The night the gods fell, the sky bled silver.
Theron Blackthorn stood at the highest point of the Celestial Monastery, his gray eyes fixed on the impossible spectacle unfolding above. Threads of pure divine essence unraveled across the heavens like cosmic yarn being pulled from reality's tapestry by invisible hands. Each strand that snapped sent a visible shockwave through the Weave, rippling outward in concentric circles that made the air itself shimmer. The invisible lattice of magic that bound their world together, that maintained the fundamental laws of physics and reality, was coming apart at the seams.
He felt it in his bones. The wrongness of it penetrated deeper than mere physical sensation. It resonated with something fundamental in his soul, as if his very existence recognized that what was happening should not be possible. More than that, he felt it in the mark on his palm. The three interlocking circles that had been there since birth, that his parents had died never knowing the significance of, now burned with an intensity that stole his breath. The mark had always been warm, a gentle heat that reminded him of summer sunlight. Now it felt like he had pressed his hand against a forge.
"Master Orin!" Theron called down to the courtyard three levels below, his voice raw with urgency and fear. But the sound was swallowed immediately by the roar of celestial collapse. The noise was beyond anything he had reference for. Beyond thunder, which was merely air moving. Beyond earthquake, which was just stone grinding against stone. This was the sound of divinity dying, of immortal beings that had existed since before time had meaning simply ceasing to be. It resonated in frequencies that human ears were never meant to perceive, that made his teeth ache and his eyes water.
Below him, through vision blurred by tears both from the sound and from the mark's burning, Theron could see the elder monks of the monastery scrambling in organized chaos. They moved with practiced efficiency even in the face of the apocalypse, following protocols that had been established millennia ago for disasters that everyone had hoped would never come. They were trying to contain the chaos erupting in the monastery's sacred garden, but Theron could see it was hopeless. Some things simply could not be contained.
The World Tree stood at the garden's heart. It was ancient beyond reckoning, older than the monastery itself, older than the kingdom of Valorath that surrounded them, possibly older than human civilization entirely. Its trunk was wider than the monastery's main hall, its branches spread so far they could shelter the entire complex beneath them. The monks maintained it had been planted by the gods themselves in the world's first days, a living anchor point for the Weave. Its luminescent leaves, each one unique and bright as captured starlight, had never fallen in recorded history.
Now they fell like ash.
Theron watched in horror as leaf after glowing leaf detached from branches that had held them for thousands of years. They drifted down slowly, seeming to fight against gravity itself, but inevitably they fell. And as each one touched the ground, it simply disintegrated. Not burned or withered, but unmade. The leaves returned to the raw magical energy that had formed them in the first place, dissolving into motes of light that faded into nothing.
His mark flared with sudden, vicious heat. Not the uncomfortable warmth of before, but searing agony that drove him to his knees on the tower's cold stone floor. Theron gasped, his free hand clutching at the rough stone, knuckles white with the force of his grip. Through vision that had gone blurry and spotted with tears, he forced himself to look up at the sky.
Seven crowns of light were descending from the fractured heavens.
Each one blazed with colors that seemed to exist outside the normal spectrum, hues that his eyes reported to his brain but that his brain couldn't quite process. Looking at them was like trying to perceive a color that didn't exist, that violated the fundamental rules of light and perception. They hurt to look at directly, but Theron found himself unable to look away. They were beautiful in the way a wildfire was beautiful, in the way a tsunami was beautiful. Terrible and magnificent and utterly beyond human scale.
Six of the crowns streaked away toward distant horizons. Theron watched them go, tracked their impossible speed as they vanished into the distance faster than any falling star. North, south, east, west. Two went in directions that made his head hurt to follow, dimensions his three dimensional mind couldn't quite parse. Up but not up. Sideways but into something that wasn't space. His eyes watered trying to track them.
The seventh crown, brilliant silver and geometric in its perfection, came directly at him.
Theron tried to run. His legs wouldn't obey. They had gone numb from the mark's burning, or perhaps from sheer terror. He tried to shield himself with what little protective magic he knew. The ward manifested as a shimmer in the air before him, a barely visible distortion that represented months of careful study and practice. The crown of light touched it and the ward shattered like glass, fragments of broken magic scattering into nothingness.
The crown struck him square in the center of his chest.
Pain exploded through every nerve in Theron's body. But calling it pain was inadequate. Pain was what you felt when you cut yourself, when you broke a bone, when you burned your hand on a hot pot. This transcended mere physical agony and reached into his soul itself, into the fundamental essence of what made him Theron Blackthorn. It was rewriting something at his very core, changing him in ways he couldn't begin to understand.
He felt his chest tear open. Not physically, though it felt physical enough that he looked down expecting to see blood and torn flesh. But the tearing was deeper than skin and muscle. It was happening in some other layer of reality, some dimension of existence that humans weren't meant to perceive. The crown wasn't just hitting him. It was merging with him, fusing itself to his essence, becoming part of him on a level more intimate than bone or blood or DNA.
Theron screamed. The sound tore from his throat raw and primal, all pretense of dignity or control abandoned in the face of absolute agony. His scream joined the cosmic destruction above, one small voice added to an orchestra of apocalypse. Gods were dying. Reality was breaking. And Theron Blackthorn was being remade into something that was no longer entirely human.
His mind, unable to process what was happening to him, unable to maintain consciousness in the face of transformation that violated every law of nature, simply shut down. It was a mercy, perhaps. Consciousness fled like a frightened animal. Darkness rushed in to claim him, and Theron fell into it gratefully.
When Theron opened his eyes again, he had no idea how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? Days? The sun was in a different position in the sky, suggesting at least several hours, but his internal sense of time had been completely disrupted. He lay at the bottom of a crater, looking up at a sky that was still fractured, still showing cracks in reality itself.
The tower where he had stood was simply gone. Not collapsed into rubble, not destroyed with scattered stones marking where it had been, but erased. As if it had never existed at all. The crater in its place was perfectly circular, its edges smooth and slightly fused like glass. At its center, where Theron lay, the ground had melted and reformed into strange geometric patterns. Fractals within fractals, mathematical shapes that shouldn't be possible in three dimensional space.
He sat up slowly, every muscle protesting. Nothing hurt, which was wrong. He should be dead. He should be broken in a thousand different ways. A fall from that height alone should have shattered every bone in his body. Instead he felt strong. Powerful. Dangerously so. Energy thrummed beneath his skin, so much power that he felt like he might burst with it.
His hand went to his chest, expecting to find the wound where the crown had struck. His fingers found smooth skin, unmarked and whole. But beneath the skin, he could feel something hard and warm. The crown had embedded itself in his sternum, fused with his flesh and bone in a way that made it inseparable from his body. It was part of him now. As much a part of him as his heart or his lungs.
Theron climbed to his feet on legs that shook but held his weight. He looked around at what remained of his home.
The monastery was gone. All of it.
The ancient buildings where he had studied and trained for eighteen years. The gardens where he had spent countless hours in meditation. The library where he had learned to read the Weave's structure. The training halls where Master Orin had taught him to fight with sword and staff. The kitchens where Brother Mallus had snuck him extra portions. The sleeping quarters where he had dreamed of one day becoming a master himself.
All of it was simply gone.
The ground around the crater was scorched black, as if divine fire had swept across everything and burned it down to bedrock. But there were no ashes. No rubble. Just smooth, fused earth that reflected the fractured sky like dark glass.
And the people.
"Master Orin?" Theron's voice came out as barely a whisper. He tried again, forcing more air through his throat. "Master Orin!"
Only silence answered him. The kind of profound, terrible silence that comes after catastrophe, when even the wind seems afraid to move. Theron stumbled forward, out of the crater, his legs unsteady beneath him. He had to find someone. Anyone. There had to be survivors.
He found the first body fifty yards from the crater. Brother Mallus, the monastery's head gardener, a man who had lived ninety three years and could make anything grow. His body was intact, showing no signs of burning or trauma. But he was cold, lifeless. Theron knelt beside him, pressed his fingers to the man's neck searching for a pulse he knew he wouldn't find. The skin was cold as stone. Brother Mallus's eyes stared sightlessly at the fractured sky.
Theron closed those eyes gently and moved on.
He found thirty seven more bodies as he searched what remained of the monastery grounds. Every monk, every student, every servant who had been within the monastery's walls when the gods fell. All dead. All showing the same lack of trauma, the same expression of peace despite death. As if something had simply reached into their bodies and pulled their life force away, leaving behind empty shells.
Master Orin lay in what had been the meditation hall. The building itself was gone, but Theron recognized the location by the ancient stones that had marked its foundation. The old man lay on his back, hands folded across his chest, his weathered face peaceful. He might have been sleeping except for the absolute stillness, the complete lack of breath.
Theron knelt beside his master and mentor, the man who had been more of a father to him than his own father had managed in the few years before his death. He took Master Orin's cold hand in his own.
"I'm sorry," Theron whispered. Tears ran down his face unchecked. "I don't know what happened. I don't know what this is." He touched his chest where the crown fragment rested beneath his skin. "But I'll figure it out. I promise you. I'll figure out what this means and why it happened. I won't let your death be meaningless."
As if responding to his words, to the promise he had just made, the mark on his palm flared with sudden warmth. Not painful this time, not the searing agony of before. This was gentle heat, insistent but not demanding. It pulled at his attention, drew his awareness north toward the distant horizon.
Somewhere out there, someone else had survived. Someone else carried a crown fragment. He could feel it, a resonance between his mark and another one somewhere far away. Like recognizing a familiar voice in a crowded room.
Theron stood slowly, releasing Master Orin's hand with reluctance. He needed to move. Needed to prepare. The voice in his head had said to find the others, and every instinct told him that time was critical.
He gathered what supplies he could salvage from the ruins. A travel pack, its leather scorched but still intact. A waterskin that had somehow survived when everything around it had been destroyed. Dried food from what remained of the kitchen stores, the preservation spells on them still holding despite everything. His sword, a simple training blade with no magical enhancements, found beneath a pile of debris. He strapped it to his hip, the familiar weight grounding him in a reality that had become unmoored.
Before leaving, Theron returned to Master Orin one last time. He knelt beside the old man and carefully arranged his hands, making sure they were folded properly. Then he spoke the words they had practiced together a thousand times, the death rites of the Weave monks.
"May the Weave carry you home. May your essence return to the infinite pattern from which all things spring and to which all things return. May you find peace in the eternal tapestry, your thread woven forever into the great design. Walk gently into that final darkness, Master. Your student will carry on your teachings."
Then he heard it. Not with his ears but directly in his mind, meaning that bypassed language entirely and spoke to his consciousness with perfect clarity. The voice had no source, no direction. It simply existed, vast and ancient and alien, pressed against his thoughts like a weight.
"The game begins. Find the others. Save this world... or let it burn."
Theron's hand flew to his sword hilt, a useless gesture against something that spoke inside his own skull. "Who are you? What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do?"
No answer came. The presence, if it had ever truly been there, was gone. Only the echo of its message remained, reverberating through his mind like the afterimage of a too bright light. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the words wouldn't fade.
The game begins. Find the others.
Theron looked one last time at the ruins of his home, at the thirty seven bodies of people he had loved, at the blackened earth where ancient buildings had stood. Then he looked up at the sky where cracks in reality spread like spiderwebs across the blue. The world was dying. He could feel it in the Weave, sense it in the way magic felt wrong now, tainted somehow.
He touched the crown fragment in his chest. Power answered his touch, thrumming just beneath his skin. Vast and terrifying power that he had no idea how to control. But he would learn. He had to. Because somewhere out there, six other people had received the same terrible gift. And if the voice was right, finding them was the only way to save what remained of the world.
Theron Blackthorn, twenty three years old, former monk and sole survivor of the Celestial Monastery, turned his face north and began walking. Behind him, the ruins of his old life smoldered and cooled. Ahead of him, an unknown future waited. The crown in his chest pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, alien and intimate all at once.
The gods were dead. Seven mortals had inherited fragments of their power. And the game, whatever it was, had only just begun.