The gods began to vanish.
At first, it was a subtle shift — a whisper lost among the echoes of eternity. In the vast Hall of Memory, a footstep that once marked their passage was suddenly missing. A voice that had always answered questions now hung silent, as if swallowed by the void. The others noticed but refused to believe. Denial was simpler than fear.
Seren was the first to disappear.
She had been in the Garden of Births, tending the final blooms that scattered starlight petals across the fertile ground. The air shimmered with the delicate glow of nascent worlds, each petal a promise of creation. Seren closed her eyes, lips barely moving in a silent prayer, her breath mingling with the soft rustle of celestial leaves. Then the wind shifted—cool and empty. When her eyes opened again, she was gone. No farewell, no trace, only the fading glow of the last petal falling into the soil.
The shock rippled through the realms.
Desperation took hold. They tore through the fabric of dimensions, chasing every flicker of her essence. They unraveled ancient timelines, hoping to rewind her disappearance. Probability itself was stretched thin under their search, but they found nothing. Only silence remained.
Then, Aelor vanished.
Once, his laughter had echoed like ripples through the endless river of time, scattering moments like seeds across the ages. Now, those ripples recoiled, folding in on themselves until nothing remained but static. His infinite loops, once spinning threads of fate, unraveled backwards, a spiraling collapse into oblivion. Aelor had glimpsed every possible outcome—except his own end.
One by one, others followed.
The Eleventh, the bearer of forgotten wisdom, disappeared like a breath drawn and never released. The Fifth, whose voice commanded storms, ceased to stir the skies. The Nineteenth, keeper of shadowed secrets, dissolved into the darkness itself.
No cause. No enemy. No clues.
Even Drazel, the cruel and cunning master of control, grew silent. The iron grip he once held on fate loosened. His eyes darted nervously to every shadow; his whispered spells were frantic prayers. Mirrors no longer reflected his gaze; he stopped blinking, as if denying his own existence. And then, without warning, he too vanished.
Only Vireon remained.
The First. The architect of realms and laws, now a hollow figure in a crumbling palace.
He sat on the ancient throne, unmoving. The vast hall groaned under the weight of ages, its spires bending and cracking as the foundations shifted. Dust drifted like lost memories in the stagnant air. Vireon's eyes were vacant, but his hand moved with purpose. He traced a final word onto the cracked floor with trembling fingers:
Caelum.
The name pulsed faintly, like a dying heartbeat.
And then Vireon disappeared.
Deep beneath the shattered ruins, where time itself slowed and twisted like a sick wound, Caelum remained.
Chained. Silent. Breathing.
He was the last.
The weight of absence pressed down on him, colder and heavier than iron. He had felt it from the first moment Seren vanished—the slow unraveling of the fabric that held the gods together. The starlight faded from the Garden of Births; the echoes of laughter ceased to ripple through time. Each loss carved a hollow space inside him.
He could no longer count the days. Time here was fractured, looping endlessly like the shattered mirrors in Drazel's abandoned chamber.
His mind flickered through memories — sharp shards in the darkness:
Seren's quiet prayer before the last bloom fell.
Aelor's laughter like music, now silenced.
Drazel's fearful eyes, darting into shadows, whispering to no one.
And the memory that cut deepest — Vireon's trembling hand writing his name on the floor, a silent call for help or perhaps a curse.
Caelum wanted to scream, but his voice was swallowed by the chains that bound him—chains forged not just of metal, but of forgotten promises and betrayal.
He was the last god.
The last pulse in a dying heart.
Yet, something stirred deep inside him — faint but persistent.
A signal.
A space in the void where possibility still breathed.
The world had fallen silent, but Caelum felt the first breath of movement beneath that silence.
A beginning...
The stillness beneath the ruins pulsed with a new energy.
Caelum's awakening sent ripples across the fractured realms—quiet at first, but growing.
Far above, in the ragged shadows of the undercity, something stirred.
A name, long forgotten by time and gods alike, threaded through the broken world.
A boy who did not know who he was.
A boy called by the silence.