In the beginning, there was nothing but the Sands of Time, a vast desert spanning all of existence. This is not the first universe, and there have been more universes than there are drops of water in a great ocean. The universes are created by Arkaroo (a massive rainbow-colored serpent), preserved by Weshir (an enormous tortoise who holds up the universe on his back), and destroyed by Tezcat (a colossal jaguar that devours a uinverse when its time has come). Since a universe must be destroyed before a new one can be created, Tezcat is both a destroyer and recreator. These three entities are all forms of Mana (usually translated as "cosmic energy" or "the cosmic one") and part of Mana. Mana is the force beyond and behind all that exists, has ever existed, or will exist.
After the previous universe was destroyed, all that remained was the Sands of Time, each grain of sand representing a moment in time from all of the previous universes. Swimming through these vast sands as if they were an infinite ocean was the tortoise Weshir. As Weshir swam through the sands, Arkaroo the rainbow serpent crawled out of Weshir's shell and started slithering around on the surface of said shell. As Arkaroo slithered and slithered, rivers, lakes, and shallow seas formed wherever his serpentine body had been, and around these primordial bodies of water, a lush subtropical paradise sprang up, dotted with all of the universe's sacred trees: sessile oak, kauri, bearded palm, foxtail palm, myrrh, monkey puzzle, common oak, date palm, olive, live oak, baobab, bodhi, evergreen oak, cherry blossom, blue spruce, rainbow eucalyptus, and greenstick.
This lush paradise would come to be known as Heaven, and it was dominated by the Cosmic Anchor, a massive rainbow eucalyptus tree at its center sprouting directly out of Weshir's shell. Once Arkaroo was finished creating Heaven, Weshir found a hunk of sandstone on top of which he could rest and the new universe could exist. The sudden halt of Weshir threw Arkaroo off his back and into a hole in the sandstone, plunging him into the sands beneath. Once Arkaroo fell through the sands, he found himself in an endless dark void with a transparent glass plane stretching out infinitely in all directions. This plane would come to be known as the Plane of Existence. The plane had a circular hole in the center directly above the hole in the sandstone that Arkaroo had fallen through, and through this hole flowed the Sands of Time. This confluence of the Sands of Time and the Plane of Existence would come to be known as Limbo, and beneath Limbo, on the other side of the Plane of Existence, slumbered Tezcat the jaguar. Once enough of the Sands of Time had fallen through the hole, it would be Tezcat's time to wake up and devour the universe Arkaroo had just begun creating.
As Arkaroo fell through the hole in the Plane of Existence, he became very scared of Tezcat, and as a result, his creations below the plane of existence took on a much darker tone. From where he wriggled and thrashed in fear sprang The Duat, an extremely complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers filled with dangerous beasts, lava pits, and all sorts of other hazards. Below the Duat, on a spot where Arkaroo slept one night and had nightmares about being devoured by Tezcat, a fiery volcanic wasteland that would eventually come to be known as Hell formed. The next morning (after being awoken by his nightmares), Arkaroo finally managed to slither his way back above the Plane of Existence and then back onto Weshir, where he slithered up the Cosmic Anchor, laid two eggs in one of its branches, and drifted off into a deep, eternal slumber now that he was no longer having nightmares about Tezcat.
From these two eggs hatched the Ashvars (usually translated as "horse twins") Hangos and Hirsa. One of the first things Hangos and Hirsa noticed about the universe is that Arkaroo left it unfinished. As a result, Hangos and Hirsa fashioned a golden chariot from gold they found in one of Heaven's rivers. However, they had nothing to pull their chariot with, so Arkaroo, being the all-knowing creator he was, laid seven more eggs in his sleep to assist them. Out of each egg hatched a horse with rainbow hair. Hangos and Hirsa hitched these horses to their chariot and set off on their merry way through the skies above Weshir and the Sands of Time. However, Hangos and Hirsa could not agree on what exactly it was they wanted to create, and Hirsa eventually got so angry he slew Hangos.
Upon killing Hangos, Hirsa immediately felt guilt and regret. He used his brother's corpse to create what would come to be known as the four galaxies of the Physical Realm: the North, East, South, and West Galaxies. As a tribute and apology to his late brother, he created the universe following Hangos's plan. Once Hirsa finished creating this new universe, he returned to heaven and occupied his days marveling at what he had created. However, he eventually grew lonely. Sensing this, Arkaroo laid another egg in his sleep, and from this egg hatched Hiratha, the love of Hirsa's life. The two married and had 3 children. These were the 3 titans: the Great Drakon, the Thunderbird, and Iotannu.
While these three Titians were still in infancy, Hirsa shaped the first humans and animals out of a corn tortilla and watched them prosper. However, as the titans grew up and the humans grew in number, various human groups and titans only seemed interested in fighting each other. Since they were completely wrecking Heaven, Hirsa exiled them to a massive, singular planet called the Primordial Sphere he had previously created in the heart of what would come to be known as the South Galaxy. This didn't really work out either, as the humans re-organized into 3 warring groups, each led by a titan. Drawing on the power of Mana, the Titans created the three schools of Elemental Magic: the Great Drakon created Fire, the Thunderbird created Storm, and Iotannu created Ice.
Hirsa and Hiratha, by this time at incredibly advanced age, sacrificed themselves to put the Titans into an eternal sleep after the force of their battle split the Primordial Sphere into the various star systems of the South Galaxy. However, before Hirsa and Hiratha died, they had time to have a set of sextuplets: Dyeus (God of the Skies and King of the Gods), Vorunar (God of the Seas), Divana (Goddess of Women and Queen of the Gods), Dhega (Goddess of the Harvest), Mikhlanteku (God of Death and the Afterlife), and Talikhar (God of Knowledge and Scribes).
These new Gods were tasked with overseeing humanity in the new post-titan galaxy. As time went on, Gods married each other and gave birth to new generations of Gods, eventually forming The Godly Hegemony, a group of Gods led by Dyeus that oversaw and protected humanity. To help oversee humanity, the Gods created the Spirits, a group of various semi-divine beings with immortality, more magical talent than most mortals, and several other unique powers. When mortals died, their soul would depart their body and sink below the Plane of Existence, where they would face a series of trials in The Duat. At the end, their heart would be weighed against a feather from the Thunderbird. If the heart was light enough, the mortal's soul would proceed to Heaven. If it was too heavy with sin, the mortal's soul would be devoured by a ferocious spirit named Ammit the Devourer and they would spend eternity in Hell. If it balanced perfectly, the mortal's soul would be trapped in Limbo until enough of their sins faded away for them to go to Heaven. However, there were some sins that even Hell was not seen as sufficient punishment for, and those who committed those sins were doomed to wander the galaxy as the first undead.
While they were sleeping, the Titans, however, were not done shaping history just yet. From Iotannu's thoughts sprang Austri, Vestri, Nordri, and Sudri, the four Iotannar. From The Great Drakon's stirrings came the Oni Demons, and from The Thunderbird's dreams the Fomorians appeared. While individually, these new beings (called Giants) were much weaker than a Titan or a God, they were much more numerous, with the Fomorians in particular numbering in the tens of thousands.
The Fomorians made the planet known as Pritani their domain, the Oni Demons set up shop on Ryu 97, and the Iotannar made Ryu 108 their own. Each group drew on Mana a different way no one else had ever done before, creating three new schools of magic. The Iotannar created Life Magic, the Oni Demons created Death Magic, and the Fomorians created Mind Magic. These would come to be known as the Spirit Schools. When the Gods least expected it, the thee groups of giants attacked Heaven, very nearly destroying the place. The noise from the battle awoke Tezcat, who quickly became enraged with the giants. He took a piece of scorching hot obsidian from Hell, dubbed the "smoking mirror", and used it as a weapon to defeat the Giants and expel them from Heaven.
The Iotannar were the group least involved in the attack, so they were permitted to remain on Ryu 108, but they lost almost all of their powers except immortality. The Fomorians were similarly allowed to stay on Pritani, but they were forced to give up their immortality, essentially becoming a more powerful race of mortals. The Oni Demons on the other hand, had caused by far the most damage to Heaven, and as a result, they were locked in Hell where the Gods could keep a close eye on them.
Arkaroo, who had also been awoken by the noise of the battle, flew up into the air and slithered in a straight line just above the Cosmic Anchor. This slithering formed a boundary between the dimensions, separating Heaven, the Sands of Time, and everything below it from the Physical Realm. The realm below the line was now known as the Nether Realm. It is generally impossible for a mortal to cross this line before their death, but there have been a handful of exceptions over the millennia. However, any living mortal who crosses the Plane of Existence will die automatically and will not be able to resurface without divine intervention.
However, the Gods forgot to revoke some of the Oni Demons' powers, most importantly their power to create interdimensional rifts, and this allowed Oni to sneak into and out of the physical realm. Using this, the Oni began coercing people to worship them instead of the Gods as an act of revenge. This Oni cult spread throughout the galaxy, in fact everywhere but the Atlantean Civilization on Atlantea and the Shushan Civilization on Awal. Angry, the Gods tried to punish the Oni by locking them in Hell again, where they planned to take away their powers, but the Oni used their power to create interdimensional rifts to form a pocket dimension known as the Oni Realm, in neither the Physical nor Nether Realm, where they would hide from the Gods until they calmed down. Meanwhile, the Gods grew extremely angry with humanity for abandoning them, transforming all of them except the Atlantean and Shushan Civilizations and their descendants into various races of talking humanoid beasts known as "sentients". This marked the beginning of the Gods' transition away from benevolence and towards abuse and neglect towards mortals.
Over the next few millennia, the various cultures of the South Galaxy began to take identities of their own as they traded with and battled each other for supremacy. However, everything changed when the Gods discovered that Mana had an Astral form called Najima and a Shadow form called Zil. By drawing on these two aspects of Mana, the Gods created the three Astral Schools of magic (Sun, Star, and Moon) and the three Shadow Schools of magic (Power, Void, and Horizon). In the process, they realized that Shadow Magic especially was much more difficult to control than any of the other magic groups and decided to keep it secret from mortals, as it had the power to mess with the fabric of the universe and could be used in theory to reawaken primordial beings such as Arkaroo and Tezcat.
However, an intrepid group of mortals known as The Original Six one day sneakily followed the Gods to Heaven through a portal they left open too long and stole the written secrets of Shadow Magic, deciding to learn it for themselves. However, in their carelessness, they accidentally both shifted Arkaroo to the Physical Realm and awakened him. In panic, Arkaroo slithered around the South Galaxy aimlessly, conjuring up hundreds of new star systems along his path. However, eventually, as Arkaroo slithered through the galaxy, its head got stuck in the planet of Pritani, giving the Gods time to come up with a plan to deal with this situation.
Dyeus traveled to Pritani, where he found a teenage boy named Cybwysedd (shortened to Sid in most translations). He trained Cydbwysedd in Storm magic and all of the Astral schools, but his mortal soul could not handle more than one Elemental or Spirit school of magic, along with any Shadow schools. In order to fix this issue, the God Dyeus stole a piece of Weshir's soul and merged it with Sid's soul, turning Sid into a semi-divine being known as the Man of Light and Shadow. This new Man of Light and Shadow was able to learn all of the magical schools in existence and use them to return Arkaroo to sleep.
After this chain of events, the Gods decided that they were simply done intervening in the affairs of mortals and left the Man of Light and Shadow in charge of keeping order and balance between the various groups of mortals, as well as serving as the bridge between the Gods and mortals. The four seals (the artifacts used to accidentally reawaken Arkaroo) were confiscated from the Original Six and given to the Iotannar on Ryu 108 to protect. The Gods at this point had become far too lazy and self-centered to take the time to actually punish the Original Six, who at this point felt guilty for what they had done anyway. As a result, the Original Six created objects called Shadow Artifacts where their powers would be hidden away from society.