"Before the world had form, the Celestials burned alone."
There was no sky. No ground. Only silence so deep that even thought had weight.
And in that silence, a spark stirred.
It was not light. It was not heat. It was memory — the first memory.
From it came the seven Archons, shaped not from matter, but from longing itself.
Each longed for something different.
The first longed for light, and so Aurelion, the Archon of Radiance, rose — his heart a sun that knew no rest.
The second longed for stillness, and so Nerath, the Archon of Glass, wove reflection into the void.
The third longed for freedom, and from that yearning was born Serathen, the Archon of Flame — the one who would not bow to silence.
The others followed: Elyra of Song, Vathis of Dust, Morwen of Night, and Ceryn of Bone.
Together, they wove the world from fragments of themselves.
Where Aurelion walked, light fell.
Where Nerath gazed, oceans formed.
Where Serathen's fire touched, life ignited.
And for a time, creation sang.
But fire cannot create without hunger.
Serathen's flame began to devour more than it gave. Mountains turned molten; oceans boiled into steam. The other Archons demanded restraint, but Serathen only laughed — a sound that cracked the newborn sky.
"What is creation if not the burning of nothing into something?"
So began the First War of Flame — Celestials warring over their own design.
Aurelion forged the Spear of Dawn, piercing Serathen's chest with light so pure it burned through eternity.
Serathen fell from the heavens — not destroyed, but remembered by the earth itself.
Where he struck, the land split open, and from the wound poured fire that would never die.
That wound became Emberveil, the scar at the world's heart.
The Archons, weary and hollow, sealed their war inside stone and silence.
They wrote their crimes into seven tablets — a book of ash, bound in sorrow.
And that book became The Codex — forbidden even to the Celestials who made it.
Aurelion spoke the last divine law:
"Let no flame think, and let no man remember."
And so the Celestials fell asleep, sinking into the earth.
Ages passed. The oceans cooled. Dust gave birth to forests, forests to beasts, and beasts — in time — to man.
But the world never forgot.
Beneath every mountain, the fire still whispered a single name —
the name of the Celestial who would not die.
Serathen.
And when the first human learned to strike flint to spark…
the Codex stirred once more.