When the waters finally receded and the Ark came to rest upon the ancient slopes of Mount Ararat, a strange silence lingered over the land.
The world was reborn, yet it was a world of ghosts.
The valleys lay empty, the bones of drowned cities buried beneath restless seas.
The voices of the Nephilim no longer echoed through the ancient forests, their monstrous forms lost to the depths.
The Watchers, those once-proud beings who had defiled creation, lay bound in the shadowed pits beyond mortal reach.
For a time, peace endured.
Noah, weary from the long trials of survival and solitude, planted vineyards in the newly fertile valleys.
His sons — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — began to raise families, their wives bearing the first children of this new age.
The beasts of the earth multiplied.
Birds once more filled the skies.
The rivers ran clear, free from the taint of blood rites and forbidden sorceries.
In those days, Noah often spoke to his descendants of the old world — recounting the rebellion of the Watchers, the rise of the Nephilim, the unspeakable blasphemies of Atlantis and Lemuria, the arrogance of Eridu, and the lost Shards of the Word, scattered in the earth's deep places.
His grandsons listened with a mixture of awe and fear.
But the hunger of mortal hearts remains eternal.
The Covenant and the Scattering of the Bloodlines
Before his death, Noah gathered his sons and their households.
Upon the sacred stone of covenant, he blessed them:
To Shem, he granted the mantle of the Architect's favor — a covenant to carry the sacred line through which the promise of deliverance would one day come.
From Shem's seed would rise the priest-kings, the prophets, and the keepers of ancient wisdom.
To Japheth, he gave dominion over the wide lands of the north and west, to become fathers of nations of kings, warriors, and seafarers.
To Ham, though burdened by the errors of his house, he gave the fertile valleys of the south.
Yet Noah warned him: "From your blood, a shadow shall rise — a cunning one whose pride will wound the heavens again."
And so the sons of Noah scattered.
Shem's line moved eastward, preserving the sacred songs, the tongue of the Beginning, and the ancient rites of the Architect.
Japheth's sons wandered into the cold mountains and deep forests, building cities of stone and mastering the arts of fire and iron.
Ham's bloodline flourished in the south, in rich lands of rivers and sand — but from it, old secrets whispered.
The shadows of pre-flood wisdom and forbidden knowledge stirred once more.
The Birth and Rise of Nimrod
From the house of Ham, in the line of Cush, a child was born beneath a crimson sky.
The midwives who delivered him spoke in hushed terror: the boy's eyes gleamed with an unnatural light, as though two pale moons had risen in his gaze.
The beasts of the fields grew restless in his presence.
And the winds whispered of ill omens.
They named him Nimrod.
From his earliest years, Nimrod displayed a will stronger than those around him.
He hunted beasts not for survival, but for sport, and bent men to his will with words sharper than blades.
He sought out the scattered ruins of the old world, prying ancient relics from the bones of drowned cities.
Some claimed Nimrod was taught by one of the last surviving Nephilim, hidden in a cavern of black stone.
There he learned the ancient names, the weaving of runes, and the calling of spirits from the hidden places between worlds.
By the time he was a man, Nimrod had gathered the scattered tribes beneath his banner.
He forged the first true weapons of war since the Flood.
He declared himself King of Earth and Sky.
His dominion spread over the plain of Shinar, a fertile land left untouched by the floodwaters.
There he raised walled cities, vast fields of grain, and temples to beings older than the stars.
But Nimrod's ambition burned higher still.
The Tower of Babel
In Nimrod's heart smoldered a singular, blasphemous desire:
To storm the heavens themselves.
To tear down the veil of creation.
To claim dominion over both mortal and celestial.
And so he decreed the building of a tower.
Not a mere monument, but a structure that would pierce the very vault of heaven.
I watched as the foundation was laid with stone quarried from the bones of ancient mountains.
Bricks were forged in furnaces fed by pitch, blood, and oil.
The labor of thousands — men, women, and child alike — was bent to its making.
But this was no simple work of mortal hands.
For beneath the tower, Nimrod gathered forbidden relics:
Fragments of weapons once wielded by the Watchers
Bones of fallen Nephilim
Sealed scrolls bearing names long forbidden to mortal tongues
Priests cloaked in crimson and black conducted rites in dead languages, calling upon the imprisoned names of the Watchers.
They sought to open breaches — rifts between realms — to draw forbidden power from beyond the firmament.
The old corruption bled back into the world.
The scattered bloodline of Cain sent emissaries to Shinar.
Descendants of the drowned cities whispered their counsel into Nimrod's ears.
I felt the Shards of the Word, long buried, stir once more beneath the stones.
Heaven's Judgment
The higher realms took notice.
The celestial choirs, though mourning their fallen brethren, readied themselves.
The Architect, who sees all and misses nothing, decreed that no flood would come this time — but a severing.
And so it came to pass.
One morning, as the masons laid stone upon stone, their tongues were turned.
Brother could no longer speak to brother.
The masons quarreled.
The priests faltered mid-incantation.
Words of power dissolved into meaningless sound.
Confusion spread like wildfire.
The rites failed.
The old names lost their weight.
The upper tiers of the tower cracked.
The Shards of the Word, sensing the disruption, withdrew deeper into the earth's veins.
The terrified people scattered.
Some fled north to become lords of stone cities.
Others sought refuge in ancient forests.
Still more crossed wastelands and deserts, carrying remnants of Nimrod's blasphemies.
The Tower of Babel was abandoned.
A shattered monument to mortal arrogance.
Nimrod himself was struck down.
Some say by fire from the Architect's hand.
Others by his own followers, driven mad by tongues they could no longer command.
Yet his bloodline endured.
And the knowledge of the old rites would surface again, hidden in secret places — waiting.
The First Fracture
But the judgment upon Babel left scars deeper than stone and speech.
For in severing mortal tongues, the Architect did more:
He fractured reality itself.
From the splintering of the One Tongue came a multiverse of reflections and echoes.
New realms were born — worlds untethered from the main current of creation.
Some strange, some beautiful, some terrible.
In the far reaches of these realms, new pantheons would rise.
New cities would be born.
Some would mirror the rebellion of the old world.
And in their stories, the ancient darkness would return.
I moved through it all.
I saw the Nexus stir.
For what was broken at Babel would one day rise again — under new names, with new faces, but always carrying the ancient, familiar darkness. We will focus on this world before the others….
The war is not over.
Not yet.