There was pure darkness—so thick that even your own feet vanished from sight.
And in that endless black stood a lady clad in red armor.
Every part of her—her hair, her bones, her very pupils—was crimson. She burned where she stood, her form a living flame. The darkness dared not draw near; it recoiled, afraid of her light.
Her name was Irene, the Red Knight of Lucian—the Flame of Origin.
---
Lucian was far away in the Primordial Realm, walking the path of his Quest. But unlike the others, his trial was not a true Quest. What Lucian believed to be a divine mission was, in truth, something else entirely.
Irene knew this, for she was born from Origin himself. Every memory he ever had—his pain, his triumphs, his final thought before death—was carved into her essence.
She was, in many ways, Origin's backup plan.
For when Lucian, his reincarnation, faltered… she would be the flame that reignites what was lost.
"This should be the place," Irene whispered, her voice echoing faintly through the void.
Her gaze fixed upon a distant point in the darkness. This was the Void—the battlefield where two titans, Origin and his counterpart Ether, had once fought to the death.
---
If her memories were correct, Origin was not always known as such.
Once, before light and matter and time, there was only Ether—the first concept, the first existence. A boundless mass of pure energy. Like the sun that gives light to all worlds in the Primordial Realm, Ether's role was both to create and to destroy.
Ether birthed the first realities—universes without number. But creation demanded power, and power demanded fuel. And so, like a farmer who plants trees and waits for their fruit, Ether planted universes, allowing them to grow and mature… before consuming them.
But not all life was willing to be devoured.
From countless worlds rose beings of great strength—Ascendants—who escaped the collapse of their own universes and fled into the Void. They watched helplessly as Ether consumed everything they had known. Those who dared to resist were swallowed whole along with their worlds.
The others, too afraid to fight, gathered in secret places within the Void and built homes from the remnants of dying stars.
Irene knew of these lost ones. But finding them within the infinite dark would be like searching for a single ember in an ocean. So she pushed the thought aside.
---
"Where… would it be?" she murmured, closing her eyes and reaching out with her flame—seeking the faint memory of her birthplace.
Ether, after consuming every universe, grew restless. There was nothing left to devour, and so it turned its gaze upon the Ascendants themselves.
Those who believed they had transcended reality discovered too late that they were still within a cage—one built by the very being that made reality itself.
Ether's hunger was for Chaos—and every mature universe was rich with it. When Ether ran out of worlds to consume, it found that same Chaos within the Ascendants.
At first, they tried to appease it—offering their energy to keep it satisfied. But there is a difference between eating and being force-fed. Ether's nature began to twist. It grew indolent, abandoning creation and letting destruction take the lead.
And in that slow decay, something new was born—
a spark, a will…
the first whisper of Origin.