Editor's Preface
This account is not mine. It is older than my grandfather's grandfather, older than the stones beneath his fields. What I give you here I did not write; I gathered it, pieced it, and cleaned its edges where mold and worm had bitten. Some call it the First Chronicle. Some whisper it is heresy. Others say it is nothing but a tale to frighten children from the water.
But I have held the scrolls, smelled their dust, traced the fading ink with my thumb. I found names written in margins and hands that trembled. I listened for the spaces between sentences and set them down again. I will not argue. I will only set the words before you as I found them, with as little meddling as my craft will allow.
Read, and decide for yourself.
Chapter I — The Beginning of All Things
In the beginning there was no beginning. No dawn, no sky, no dust, no flame—only God, entire and unbroken, wrapped in silence so complete it had weight and texture. He knew no loneliness, for He was wholeness itself. Yet within that wholeness there stirred a question that had no voice but pressed against the boundaries of His completeness like water against stone: What is it to be less? What is it to know the world from the eye of the small?
So He waited in Himself, contemplating limitation with infinite patience. Ages passed though no ages yet existed—no sun to mark their turning, no hearts to count their beats. In that stillness deeper than any mortal quiet, thought turned to yearning, and yearning to will, and will to the first act of divine sacrifice.
Then, with an exhalation that was the first stirring of sound in all existence, God divided His own authority. He did not shatter, but willingly splintered His infinite nature, holding his core consciousness intact while His power took living form.
The division was one of tender sacrifice, like a mother dividing her heart among her children. From the fragments of His delegated essence sprang ten living lights, each blazing with a fragment of His nature, each perfect in its incompleteness. They rose about Him like children about a father—fires that thought, voices that walked, beings of such beauty that reality itself held its breath.
The first stepped forward, bright and steady, a flame without shadow yet carrying within its radiance an edge sharp as justice. "I am Tahor," he said, "the First Breath of Order." His voice settled the void like a straight line drawn through chaos. There was in his word a clarity that shaped law and gave structure to the formless; yet even in his brightness there lay a hardness—an edge that loved boundaries and feared slackness. That edge would later be a faultline, though none yet knew it.
Another followed, soft and unyielding, her radiance like the pulse of a living river that has never known drought. "I am Chayim," she whispered, "the Flowing Stream." In the wake of her radiance, warmth and motion stirred, and the void itself seemed to exhale in relief. Her essence carried the rhythm of seasons yet to be, the heartbeat of lives yet unborn.
Wings unfolded in the silence as a calm presence spread like oil upon troubled waters. "I am Yoni, the Gentle Dove." Discord bowed where she passed, and even the harsh edges of newly-formed reality softened at her touch. In her came the gift of peace that passes understanding.
Fire came next, fierce and consuming, beautiful and terrible. "I am Seras, the Burning Fire." Her presence was a forge, and where she walked, the bright and the furious were made one. She carried both the warmth of hearth and the devastation of wildfire, creation and destruction balanced on the edge of her sword.
Then the keeper of bonds stepped forth, solemn and unbreaking. "I am Chotam, the Guardian of Seals." His word was a chain that could not be broken, a promise that would outlast mountains. Through him came the power of binding and loosing, of oaths that held worlds together.
Oil gleamed upon another's brow like liquid starlight. "I am Shemen, the Oil of Authority." Through him dominion flowed like anointing oil, and the right to rule was born. Yet his gift was not mere power but the responsibility that comes with it, heavy as a crown.
A hand lifted, pouring gifts unseen but felt in every corner of existence. "I am Matani, the Overflowing Gifts." Where he stood, plenty swelled like wheat in summer, and the concept of abundance took its first breath. His was the generosity that gives without counting cost.
A wind stirred that none could hold or bind. "I am Ruach, the Keeper of Wind." Breath filled what had been still, and the first whisper of life moved across the void. Through him came the breath that separates the living from the dead, the inspiration that fills lungs and souls alike.
Truth's flame came shining, pure and uncompromising. "I am Emet, the Revealer of Witness." His words cut shadows from light with surgical precision, and reality crystallized around his declarations. In him was the power to see clearly and speak truly, regardless of cost.
Last came a presence shrouded in silence, a radiance not of light but of patient depth. "I am Anani," the voice was the sound of a secret being kept, "the Veiled Mysteries." He carried what was hidden, waiting for its proper time—knowledge too deep for casual revelation, wisdom that must be earned rather than given freely.
Ten pebbles, scattered, remain alone. But these were ten chapters of a single song—each necessary, each unique, each incomplete without the others. The void around them began to sing—not with sound but with possibility.
God looked upon them. "The substance is prepared. Now, give it form. Sing the world into being with the nature I have given you."
And so the Animas began their great work.
Tahor, the First Breath of Order, stepped forward. He did not build, but defined. Where his light passed, the chaotic potential of the void crystallized into law. He drew the line between light and dark, established the pull of gravity, and set the stars upon their fixed and measurable courses. He was the architect of the skeleton upon which all else would hang.
Chayim, the Flowing Stream, followed. Her radiance, soft and unyielding, spilled into the spaces Tahor had structured. Where she walked, warmth stirred and motion began. She carved the first riverbeds in the formless stone, pulsed the rhythm of tides into the seas, and whispered the pattern of the seasons into the fabric of time. She was the blood and breath of the new world.
Yoni, the Gentle Dove, unfolded her wings. As the raw elements met—fire and water, stone and wind—her presence settled over them. She did not command, but harmonized. The harsh edges of newborn reality softened; the first winds became breezes, the first tremors of the earth became a stable, gentle rumble. She wove the first threads of peace into the world's foundation.
Seras, the Burning Fire, arrived next. Her essence was a forge. She plunged into the heart of the world and kindled its core with eternal flame. She breathed life into the sun and taught the stars to blaze. On the surface, her touch was both creator and destroyer—clearing the old for the new, hardening clay into pottery, and promising both the warmth of the hearth and the purge of the wildfire.
Chotam, the Guardian of Seals, then made his mark. He walked the boundaries Tahor had drawn and made them permanent. His word was a chain that could not be broken. He sealed the depths of the ocean so they would not swallow the land, locked the laws of nature into place so a stone would always fall, and set the unbreakable covenant of life and death into the heart of every living thing to come.
Shemen, the Oil of Authority, anointed the world. He did not create the mountain, but gave it its majesty. He did not fill the ocean, but gave it its dominion. Through him, the right to rule was born—the lion's claim over the pride, the mountain's reign over the valley, the inherent authority in the structure of a crystal and the orbit of a moon.
Matani, the Overflowing Gifts, lifted his hands. Where he stood, the world swelled with potential. He did not plant the first seed, but filled it with the urge to become a forest. He did not create the first beast, but blessed it with the capacity to multiply until its herds painted the plains. His was the generosity that gives without counting cost, the foundational principle of abundance.
Ruach, the Keeper of Wind, stirred. He filled what had been still with the first exhalation. His breath became the winds that scoured the peaks and whispered through the nascent grasses. More than air, it was the breath of inspiration itself—the invisible force that would fill lungs and stir souls, the gift of life and the vehicle of change.
Emet, the Revealer of Witness, shone his truth upon the work. His light cut through ambiguity. It revealed the mountain as a mountain, the river as a river, solid and real. He gave things their true names and their undeniable nature. Under his gaze, reality solidified from a dream into immutable fact.
Anani, the Veiled Mysteries, was last. As the world settled into its beautiful, defined form, he moved through it like a shadow. He hid the deepest caves, veiled the bottomless depths of the ocean, and tucked secrets into the heart of every atom. He ensured that for all its order and light, the creation would always hold a depth of shadow, a promise of something more to be earned, a mystery waiting for its proper time.
Together, in a symphony of divine aspects, they labored. They raised mountains that pierced the sky and carved valleys where Chayim's rivers would run. They breathed life into every corner of creation—beasts that roamed the wild places, fish that swam in crystal streams, birds that painted songs across the heavens. Last came humanity, made in the image of their Creator, gifted with minds to wonder and hearts to choose—the most complex and perilous of all their works.
During this time, as the world flourished under the care of the Animas, God began His great descent—not a rest, but a journey of infinite sacrifice. His consciousness, still a unified whole but now focused into a single, flowing stream of awareness, began to pour itself into the burgeoning tapestry of life He had willed into being.
He did not simply observe. He became.
For an age, He was the patient, blind yearning of the lichen on the first stone, knowing only the slow turn of light and dark, the simple ecstasy of rain. He was the single-minded pulse of the leviathan in the deep, feeling the immense pressure of the abyss, knowing nothing but the primal rhythm of hunger and satiation. He knew the brief, brilliant flash of the mayfly's life, a single day of frantic mating flight and the quiet mystery of death. He was the simple trust of the grazing beast, the sharp cunning of the plains predator, the soaring freedom of the eagle that saw the world as a map of thermals and prey.
With each life, He learned a new facet of limitation. He knew the prison of pure instinct, the tyranny of a body that knew only need, the singular, flawless focus of a nature with no room for choice. He felt the world through a million different senses—the echo-location of the bat, the magnetic pull felt by the journeying bird, the subtle vibration in the web of the spider. It was a symphony of experience that was both agonizingly narrow and profoundly deep.
And last of all, as the Animas guided their final masterwork to fruition, He turned His attention to humanity. In them, He saw a unique and terrifying spark—the mirror of His own creativity, but housed in fragile flesh and bone; the capacity for love as vast as Chayim's rivers, but also for a cruelty sharper than Seras's fire; the potential for wisdom that sought Emet, and for pride that would challenge Tahor. They were a paradox, a culmination of all He had experienced, the one creature that could look upon a star and not just navigate by it, but wonder why it shone.
And so, with the patience of ages and the memory of a billion lives behind Him, God gathered the threads of His experience and wove His essence into the form of a man. He would know the world from the eye of the small, yes, but finally, He would know it through the being that could wonder why it was small, that could choose to be more than its nature, or less.
His voice, now tempered by the dust of continents and the salt of oceans, whispered into the firmament, a secret for the Animas alone: "Keep the Balance. I will walk among them now, to know the one who knows they are known."
Ages passed like slow breaths. The Animas became as gods to mortals, receiving worship, gathering followers who called upon their names in times of joy and sorrow. Some, like Tahor, found deep satisfaction in the multitudes who sought his blessing. The praise of countless voices began to nurture something in his heart that had not existed in the days of wholeness—a quiet, growing pride.
And so the world began—not just in a moment of divine fracture, but through ages of careful tending, until creation stood complete and ready for its greatest test.