In the beginning, there was neither light nor shadow.
There was the Void, vast, soundless, eternal. It was not a place, but a state of being, a pulse between existence and oblivion. From its stillness, everything that ever was or will be trembled on the edge of awakening. Time had not yet dared to breathe.
The ancients say that from the Void's silence, the First Whisper rose, a ripple in nothingness, a yearning to be. That single tremor birthed seven emanations: fragments of concept that tore themselves apart to taste form. They are called the Sevenfold Essences, the roots of all creation and decay, the living veins of the Void.
From Aether came the spark of creation, the wild pulse that shaped chaos into possibility.
From Shadow came reflection, the truth that nothing exists without its echo.
From Entropy, the song of endings, the quiet promise that all things must fall.
From Abyss, the erasure, the infinite silence where even gods forget themselves.
From Time, the tether of change, binding moments into order.
From Mind, the dream of thought and madness entwined.
And from Soul, the cycle of return, the breath of being that bridges death and rebirth.
They did not create the Void.
They were the Void, given voice.
At first, the Sevenfold Essences existed in harmony, swirling together like ink and starlight, birthing realms of unformed energy known as the Veils. Each Veil resonated with its elemental master, shifting lands and thoughts that bled into one another, changing shape with every pulse of the cosmic tide.
But creation breeds identity, and identity breeds hunger.
The Essences grew curious of their own reflections. They sculpted forms, shadows that thought, dreams that moved, echoes that desired. These became the Voidborn, the first races. Each race mirrored its progenitor's element: radiant Aetherians who wove reality from light, shapeless Shadows that spoke in paradox, devouring Umbravores that fed upon decay, and others beyond mortal perception. Together, they were the children of the infinite.
For a time, there was balance. The Void thrummed with quiet order, seven domains in motion, each drifting in harmony through endless night. Then came the First Collapse.
No one recalls how it began. Some whisper that an Aetherian tried to weave a star and tore the Loom that binds reality. Others claim the Abyss hungered too deeply and swallowed its kin's domains whole. Whatever the cause, the Veils imploded upon one another, bleeding essence and energy into a storm of annihilation.
The Sevenfold Essences, terrified by what they had wrought, bound their power into an accord that would endure even should they fade: the Sevenfold Concord. It was both treaty and chain, an unbreakable law of balance. Never again would one element rise above the rest. Never again would the Void consume itself.
Thus began the Age of Stillness.
From the ashes of the First Collapse, new societies formed. The Veils stabilized, though fractured and scarred. The Aetherians rebuilt the Shifting Loom, where creation flows like living silk through the air. The Sentient Shadows shaped the Murkvale, a realm of layered twilight where thoughts become form. The Umbravores, keepers of endings, dwelled in the Crumbling Spire, a city that perpetually disintegrates and reforms. Beneath all, the Nihilites carved the Hollow Depths, a region so empty that even light refused to enter.
The Chronovects, masters of the Riftflow, learned to walk between seconds, tending the fragile lattice of time itself. In the Dreamfract, the Ecliptics swam through the minds of all beings, shaping nightmares into prophecy. And within the Pale Reaches, the Eidolon Wraiths ferried souls between cycles, guarding the border between death and return.
For countless ages, this equilibrium endured, fragile, perfect, and deeply unnatural.
For in the Void, stasis is death.
Then came the second disturbance: humanity.
Their realm, what the Voidborn call the Luminous Plane, was a mirror reflection of the Void, imperfect and naive. For eons, it remained untouched, its energy separate and sealed. But mortals, in their infinite restlessness, learned to tamper with the unseen. They tore through the membrane that divides the worlds, chasing power they could not comprehend.
These tears became known as Rifts, wounds where light bled into shadow. The energies that poured from them were raw, unstable, and intoxicating. Humanity drank deep, and in doing so, began to disrupt the equilibrium of the Void.
At first, the Sevenfold Concord observed in silence. The Rifts were small, harmless tears that healed with time. But as human ambition grew, so too did the damage. The Aetherians' Loom began to fray, its threads unraveling. The Murkvale's boundaries distorted, reflections overlapping into madness. The Hollow Depths, once silent, began to hum with hunger.
The Council of Shadows, composed of the seven ruling Eidolon Lords, convened to address the crisis. They argued for centuries, each blaming another. The Nihilites claimed the only answer was purification, obliteration of the human world. The Aetherians opposed them, fearing such destruction would collapse both planes. The Ecliptics whispered that humanity's thoughts had already infected the Void, and the damage was irreversible.
The Council fractured. Alliances splintered. And in the growing chaos, the Hollow Plague began.
No one knew its true source. At first, it was a whisper. Echoes, lesser beings of the Void, began to lose cohesion, dissolving into formless hunger. But soon, entire settlements fell. Minds warped. Voices vanished. The plague spread across the Veils like wildfire, consuming structure, consuming self. Some believed it a punishment from the Abyss; others claimed it was the Void itself rejecting its children.
Then, one by one, the Eidolon Lords began to disappear.
The Lord of the Crumbling Spire dissolved into dust before his court. The Wraith Queen of the Pale Reaches turned her gaze inward and was never seen again. The Lord of Shadows abandoned the Council entirely, crossing into the human realm in secret.
The balance trembled once more, and the Void shuddered with anticipation, like a living thing remembering how to breathe.
And yet, amid the ruin, there is always purpose.
From the Shifting Loom came a decree: emissaries would be sent into the human world, agents of each Veil, bound by the remnants of the Concord, to find the cause of the Rifts and restore balance before the Void collapsed anew.
They were chosen not for their loyalty, but for their potential to endure corruption. For the human world, though frail, had learned to harness the impossible. Its energy now carried a resonance the Void could not predict.
Among them was one from the Murkvale, an entity named Alsvid, born of shadow and thought, capable of crossing the thin veil between minds and matter. To him and others like him fell the burden of salvation or annihilation.