When the last echo of thunder faded, there was only stillness.
No time. No form. No sound — only consequence.
The Void, once whole and untouched, now lay broken across infinity.
The Battlefield of Strength and Speed
Kaiser's body floated in nothingness, his skin cracked like stone leaking molten crimson. His once-boundless muscles trembled, unable to hold his own weight even in the absence of gravity.
Beside him drifted Savitar — his limbs bent at impossible angles, his outline flickering, unable to maintain cohesion after running through infinity itself. The concept of motion still trembled around him, trapped in loops that refused to end.
Both were alive, yet paralyzed — two broken gods locked in eternal stillness.
The Battlefield of Steel and Tide
A sea of shattered constructs and floating droplets surrounded Poseidara and Hephaestus.
Hephaestus lay impaled by his own molten spears, metal still hissing as it cooled against his divine frame. His forges — once infinite — had melted into blackened slag.
Poseidara's oceanic form was reduced to mist, her trident shattered, her essence dispersed across the void. She tried to rise, but even her waves had forgotten how to flow.
They stared at one another from across a gulf of their own making — rivals, equals, destroyed by what they were meant to embody.
The Battlefield of Spirit and Barrier
Thanamira hovered amid a graveyard of souls — the fragments of her own attacks drifting like pale fireflies. Her spectral claws were torn, and her eyes, once bright with ethereal flame, flickered like dying candles.
Aegriya kneeled within a cracked dome of sigils, her body pierced by the very seals meant to protect her. The glyphs around her trembled, unable to contain the chaos she herself had unleashed.
They looked upon each other — two divine beings gasping through divine ruin — and for the briefest instant, pity replaced rage.
The Battlefield of Shadow and Lightning
The void here was unrecognizable — half scorched by impossible light, half frozen in absolute night.
Voltraeus floated at the center, his lightning extinguished, his chest hollowed by the recoil of his final outburst.
Nocturne's body, a silhouette barely holding together, flickered beside him, his edges dissolving into the darkness he once commanded.
Where their clash had met, a fracture ran through existence — an endless rift of gray, neither light nor dark.
Only two figures remained untouched by ruin.
Artemis, her form shimmering with calm luminescence, drifted between the fallen, eyes wide with silent comprehension.
Moara, her presence a ripple of dark symbols, watched from the periphery, neither weeping nor gloating.
All fell silent after the wars of gods.
The Void—once infinite, now fractured by their clash—echoed only with the slow dying breath of eternity itself.
But two remained.
Moara, the Primordial of Voodoo, drifted through the debris of collapsed divinity. Her body was carved in runes of paradox, every layer of her soul folding over another like an infinite maze. Arae's curse had tried to take her—twisting, clawing, biting into her essence—but the labyrinth of her being devoured it, turning the poison back into silence.
Artemis, the Primordial of Wisdom, floated near her—calm, luminous, unbroken.
She did not escape the curse. She endured it. Every whisper that sought to unravel her was named, categorized, and burned within her mind. Madness could not exist in the presence of understanding.
Artemis: "The cycle ends where all beginnings are lost."
Moara: "No. It only sleeps. You feel it, too, don't you? The fracture still breathing under the dark."
Artemis: "Then we must mend the wound... before existence forgets it was ever whole."
They stood upon the rim of unbeing, where even light feared to exist.
Between them shimmered a dying star—its last ember trembling in the black.
There, they began.
Moara slit her palm. From her veins spilled cursed blood—thick, black, and whispering. Each drop carried the echo of every hex, every ritual, every forbidden truth that had ever been sealed.
Artemis raised her hand, and from her mind flowed pure thought—spinning into sigils, fractal lines, and perfect geometry. Her intellect took shape as glowing, crystalline veins weaving through the darkness.
Together, they gathered the fragments of their fallen kin:
The blood of Kaiser — strength made manifest.
The bone of Savitar — the eternal motion that defied stillness.
The creation of Hephaestus — the foundation of matter itself.
The flow of Poseidara — the essence of renewal and rhythm.
The life of Thanamira — the soul's echo of remembrance.
The protection of Aegriya — the law that forbids oblivion.
The light of Voltraeus — illumination, the proof of perception.
The darkness of Nocturne — mystery, the breath of unknowing.
Each fragment was offered to the dying star, their essences fusing under Artemis's divine patterning and Moara's forbidden art.
Then, together, they spoke the First Binding:
Artemis: "Let wisdom shape its thought."
Moara: "Let curse become its heart."
Both: "Let remembrance take root."
The star shuddered.
Its core inverted, folding inward upon itself until light and shadow merged into a single pulse—a seed.
They buried the seed into the corpse of the star, and from it grew a tree unlike any other.
Its roots plunged through the void, drinking from memory and essence.
Its trunk was glass and thought.
Its branches reached beyond the limits of existence, splitting into rivers of creation that would one day cradle galaxies.
It was not wood.
It was not life.
It was YGGDRASIL—the World-Root, the Neural Spine of Reality.
As its first leaves unfolded, Artemis wove into its structure a failsafe—a recursive memory hidden within the bark.
"When Arae's madness stirs again," she said, "Yggdrasil will remember us. And it will birth ten souls—ten echoes of divinity—to restore balance."
Moara nodded, pressing her bloodstained hand against the trunk.
"Then let our sins be their purpose."
From their combined will, the Cycle of Chosen was born.
Ten spirits forged from divine fruit—each one bound to Yggdrasil, carrying the will of a fallen god.
As Yggdrasil's pulse spread through the fractured Void, reality began to remember itself.
The madness of Arae withdrew like a receding tide.
One by one, the fallen Primordials stirred.
Their eyes opened—not as gods of war, but as remnants of an ancient harmony reborn.
Moara and Artemis stood beneath the silver eclipse—the first and last light of the Primordial Age.