In the age before ages, in the time before time…

  Evra once set out from her home in the True Abyss in search of a spot suitable for her seed. Her origin is not known—to the people of Caloria, she is forever, and always was. To a realm which perceives time differently than our own, there’s no way to relate our timeline of events to hers. It’s the selfsame reason why Etherian timelines converge seemingly at random—their world is a tesseract with four dimensions, versus our own with three dimensions.

  It’s hard, just as well, to enunciate the word near within this context, but it is believed that Evra found a spot near where the great daemon Azafel erected his own home. He had done as every red before him had ever done, had carved out a venerable home in the shadow of the True Abyss, crafted a realm of violence and strife, planets of magma, stars which became meteors projected down with the force of gods upon the planets’ inhabitants. Chaos, without recognition. So much disorder that the universe was perceived as entirely different between one day and the next. It was pure entropy, eternal rebirth, the sheer bloodlust of a red made manifest.

  As was his soul’s desires.

  Nothing is known about their kin, their siblings; nothing is suspected about their kind at all. Their race is one shrouded entirely in mystery, oblique obfuscation which limits even what the Etherians themselves are to know. Man and Etherian both are guilty of twisting the story beyond recognition, beyond truth. They are the greatest secret of this timeline, of all timelines—but this is what is known:

  Evra created Caloria, in that spot nearby Azafel, and the entire plane which surrounds it. When an Outer God creates a realm, they create the universe itself, the stars within, the characters who star in its story; she created time, created the rules which bound the realm and its inhabitants, and created the very math which binds and guides every existing particle beyond knowing, without contradiction.

  But Evra began with just those stars, those dots which light up the night’s sky. And in the surrounding orbit of one such star, in a mimicry of the eons-old folklore of God’s Earth, Evra created Caloria.

  Caloria was unlike Azafel’s nameless realm by great measure. The stars were each placed in loving sequence, each bound to constellations with proper measure so as not to be mistaken. The hills were placed delicately, with care, like a painter dabbing the brush across the canvas. Evra’s heart stirred with each blade of grass she rooted into each nook of the world’s soft dirt.

  And evra created the sel, inspired by God’s man. She created the Alisars, expounding upon God’s animals, took full, loving inspiration in their creation. She created the elves as a race of elevated people, who knew no sin, no lust. She created a utopia where man was unallowed, where greed and hate were without existence.

  But then her twin brother Azafel came to play. He opened the portal which allowed the first man into the realm—

  And there arrived Kasian. Me. Once upon a time, I bore the name Kasian Strolcerth, earliest descendent of Tovas Strolcerth, emperor during the Bloody Third. I was the first man to step foot upon Evra’s Caloria, the first person to perfect interplanar travel by way of the ley—and a device lent to me by my dying master’s hand.

  And with my entrance to the world… Serkukan was borne to life.

  —But that’s not the whole of it. That fable is riddled with red herrings and misdirections. The real culprit of Serkukan’s birth was Evra’s lust, and know this to be the only truth…

  I remember, some time into my journey there, staring up at her vibrant sky, my broken sword dangling uselessly from my bloodied hand.

  My body was broken. Sharp stones had ripped through the flesh of my back, broken my ribs apart. Blood soaked through my shirt and made me feel wet and warm, though my body felt so cold. My left arm, my offhand, both were broken beyond recognition—so badly damaged that I could no longer even feel the pain throbbing throughout the limb.

  One of her Azar creatures stood above me, leering down upon my sad state. An animal, by all measure. And to be looked down upon by an animal is no joyous thing. To be killed by one—a man with all of their tools and magic and fancy gimmicks—perhaps I underestimated it. Perhaps I underestimated Evra. An animal defending his home from a tyrant’s attempted invasion—perhaps I was the one bearing the guilt.

  When the sky had turned dark, I expected the Deadworld—it was no great mystery from the plane I emerged from. The cycle of reincarnation had been mapped out decades ago, never doubted; there are the Entities of Hell, those left to the Pit to be slaughtered by reds and supped for energy; the Ghosts (which were later decidedly Etherians, who may traverse the Pit and Caloria at will); Animals (including Alisars and Sel,) Humans, Demigods (what Cedric had become, once he sacrificed his humanity to bind himself permanently to Serkukan and the others,) and Gods (those at the level of Evra and Azafel.)

  But it wasn’t a swirling vortex of souls which I gazed upon once my eyes next opened; it was a woman there, with silver hair. Platinum hair. I thought I’d been denied the Deadworld, resurrected into the plane of Gods for my transgression of interplanar travel.

  “Why?” was her singular word. A simple question, but so deceptively ploying.

  I didn’t quite feel like I existed at the time. I felt dreamlike, lightweight, like a cloud. I thought she was alluding to my travel at first, but I realized soon that she meant my attack upon the Azar. I answered back honestly, feeling some strange comfort from her: “Because I was curious.”

  “About?”

  There was almost the sensation of a floor beneath my bare feet, just barely. I remember how strange it felt; I knew fully that it was there, but it was almost imagined, less than real. “I wanted to know exactly what the Azar were.”

  “They’re my own.”

  “And you are?”

  She didn’t answer my own question. It was an interrogation, not a conversation.

  I continued in answer of her original question. “I wanted to know what happens when they die. They’re not men—surely they’re not allowed the Deadworld?”

  “They don’t die.”

  That one had caught me by surprise. She’d invented a world where things never died. Why? For what purpose? “Are you an angel? You certainly look like one.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  She hadn’t moved once, still as a statue. Not even her lips moved as she answered: “No.”

  “But you’re not human,” I remarked.

  “No.”

  “Are you God?”

  “No.”

  Finally, the conversation had budged slightly. Perhaps, then, she would answer my question. “What do you call yourself?”

  A pause. Then, “Evra.”

  It wasn’t a name I knew. I suddenly wasn’t sure at all why I’d cared to know in the first place; it did nothing to further my objectives. My objectives—to survive? To be reborn? “Am I dead?”

  “Yes—but I withheld you from the Deadworld myself.”

  “So you’re some type of god.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you look human? Is it convenient for you?”

  “I thought this shape might help you feel comfortable.”

  And somehow, she was right. “Is that why you chose a woman’s form? To appear more nurturing?”

  “It felt appropriate. The shape of man does not come across quite as nurturing, in most cases I’ve seen.”

  It somehow felt akin to a jab, but the impact left quite quickly. “Why did you stop me from entering the Deadworld?”

  “I was curious.”

  “About?”

  “What exactly you are.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be any great mystery—you’re familiar with men, aren’t you?”

  “Only in theory shared amongst my kin. But I did not create you, nor did I welcome you to this plane. How did you get here?”

  “I’ve been studying interdimensional rifts, let’s say. Or rather, somehow rifts have opened and allowed ley to spill into my world. I believe the ley came from here.” A half-truth.

  Her eyebrows tensed and quivered, but quickly hid bad to their statuesque positions. I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it.

  Then she made something materialize between us, a series of golden rings, floating sequentially by size, with the smallest at the bottom. One was missing.

  I later learned that those were the Rings of Fate, the guidelines of destiny which determine when and how things should happen, tightly regulated by Arbiters and Evra’s math. Precision is important for the Rings to be maintained. Should anything fall out of place…

  “My Ring is broken.” she gasped.

  Then she made the golden symbols disapparate, stepped to me in a hasty movement. I tried to retreat, but my body was still so distant. She touched my forehead, her cold hands—agony, unembellished, ran through my entire body, my soul, every fiber of my being. She read through my entire past, my unmet future, her eyes shone with the light from every plane I’d ever ventured to and abandoned…

  And we were inexorably bound.

  Kasian remembered the gilded city of Calamon, from that vision she’d supplanted in his mind that day. He remembered the brilliance of the country he’d wrought from the dirt, the mountains he’d carved into castles, the hex he’d placed upon her with the earliest of the men he’d brought from the other realms—the Hunters. In the First Era, they were all Planeshapers just like him. But once he’d gotten a foothold in Evra’s domain… They were slaughtered without mercy. This was his own realm to keep.

  A full scale war he’d waged against Evra, against her Ordinators… But he’d never seen what came after this very moment.

  And then again, he’d never seen Cedric Castelbre in any of the visions they shared.

  Kasian took a deep breath, sucked in the taste of war, supped the acrid stench of ash and iron from the air, let the sense of warfare rattle his every sense…

  A dark shadow passed swiftly overhead, blotted out the sun for only a second. By the time everybody looked up, it was gone. She was gone.

  Kasian chuckled. “My dearest Evra… How long have we waged this war?”

  Screams resounded in the distance from where the Ordinators had begun their assault upon his Sylvet forces. Lieutenants and generals barked orders over the mayhem, commanded their men to rally with shields held high.

  “I admire the ingenuity, at least—inventing Llestren’vatis, so I couldn’t track him as Arbiter, nor Outsider. Impressive, too, that you managed to convince half the realm that he really worked for your brother. And then, what, he invented the boy, Cedric, as a way to defeat me? That was your master plan?”

  She still hadn’t responded, if she was there at all. But Kasian knew she was around. More than knowing—he could feel her there.

  “When you prodded my soul for all it contained and could contain, you linked us together, Evra. We are one and the same. I have known every step that you would ever have taken, just as you know my own. That’s why I was forced to be underhanded in sealing you beneath my city; not that I would think to ask your forgiveness.”

  The Ordinators were searing through the frontlines of his army with ease. Their mist of blood was spraying into the air, almost hovering there like a lifeless fog. And in the way that it hovered, Kasian saw the shape of Vekzul…

  His eyebrow raised beneath the mask. “Oh, I see. You’ve been conspiring against me all this time…

  A blink, a warp. Vekzul was crouched behind him, a mortal wound carved through the chest of his armor, all the way to his throat. He clutched it desperately as it leaked a thick, bloody stream.

  “Sorry to disappoint. You were never any match for me, though I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “My purpose…” groaned Vekzul, “is served.”

  “Purpose?”

  “Yeah—” interrupted a new, yet all-too-familiar voice. “—Sorry. I couldn’t do it without him.”

  Kasian whipped his head around as fast as possible, only to be met halfway by a sickening blow against his temple which shot his head back with enough whiplash to fill his mouth with sick and drop him stumbling sideways. He didn’t know until he reached up to the impact—the strike had shattered a hole into the side of his head, letting his brain spill out.

  “No…!” Kasian whimpered, and it was undone. Dyosius made him whole again. Then he spun, and there he was: just as his eyes met him, the blood supped from the dead Vekzul, from the bodies littering the tiled road, from the sky, and formed a suit of staggering crimson armor across the body of one Cedric Castelbre.

  “You—you can’t be here!” he howled as he backpedaled.

  Cedric's grin was the last thing he saw before the jagged helmet of Serkukan clamped tight over his skull…