Prologue

Would you mind if I told you an ancient story?

Long ago, in an Origin Planet hidden deep within the cosmos, three divine beings were born. It was an Aeterium, an Omniscient and a Verdarite. They came into existence with one purpose: to bring life to the sleeping world they had awakened upon. The Aeterium and Omniscient were bound by love. The Verdarite however, fell in love with the world itself.

The Nine Primordials, the oldest forces of reality, looked upon this sacred union and deemed it worthy. As a gift, they granted the trio the Nine Splits of Power that included Life, Death, Creation, Destruction, Destiny, Fate, Time, Space, and Existence. With these divine fragments, they shaped the soul and structure of the world.

The Verdarite nurtured life and watched over existence. The Omniscient wielded both creation and destruction, crafting and unmaking all that was. The Aeterium took hold of destiny, fate and death, becoming the judge of ends and turning points. Time and space were entrusted to the world itself, which had become sentient.

Thus, four entities stood at the peak of creation and the world they had built. They named it Spheraphase and from their combined will, the first minor Supreme Entities were born. These beings, in turn, created offspring called the Nexuses, who inherited their divine gifts and became architects of races, cultures and realms.

Once their purpose was fulfilled, the original deities stepped away from the affairs of the world and became passive, leaving the world they created to them. The Nexuses, however, grew ambitious. They turned on their parents, destroyed them and declared themselves the First Generation Deities. They made and lived in a divine utopia named Mopheria.

Centuries later, they gave birth to the Second Generation, radiant gods with powers even greater than their predecessors. But when a prophecy from Spheraphase itself foretold that this new generation would rise and overthrow their parents, the First Generation responded with fear and cruelty. They began to slaughter their own children.

Only one stood against the massacre. It was Mintherenia the Verdarite, who saved nine young deities and raised them in secrecy. These nine would become the Nexus Heroes, destined to challenge the tyrants of the heavens.

Their defiance sparked a war unlike any before or after called The Destras Cataclysm, a four-thousand-year conflict that consumed the world. Billions of mortals and immortals died. Even the gods perished. Civilization itself nearly collapsed under the weight of divine wrath.

At the end of all things, one hero stood above the rest. His name was Dilasyus, the son of the strongest First Generation Deity and the leader of the rebellion. He led the final battle that shattered the old regime and gave Spheraphase a chance to breathe again.

But the victory came at a cost.

In their final moments, the First Generation Deities unleashed three irreversible curses. The Nine Heroes were exiled from Mopheria, never to return. The surviving gods of the Second Generation were trapped in that same realm, forever severed from the world. And worst of all, they placed a curse upon the very concept of power called the Ascension Curse.

From that moment on, all life either mortal, god, or Nexus would be born powerless. At the age of six, each being would begin their path of growth, forced to climb from weakness to strength. Even the child of a god would have to earn their power through suffering and struggle.

The Nine Nexus Heroes descended to Spheraphase not to rule but to protect. They were worshipped as legends but refused thrones. Instead, they gave the world its freedom from divine tyranny and destiny forced upon them by the other two generations behind them.

To ensure that peace would last, each of the nine founded a Dynasty across the continents, skies and underworlds of Spheraphase. Each Dynasty stood as a shield against otherworldly threats, against the horrors that existed beyond time, beyond the Krepsunas and beyond the known stars.

But after the Destras Cataclysm, Spheraphase gave another vision of the far future that would eventually be forgotten by everyone but remembered by some.

When silence drowns the echo of gods,

And starlight weeps through bloodied haze,

Ten flames shall walk where none have trod,

Born not of heaven nor of blaze.

Where roots remember broken oaths,

And time forgets what once was sworn,

Shall rise a pact of flesh and soul,

In quiet grief, ten stars reborn.

The crownless heirs of shattered thrones,

Will dream of things that gods fear most,

Of bridges mended, not of bones,

And wine poured not in war, but toast.

They'll bear the storm that's yet to pass,

With scars etched deep from lives before,

And shatter glass that holds the past,

To write a truth the void ignored.

One walks with lightning in her stride,

One bends the world with bloodless grace,

One carves the stars from broken time,

One hides the truth in crimson face.

One tears apart what must be whole,

One grows a forest out of flame,

One bleeds in silence, one in song,

And two remain without a name.

They'll walk through ages split in three,

The then, the now, the yet-to-know.

And at the end of what must be,

They'll learn how far a heart can go.

Not to reclaim a throne or fate,

Nor seek the crowns that gods once wore,

But just to change the world they loved,

And leave it better than before.

So when the world begins to quake,

And old gods stir in sleeping fear,

Look not to sky, nor flame, nor quake,

But to the ten who dared draw near.

With this prophecy, the World fell to slumber, waiting for the day when he would be once again be summoned.

But until then, the world keeps spinning.

Oh wait. You thought that I was done? Oh no. The story is even longer than you can imagine it to be. Since this is a tale that existed and still exists in the present. After all, I was told to give an account of everything they experienced, was I not?

Now where shall I begin...

Oh right. Let's begin with the very long tale of the most handsome immortal child of Dilasyus Richinaria himself. And my husband too, as they might say.

It all began when a normal human was limping away in a alley as all nuclear weapons on Earth were set to detonate the planet at the same time...