The world did not collapse because humanity failed.
It collapsed because the rules that held it together were removed.
Before the silence, existence was stable. Cause followed effect. Memory endured. Even suffering had meaning. The world knew what it was, and so did the gods who governed it.
Then the failures began.
Not catastrophes. Not wars.
Small things.
Authority weakened. Domains lost clarity. A god of harvest could no longer explain why crops grew. A god of war forgot the difference between victory and slaughter.
Prayers still arrived—but incomplete.
Names still existed—but carried less weight.
The gods gathered where time remained intact.
Not to judge.Not to argue.
To decide.
Above them spread the Void.
It was not destruction. It did not rage or conquer.
It replaced.
Where it passed, unnecessary existence was removed. Continuity thinned. Meaning collapsed. Reality did not break—it simplified.
Divinity was not exempt.
The younger gods panicked.
History would later claim fear ruled the heavens.
That, too, was a lie.
One among them spoke—older than worship, older than the idea that gods were meant to rule.
"As long as we remain," it said, "the world cannot stabilize."
Silence followed.
To seal the world from the Void required more than sacrifice. More than retreat.
It required irrelevance.
Gods were anchors. Their authority distorted a world struggling to survive without excess. If divinity remained, the Void would continue trimming existence until nothing coherent remained.
The choice was absolute.
Remain—and doom the world slowly.Withdraw—and be remembered as deserters.
The gods withdrew.
One by one, they released their authority. Storms lost their voices. Fire dimmed. Time corrected itself without guidance.
Before the seal closed, one god remained.
Not the strongest.Not the kindest.
The one whose role was endurance.
"You will forget us," it said—not in sorrow, but certainty."You will remember only the silence."
Human memory could not survive discontinuity.
A final rule was carved into reality itself—deep enough that forgetting could not erase it.
A failsafe.
Then the seal closed.
The gods did not die.
They ceased to matter.
Below, humanity would one day name the gap that followed.
They would call it the Void Era, because they lacked the language for a time that had been deliberately removed.
And beneath the world—beyond history, beyond prayer—
Something waited.
Not for worship.
But for someone who could give the world structure again.