In the aftermath of the Unmaking Choir, the fabric of the Weave fluttered like a wounded pulse. The Primordials had recoiled into themselves, vast and immutable, each bound by the purity of their nature. They could not change — for to change was to betray the very concept they are.
But where the great weaves frayed and threads snapped, something else began to stir.
Splinters in the Loom: The Shatterborn Awaken
From the fractures of the divine, the Shatterborn stirred — not children of Chaos, nor creations of will, but byproducts of Primordial dissonance.
When N'yrrhath dreamed too deep, the dream remembered itself and wept as Myrrhk, spreading echoes that distorted reality.
When Asaryel's Law confronted Yunea's Becoming, the clash birthed ripples of half-formed certainties, anomalies seeking anchors.
These were not gods.
They were errors made persistent.
The Shatterborn moved through the frayed edges of the Weave, feeding on unresolved contradictions, expanding the cracks.
Yet, in their blind hunger, they became the unlikely midwives of something new.
Mortals: Born of Oversight, Not Design
In pockets where the Weave thinned, where neither Primordial will nor Shatterborn corruption held sway, raw existence stabilized—not by force, but by happenstance.
Here, mortals emerged.
Not sculpted by divine hands.
Not echoes of Primordial thought.
But aggregates of persistence, anomaly, and the subtle guidance of reality seeking balance.
Where gods embodied singular truths, mortals embodied conflict reconciled into survival.
Their will was born not from identity, but from the necessity to adapt.
The Covenant of Fragments
It was inevitable that these mortals would encounter the lesser Shatterborn—those fractured things too weak to consume realms, yet too persistent to dissolve.
In their meeting, a new dynamic emerged.
> "You, fragile ones, are cracks walking," whispered a Shatterborn of Fractured Time, its voice a thousand clocks stuck between ticks.
"But you endure. That... intrigues me."
Thus, the first Covenant of Fragments was formed.
Not a pact of dominion.
Not worship.
But mutual exploitation.
The Shatterborn found hosts to stabilize their existence, leeching coherence from mortal minds.
Mortals found power—the ability to shape their immediate world by wielding echoes of forgotten concepts.
Through this bond, mortals began to bend localized threads of the Weave, not by divine right, but by sheer persistence and borrowed flaws.
Lesser Concepts: Emergent Divinities
From these mortal-Shatterborn covenants, new patterns emerged.
As mortals named their fears, hopes, and struggles, these ideas began to coalesce into Lesser Concepts.
A spark of flame remembered in a cave became a fledgling god of Fire.
The ritual of hunting wove a god of Pursuit, sharp and watchful.
The mourning of the dead birthed a tender god of Passing, fragile yet necessary.
Unlike the immutable Primordials, these Lesser Concepts were malleable, evolving through belief, story, and need.
Their power, though minuscule compared to the Titans of Meaning, was nimble, contextual, and — in time — capable of challenging even the eldest gods within their narrow domains.
The Camps of Influence
Even as mortals and Lesser Concepts carved their small realities, the primordial influences still loomed.
Asaryel's scions sought to impose order on mortal pacts, creating the first Codices of Covenant, binding Shatterborn and mortals within structured laws.
N'yrrhath's dream-born reflections encouraged fluidity, teaching mortals to embrace mutable forms and adaptive truths.
Eroth's emanations sharpened the delineations, ensuring that each emergent deity remained distinct, preventing the collapse into undifferentiated myth.
Yunea's wild progeny celebrated evolution, pushing mortals to innovate their own rituals and expand beyond inherited patterns.
Thaal's silent witnesses recorded these shifts without interference, ensuring that the Archive of Becoming would reflect reality as it was, not as it was intended.
Myrrhk's distortions whispered subversions, infecting nascent gods with paradoxes to prevent stagnation.
Mortals, however, did not wholly submit to any camp.
Their strength was hybridity.
Where Primordials were bound to singular truths, mortals could weave contradictory fragments into coherent — if imperfect — wholes.
This capacity unsettled the old order.
The Loom's Subtle Shift
As mortal stories wove into the Weave, imperceptible to the Titans of Meaning, small tensions began to accumulate.
Possibility thickened in places where mortal will reinforced emergent divinities.
Contradictions stabilized where Splinterborn symbiosis endured.
Law bent slightly, reshaping the local flow of consequence.
The Weave itself remained passive.
But every thread tugged by mortal hands added to a pressure of divergence.
A pressure that, in time, even the Primordials would be forced to acknowledge.
The Hidden War of Meaning
Though no banners flew, though no swords clashed, a quiet war began.
Not of might, but of definitions.
Could a god be born of mortal need and still be divine?
Could chaos be tamed without destroying its essence?
Could a fragment of a fragment outgrow its origin?
In these questions, the Covenant of Fragments laid the foundation for a future where the absolute might of the Firstborn would be challenged — not by opposition, but by irrelevance.
For in a cosmos where meaning evolves, even the Titans of Meaning must eventually choose:
> Adapt in ways they are not designed to…
Or fade into conceptual extinction.