The chronicles, whispered in hushed tones around flickering fires, speak of an age when the world was a divine plaything. Gods, beings of immense power clad in humanoid form, strode the lands, their whims shaping mountains and drying seas. They were magnificent, terrible, and utterly self-absorbed. Nations rose and fell on their capricious desires, and mortals lived in a state of perpetual awe and terror, drawing trickles of power from their divine patrons like hopeful pups at a feast.
Among them, one stood apart – a being of such terrifying might that even other gods dared not speak his true name. He was the Unmaker, the Final Word. For eons, he observed, his gaze sweeping across the pantheons, and what he saw was a festering rot of arrogance, a symphony of selfish desires that threatened to unravel the very fabric of existence. Their endless squabbles, their petty cruelties, their disregard for the delicate balance they were meant to uphold – it was anathema.
And so, the Unmaker decreed an end. Not a gentle fading, but a cataclysmic purge. From the highest celestial peak to the deepest abyssal throne, he hunted them. Divine blood painted the heavens, and the screams of dying gods echoed through the void, a funeral dirge for an era.
When the last god fell, a profound silence descended. The world, once thrumming with divine energy, went cold. Humanity, coddled and empowered by their divine masters, found themselves stripped bare. Their borrowed might vanished like morning mist. Chaos erupted. Without divine order, nations crumbled. Without divine magic, fields withered. Famine stalked the land, plague rode the winds, and the clash of steel became the world's only song. Despair was a suffocating blanket, and humanity teetered on the precipice of annihilation.
Then, when all hope seemed extinguished, a final, monumental act of power rippled through the cosmos. The Unmaker, the architect of the divine apocalypse, performed his last, terrible feat. He unmade himself, his essence shattering into a trillion shimmering motes, a sacrifice to infuse the barren world with a new, raw potential – a nascent hope for what might come after. The darkness receded, but the world was forever changed, scarred, and waiting.