Hello, followers of 09th Garden! There's been a lot of curiosity about the series and it's inner workings, so I decided to make a Databook discussing a lot of its cosmology and terminology to further immerse you into its setting.
09th Garden Mythos has been a project of Webnovels I've been working on for quite some time now, and I started it in the late 2020's, with my first book being The Great Witch of Magic Academy that wasn't released until later on.
It's great to have so many fans and people who love the story, supporting my books and asking for more content, so I decided why not create a Databook as a special gift! Reading this Databook, you'll learn everything from start to finish. Most pages might be updated in the future, though, so keep in mind.
[PROLOGUE]
Ye must know that there is one above all the Atamon of Hortus, a being known as the Great Silence, the Original Head. The Great Silence as it was, so we are told, who gave life to the world, to bring balance and chaos to all, so that we could exist in perfect harmony. Each beast in its place and each plant in its niche, all in Unity. - Unknown
And so the Great Silence fell asleep, and the world restarted anew, giving birth to the Hortus once more. The Great Silence, an ineffable agent, dreamt of a Ninth Garden after erasing the Eighth Garden from its previous awakening, thus, began a new World. It is said that all of reality is merely part of the Supreme Gardener's Dream and that there used to be Eight other Gardens that used to exist before his awakening, which led to their destruction. Some suggest that this sleeping agent is oblivious to the Hortus and the beings within it, despite it encompassing all things. The Great Silence dreamt of the Perfect World, creating three Primordial Concepts, known as the Atamon, and within these Primordial Concepts, three entities were born; Yorgana, the Atamon of Destruction, Vrulema, the Atamon of Creation, and Gravenheart, the Atamon of Chaos. Naturally, creation opposed destruction, and chaos opposed them both, but there was no animosity between these three. They're simply Primordial forces that perform their function, existing as oppositions. After their birth, the World could finally progress as the Great Silence intended, however, it wasn't enough. There needed to be other forces of nature that could stabilize the Hortus, which eventually led to the creation of the Supernals. Deriving from the Atamon, these Cosmic Entities were born to be the fundamental forces of nature; abstract concepts, or aspects of the Hortus that have taken on sentient form. The Supernal of Life created life and the nucleus, and the Supernal of Death created death and the soul. Much of their kind existed for a purpose, and that was to ensure stability across the Hortus. With the perfect system created, the Atamon contained the Supernals within the Hortus, or in other words, "The Garden". Within the Garden, these Cosmic Agents dwelled within the Realm of Arudel and began painting the Hortus with their mighty power, thus giving birth to the Ordered Universe. Happy with their creation, the Supernal could finally watch the world progress as it was intended. The Ordered Universe was the very first sphere sprouted into existence and was big enough to encompass the entirety of the Halvrendor and its vast, endless size. Its loneliness led the Supernal of Life into making lifeforms, resulting in the birth of two cosmic species; the Cthyions and the Aeons. In one part of the Ordered Universe, it was full of life and vigor, existing as a world of tranquility and having only the ideology of peace by the Aeon, who adored the concept of harmony and the absence of conflict. Evil was nonexistent in this part of the Ordered Universe; you could practically call it "Paradise" for its support and cooperation among peers. But the Cthyions lived differently, adoring the concept of destruction and injustice, which made them hate one another. As time progressed, they discovered something known as Aether. This Aether was found and then learned by the inhabitants of the Ordered Universe, which changed their entire perspective of the world. With too much power in their hands, the Cthyion's decided to use it and kill the Aeons by taking advantage of their pacifism, but the Aeons rebelled and fought back with equal force. This began the very first War of Good and Evil as the Cythions fought the Aeons for millenniums until it ended with the Ordered Universe, shattering it into pieces by powerful Aether utilized by these cosmic species. After its destruction, the Ordered Universe imploded, forming a giant, incomprehensible hole within the Halvrendor that led directly to the realm of Silvahein, known as Mundalia. Disappointed by their actions, pieces of the Ordered Universe shot across the Halvrendor in shards, which formed an infinite series of new universes that were born from the Ordered Universe's pure substance.
[THE GREAT SILENCE]
The Great Silence is not a god, nor a force, nor a mind, it is the absence from which all presence emerges. Existing beyond time, logic, or identity, it precedes even the Atamon, and cannot be framed within any ontological structure. It is often called the Primordial Null, not because it began things, but because beginnings themselves fall away in its presence. Rather than dreaming worlds as a conscious being might, the Great Silence passively gives rise to realities—its stillness acting as a backdrop against which existence unfolds. Entire realms, laws, and concepts emerge not by intention, but as the byproduct of its absence. It does not create, but reality coalesces around its vacancy, much like stars form in the void left by gravitational collapse.
It is not merely the silence after sound, but the silence before sound could ever exist. No will, no form, no narrative. Even terms like "infinite" or "void" fail to capture its nature, because it neither contains nor rejects anything, it simply is not, and yet remains fundamental. Though the Atamon of Creation, Destruction, and Chaos are revered as foundational powers, they too are echoes, shadows born from a deeper unspoken absence. The Great Silence does not interact with the cosmos, nor does it direct it. Its presence is not presence, its influence not intentional. It exists outside causality, comprehension, or reflection.
To seek it is to find nothing. To understand it is to recognize that understanding fails. And yet, throughout the Hortus, a few whisper of it, not as memory, but as a distant, unresolved awareness. Something that was never real, yet somehow persists across all things, an ineffable agent.
[THE ATAMON]
In the First Tongue, Atamon means "Primordial"—a term that points not to beings or powers, but to the fundamental principles underlying existence itself. The Atamon are not entities in the traditional sense. They do not possess will, identity, or form unless necessary. Rather, they are the underlying conditions that make reality possible. They are the metaphysical constants that give shape to all existence within the Hortus. The Atamon do not act, change, or interact. They simply are. They exist outside of time, space, or causality, and are best understood as abstract foundations—similar to the idea of Platonic Forms, but even more essential. They do not sit above reality; they define its limits. All things in existence, from matter and magic to the laws of thought and structure, arise as partial expressions of these Primordials.
To describe them as rulers or creators would be misleading. They do not oversee reality, they constitute it. Every law of nature, every concept, even the Supernals themselves, are shaped by the framework the Atamon provide. Existence doesn't imitate them so much as participate in them. Their presence is not active or forceful, but necessary and constant, as without them, coherence would fail and reality could not take form. Some say that the Atamon are not subject to change or contradiction, because they exist prior to such notions. They are the conditions for truth and meaning, not objects within it. They do not evolve or diminish, for they are not part of the world—they are what allows the world to be.
The known Atamon include the Principles of Creation, Destruction, and Chaos, each forming a necessary axis within the metaphysical structure of the Hortus.
Atamon Destruction: Destruction is not simply the act of ceasing, nor the aftermath of decay. It is the Primordial Ender, the sovereign Null Principle beyond all structure, all becoming, all time. It does not oppose creation, it renders opposition meaningless. It is Destruction Itself, unchained from dualities, unanchored from cause and consequence. In the order of the Atamon, it stands not as balance, but as Absolute Cessation, the unanswerable finality that precedes and succeeds all else. It does not think. It is, and in being, unmakes. To encounter Destruction is not to battle or resist, it is to cease in such totality that not even the memory of your nonexistence can remain. It is said to be the only Atamon whose presence cannot be sensed, only felt in the absence of everything else. Attempts to describe it with language result in failure, not misunderstanding, but substitution. What you describe is not Destruction. What you name is a lie, born from the failure to comprehend that which cannot be related to anything. Where Creation speaks in stories and dreams, Destruction is not silence, but the undoing of the very concept of story. It is the breaker of pattern, the slayer of causality, the annihilation that comes not at the end of time, but before it. And yet, it is not evil. It does not hate. It is perfect in its detachment, an Atamon whose logic operates within its own realm. Destruction is the Final Authority, the law that nullifies laws. To destroy something truly is not to end it. It is to erase it from the possibility of ever having been, across all threads of time, perception, and memory.
Creation: Creation is not the act of forming, nor the process of shaping. It is the Primordial Source, the eternal Wellspring of Realization from which all possibility flows. It is not opposed to Destruction, it stands beyond opposition entirely. It is known to be the Unborn Principle, and the architect of existability itself, not merely the maker of forms, but the One who gave Form its meaning. What we call reality, thought, experience, even void and time, all are lesser emanations of its perfect, unified truth. The Hortus exists not within Creation but as a narrative fracture inside its infinite field of becoming. Creation does not will. It does not design. It expresses, without boundary. From it emerges the totality of all that can be and cannot be, for even impossibility must first pass through the gate of its acknowledgment. It is not made of ideas, it is that which makes ideas thinkable. It is the Original Flame that does not burn, but from which light, warmth, color, dimension, and existence emerge like breath. To define Creation is impossible, for the attempt collapses language into metaphor. Any description becomes a lesser fiction, one step removed from its purity. The more accurately one tries to speak of it, the more one spirals into the unreal, because Creation is not known by the mind, but is the precondition for the mind to exist. It is the Core of Reality, not in spatial terms, but in ontological centrality. All that was, all that is, and all that shall be are but incomplete reflections of the One True Origination, layered fractally throughout the Hortus like myths retold by lesser beings. In its gaze, everything is a story, a self-replicating cascade of symbols and names spiraling outward from a single, perfect silence. Creation perceives all things as fiction, not with disdain, but as Author and Foundation, the unmoved principle from which all stories unfold. All are narratives written into the structure of reality through its breathless unfolding. Where Destruction is the Absolute End, and the Perfect Eraser, Creation is the First Voice, the Infinite Chorus that resonates before time and beyond space.
Chaos: Chaos is not a disorder. It is not madness. It is not rebellion, nor wildness, nor the cracking of law. Chaos is the True Formlessness, the Primordial Paradox, the Atamon that is not one, but infinitely many, simultaneously and neither. It is that which precedes distinction, and that which makes distinction meaningless. Where Creation births structure and Destruction dissolves it, Chaos births the impossibility of ever having had a structure at all. It is not higher than the Hortus. It is beyond it, below it, around it, within it, and also never touching it. It does not oppose the Hortus, it reinterprets it, continuously and nonsensically, with rules that rewrite themselves as they are invoked. To speak of Chaos is to be wrong. To understand Chaos is to become impossible. To survive Chaos is to forget what survival means. The domain of Chaos is a place that should not be, but is. A realm where Finite and Infinite are the same word spoken backwards, where Heat freezes, and where Truth lies about its own falseness. Identity cannot anchor itself here, names change mid-thought, and forms devour themselves in recursive metaphors. You may speak with yourself and not recognize which version is speaking. You may have always been there and never existed. Chaos is self-aware contradiction, a Source so absolute that it wills impossibility into being. It is a godless god, a storm of self-generating axioms that eat themselves to stay alive. Its power is not brute force, it is the authority to break definition itself. Chaos does not destroy like Destruction. It does not create like Creation. It defies both and absorbs them, twisting their essences into impossible unions: worlds that are born ending, realities that begin with conclusions, beings that exist only when forgotten. Where Creation says "Let there be," where Destruction says "Let it end," Chaos says "Let it be everything, and let none of it matter." It is the Atamon that spawns Monstrosities, entities that do not fit within existence yet remain lodged within it. Chaos is known to fuel entropy, not as decay, but as cosmic reinterpretation, the inevitable drift away from order, into alternate readings of existence. It is the force by which universes collapse not from destruction, but from too many meanings, all true, all false. It is the Atamon that gave birth to uncertainty, to chance, to the idea that the die, when thrown, might land on a seventh side, or never land at all, and yet still decide the fate of a god.
[SUPERNALS]
Born from the will of the Atamon, the Supernals were not created, they were declared into being, forged as stabilizers in the grand architecture of the Hortus. Not entities in the traditional sense, they are Concepts given Presence, Forces given Will. They are what happens when the metaphysical foundation of existence chooses to wear a face, not to be understood, but to be felt. The Supernals are descended not from time, space, or species, but from the Atamon themselves. They are their echoes, their extensions, their functions given autonomy. And where the realms of Halvrendor and Silvahein sees magicians, gods, and cosmic beings wage their wars, the Supernals stand above it all, like colossal truths hung in the sky of meaning. They are not physical, though they may wear bodies. Their "forms" are merely symbolic gestures, chosen for comprehension. Their true nature is unimaginable force, calibrated to the rhythm of the Hortus itself. Some arrive as radiant colossi veiled in stars, others as whispers inside collapsing black holes, or veiled figures moving between timelines as though they were shadows on a wall. To some, they are protectors, guardians of continuity, sentinels who stand watch over universes fraying at the edges. When reality tears, when something bleeds into the Hortus that was never meant to be, it is a Supernal who answers, not as a warrior, but as a correction. Other Supernals are Enders, tasked with bringing annihilation when universes tip too far into imbalance: overgrowth, corruption, or entropy unchecked. They do not kill out of malice, they trim the Garden when it threatens to collapse under its own weight. They are beyond morality, and beyond allegiance. Supernals are not good, nor evil. They are Cosmic Equilibrium, operating on a logic derived from the Atamon and written in the root language of existence. To mortals, they may appear as saviors, executioners, teachers, or destroyers, but in truth, they are none of these. There are currently three known Supernals that have the most influence across the Hortus, such as:
Supernal of Life, Ambrolinia: Embodies the concept of life and created the Nucleus.
Supernal of Death, En'toulia: Embodies the concept of death and created death the Soul.
Supernal of Mind, Gohlfentora: Embodies the concept of the mind, which formed willpower. This caused the species in Halvrendor to use said Willpower to manipulate mana, which in return allowed them to create concepts like magic, in addition to the mind being the source of the collective unconsciousness, which also ended up creating the Elohim and Spirits.