In the unmarked ages of the world — when the stars hung closer to the earth, and the seas were deeper than memory — there rose a kingdom unlike any other. A city not born of earth alone, nor solely of heaven's decree. Atlantis.
It was beautiful and terrible. Towers gleamed with metals no mortal forge could name, obelisks of pale blue crystal shimmered even under the weakest sun, and streets of living stone hummed faintly beneath every step. The oceans around it glowed with an unnatural light, as if the waters themselves bowed to the city's will. Winds carried songs in languages long forgotten, words older than the angels who once whispered them. Even the ground beneath it trembled, uneasy under the weight of ambition.
The Atlanteans were not simple folk. They were kings and scholars, sorcerers and warriors, their blood mingled with the fallen — the Watchers who walked among them in forms both beautiful and terrible. They could speak with beasts of air and sea. They bent tides and winds as easily as a child might bend reeds. But their true power lay elsewhere. Three fragments they called the Shards of the Word, relics of creation itself, syllables from the first utterance that shaped the stars, that still hummed in the bones of the universe.
When the Atlanteans wielded these Shards, the world bent. Obelisks stilled the oceans. Temples floated untethered in the sky. Engines drew fire from the earth's molten heart, bending continents as easily as a sculptor folds clay. And yet, with all this power, hunger grew. Ambition grew. King Adanir the Radiant, ruler of all Atlantis, dreamed of ascending beyond flesh, beyond mortality, into divinity itself.
They spoke of the Celestial Nexus, a thin veil where worlds and realms brushed against one another, where Heaven and Earth nearly touched. They sought to pierce it. They sought to claim dominion over the very threads of creation. And when the Shards were aligned, they tore open a wound in the fabric of reality. I felt it like a shiver through the loom of fate itself.
The Watchers rejoiced, whispering that exile would end, that power long denied would be theirs. And Lucifer's voice echoed faintly through the breach, promising glory to all who would claim it. Within Atlantis, mortal priests chanted names older than the stars, words that had not been spoken since the dawn.
But the Architect does not slumber. Not even for pride. From the highest Heaven came a single, immutable decree: the city that sought to rival creation would be undone.
And undone it was.
The oceans rose like living things, devouring streets and towers in a single gulp. Mountains trembled and shattered. Fires rained from the sky, unnatural and terrible. The Engines of the Nexus collapsed, the wound widening, swallowing all in its reach. The three Shards of the Word vanished, scattered into the void, lost to all but the Architect's knowing.
Some Atlanteans fled — to islands, to hidden caverns beneath the seas, to the shadowed depths where even sunlight dared not tread. Few survived. Most were claimed by the rising waves, their shining city swallowed beneath black waters. Atlantis vanished, leaving only myth, memory broken and trembling.
I watched it all. I felt the heartbreak of the world in every crash of the waves, in every falling spire, in every scream that the wind carried away. And yet, even in that destruction, the Architect's hand was just. The sins of the city had left their mark. The blood of the Nephilim ran in human veins. The Watchers still lingered, their exile unfinished. The world's heart was wounded, still stubborn, still unready to be pure.
But in the midst of ruin, one soul stood apart. His heart remained untainted. He walked with wisdom no teacher had given him. He listened to the wind and it answered. He honored the old ways that had long been forgotten. His name… was Noah.
And I, as always, moved unseen in the currents beneath it. I made things happen, nudged fate along, watched and waited. For though Atlantis had fallen, the greater story was yet to unfold. The flood was coming, yes, but also a world shaped by fragile, stubborn creatures who would rise, walk, and change everything. The war had begun, not among angels or gods, but deep in the hearts of mortals who did not yet know the weight of the sky above.
I still remember the last moment I saw the city whole. The towers gleamed under the pale sun, waters dancing around their feet. And then… the world shuddered. The sea swallowed the streets. Fire licked the skies. And I felt the heartbreak of a creation that might have been, mourning what pride had stolen. Atlantis fell. But its memory — oh, its memory — would echo forever, in stone, in water, in blood, and in the dreams of men yet unborn.