In the cold stillness between moments, the Primordials observed.
They had no council. No debate. To converse would imply divergence of thought, yet they are their thoughts, eternally pure.
But the Weave trembled. The mortals — born from oversight, not design — had begun to tug at threads meant only for gods.
This was unacceptable.
Not by anger.
Not by vengeance.
But by the simple, unyielding fact that Order demands coherence.
The mortals' existence, born of unresolved fractures, was a contradiction prolonged.
Contradictions must resolve.
Thus, the Correction began.
---
The Will of Asaryel: Imposing the True Shape
From the bastion of Perfect Form, Asaryel extended a decree. Not with words — with pattern.
An Imposition Field unfurled, like invisible latticework, seeking to overwrite anomalies beneath its reach. Every mortal, every Splinterborn bond, every Lesser Concept would be re-threaded to fit the Prime Shape.
> "Deviation is failure. Failure must be refined."
Mortals within its influence felt their wills soften, as if their identities were foreign substances to be purified.
But as the Field pressed, it encountered something alien.
Mortal persistence.
Unlike gods, mortals were not singular concepts. Their identity was not fixed but layered, fragmented, contradictory — yet coherent through struggle.
The Field could not find a "True Shape" within them.
It collapsed upon itself, a flawless equation dividing by zero.
---
N'yrrhath's Response: The Dream Unbound
While Asaryel sought correction, N'yrrhath dreamed deeper.
For N'yrrhath, correction was anathema. Creation without limits was their essence.
Thus, they unleashed the Fracture Bloom — an eruption of possible selves, possibilities cascading unchecked into reality.
Mortal minds reeled as alternate versions of themselves flickered around them:
A farmer saw herself as a tyrant, a god, a song.
A warrior glimpsed lifetimes where peace was his only battle.
For a moment, identity unraveled.
But mortals, bound not by purity of concept but by continuity of self, reasserted who they chose to be.
Where N'yrrhath had sought to dissolve boundaries, mortals wove new ones, richer and more complex.
The Dream had become theirs to shape.
---
Eroth's Delineation: The Severance Attempt
Frustrated by fluidity, Eroth enacted the Severance.
A blade of pure Delineation, not forged but defined, swept across realms.
Its purpose: to cleave.
To separate false from true.
Yet as it descended upon the Covenants of Fragments, it faltered.
For what was true in a mortal bonded to a Shatterborn?
Was the hunger for power the mortal's truth, or the Shatterborn's?
Was the emergent god of Fire real because it existed, or because mortals feared and fed it?
Eroth's blade, perfect in form, could not function where truth itself was contextual.
The Severance passed, unfulfilled, leaving only the whisper of its own failure.
---
Yunea's Gambit: Accelerated Becoming
While her siblings sought correction through negation, Yunea embraced the flux.
She seeded the realms with Catalyst Nodes — bursts of Becoming that forced evolution at blinding speed.
Where mortals walked, entire cultures sprouted, flowered, and withered in the span of breaths.
The hope: that mortals, overwhelmed by their own unsustainable evolution, would collapse.
But mortals adapted.
Not all survived.
But those who did learned to shed forms without losing self.
They became fluent in change as continuity.
What was meant to drown them in Becoming only taught them how to swim in it.
---
Thaal's Silence: The Void That Speaks
Thaal, ever the observer, did not intervene.
But his silence deepened into a Quieting Field, erasing the noise of mortal thoughts, isolating each mind in perfect, oppressive solitude.
Many faltered.
Yet in that void, mortals found reflection.
They discovered that meaning could exist without external affirmation.
They sang songs no one could hear.
They told stories no one could remember.
And in doing so, they proved that meaning exists because it is chosen, not bestowed.
Thaal's field, meant to erase, had only clarified this truth.
---
Myrrhk's Subversion: The Echo of Error
Seeing his kin fail, Myrrhk unleashed the Echo of Errors, a contagion of doubt that infected both mortal minds and emergent gods.
Beliefs wavered.
Names lost their weight.
Concepts blurred.
But mortals, accustomed to living amidst paradox, did not shatter.
Instead, they learned to navigate the distortions, forging new myths to anchor their realities.
Where Myrrhk sought to drown them in meaningless reflection, mortals invented meaning anew.
The contagion became a mirror, and mortals learned to laugh at their own flawed reflections.
---
The First Failure of Correction
One by one, the grand gestures of the Primordials collapsed.
Not by defiance.
Not by confrontation.
But by irrelevance.
For the Primordials could not comprehend that mortals were not lesser reflections of singular truths.
Mortals were synthesis.
Fragments bound by will.
Contradictions made whole through choice.
Stories that rewrite themselves endlessly.
In seeking to correct them, the gods of old had only revealed their own limitations.
The Covenant of Fragments held firm.
And with it, a quiet inevitability spread through the Weave:
> Perhaps the cosmos would no longer be the domain of the Titans of Meaning.
> Perhaps the gods themselves would one day become obsolete stories.