Long ago, long enough to be forgotten, there existed a being known as the Eternal Creator. From its boundless will, it shaped two immensely powerful entities and called them Gods. Then, its purpose fulfilled, the Eternal Creator vanished from reality without trace or farewell.
Left alone in the silence of existence, the two Gods grew restless. Out of curiosity, or perhaps boredom, they reached into the void and wove two opposing forces into being: Divine Energy, radiant and ordered, and Abyssal Energy, dark and formless. The collision of these two forces gave birth to something neither God had anticipated: a vast, living world suspended between life and death.
Thousands of years passed.
Within that world, a new kind of being emerged, fragile, mortal, and endlessly curious. Humans. In time, they discovered Divine Energy and learned to channel it. This surprised the Gods, who had long considered such power their own. But surprise turned to alarm when, centuries later, a human being achieved something thought impossible, full mastery of Divine Energy. They had reached the stage known as DemiGod.
Fearing what this meant for their dominion, the Gods acted swiftly and without mercy. The DemiGod was destroyed.
But one God went further. In secret, the darker of the two flooded the mortal world with Abyssal Energy, hoping to cripple humanity and prevent another such awakening. The plan backfired. The living beings of the world recoiled from the corruption, and their collective hatred of the Abyssal Energy coursed back like a tide, weakening the very God who had unleashed it.
Seeing its counterpart diminished, the other God seized the moment. A war erupted across the divine realms, ancient and catastrophic, until the weakened God was cast down, swallowed by the deep dark below the world. In that shadow, it became something new: the God of the Abyss.
To ensure the Abyss never rose again, the remaining God made a choice. It would bind servants to itself, chosen from among humanity, selected at the very moment a soul was formed. These Chosen would carry divine purpose from birth, tasked with holding back the darkness.
But the selection was imperfect. Some souls slipped through, unnoticed, unchosen, and were born into the world without purpose or patron. Over time, this divide grew visible. Humanity fractured into two halves: those who served the God, and those who had been forgotten by one.
Among the forgotten, a small and desperate group refused to accept their fate. Denied divine power, they turned their eyes downward, toward the Abyss. Through dangerous experimentation, they discovered a forbidden path to strength. They called themselves the Abyssal Prayer.
The practice was treacherous. Some who pursued it were consumed by darkness. Others lost their minds entirely. When the God's servants discovered what they had done, the knowledge was buried, sealed away and condemned, meant never to surface again.
Years 3085 Of The Sun
In Neril family
A young woman of about nineteen pushed open the wide door and slipped inside, crossing the room toward the older man asleep in the bed.
"Big brother. Big brother." She shook his shoulder with both hands. "Wake up. Right now. You're almost late for the family meeting."
The man in the bed stirred slowly, like something surfacing from very deep water. He was around twenty, with black hair, dark brown eyes, and the kind of dark circles beneath them that suggested the night had not been kind to him. His name was Asentha Neril.
"Alright, alright," he muttered, his voice thick with exhaustion. "I'm waking up. What time is it?"
"Almost ten in the morning and you're still in bed." She said it with the flat, weary tone of someone who had done this exact thing every day of her life and had long since stopped expecting it to go differently. "What a lazy brother I have."
Asentha dragged himself upright without further argument and began preparing himself for the day, his sister moving around the room behind him, straightening the bed with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned not to wait for him to do it himself.
"This girl," he thought, watching her out of the corner of his eye, "is my younger sister. We have different mothers, but she has never once treated me as anything less than her real older brother. Her mother passed away shortly after giving birth to her, so my mother raised her as her own. My poor sister." He watched the morning light catch her hair, golden and bright as silk thread. "With her beauty and her warmth, I hope she finds a good life. A peaceful one. Her name is Nitaria Neril, and she is the only sister I have."
He finished preparing in silence and walked out toward the Hall.
Five people were already seated in the meeting room when Asentha arrived.
The man at the center chair was Metania Neril, head of the Neril family, his expression set in its usual serious lines. He had just drawn breath to speak when the door swung open and Asentha walked in, carrying himself with the casual, unhurried ease of a man who had somewhere more comfortable to be.
"My son." Metania's voice filled the room. "Sit your damn self down. We need to talk."
Asentha sat without hesitation, settling into a chair among the four Elders as though he belonged there entirely. He reached across the table, picked up a cup of tea that looked as though it had been brewing since before anyone in the room was born, and took a small sip.
"Father," he said, setting the cup down. "What's on your mind? I was sleeping perfectly well until a moment ago."
Metania Neril looked at his son for a moment, then let the comment pass. His expression grew more serious.
"Which God selected you?" he asked. "That's all I want to know."
In this world, seven Gods had once existed. But one had vanished long ago, and so only six remained in the knowledge of living people: the God of Light, the God of Destiny, the God of Death, the God of Life, the God of Darkness, and the God of Justice. In great families like the Nerils, leadership passed to whoever had been chosen by the strongest among them. The selected heir carried that divine mark from birth.
Asentha's face shifted into something quieter. "I never entered the Divine Realm," he said. "All I ever see are nightmares. Every night."
The silence that followed was brief and uncomfortable.
"Our family has held its place among the three strongest in this kingdom for generations," one of the Elders cut in sharply, not waiting to be addressed. "If you carry no divine selection, you have no standing here."
"That doesn't matter, Fourth Elder." The words came from the youngest-looking Elder in the room, delivered with a calm that made them land harder than a shout. "Asentha stays in this family. He is not useless. Unlike some people at this table who are old enough to know better."
The Fourth Elder stiffened. No one else spoke. The youngest-looking of the Elders was, despite appearances, the Second Elder of the Neril family, chosen by the God of Life himself. People tended not to argue with him for long.
The room held its silence.
Then the door cracked open.
Standing in the doorway was a young man of about twenty, white-haired and golden-eyed, carrying himself with the particular confidence of someone who had never once doubted he was the most interesting person in any room he entered. This was Neolan Neril, firstborn son of Metania Neril, chosen of the God of Light, the strongest divine selection in the family.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," he said, eyes still closed, a small smile on his face. The room went quiet in a strange way, the way it sometimes does when someone very powerful enters a space.
He opened one eye. Looked around slowly. Closed it again.
"Ah." A pause. "My apologies. Let me try again." He straightened slightly. "Good morning, gentlemen."
The Second Elder glanced at the Third Elder, who was widely regarded as both a failure and a devoted chaser of women, and muttered, "Remarkable. Truly."
The calm lasted exactly as long as it took someone to look down.
"Brother," Asentha said, his voice breaking through the quiet with tremendous restraint. "Why are you not wearing any pants?"
The room exploded.
Neolan looked down. Then he vanished from the doorway. He returned approximately four seconds later, pants on, expression unchanged, as though nothing had occurred.
He crossed the room, leaned down toward Asentha's ear, and whispered with complete seriousness, "Don't worry. I'm going to be the one who leads this family."
Asentha looked at him. Neolan looked back.
Slowly, at exactly the same moment, both of them smiled, the kind of smile that made everyone nearby instinctively check whether their belongings were still where they had left them.