The Divine Sundering, as told by Vulon, Moonborne of the Four:

We do not remember a beginning. There was no story before the first breath, only the endless dark. A silence so vast even thought felt like an intrusion. It was in that silence I first opened my eyes, and I was not alone.

From the shadowed expanse rose three others: Yol, radiant and ever-burning, who came to light my darkness; Denek, mighty and unmoving, whose presence weighed like bones of the world; and Sil, who shimmered with something not yet known, a gentle pulse that stirred the idea of breath and bloom. We were the First, the Four. Gods, though we did not know the word. We had no purpose, only each other, and in that timeless stillness we created harmony simply by being.

We discovered that together, our essence could shape the void. Yol and I turned our dance into day and night, shaping the heavens with light and shadow. Denek and Sil walked the emptiness below, forging form from formlessness, laying land and stream, seed and flesh. And so Ajagar was born, a world of rhythm and wonder, our gift to the mortal things we shaped to share with it. In their joy and striving, the mortals gave meaning to what we made, and in their reflection we learned to feel.

I loved Yol. How could I not? He was dawn and dusk, fire that kissed the edges of my cold light. Together we painted the skies with flame and silver, chasing one another like tides to shore. But not all hearts are destined to be answered. Denek, old and deep as the mountains he bore, held a love for me that I could not return. I did not see his bitterness until it was too late. When I laid my egg—our child, Yol’s and mine—I placed it among the stars for safekeeping, but Denek stole it from the heavens and had meant to destroy it. Yol found him before he could finish the deed, and their battle split the world. My love, my fire, was shattered.

I found him broken upon the earth, ember fading. I wept stardust and begged Sil to save him, but Sil would not kill for me, would not dare to kill Denek. So I made a vow. If Sil would not slay our brother, then we would bind him forever. I offered a prison, a gem carved from Sil’s own essence, strong enough to hold a god. Together, we did what needed to be done, but in doing so, we undid everything else. The world we made cracked beneath our wrath. Mortal homes burned, rivers turned black, and magic fled the soil like blood from a wound. The death of a god is not a quiet thing, and we had very nearly killed two.

As we wandered the ruins of our own divine hubris, something stirred beneath us, not made by our claws, nor by mortal hand. It crawled up from the earth, shaped from agony, from grief, from the stink of ruin and rot. It had no name, no form, but it had eyes, pale and lidless in a face of blackened gold. Sil fled the moment they saw it, but I stayed. I watched it shape itself into a dragon, massive and slow, made not of scale but of shadow-stuff and hunger, and it spoke not in words, but in action. It consumed the dead, drawing their souls into itself, not to destroy, but to take, to keep. And I understood. We had made life. Now, the world had made Death. The new god named itself Oblaan, and then it vanished.

In time, Sil and I healed what we could. We stitched the land back together, wove new life from the ashes, but something had changed. The gods no longer walked as one. Sil vanished into the deep places of the world, hidden in shame, afraid that Oblaan would return. Perhaps they still listen, somewhere, to the cries of the dying. But I chose to stay among mortals, among the fragile, the brave, the ones who rebuild no matter how often their gods fail them. Ajagar was reborn, but it was never innocent again.

And neither was I.