Listen well, mortal, for I weave a tale etched into the bones of the world itself—a story few remember, though it once pulsed in every heartbeat, every whispered prayer.
Long before your grandfather's grandfather drew his first ragged breath, before empires crumbled to ash and faded into myth, the world wore a different face. There was the Age of Divine Dominion, when gods strode the earth as casually as you might pace your village square.
They were real. Flesh and fury, not mere fables.
And when they bled—oh yes, even immortals cuuld spill their essence—it ran gold, not red. Ichor, they named it: the molten blood of eternity, shimmmering like captured sunlight, worth more than every hoard in every kingdom of trembling men.
These deities towered over humanity, nine, ten, twelve feet of rippling godflesh that warped the air with raw power. Wounds could mar them, rival pantheons could slay them in cataclysmic wars, but to mortals? They were untouchable apocalypse.
One flex shattered mountains; one sprint left tempests in their wake.
Their beauty seared the soul, their terror shattered minds—glimpses alone drove poets mad and kings to their knees.
In the frozen North, Odin All-Father brooded upon his throne in Asgard, his Lone eye piercing the Nine Realms like a raven's unblinking stare. Thor's hammer Mjolnir cracked the heavens, its peals mistakene by mortals for thunder's roar.
The Aesir and Vanir commanded storm, sea, war, and arcane wisdom, their halls echoing with mead-soaked feasts and blood-oaths.
Across vasst oceans, in lands of jade and silk, the Jade Emperor ruled from his celestial court, a bureaucracy of immortals more intricate than any mortal empire.
Dragons coiled through mist-shrouded clouds, the Phoenix erupted from pyres to herald dynasties' rise and fall. Eastern gods numbered in the thousands, their domains a web of cosmic order.
In dense jungles and atop sky-piercing pyramids, Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent soared on iridescent wings, while Tezcatlipoca stalked through his smoking mirror, weaving jaguar-shadowed intrigue. Mesoamerican deities thirsted for sacrifice—their own ichor had forged the Fifth Sun, and the scales of creation demanded repayment in rivers of mortal blood.
Japanese isles quaked under Susanoo's tempest rage, only to bloom in Amaterasu's radiant grace. Tengri's eternal blue sky blanketed the endless steppes. In frozen wilds, bear and raven spirits held feral court. Africa's Anansi spun webs of cuning tales, while Orishas danced fluidly between realms and realities.
Yet above all—in raw power, blinding glory, and the gravitational crush of their worldwide presence—two pantheons reigned supreme.
The gods of Egypt were creation's masterpieces: beast-headed avatars fused to bodies of flawless divinity, a savage symphony of animal ferocity and immortal grace. Golden ichor coursed beneath fur, feather, and scale, rendering them living hieroglyphs—embodiments of primal forces made manifest, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
Ra, the sun god, bore a falcon's head crowned by the blazing solar disc, his eyes twin infernos scorching all they surveyed. Daily he sailed his solar barque across the heavens, plunging into the underworld each night to battle the chaos-serpent Apophis, ensuring dawn's merciless return.
Osiris,lord of the dead, stood swathed in burial linens, his human-headed form reborn in verdant green skin—the hue of eternal renewal. Crook and flail crossed upon his chest, his realm spanned the veil of death, weighing every soul's worth on scales of unyielding truth.
Isis, his indomitable queen, wore cow horns cradling the sun disc, her wings of magic vast enough to resurrect the slain and command Ra's secret name—bending reality like clay in her hands.
Horus, falcon-headed avenger and rightful pharaoh of the gods, whose eyes were the sun and moon themselves—one blazing day, one silvered night—flew as Egypt's eternal guardian, talons dripping with the ichor of slain foes.
Set, the red god of chaos and desert storms, with the head of a creature that never stalked mortal lands—part jackal, part aardvark, part pure nightmare—his crimson skin crackling with violence held just barely in check, like a sandstorm itching to break free.
Anubis, jackal-headed guide of souls, who stood over the scales and weighed each heart against Ma'at's feather, sorting the worth from the damned with a solemn nod or a final judgment.
Thoth, with the curved beak of an ibis, master of all wisdom and magic and the written word—the divine scribe who etched every moment of existence into eternity, his reed pen never still.
Bastet with her sleek cat's grace, Sekhmet the lioness of slaughter, Sobek the crocodile lurking in Nile murk, Hathor with her cow's gentle horns hiding a wild heart—each one towering over mortals, golden ichor like liquid sunlight pumping through their veins.
The Egyptians had stared death in the face and built ladders to climb over it. They'd raised monuments that laughed at time itself, pyramids that clawed at the stars. They'd carved paradise out of barren sand, and their gods laid every stone of forever.
And then there were the Greeks.
Oh, the Greeks.
Where Egyptians blended beast and divine into something primal and strange, the Greeks were human perfection dialed up to impossible—tall as their rivals, beautiful in a way that stopped hearts, golden ichor thrumming in veins just as potent and holy. No need for animal masks to prove their might. Their sheer presence could drop a mortal to dust.
Zeus, who'd overthrown his own father Kronos and seized lightning as his personal toy, shaking Olympus with nothing but his whim. His eyes sparked like storms brewing, his voice rolled out thunder that rattled bones. Poseidon gripped the seas tight, trident ready to crack continents like eggshells.
Hades ruled the underworld's shadows, a realm to make even Osiris glance over his shoulder. Athena, springing full-grown from Zeus's skull, balancing wisdom and war like it was chird's play. Apollo drove the sun's chariot across the sky, peering into tomorrows. Artemis, huntress who bowed to no one, arrow always nocked.
Ares, grinning through the blood-soaked chaos of battlefields. Aphrodite, whose glance toppled kingdoms and started wars. Hephaestus, hammering wonders in the bellies of volcanoes. Hermes, quick as thought, slipping between worlds with a wink.
The Greeks didn't just rule—they devoured. Egyptians kept the cosmic scales balanced, Ma'at's order holding chaos at bay. But Greeks? They lived for the fire of it all—passion that burned cities, conflicts that redrew maps, the raw thrill of power with no leash.
These two pantheons, Egyptian and Greek, they were the backbone of the divine order. When they opened their mouths, every other god shut up and listened. When they stirred, nations toppled like dominoes. Oldest of the old, strongest of the strong, terrible in their glory like nothing else.
But power's a greedy bastard.
And the Age of Divine Dominion, for all its thunder and shine, couldn't stretch on forever.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back, back to when the gods still walked among us, back to the last golden age before everything changed. Back to the day when Ares, God of War, made a wager with Set, God of Chaos...
And set in motion the end of everything divine.
Back to the day when a mortal—a single mortal boy—arrived from beyond the known world...
Back to when he cuckolded the gods themselves.