The dawn of all things began with the birth of chaos. Before it there had been an endless expanse of nothing. Nothing ever changed or grew, time stood still. Chaos, birthed into an empty world, spread like a fire through tinder. A sporadic inferno, a wave of change, chaos consumed the world and reforged it.

But the chaos raged like a savage beast, it forged and consumed the world countless times. Each creation, no matter how strong, was folded back into the fire that made the world. A formless something that filled the space, not much different from the nothing it had replaced. However, chaos is, by it very nature, is an agent of change. Stagnation is death to the flame.

Ever so slowly the chaotic flames of the world withered. Bit by bit things began to take root, stone, thunder, water. Things that the flame could not destroy and reforge. Soon the fire that once consumed the world had condensed into towering Pillars of Creation, columns of fire that left chaos and destruction in their wake.

But from the chaotic Pillars something new emerged, beings of stone and ash. Mindless but animated, they were frail and swiftly swept away by the whims of the world. In time they gathered in greater numbers, hordes of wandering constructs, the Ash Born.

While the flames of the Pillars of Creation swept most Ash born aside like dust a few survived. The chaos remade them, gave them the capacity to understand, gave them the spark to become more. The Ash Born that endured the chaos were born again with a soul, the ability to grow and expand beyond death.

The first souls were entrenched in ch aos, more feral instinct than thought. With time they matured, becoming the first ‘sentient’ beings of the world. But with thought came desire, a hunger to rule. The souls feasted upon the chaos of the world, allowed it to change them, make them stronger, and so the Tyrants took shape.

Born from ash but forged by chaos, the Tyrants bent the world to their will. They ensnared the mindless Ash Born and tamed the chaotic pillars that roamed the world. The Tyrants grew, both in size and power. Once fledgling beings of ash swept away by the wind, the Tyrants became the true rulers of the world. Each carved out their own little domains but there were always drawn to claim more. As they hungered without end, the Tyrants clashed in wars of dominance and subjugation. But immortal was the soul and each fallen Tyrant was inevitably reborn, ready to begin anew.

But the thirst of desire can never be quenched. Weaker Tyrants were enslaved, the strongest rose and brought order to the land. The Pillars of Creation were ensnared in iron and stone, fuel for the Tyrants that controlled them. The land reshaped and made a slave to those who ruled it, the Ash Born but tools to fulfill the will of the Tyrants.

Chaos, however, can never be truly tamed. The more the Tyrants fed from the world the more it changed. The land began to crack and buckle, the air grew stale and cold, the Pillars dimmed and shriveled. The Chaos that had made the world began to fade.

A creeping stillness enveloped the world. The weaker Tyrants lost their connection to the fire, cracking into countless pieces or shriveling into near nothing. The few that remained whole fought over the remaining Pillars of Creation, a few great Tyrants rose to rule all others. Even the land itself began to shrink and break into many pieces.

Once mindless and without purpose, mere thralls to the Tyrants, the Ash Born sparked like their masters before them. Across the broken landscapes the Ash Born gathered in disheveled hovels, standing together in frail communities. Crude souls of chaos took root in their cores and with it came a will to survive, a drive to see change in the world.

But even those who once owned the world could not survive the end of change. Not with a bang, but a whimper, the Tyrants died. With no fire to keep their souls lit, with no chaos to drive them, the Tyrants became shadows of their former glory. Husks hiding in the darkness, they slowly faded away and their domains rotting to nothing. A few remained in defiance of their end, like cornered animals in a hunt, but they could not truly escape it.

In a world once forged by Chaos, only a single Pillar of Creation remained. The few Tyrants that remained flocked to it with armies of Ash Born in toe. At first war tainted the land around the Last Pillar but in time the Tyrants grew quiet, none daring to risk extinguishing the last flame. Mere leeches clinging to a dying fire.

But the fading of chaos brought more than an eerie darkness. The wars once waged eagerly by the Tyrants became a distant memory, unforeseen death a rarity. But with it went birth, creation, creativity. A rigidness took the world, without chaos there could not be change. The air went still, the ashes settled, a new age had come, the Age of Silence.

The Ash Born settled into simple villages as they walked free of the Tyrant’s influence for the first time but a new type of tyranny ensnared them. One day bled into the next, people grew old but never changed, color and vibrancy disappeared, silence hung in the air. An unchanging, sameness permeated everything, everything melded together as the differences that chaos had made faded.

From the bowels of the world a creeping nothingness grew. Once a small remnant of what the world had been before, the Abyss ballooned as chaos disappeared. It spread like a cancer, corroding all it touched into a grey ash. In its wake, none survived.

But in the bleakest hour, when the spoken word had been forgotten, when color had long left the world, when the last spark of chaos was but a flicker, suffering was born. During the peak of stagnation, when change was a distant memory, the Ash Born developed the capacity to suffer, to feel pain beyond the physical. The complexity of suffering did more than allow change, it forced it. Suffering created desire for something better, it drove some to explore, others to rage and murder. Death created a bleakness of life but it brought a longing for something more.

Suffering brought war and death but it saw the taming of the land, the rise of families and tribes to protect. The once crude souls that clung to ash became more in their suffering. Death became but another step in life, that all souls would pass on and be reborn. Their souls forged ash into flesh and blood. Suffering remade the world, brought it back from the brink of utter stagnation.

With a spark of life brought back into the world the Last Pillar of Creation flourished. It acted as the sole conduit for chaos, the suffering and desires of the Ash Born morphing the ancient flame. It collapsed into a great ball of fire. The old Tyrants that clung to it became apart of the great flame, the kindle for countless souls to come. So the Crucible of Souls was born.

The forms the Ash Born took became more permanent, more defined. The new souls forged by the Crucible took on ash and flesh like never before. Some became more feral, grounded in necessity. They took up fur, scales, wings, horns, whatever it took to survive, and so the first Beasts were born. The Ash Born took on countless forms. Some took up scales and swam in the seas, others stood tall and stalked winter forests. Kin of blood and creed bared the same features and formed a common heritage. So the many people of the world took hold and they spread across the many lands.

The land had been shattered into many pieces, an expansive emptiness between them. The Tyrants had faded into old bones and ruins. The Ash Born built cultures, cities, and civilizations. The Age of Silence had wiped away much of the memory of what had come before, those that now lived forced to explore the world with virgin eyes. They found the great shadows of the Tyrants, the remnants of their era. In these shadows the Ash Born found gods, so began the Age of Shadows.

Sources for above images:

https://www.artstation.com/artist/artbdraw http://shahabalizadeh.deviantart.com/art/Born-from-Ashes-636332182 Fall of the Gods https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ePPaw