A month had passed in this new world for Eric, now apparently Edran. So far as he could tell, he had no actual last name, or at least no one had ever called his parents by anything other than their first names: Edric and Brinna. Perhaps the goddess had gifted him an intuitive grasp of the local language, or perhaps he was simply picking it up quickly. While some words escaped his understanding, especially when used out of context, he grasped the majority of what people around him said.

  Being a baby—truly and consciously—was among the strangest experiences of his lives. Stranger still was the indignity of it. Relieving himself in a swaddled cloth, unable to control his limbs beyond feeble kicks and swipes, squinting at the world with an eyesight that turned anything beyond ten feet into a blur—and worst of all, the feeding. Suckling from Brinna, a woman younger than he’d been at his death, was deeply humiliating, even if his current body demanded it. He prayed that the dependence on his mother—and the occasional visits from the midwife—wouldn’t stir up any psychological oddities in the years to come.

  Despite the endless embarrassment and frustrating lack of autonomy, his circumstances weren’t entirely bleak. His parents—especially Brinna—were loving in a way that warmed even his weary, reincarnated soul. She hovered near constantly, soothing him with soft words and gentle touches. When she had to step away, she’d often wait until he offered a gurgle or flail that might pass for a wave, as if needing his reassurance as much as he needed hers. It had been many years since he’d last experienced this kind of unconditional, ever-present love. He had loved his parents back on Earth, of course, and he had experienced crushes and a few almost-relationships. But this—this was something primal and pure.

  He wasn’t exactly becoming overly attached—at least he told himself that—but he knew this woman deserved his respect and appreciation, even if all he could offer were coos and flailing limbs.

  His father, Edric, was a more complicated figure. The man was rarely home before the day’s light faded, clearly burdened with hard work. When he was home, he seemed uncertain around his newborn son. Affection was there, that much Edran could sense—but it was restrained. Measured. Perhaps it was a cultural expectation for fathers, or maybe Edric held a personal belief about raising sons a particular way. Whatever the cause, it left Edran with the vague sense of being evaluated, even as an infant.

  That said, this new life had so far spared him any horror stories. No cruelty, no coldness. Just a world reduced to two rooms and a mattress he could hardly roll off of.

  His world was a wooden house—two rooms total. One was his parents’ bedroom, where he spent most of his time on a modest pad of straw and cloth with a blanket tucked around him. The other was the main room: simple but functional. A stove and chimney sat against one wall, a sturdy table dominated the center, and in one corner stood a large metal lockbox that his father occasionally opened and closed.

  A lockbox of that size—solid metal—would have been a luxury in the medieval period back home. Either metal was more common here, or his family was wealthier than appearances suggested. Not that it mattered. He remained trapped in a tiny, wooden prison.

  His efforts to build up coordination or strength were thwarted by constant supervision. He was never left alone long enough to try anything productive. Instead, he was coddled with toys: wooden blocks, bundles of cloth, soft balls of stitched leather. His limbs flailed without rhythm or coordination, his muscles weak and untrained. It was stifling, maddening.

  The only true moments of stimulation came when Brinna told him stories—long, lyrical tales that she recited as lullabies. Most of the words blurred into nonsense, but context slowly painted pictures in his mind. From what he could gather, the people of this world still believed in a pantheon of gods. A refreshing change from the monotheistic grip his old world had slowly tightened over the centuries.

  One story recurred more than others: a tale of two primordial deities who created the world. Nhalaya, goddess of the earth and emotion, and Auremaxos, god of the sky and knowledge. It was hard not to draw parallels to Sylra—his benefactor and would-be guide—though Nhalaya lacked Sylra's mischievous charm. Auremaxos seemed like a blend of several mythic sky-fathers from Earth’s various pantheons, imbued with both reason and raw power.

  As Brinna told it, the story began with separation. The sky and earth existed in isolation, with a great void between them. But Auremaxos, ever curious, sang across the nothing, a deep and echoing call that stirred Nhalaya from her slumber beneath the crust. Drawn by the song, she rose, and they took forms so they could touch, see, and speak with one another. Their union, even in words, reshaped the world—storms roiled the skies, mountains and valleys etched themselves into the land. Creation was a byproduct of their love.

  The story, as best as Edran could piece together, began with separation. The sky and earth existed in isolation, with a great void between them. But Auremaxos, ever curious, sang across the nothing, a deep and echoing call that stirred Nhalaya from her slumber beneath the crust. Drawn by the song, she rose, and they took forms so they could touch, see, and speak with one another. Their union, even in words, reshaped the world—storms roiled the skies, mountains and valleys etched themselves into the land. Creation was a byproduct of their love.

  Kind of a weird thing to talk about with children but there wasn’t anything graphically over the top described so he supposed it amounted to an elderly wise bearded man hugging a matronly emotional woman and the hug spraying light across the world. It was actually rather nice compared to the often more violent origins he’d heard from his old world.

  From this union came the first divine child: Vireya, goddess of love, birth, and oaths. She was born not from chaos or willful power, but from the lingering warmth between sky and earth, a breath of peace wrapped in promise. Her arrival quieted the storms and stilled the quakes that had marked her parents' first touch. Flowers bloomed where her feet would one day step, and her laughter echoed like birdsong on spring air. She wove bonds not only between her divine kin, but in the future, would be invoked at every wedding, birth, and sacred vow.

  But creation did not linger in calm. As Auremaxos and Nhalaya reveled in the beauty of their daughter, their joy burst forth again in an uncontained blaze. From this unbridled exuberance leapt Brannia, goddess of fire and passion. Her birth was heralded by an eruption of flame from the world's core, painting the sky in red and gold. Brannia danced across the molten peaks with hair like wildfire and eyes that gleamed with fierce delight. She embodied the heat of longing, the hunger of ambition, and the zeal that could forge or destroy. Where Vireya soothed, Brannia inflamed.

  Then, as if in balance to the fire, Taraneth was born. Nhalaya, overcome by the ferocity of Brannia's tempestuous nature and the great destruction she caused in her wake, wept into the newly-formed valleys. Her tears pooled and surged, until from the depths rose a figure cloaked in tide and thunder. Taraneth, god of oceans and storms, took form in the crashing of waves and the rumble of distant thunderheads. He carried both the sorrow of his mother and the vast, unknowable depths of the sea. With each movement, he pulled moisture through the air, filling rivers, carving coasts, and reminding all that even the calmest waters could drown a mountain.

  It was actually very interesting to Edran that love came before fire and water in this world. Maybe it was a call that love was eternal just like the theories of earth, or maybe people believed that creation needed love to spring forth. Either way it was kind of touching to Edran to listen to his mother talk on the subject as though it were a loving romance between a king and queen giving birth to princesses and princes, even with the over the top acting of his mother’s waving fingers and whooshing noises to depict the fires and waves he either wasn’t allowed to see or at least hadn’t been allowed to see yet. He made sure to clap and giggle along though.

  The passions and rivalries of the new gods inevitably erupted into conflict. It began as contests—of strength, of will, of domains—but soon spilled into open battle. Where Brannia’s fire clashed with Taraneth’s waves, and where Vireya’s oaths were shattered by pride, the first divine wounds were struck. From the fury of these clashes, where no side could claim true righteousness, Judicar was born.

  He did not arrive with trumpet or fanfare, but emerged amid the carnage—fully formed, clad in obsidian armor veined with silver light. His appearance silenced the battlefield, not through power, but presence: a stillness that made even the wildest flame pause. His voice rang like a judge’s gavel across the fractured heavens, calling the gods to account not with rage, but with unwavering clarity. In his hand was a blade unlike any other—its edge neither gleamed nor reflected, but seemed to consume sound itself. Judicar became both arbiter and warrior, delivering balance through force only when necessity demanded it. His gaze pierced illusion and intention alike, weighing deeds alone. He was the scale and the sword, a god born not of chaos or creation, but of consequence.

  ‘Ah, of course. What is a pantheon of gods without conflict?’ Thought Edran. ‘Whether they are family or separate but equal beings of origin, they always seem to fight worse than even the most annoying of housewives reality tv stars. I guess it’s just human nature to see themselves in their gods and feel no opposites can truly get along.’ His lips pouting in thoughtful contemplation and blowing bubbles for his mother to giggle at.

  But judgment could not halt death—only direct its hand. The divine struggles, though not fatal to any god, left their mark upon the world. Mountains cracked, seas boiled, forests burned, and lesser creations—beasts, plants, and wonders wrought by divine whim—were shattered and lost. The ground, soaked in the blood of divine conflict and strewn with the remnants of forgotten marvels, grew cold.

  From this sorrowed soil, in the quiet places where no god’s laughter reached and no flame dared linger, a chill began to rise. It was not born in violence, but in aftermath—in the silence that follows pain, in the stillness where mourning takes root. In the forgotten hollows and forsaken glades, shadow gathered and clung like breath held too long.

  There, from sorrow and silence, Noctyra emerged.

  She did not cry out, nor did thunder announce her coming. She stepped forth from the dusk like a whisper given form, draped in flowing black, her presence soft and weightless as falling ash. Her eyes held no light, only the depth of things left behind. She touched nothing, yet all things recoiled, recognizing her as the shape of ending.

  Noctyra was not cruel, nor was she kind. She was inevitable. She moved among the discarded and the dying, not to judge, but to guide. In her hands, broken things found their final shape. She became the shepherd of ends, the quiet promise that all would one day rest.

  And with her coming, the gods knew that something truly new had entered the world—not just power, but passage. Not destruction, but closure. Death, not as a foe to be slain, but as a veil to be understood.

  She was the quiet between heartbeats, the hush before mourning, the velvet dark that swallowed light. With hair like flowing night and eyes that mirrored the void left behind by creation's turning tides, Noctyra watched. She did not weep. She moved through the echoes of ruin and the silence that followed sorrow, gathering what the others had cast aside—souls lost to battle, promises shattered by pride, remnants of beauty forgotten in the tumult. She fed on these endings, grew strong in their wake, and claimed dominion not only over death, but over the night that cloaked and softened its arrival.

  ‘Wow, so even in this world, people liked talking about goth mommies….ehem uh, darkly clad women.’ Edran was definitely a little dazed as his mother went into so much detail on the rather obvious villain of this story. It seemed she was trying to scare him throughout the with the dark hushed words she nearly whispered in her story. But this only drew more of Edran’s attention as his eyes just grew wider until she launched in attack on his stomach to tickle him as she exclaimed “So always be a good little boy or she’ll come and take you away in the night.”

  The pantheon spiraled into chaos. Battles raged between siblings, while Nhalaya and Auremaxos watched in sorrow, unsure how—or whether—to intervene. Yet amidst the fury, Noctyra remained still. She watched from the shadows, silent and unblinking, as her brothers and sisters clashed, their rivalries deepening, their wounds growing ever more grievous. She did not revel in the violence, nor did she mourn it. Instead, she waited.

  For in each battle, she saw ingredients taking shape. From the dying breaths of forgotten beasts to the broken bonds that once tethered divine hearts, she gathered the raw threads of ending. Where others saw chaos, she saw alchemy. Slowly, she wove these fragments—despair, decay, betrayal, and silence—into a substance unlike any other. It was no mere toxin, but a distillation of mortality itself, a venom forged not in haste but with patience that only death could possess.

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  When the poison was complete, she moved. Noctyra struck with quiet precision, her blade laced with her creation—a venom of endings, sorrow, and silence. She did not announce her intentions, nor offer warning. In the midst of divine conflict, when all eyes were turned toward the next clash of power, she unleashed her wrath.

  She descended like the hush before a funeral bell, and the first to feel her sting was Taraneth. Her blade slipped through the folds of his storm, severing the thunder from his soul. The ocean god faltered, his tempests collapsed into a breathless calm, and the tides froze to glass. The sea itself held its breath. He might have perished in that moment had Judicar not intervened—his obsidian blade flashing between death and brother, halting the venom’s march with a decree of divine law.

  But Noctyra's strike did not end there. Brannia, caught mid-charge in a blaze of fury, felt the poison burn across her side, the fire in her blood sputtering with the sudden knowledge of pain that would not yield. For the first time, her flame dimmed—not from exhaustion, but from the creeping embrace of inevitable end.

  She had waited, quietly, patiently, until the gods gave her the tools. And when she acted, it was not out of hatred, but fulfillment. Noctyra lashed out not at one, but at all her siblings. Her silence was her judgment, her blade the answer to their clamor.

  To Edran’s mind, this part was actually pretty cool. He could easily use his memories to turn these fossilized gods from shining divine beings into amazing anime fighters punching, dodging and kicking at one another until this Noctura comes in swooping with a massive dark sword of darkness or chaos. If this world ever gets to the modern age with these gods he can see a lot of shows and fandoms forming around the goddess’ style.

  But contrary to her expectations—built on careful observation and manipulations—Auremaxos and Nhalaya intervened. For the first time since the dawn of the divine, the two primal gods acted in unison. With their combined might, they forged a prison of stone and divine light, a lattice of earth and radiance that even the goddess of death could not break. Noctyra, for all her cunning, was trapped.

  With their wayward daughter sealed, the two elder gods rushed to the sides of their wounded children, desperate to save them. Brannia and Taraneth lay broken and burning with pain. The battle had nearly unraveled their divine forms. The gods argued. Loud, fierce, godly arguments that echoed across the world, rending the skies and stirring the mountains. Each feared to lose their children and blamed the other.

  But as the heavens quaked from their discord, the gods saw something awful: their rage, their grief—it fed Noctyra’s prison. The cracks in her cage deepened with each scream and cry. Ashamed and afraid, Auremaxos and Nhalaya chose different paths. They would each care for one child in their own way.

  Nhalaya drew Brannia into the depths of the earth. There, in the warm cradle of stone and root, she held her daughter close, pouring the essence of life back into her. Brannia, born of flame and brilliance, recovered quickly under her mother’s embrace. Her own inner fire fused with Nhalaya’s deep vitality, burning away the black scars of corruption left by her sister’s attack.

  But the healing was not without cost.

  Where once her divine form had gleamed with radiant red and pure white, now a riot of colors streaked through her being—marks of pain endured, battles survived. It was a permanent reminder of her near destruction. Beauty born from injury.

  Auremaxos, meanwhile, tried to carry Taraneth skyward, seeking to heal his son among the stars. But the sky’s high winds and thin light only brought the god of the sea greater pain. Realizing his error, Auremaxos laid his son upon the earth instead and knelt beside him. Drawing from the core of his vast power, he poured divine energy into Taraneth’s shattered form.

  The poison ran deep. Too deep. Though life returned to Taraneth’s body, the darkness refused to release him. It clung to his spirit, gnawed at his mind. What emerged from that agony was no longer the calm, thoughtful god of tides and reason. His body trembled. His voice thundered. The seas boiled with his grief and fury.

  Determined to ease his son's torment, Auremaxos reached for the only substance still alien to him—earth. It did not obey him as it did Nhalaya, but he tried. With difficulty, he shaped stone into a great mantle. A loose robe of shimmering minerals and celestial light, draped over his son like armor made of starlight. Though crude, it dulled the pain.

  Taraneth’s mind cleared. He still bore the poison, but it no longer threatened to unmake him. From this desperate act of divine innovation, a new god was born: Fauron, god of Stones, Craft, and Invention. Not a child in the traditional sense, but the embodiment of a new idea—of shaping pain into purpose.

  With Fauron’s birth came another unexpected bond.

  Vireya, Love, birth, and oaths, who had long wandered the world in sorrow and solitude, felt a kinship she hadn’t known in ages. She had once hoped for sisterhood with Brannia, drawn to her energy and warmth, but Brannia’s fiery path had been too wild, too destructive. Vireya had fled from it, shrinking into the quiet places of the world.

  But Fauron was different. Calm, thoughtful, and strange in a way that felt familiar.

  They met, and in their meeting, something stirred between them. Love—not just the divine love of kin, but the romantic spark of two lonely gods finding understanding in one another. As Brannia’s volcanoes calmed and Taraneth’s seas subsided, the two new lovers slipped away quietly, disappearing into the winds to escape their father’s watchful, storm-colored eyes.

  And Auremaxos was angry. Deeply.

  Nhalaya, Brannia, Taraneth, and Auremaxos reunited to face Noctyra, who still raged against her prison. She howled and cursed, demanding her stolen powers. She had done nothing, she claimed, that her siblings had not also done. She had simply been better at it.

  Brannia cried out for her death, her fury igniting flames across the mountains. Taraneth agreed, his wrath crashing in thunderous waves against the world’s shores.

  But their parents hesitated.

  Despite their anger, Auremaxos and Nhalaya could not bring themselves to destroy one of their own. Instead, they sought a different justice. Together, they reached into Noctyra’s divine essence and tore away the powers she had stolen.

  From that torn darkness coalesced a new god: Tenebron, god of Shadows, Secrets, and the Lost. He was small, hunched, and quiet—without ambition or voice. He fled into the shadows before any could even speak to him, always watching from a distance.

  Still unsatisfied, the elder gods pulled further, stripping Noctyra of her dominion over night itself. But the power would not be erased. Instead, it took form again as Cernovar, god of the Shifting Times and Seasons. To everyone’s surprise, he shone with a quiet radiance. His calm presence stood in stark contrast to the sister who birthed him. Perhaps he carried the remnants of her once-reasonable nature.

  Freed of even these last pieces of power, Noctyra screamed in maddened rage. Her body convulsed with divine fury, her voice a storm of grief and entitlement as her many hard earned powers were taken from her.

  Justicar stepped forward.

  The god of balance and law, once manipulated by Noctyra himself in the ever flowing conflicts of the many siblings, now looked upon his sister with pity. He saw himself in her—ambitious, wounded, desperate to matter among the much more powerful gods who came before them. He pleaded with their parents for mercy, asking they spare her remaining essence as the goddess of death and lady of the night.

  Moved by his words, Auremaxos and Nhalaya relented. But mercy did not mean freedom. They reforged her cage, sealing every seam until no light or sound could escape. Then, with heavy hearts, they each shed a tear and breathed a final breath over her prison, sending it into the sky on a gust of divine wind.

  From this wind was born the god Vandros, god of Change, Wind, and Wanderers. He took up the task his parents had given him, carrying Noctyra’s cage across the world until he could carry it no longer. At last, he cast it into the night sky, and there it remains still—Noctyra, bound within the moon, shining down upon the world in cold, silent fury and an ever silent watcher over the world she was now denied.

  But Vandros had unknowingly carried more than just a prison. Some part of Noctyra clung to him—a wisp of her essence that had escaped with her parents’ and siblings’ punishment, now unbound, spreading on every breath of wind that Vandros traveled upon. It brought with it a new force: death. Not sudden or violent, but ever-present. Slow. Inevitable.

  And death changed everything.

  Until then, life had been static. Things endured unless destroyed by a careless god or transformed under their will. But now, all life began to wither. Die. Fade. The gods mourned. Their feud had scarred the world and in their belief had made it lesser. Yet from this loss came something miraculous: rebirth. The blending of creation and death birthed a cycle none had foreseen.

  From it rose a wild, laughing goddess: Auralis, goddess of Beasts, Nature, and Growth. She danced across the land, singing new life into the soil. Under her touch, flowers bloomed, animals ran free, and forests stretched toward the stars. Life flourished like never before—untamed and joyful.

  Yet, it was too chaotic.

  Rain fell where it wasn’t needed. Plants withered from too much sun. Beasts loved and killed with equal fervor. The gods, unsettled, came together once more. They agreed: there must be some order so that the world could thrive.

  Auremaxos guided them in their greatest act of creation. Together, they etched laws into the stars themselves—an eternal record written across the heavens in a language only they could understand but which echoed across the universe itself and seeped into the world.

  From this act came the last great god: Memnira, goddess of Fate, Memory, and Stars. She brought structure to the chaos and carved paths in the randomness. But she could not shape the world alone.

  With the remaining stardust and earth, she shaped something new—something mortal.

  Humanity.

  Beings of both order and chaos. Reflections of the gods. Born to live, to grow, and to die—but also to remember. And to choose.

  —

  It was, Edran reflected, a surprisingly violent story to tell a baby. But no one really died in it, so he supposed the concept of death was probably just some vague idea of fading away to most children.

  Still, he appreciated it. It taught him much on how this world believed the world worked, how it formed and what they believed were important aspects of this world. Time, fate, fire, water, shadow, death, knowledge, earth, sky, etc. Tons of very important and unknowable aspects in this age really. Hopefully he could find ways to work with these religions, but there were always upsides and downsides. Polytheistic religions tended to be very politically feuding when it came to who held power, what temples could do what, and how the people had to worship them. It tended to be more labyrinthine than a monotheistic one where you simply offered prayer and money to the church.

  But such thoughts were meant for another time as while he had plenty of time to ponder, his constant supervision meant that if he went too quiet or contemplative, his mother began to fuss over something being wrong with him.

  So he clapped and giggled at the end, doing his best to please Brinna. Maybe if he looked curious enough, she’d tell more. Anything was better than being left alone with his thoughts and a few carved wooden blocks.

  One thought lingered, though.

  Sylra hadn’t been mentioned. Not once. If this was the dominant religion, then she either had no formal worship, or she had been erased from it over time. Maybe she couldn’t interfere. Maybe she didn’t want to. Or maybe mortals simply wrote their own stories and forgot who had written the first pages.

  Either way, if he wanted to speak with her again, visiting a temple to Nhalaya might be the only chance he’d get.

  Still, these myths were the only stories he had for now. No fairy tales. No picture books. He hadn’t even seen a single bound text in the room. Judging by the surroundings, he guessed this was an early-to-mid medieval setting. Definitely no Mother Goose. And honestly, he didn’t miss the morality tales. “Don’t wander into the woods” seemed a little irrelevant when the woods might be home to a sea god with a fire-scarred sister.

  Noctyra, especially, seemed to be the world’s catch-all boogeyman.

  Brinna clearly got a kick out of telling the darker parts of these myths. He could tell she delighted in his over-the-top baby expressions—the widened eyes, the gasps—and she never missed a chance to tickle him after a suspenseful moment. It was a fair trade, he figured. A little baby humiliation in exchange for culture and lore.

  After yet another day of mythic trauma, paternal stoicism, and maternal sneak attacks, Edran fell asleep.

  And, blessedly, he slept through the night.

  He was getting better. Fewer interruptions from his inconveniently needy baby body. No midnight hunger pangs, no inexplicable burping issues. And as the dawn filtered in, warm and golden, he stretched with a yawn and blinked awake.

  Both his parents stood over the crib, smiling.

  They were dressed unusually well.

  Brinna’s dress was free of stains and patches for once, the fabric vibrant and newly mended. His father wore a clean, well-fitted jacket over a green shirt and trousers—much brighter than his usual drab brown.

  That was new.

  Brinna leaned down, wrapped him snugly in his blanket, and cooed, “It’s finally time to go see your grandfather, little Edran. I’m sure all your uncles and aunts will be so excited to see how cute you’ve turned out.”

  Edran’s heart gave a little flutter of anticipation.

  ‘Oh, finally…’