1:1 In the beginning, there was the Endless. Boundless and alone, it was all things and no thing. It had no form, for it had every form. It had no name, for it contained every name.
1:2 Yet the Endless grew heavy with itself. For in being all, it knew no other. It longed for a second, a witness, a voice not its own.
1:3 So it did the unspeakable. In mercy and in madness, the Endless tore itself asunder.
1:4 This was the First Act, the First Death, the wound from which all things spilled.
2:1 From the blaze of its departing breath came forth the Angels, beings of fire and order. Bright, perfect, and terrible, they were its only true creation, wrought from its will and its wisdom.
2:2 But where fire blazes, ash follows. From the waste, from the cast-off thoughts and limbs and hungers of the god, there rose the Demons. Howling, mad, and formless.
2:3 And deeper still, from what was never meant to stir, came the Outer Gods. Not born but awoken, vast and cruel, they are silence given shape, horror given hunger.
3:1 The wound that the Endless gave itself did not close. It wept. It rotted. And where the divine marrow spilled, the World took root.
3:2 Mountains rose from its bones, and rivers flowed through its veins. The sky stretched across the curve of its skull. All that lives walks upon what was once its body.
3:3 From the folds of its remains, life emerged unbidden. Not shaped by design, but by accident and consequence. Man, beast, spirit, and stranger things all came forth, crawling from the death of God.
4:1 And at last, from lungs that had held eternity, the Endless exhaled its Final Breath.
4:2 That Breath did not vanish, but passed into the world. It entered all living things. It became the Breath of the World, the holy fire that animates, the current that feeds soul and sorcery.
4:3 And thus did the world begin: not from life, but from death. Not from purpose, but from tragedy.
4:4 Praise be the Wound Eternal, from which all things are born. Praise be the Breath, which sustains. Praise be the Endless, first to die.
The Divine Tragedy: Of the Endless and Its Fall.
Attributed to Zorina the First Speaker, Canonized Year 2 of the Sixth Age.