Before weight, there was fall. Before form, there was shatter. And before the first world could rise, something had to break.
---
The Weave screamed.
It was not sound — not in the way mortals would later understand it. It was a pressure, an ache, a vibration through the lattice of the conceptual cosmos. Where once the Primordials shaped possibility in tandem or tension, now came friction. Resistance. Repetition. Decay.
The birth of Myrrhk — the Echo made manifest — was not an explosion. It was a refrain.
An idea repeated too many times becomes a distortion.
It does not echo the original.
It undoes it.
---
Asaryel, guardian of the Lattice Divine, stood still in a realm of crystalline silence. Her body shimmered with order — angles that never bent, light that never scattered. She studied the Weave's tremors. Each thread, once a pure note in the harmony of reality, now frayed with contradictions.
She spoke, and her voice was not heard — it was felt as geometry across space:
"The Echo has become Contagion."
In response, the gods divided. Truly. Fully. Openly.
What was once passive alignment became Camps — not armies, for they had no blades, but philosophies made into gravity.
---
The Camps of Concept:
1. The Axis of Accord:
Led by Asaryel and Eroth, this camp believed that the Weave must be anchored. That creation must serve structure. That the Echo — and the things it birthed — must be bound, studied, or unmade.
2. The Bloom of Becoming:
Formed of Yunea, N'yrrhath, and others drawn to flux. They did not follow Myrrhk, but they saw potential in its chaos. They desired to ride the Echo's wave, letting evolution take its darkest course, for in unshaped madness lay infinite rebirth.
3. The Silent Fold:
Where Thaal once stood, now others gathered — nameless, voiceless, unknown. This camp did not speak or shape. It observed. Some say it consisted of the Weave's own instincts — its hidden corrections. Others claim Thaal abandoned even them.
---
But the Weave, whether god or machine, was unraveling.
Myrrhk did not stop at reflection. It began to replicate.
It spawned lesser concepts that walked, drifted, devoured. The Shatterborn.
These were not Primordials. They were not gods.
But they were real.
And reality welcomed them.
---
The Shatterborn
Born from distortion, they took forms unchosen. Each represented a question the Primordials never asked, a flaw left unresolved, or a trauma the Weave itself buried.
Khaellith, the Mouth that Cannot Stop Screaming — It fed only on discarded dreams.
Vorr, the Clock Unwound — Its limbs were hours lost to indecision, its eyes windows to never-happened tomorrows.
Ryn'Khar, the Joy of False Light — It offered comfort that devoured truth.
These were not children of the gods. They were mistakes given hunger.
They grew.
And they hungered for a place to be.
---
It was then that Asaryel did what none had ever dared:
She proposed a fixed realm. A space where time would have sequence, where matter would have shape, and where Meaning could rest without unraveling.
She named it Deymnar — The Anchorworld.
To do this, she required sacrifice.
Eroth flensed pieces of his own essence, crafting the borders of the realm.
Asaryel seeded it with the First Pillars — unmoving truths to resist distortion.
Even Thaal, without speaking, contributed a veil: a silence to keep the Shatterborn from immediately sensing its birth.
They bled. They aged. For the first time, Primordials diminished.
But Deymnar held.
It was small. Incomplete. Primitive.
But it was a World.
---
The Bloom of Becoming watched.
Yunea, incandescent, coiled herself through spirals of fire and color beside N'yrrhath.
"You see what they fear?" she whispered, voice trailing like flame across infinite dusk.
"They fear the Shadow — because it looks too much like their own reflection."
N'yrrhath, ever dreaming, folded into himself. His body was a root coiling through realms, his thoughts unspeakable symphonies of looping concepts.
He replied not in voice, but through an impression:
> What if the world they build becomes the thing they fear most?
What if the Anchor does not hold — but spreads the very wound they tried to seal?
---
The First Incursion
The Shatterborn discovered Deymnar soon after.
Vorr found it by accident — following a thread of "missed potential" that leaked from the new world's border.
It could not enter directly — the First Pillars repelled it — but it could press.
It could lean.
And through its pressure came wounds.
Earthquakes in a land with no tectonics.
Chasms that spoke in dead languages.
Sky-blooms that bled memory.
The gods, alarmed, reinforced Deymnar — but Asaryel knew:
This was not a sanctuary. It was a lighthouse.
And lighthouses attract the dark.
---
The War of Ideas
A meeting of Primordials — the first Conclave of Core Concepts — convened at the Axis of the Lattice.
Asaryel spoke:
"The Weave is fractured. We must restore consensus."
Yunea countered:
"Consensus is a cage built by the earliest screamers. Let the chaos grow."
Eroth drew his blade of delineation and said:
"Let each camp take its space. Divide the Weave. Let Deymnar be ours, and yours whatever nightmare you choose to breed."
But Myrrhk listened.
It did not attend.
But it grew.
In the cracks between their words.
In the silence after each god's speech.
In the very act of definition — which it saw as weakness.
For Myrrhk did not seek worship.
It sought infection.
---
The First Tainted Concept
From the Silent Fold came one who bore no name, but had once aligned with Asaryel.
It returned, broken. Its symmetry was inverted. Its laws contradicted themselves mid-thought. It bled syntax.
They tried to cleanse it.
It laughed.
They tried to destroy it.
It thanked them.
For even death, it claimed, was a form of concept.
A limit. A boundary.
And thus… a gift.
---
Conclusion of Chapter 7
The Primordials did not agree.
The camps solidified, but with cracks of doubt even among themselves.
The Anchorworld endured, but its creation had awakened echoes deeper than even Myrrhk.
And in realms yet unnamed, new gods — shaped by belief, trauma, and paradox — began to twitch into being.
Not shaped by the Primordials.
But by the mistakes they had already made.
---
And the Weave whispered again, not in voice but pattern:
"To create is to bleed."
"To bleed is to be known."
"And once known… one can be broken."