Before kingdoms.
Before even names.
Before boundaries were drawn on maps that did not yet exist, before crowns were forged and thrones were claimed, there lived an ancient understanding of the world—one that survived only in whispers and fragments.
An ancient belief, nearly erased by time.
It claimed that the world did not turn by human will alone, but by higher Wills: vast, invisible forces that etched themselves into reality through life, matter, and intention. They did not rule like kings, nor command like generals. They shaped. They drove. They chose.
And when they chose, the world changed.
Six, according to the fragmented texts.
Six Wills that once upheld the balance of the world… and, in the same breath, brought it to the brink of ruin. Each embodied an aspect of existence so fundamental that to invoke their name was to acknowledge the true insignificance of humanity.
Their footprints had been found in ancient ruins buried beneath modern cities. In symbols etched into stone that no modern tongue could fully translate. In bloodlines that bore strange gifts—or even stranger curses.
History remembered the empires that rose and fell.
The belief remembered what moved them like pieces on a board.
These Wills did not speak with voices.
They did not appear in the sky in flaming forms.
They acted through Vessels.
Individuals chosen, marked at birth or claimed later by forces they could neither see nor refuse. Those marked bore Seals: living conduits between mortal flesh and something far more ancient. Through them, the Wills touched the world directly.
Some Seals brought prosperity.
Others, catastrophe.
And so, the knowledge was buried.
Not destroyed—never truly destroyed—but hidden. Passed down in coded texts, in sealed archives, in the guarded minds of those entrusted with truths too dangerous for the public to know.
They were not spoken of in plazas or schools.
They were not taught to children.
They were not debated in courts.
Only in closed rooms, behind reinforced doors, among people who knew too much and slept too little.
Because to know the Wills was to understand a terrifying possibility:
That power did not truly belong to humanity.
In Valthera, that knowledge was not faith.
It was fear.