Long before the shriek of steam and steel drowned the skies, the world sang in the names of four. Their temples crowned mountains, their symbols marked the stars, and their names were carved into the bones of kings and commoners.
They were the gods of Creation, who shaped the first dawn; god of Beasts, who stirred breath into blood; god of Devotion, who taught the soul to kneel; and god of Death, who granted mercy through silence.
In that trembling age, when the world was still raw and full of wonder, a prophecy was whispered a promise that these gods would return, not as divinities, but through mortal flesh.
But time is a patient erasure, and faith fades faster than stone. Temples withered. Names were forbidden. And so the divine was swallowed by soot, law, and iron until even memory decayed into myth.
Yet prophecies do not die they linger, buried in dust-laden scriptures, whispered by madmen, and etched into walls where no light dares touch. It spoke of four vessels mortals chosen not by merit, but by fate through whom the forgotten gods would walk once more.
When the world chokes on its own reason…
When faith is ash and time unravels…
Then shall the first rise
A child of silence and fracture, whose breath will twist the air and whose shadow will bend the path of stars.
None remember his name. Not even he.
But deep beneath the smoke-veiled city of gears and gloom, in a place where clocks no longer tick and mirrors cannot reflect, he begins to awaken.
He was born not in a palace nor in shadowed prophecy halls, but in a creaking house that smelled of salt, smoke, and seawater. His father was a fisherman his hands calloused, his voice rough but kind. His mother, a quiet woman, carried the child with dreams no larger than warmth, food, and a name. They were neither rich nor ruined just one family among thousands who believed the gods were myths and the stars were simply stars.
But when the child took his first breath, every clock in the world paused. Gears ground to silence. Pocket watches refused to tick. Time, for a heartbeat, forgot how to move.
In distant lands and nameless monasteries, four cloaked saints looked up from their prayers their veiled faces unreadable, their eyes hidden behind scripture and shadow. They did not speak. They simply knew.
The child of the prophecy had entered the world.
And somewhere, though no one noticed then, the wind outside the little fisherman's home grew colder. As if it already knew that love, like time, was something even the gods could not protect forever.