When Yggdrasil's roots first pierced the Abyss, the cosmos did not rejoice.
It stilled.
Not in peace — but in the tense, breathless silence that follows a catastrophe, when the dust has settled yet the air still trembles with what has just occurred. Creation did not sing. The void did not bow. Even the newborn light of the World-Tree seemed to hesitate, its radiant tendrils hovering in the dark like a living thing uncertain of its own survival.
For though Yggdrasil had risen — tall, vast, and radiant beyond comprehension — the stain of Arae remained.
It lingered beneath existence like a poisoned well beneath a gleaming city.
The Abyss still remembered his touch.
The Nothingness still carried his echo.
Even dormant, his presence festered — a wound that refused to close, a cancer buried too deep to be excised. His curse had seeped into the foundation of reality itself, threading through the veins of creation like invisible rot. Every star, every law, every fragment of order now existed atop something fundamentally tainted.
The Primordials felt it.
They felt it in the tremor of their own divinity. In the subtle dissonance beneath their thoughts. In the way the cosmos no longer obeyed them with the same certainty it once had. They had won — but their victory was contaminated.
Bloodied, fractured, and hollow, they gathered upon the scar they had carved into Nothingness.
What remained of their battlefield was not land, nor void, nor anything that could be named. It was a torn seam in reality — a raw, bleeding fracture where concepts folded in on themselves. The air did not move, because "air" did not exist there. Light did not travel, because distance was a lie. Even time seemed hesitant, flickering like a dying flame.
Around this wound, the Primordials stood.
Weary beyond reckoning.
Resolute beyond despair.
They could not destroy Arae — not without unraveling existence itself. They could not leave him as he was — not without risking the return of the madness that had nearly unmade them all. And so, with grim inevitability, they chose a third path.
From the remnants of their shattered battleground, they reached inward — not with hands, but with will.
Together, they tore the fracture wider.
The veil of Nothingness screamed.
The wound bled energy so dense that it warped the very idea of "form." Space twisted into impossible spirals. Matter inverted into meaning, and meaning collapsed into chaos. Concepts collided and dissolved: up became down, silence became sound, creation became decay.
What poured forth was not light, nor darkness — but something older than both.
From the husk of Arae's broken divinity, a new realm began to take shape.
It was not born.
It was carved.
A dimension that could not, and would not, exist within the ordered planes of creation. A place that rejected the harmony of Yggdrasil as instinctively as a wound rejects a blade.
This was not a realm of birth.
It was a realm of containment.
Not of balance — but of rejection.
Not of life — but of necessary imprisonment.
And thus, Purgatory began.
At first, it existed only as a storm of raw divinity — a raging vortex where fragments of countless shattered realities swirled together. Echoes of strength, motion, will, and shadow were crushed into one chaotic mass, screaming without sound.
Its skies bled a colorless light — not white, not black, but something that hurt to look at because it did not belong anywhere in creation. The "ground" beneath it pulsed like the flesh of a sleeping god, rippling with every tremor of divine power.
Mountains rose and collapsed in seconds, their peaks forming only to be swallowed by chasms that opened and closed like breathing mouths. Oceans of glowing ichor appeared, evaporated, and reformed in endless spirals that defied gravity, logic, and orientation.
There was no horizon.
No distance.
No certainty.
And through it all, faint but undeniable, pulsed the lingering heartbeat of Arae's corrupted energy — silent, watchful, patient. Even bound and broken, his influence seeped into this newborn prison, staining it from its very inception.
The Primordials did not flinch.
Instead, they reached into themselves.
From their own essence, they forged chains — not metal, not spirit, not law alone, but all of them at once. Each link was a living paradox: logic entwined with chaos, protection fused with destruction, order braided with anarchy.
These were not chains meant to bind a body.
They were chains meant to bind reality itself.
They stretched outward like infinite serpents, coiling through the dark beyond dark, embedding themselves into folds of unreality that had never been mapped or named. Every link vibrated with divine authority, humming with the weight of ten Primordials acting in unison.
Slowly — inexorably — the chaos of Purgatory began to take shape.
The storm stilled into structure.
The screaming vortex condensed into a domain.
A prison.
At its very center, the Primordials shaped the Hollow Core — a place where existence itself refused to behave. Time fractured into splinters there, past, present, and future collapsing into a single, endless spiral around an unseen axis.
Space folded inward upon itself until distance ceased to have meaning. To move one step could mean crossing a universe — or going nowhere at all. Up bled into down. Inside bled into outside. The very idea of "location" trembled and dissolved.
And beneath it all, unseen yet ever-present, lay the destined resting place of Arae.
Purgatory was no temple.
No sanctuary.
No second chance.
It was a scar carved into the fabric of creation — brutal, necessary, and eternal.
Where Yggdrasil embodied growth, order, and ascent toward light, Purgatory embodied decay, distortion, and an endless descent into the dark.
Where the World-Tree's branches reached toward infinite possibility, Purgatory's roots sank into infinite confinement.
Its existence was both salvation and sin — a monument to what the Primordials had been forced to become. A reminder that even gods must pay a price when they wage war against something that should never have been born.
And as the chains finally settled, locking the newborn realm into place, the Primordials felt a shared, unspoken truth settle over them like a shroud:
They had not healed the universe.
They had merely buried its sickness where it could not be seen.
For now.
At the heart of Purgatory, existence ended.
Not with a bang — but with a quiet that felt wrong in the bones.
The Hollow Core was not a place. It was a contradiction given form.
There was no sky. No ground. No horizon. No direction in which one could move and claim they were "closer" or "farther." Space did not stretch — it curled. Distance did not separate — it collapsed. The very idea of "here" and "there" bled into one another until the distinction ceased to matter.
Time fractured here.
Not shattered — but splintered.
Past, present, and future did not flow in a line. They coiled around one another in an endless, impossible spiral. Moments overlapped like layers of translucent glass — a birth happening simultaneously with a death, a war ending before it began, a star exploding while still unborn.
If one were to stand in the Hollow Core, they would feel every possible version of themselves at once — yet remain unable to move.
And at its center, suspended in this impossible convergence of reality, lay Arae.
He was no longer a god.
No longer a being.
No longer even a presence that could be described in mortal or divine terms.
His body was a ruin of broken geometry — a lattice of fractured shapes that refused to align. Limbs bent at angles that did not exist. His chest was a hollow void that breathed without lungs, exhaling static instead of air. His veins glowed with pale, uncolored fire that crawled beneath his skin like something alive.
Cracks ran across his form like frozen lightning.
Each fracture leaked threads of corrupted essence that drifted outward, only to fold back into him in endless loops. His face — if it could be called that — was turned upward, eyes sealed shut, yet somehow still watching.
He slept.
But it was not rest.
It was paralysis.
A consciousness too vast to die, too broken to awaken, trapped in a nightmare of its own making. Every whisper of thought that stirred within him caused the Hollow Core to tremble, as if reality itself feared what might happen if he regained even a fraction of awareness.
Around him, the chains of Purgatory hovered like waiting predators.
Invisible, yet felt in every fiber of existence.
And beyond them — standing at the edge of the Hollow Core — gathered the Primordials.
They did not enter immediately.
They could not.
To step fully into the Core would mean submitting themselves to its fractured laws — risking their own essence being bent, split, or undone. Instead, they stood upon the threshold between creation and confinement, their forms casting no shadows because light itself refused to behave here.
They were changed.
Every one of them bore the scars of their war.
Kaiser's radiant frame still cracked with molten gold beneath his skin, his breath slow and heavy.
Savitar flickered at the edges, his existence slipping between moments like a figure caught between frames of shattered film.
Hephaestus' forges were dim within his chest, embers glowing faintly where once there had been roaring infernos.
Poseidara's oceanic aura moved like still water — restrained, uneasy, no longer infinite.
Thanamira's spirit form drifted in soft, broken pulses, as though the boundary between life and death had frayed around her.
Aegriya's sigils hovered weakly, flickering like laws struggling to remain absolute.
Voltraeus' lightning coiled lazily through his veins, restrained rather than unleashed.
Nocturne's darkness clung closer to him than before — protective, wary, ancient.
Moara stood wrapped in shifting runes, her cursed blood faintly glowing beneath her skin.
And at the forefront, calm yet heavy with unspoken grief, floated Artemis.
Her gaze did not waver from Arae.
Not with anger.
Not with fear.
But with something far more dangerous — understanding.
For a long moment, none of them spoke.
The Hollow Core pulsed.
Arae's chest twitched once — a barely perceptible movement, like the echo of a heartbeat.
The Primordials felt it.
A tremor ran through Purgatory.
The chains tightened in anticipation.
Finally, Artemis stepped forward.
Not into the Core — but closer to its threshold.
Her voice, when she spoke, was not thunderous.
It was precise.
Measured.
Unyielding.
"So this is where truth goes to die," she said, eyes reflecting the impossible spirals of time around Arae.
Moara drifted beside her, runes flickering like dark stars across her skin.
"Do not pity him," she murmured. "Pity is what allowed him to become this."
Artemis did not respond immediately.
Her gaze lingered on Arae's shattered form — not as a monster, but as something that once was more.
Then, softly:
"He was our mirror."
Silence.
Aegriya stepped forward next, sigils coalescing around her like orbiting constellations.
"Mirrors shatter when they show something intolerable."
Hephaestus exhaled, sparks dancing in the void.
"And what we saw… was ourselves, unbound."
Kaiser's fists clenched.
"If we had been stronger," he growled, "none of this would be necessary."
Savitar appeared beside him in a blur of motion, then stilled.
"No," he said quietly. "If we had been wiser."
Poseidara's form rippled.
"Strength and wisdom failed us both."
Nocturne's voice emerged from the dark like a whisper that was not sound.
"Then let chains be what we could not."
Thanamira drifted closer, her voice faint yet mournful.
"Will he feel it?"
The question hung in the air.
Not about pain.
Not about punishment.
But about awareness.
Artemis closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
"Yes," she said finally. "He will."
And that, somehow, made the moment heavier.
Moara lifted her bloodstained palm, runes spiraling across the Hollow Core's boundary.
"The prison is ready."
Aegriya raised her arms, sigils blazing to life on a scale that made entire constellations look small.
"The seals await."
Hephaestus' forges roared faintly.
"The laws are prepared."
Kaiser straightened, his shattered frame radiating defiance.
"The weight is set."
Savitar's form blurred, then focused.
"The sentence is measured."
Poseidara's tides coiled silently behind her.
"The tide is poised."
Voltraeus' lightning crackled, waiting.
"The storm is patient."
Nocturne's darkness deepened.
"The night remembers."
Thanamira's spirits gathered like a silent, grieving chorus.
"The dead are listening."
And at the center of them all, Artemis extended her hand toward the Hollow Core.
Light — pure, crystalline, and merciless — flowed from her fingertips.
The Hollow Core trembled.
Arae's body twitched again.
This time, his eyes fluttered.
A faint tremor of awareness rippled through Purgatory.
The chains surrounding him began to hum.
Low.
Resonant.
Unavoidable.
And as the first spark of consciousness stirred within Arae's ruined mind, the Primordials stepped forward as one.
Not as warriors.
Not as gods of dominion.
But as executioners of necessity.
The Sealing of Arae was about to begin.
The Hollow Core trembled.
Not with sound — but with consequence.
The spiral of time around Arae tightened, coiling like a noose that was not physical, not spiritual, but inevitable. Every possible version of him — past, present, future — overlapped in a single, suffering moment.
The Primordials did not rush.
They did not hesitate.
They advanced as a single horizon of divine will.
And when the first step crossed the threshold, reality itself bent to let them pass.
---
I — THE CHAINS OF LOGIC (HEPHAESTUS)
Hephaestus was first.
The embers in his chest flared, not as fire, but as law. His eyes glowed like molten metal poured into the skeleton of the universe.
He did not raise his voice.
He spoke into existence itself.
"I am the hand that shaped what is real.
What exists, exists because I allowed it to stand."
The Hollow Core answered — recoiling.
From the folds of Nothingness, something began to move.
Not chains of iron. Not chains of divine light.
Chains made of axioms.
They slithered into being like serpents born from truth itself — each link a perfect equation, a rule of reality given form. They sang, not with sound, but with the hum of inevitability.
The Chains of Logic coiled around Arae's shattered limbs.
Around his wrists.
Around his ankles.
Around his throat.
They tightened.
Arae's body cracked further, fractures spiderwebbing across his form like glass under unbearable pressure. Static hissed from his breath. His fingers twitched.
For the first time since his fall — he stirred.
The Hollow Core shuddered in terror.
Hephaestus exhaled, sparks falling from his lips.
"Remain… bound by what you sought to break."
---
II — THE WEIGHT OF STRENGTH (KAISER)
Kaiser stepped forward next.
His body still bled molten gold, every movement slow, heavy, deliberate — as though even after his war, he carried all of creation on his back.
He looked down at Arae with a gaze that was not cruel.
Only absolute.
"You sought to crush what held you accountable."
The void above Arae began to fold inward.
Mass gathered where no mass should exist. Gravity condensed into a singular point. The concept of weight, compressed beyond infinity, coalesced into an invisible sphere that made even the Hollow Core bend around it.
A weight so absolute it could pin a universe.
Kaiser raised his hand.
Then lowered it.
The sphere descended.
It did not explode. It did not shatter.
It pressed.
Arae's body was driven downward into the very foundation of Purgatory. The "ground" screamed — if such a thing could scream — as existence itself cracked beneath the pressure.
Arae's ribs collapsed inward like broken constellations.
His limbs bent.
His breath came in static bursts.
Kaiser staggered back, chest heaving.
"Bear it," he growled. "Forever."
---
III — THE SLOW MARCH OF TIME (SAVITAR)
A blur.
Then stillness.
Savitar stood beside Arae, flickering between moments like a being who refused to exist in just one time.
He looked down at the fallen Primordial who had once bent speed into madness.
"You made us race toward annihilation."
His fingers vibrated — not through space, but through duration.
He reached forward and pierced time itself.
With a single motion, Savitar twisted the flow of existence around Arae — stretching each second into an eternity.
Arae's heartbeat slowed.
Not to stillness — but to infinite delay.
Each pulse took millennia.
Each blink contained the birth and death of galaxies.
Each thought was dragged across endless ages.
Savitar stepped back, his form blurring into stillness.
"Try to run now."
---
IV — THE MADNESS RETURNED (MOARA)
Moara drifted forward, runes blazing across her body like cursed constellations.
Her blood shimmered beneath her skin — black, ancient, whispering.
She did not look at Arae with hatred.
Only with cold recognition.
"You infected us with madness… and called it truth."
She raised her palm.
From her veins spilled a spiral of glyphs — not symbols of order, but of contagion. A curse older than reason, older than creation, older than gods.
The glyphs slithered into Arae's mind.
His body convulsed.
Inside his consciousness, his own voice multiplied infinitely — laughing, pleading, screaming, whispering, begging, condemning — all at once.
He would never know silence again.
Moara lowered her hand.
"Live with yourself."
---
V — THE TENFOLD SEAL (AEGRIYA)
Light erupted.
Aegriya stepped forward, her form wrapped in halos of divine law. Sigils the size of entire star systems ignited around her, rotating like perfect, merciless suns.
She raised both hands.
"Essence unbound cannot be contained."
The sigils began to carve into Arae's being.
Not his body — his existence.
His essence screamed as it was torn apart, fragmented into ten distinct shards of divine corruption.
Each fragment howled in a different tone — rage, despair, hunger, sorrow, betrayal, arrogance, regret, madness, defiance, and hate.
Aegriya clenched her fists.
Each shard was sealed inside a crystalline vault of light, scattered across the endless depths of Purgatory.
Her voice rang like a final decree.
"Ten pieces of you.
Ten prisons.
Never reunited."
---
VI — THE WAILING OF SOULS (THANAMIRA)
The air — if there was air — grew cold.
Thanamira descended, surrounded by millions of lost spirits — the dead of the Primordial War, their forms pale and trembling.
She extended her hand.
The souls surged forward like a tidal wave of mourning, phasing directly through Arae's body and into his mind.
Their cries merged with his consciousness.
Every scream of every being destroyed by his corruption became part of him.
He would hear them always.
Their pain. Their terror. Their resentment.
Thanamira whispered, her voice trembling with sorrow.
"May their voices never leave you."
---
VII — THE ETERNAL LIGHTNING (VOLTRAEUS)
The void split.
Black lightning crawled through it like veins across reality itself.
Voltraeus emerged, eyes burning like collapsing stars.
He did not speak with poetry.
Only fury.
A spear of living lightning formed in his hand — not energy, but eternal punishment. A bolt that would never fade, never cease, never diminish.
He drove it into Arae's chest.
The Hollow Core lit up in blinding radiance.
Lightning rooted itself inside Arae's core, burning him from within, each pulse a lifetime of agony, each surge a memory of his own rage turned against him.
Voltraeus stepped back, lightning coiling beneath his skin.
"Burn — forever."
---
VIII — THE DROWNING FLOW (POSEIDARA)
Silence.
Then water.
Not real water — a sea that did not exist, formed from memory, regret, and suffocation.
Poseidara raised her shattered trident.
A boundless ocean poured into Arae's being.
His chest filled — not with air, but with drowning.
Every breath became suffocation.
Every exhale became endless pressure.
His body convulsed as the weight of an impossible sea crushed him from within.
Poseidara turned away, her tides settling.
"Drown in what you created."
---
IX — THE MEMORY OF DARKNESS (NOCTURNE)
Darkness bled into the Hollow Core.
Not shadow — something deeper.
Nocturne stepped forward, his form less a being and more an absence shaped like one.
He placed his hand upon Arae's brow.
The darkness did not consume.
It remembered.
It burned away who Arae was, leaving only what he had done — his malice, his betrayal, his ruin.
Even oblivion would not erase him now.
Only memory.
Nocturne's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.
"You wanted to be eternal.
Be remembered… as ruin."
---
X — THE JUDGMENT OF WISDOM (ARTEMIS)
The Hollow Core dimmed.
Not because power faded — but because everything else had already spoken.
The Chains of Logic lay taut and perfect.
The Weight of Strength pressed unendingly.
Time itself crawled.
Madness coiled within Arae's mind.
Ten crystalline vaults of light hovered in the abyss.
The wailing of souls still echoed through his being.
Eternal lightning burned in his core.
An impossible sea filled his breath.
Darkness had carved him into a memory of ruin.
And yet, in this cathedral of punishment, silence finally returned.
Artemis moved last.
She did not stride.
She did not float.
She simply arrived — as though she had always been there.
Her form was luminous, not as a star, but as understanding itself: soft, steady, and unbearable in its clarity. Light traced fractal patterns along her silhouette, as if every thought she had ever held was visible in her presence.
She looked upon Arae not with wrath, not with disgust, but with something far more devastating.
Sorrow.
A sorrow that saw not only what he had become — but what he once was.
Her gaze lingered over his shattered body, the cracks of his form glowing with leaking, corrupted divinity. She saw the remnants of a mind that had once touched infinity, now fractured beyond repair.
The Hollow Core trembled — not in fear, but in reverence.
Artemis took one step closer.
Reality parted around her foot like water yielding to stillness.
She raised her hand.
It did not blaze.
It did not strike.
It simply hovered above Arae's brow — inches from the ruined center of his being.
Her voice, when it came, did not echo.
It permeated.
"You sought to know all things," she said — not accusing, merely stating a truth older than time.
"You tore open every veil, shattered every boundary, devoured every forbidden thought."
Her fingers brushed his forehead.
A ripple of pure, crystalline light spread through the Hollow Core — not as power, but as absolute comprehension.
Artemis did not imprison him with chains.
She did not burn him with lightning.
She did not drown him in memory.
She did something far more terrifying.
She sealed him inside his own mind.
Within Arae's consciousness, a labyrinth of perfect logic unfolded — infinite, precise, and merciless. Every question he formed split into a thousand more. Every answer collapsed into paradox. Every thought multiplied beyond resolution.
He would think — forever.
But he would never reach conclusion.
Never clarity.
Never completion.
Only endless, self-consuming inquiry.
Artemis withdrew her hand slowly.
Her expression did not harden.
If anything, it softened.
"You desired boundless understanding," she murmured.
"So learn… through silence."
Light faded from her touch, leaving only the faint imprint of her presence upon his shattered form — a seal of intellect that could not be broken by force, only endured.
The Primordials stood in perfect stillness behind her.
Judgment was complete.
---
For a moment, there was nothing.
No motion.
No sound.
No defiance.
Only the slow, agonizing crawl of time around Arae's broken form.
Then —
A crack.
Not in his body.
In existence itself.
A faint tremor ran through the Hollow Core.
The crystalline vaults of Aegriya's seals flickered.
The Chains of Logic vibrated — just barely.
The sea within Arae's lungs churned.
And then —
His chest rose.
Once.
Twice.
A breath — static and fractured — tore from his lips.
His eyes snapped open.
Not pupils.
Not irises.
Two spiraling abysses of collapsing light and broken geometry.
The Hollow Core screamed.
Arae did not struggle against the Chains.
He ignored them.
His gaze burned upward, past the weight crushing him, past the seals binding him, past the ocean drowning him — straight toward Artemis.
A thin, broken smile split his ruined face.
His voice did not travel through air.
It carved through reality.
"So," Arae whispered, every word tearing at the fabric of existence.
"Even wisdom… has teeth."
His body trembled — not with weakness, but with a defiant recoil against inevitability itself. Cracks spiderwebbed further across his form, leaking strands of corrupted divinity that twisted like dying stars.
The Chains tightened.
The lightning flared.
The ocean pressed.
Time slowed further.
And still — he laughed.
A sound like a collapsing dimension.
"You bind me in logic," he rasped. "Drown me in memory. Burn me with eternity.
But do you know what you have done, Artemis?"
His eyes gleamed — not with madness, but with terrible certainty.
"You have taught me how to endure."
The Hollow Core quaked.
Yggdrasil's distant pulse flickered through the void.
Arae's voice grew louder — not with volume, but with inevitability.
"Then listen, children of creation."
His gaze burned over every Primordial present — Hephaestus, Kaiser, Savitar, Moara, Aegriya, Thanamira, Voltraeus, Poseidara, Nocturne… and finally, Artemis.
His shattered form lifted — not physically, but in presence.
The void bent beneath his will.
"Chains," he snarled, "are only meaningful… if there is something left to restrain."
Cracks tore across his chest.
Black, uncolored fire leaked from his wounds.
And with a voice that split into infinite echoes across all realities, he spoke his final curse:
"THEN I CURSE YOUR CHILDREN."
The Hollow Core ruptured with his declaration.
Lightning screamed.
Darkness writhed.
Time shattered into splinters.
Arae's voice filled the abyss — not as sound, but as a law of ruin.
"Every fruit your Yggdrasil bears… shall be mine to rot from within."
The crystalline vaults of his fragments pulsed.
The roots of Yggdrasil trembled far beyond the Void.
Arae's eyes locked onto Artemis once more — not with hatred, but with something colder.
A promise.
"When their blood stains the roots… I will crawl back."
The Chains dragged him downward, Purgatory itself opening beneath him like a devouring maw.
His form cracked further, dissolving into spiraling light and shadow.
But his voice remained.
Resonant.
Eternal.
"And when the last Chosen dies—"
The void fractured.
His presence tore into infinite shards.
The Hollow Core collapsed inward.
His final words echoed across creation:
"—YOU DIE WITH THEM."
Then —
Silence.
Absolute.
The Chains vanished.
The lightning dimmed.
The ocean receded.
Time returned to a fragile equilibrium.
Arae was gone — dragged into the deepest layers of Purgatory.
Sealed.
Imprisoned.
Unbroken.
And in that silence…
…his curse began to breathe.