Before there were screams, before there was blood or fire or names carved into history, there was order.
The universes turned as they were meant to. Creation expanded. Destruction balanced it. Mortals lived, fought, died, and were forgotten at a pace the gods found acceptable. Power had limits. Divinity had rules.
And then—quietly—something changed.
It was not a war. Not a rebellion. Not even a prophecy spoken aloud. It was a deviation so small it almost escaped notice, buried beneath the endless noise of existence.
Almost.
In the deepest strata of the cosmos, where time thinned and causality bent, a thread was pulled too tight. A possibility that should have collapsed instead endured. A soul took shape where none should have been allowed to form.
The gods did not see it at first.
They were watching other things—clashing universes, troublesome mortals, futures that refused to behave. They always watched the loud moments. The obvious ones.
This was neither.
It was a birth waiting to happen.
Far from divine thrones and angelic attendants, in a corner of reality deemed insignificant, the laws that governed power hesitated. Mortal flesh and divine essence brushed against one another in a way that should have ended in annihilation.
Instead, it held.
The cosmos recoiled—not in fear, but in correction. Forces older than memory leaned inward, pressing, compressing, sealing. If divinity could not be erased, then it would be buried. If a god could not be stopped from being born, then it would be forced to begin as something fragile.
Something weak.
Somewhere beyond mortal perception, an angel paused mid-step.
Elsewhere, a god of destruction felt a pressure behind his eyes and frowned without knowing why.
And deeper still—beyond gods, beyond angels—existence itself adjusted its weight, as if bracing for a future it did not remember approving.
No prophecy was written.
No warning was given.
Only a quiet agreement was made by the universe as a whole:
If this being must exist, then it will suffer for it.
Moments later, on a distant world beneath a turbulent sky, a child would draw his first breath.
And with it, the age of certainty would begin to crack.