– Book I: Uranus Arc
There was no pain. No breath. No sound.
Only darkness—deeper than space, colder than death, quieter than silence.
Then, a ripple.
A shiver passed through that eternal stillness, and from it bloomed awareness. Not sharp and sudden, but gradual, like mist rolling over a sleeping city. He didn't know his name yet. He didn't know where he was. But he knew he existed—and that alone was everything.
He was Scott Domain once. A human. A man who had walked city streets, laughed with friends, felt the rain, died saving a child from a rushing truck on a cracked crosswalk. That final flash—of screeching tires, the twist of his body, a child's scream—faded into a pale memory, distant and small compared to the ocean of sensation now engulfing him.
No longer did he feel flesh and bone.
He felt… truth.
He wasn't floating, because there was no up or down. No gravity. No matter. Only awareness expanding like a star being born, and with that growth came understanding.
Not learned. Inherited.
His human thoughts screamed against it, too small to contain what was being poured into him.
Images. Concepts. Structures. Memories—millions of them, all at once.
He saw a vast mountain wreathed in mist, its peak brushing the edge of space. Beneath it, rivers of light coiled through sleeping valleys. He saw colossal figures warring in the sky, their shadows tearing at the clouds. He saw stars bleeding into seas. Voices whispering across eternity. Symbols etched into stone with language older than words.
And through it all pulsed a singular force:
Soul.
The unseen thread that bound all things. Emotion. Memory. Identity. Choice. Essence. Not the body. Not the mind. Something deeper. It was as if the universe itself had remembered him—and in doing so, reborn him.
A great hum vibrated through the void.
And then—
Light.
He emerged from the abyss like a seed rising from soil, gasping with lungs he had never used. Cold, dry air rushed in. The sky was not blue, but infinite—an endless dome of shifting stars and colorless twilight. The world was not yet formed.
He stood naked upon rock that had never known a footstep. The land stretched in every direction like a puzzle still assembling itself—cracked stone plains, chasms that bled light, mountains that floated on invisible winds.
And he remembered.
Not as Elias.
But as someone new.
Aetherion.
The name echoed in his soul.
Aetherion, Titan of Soul.
Born of Gaia, the eternal Earth, and Uranus, the boundless Sky. Their son. Their secret. Formed in silence, hidden in eternity.
And yet… they did not know him.
Gaia had birthed him from the world's root—not in flesh, but in spirit. Uranus had touched the seed that became him, not knowing it gave spark to something neither god nor beast. Aetherion was a fragment of their joined potential—born when their thoughts wandered, formed when the fabric of the world trembled under its first heartbeat.
His birth was no accident, yet it was unknown.
Not even his creators could perceive him clearly. But the world did. The soul of existence had remembered Elias, and had drawn him back—shaped him not in the image of man, but of myth.
He fell to his knees.
His body—tall, lean, ethereal—was clothed in skin that shimmered faintly in starlight. Not quite pale. Not quite radiant. His long white hair fluttered, even though no wind touched it. And within his chest, he felt it again:
That hum.
It was not a heart. It was not his voice. It was infinity.
He clutched the stone beneath him.
And the stone answered.
He heard it.
Not in words—but in feeling. The rock remembered its shaping. The dust remembered the stars it once belonged to. Even the sky above him whispered down echoes of time unformed.
Everywhere he turned, he saw memory made manifest.
This… is my domain.
Soul. The thread between what was, what is, and what may yet be.
He stood slowly, the muscles in his legs adjusting to this new form, his thoughts stretching far beyond his reborn body.
And then the inheritance began.
It was not given. It was not explained. It simply was.
Like an instinct clawing its way to the surface, ancient knowledge swelled within him.
He raised his hand—and the air shimmered.
He saw it.
A thread—gossamer, silver-blue—floating between two rocks. Tugging gently.
It was a connection. Not of mass. Not of light. Of meaning.
He touched it.
And was thrown into a vision.
The stones had once been part of a single mountain. A titan had slammed a fist into it during a battle that would not happen for centuries. The rocks were destined to be shattered. But they still remembered being one. They still longed for their other half.
That memory was the thread.
Aetherion stumbled back, gasping. The thread vanished.
But now he understood.
He could see the soul in everything.
He stood alone in a world still being written, and knew he was meant to shape it.
He extended both arms and closed his eyes.
Let there be a place to begin.A realm not of earth or sky. A realm of soul.
The world trembled.
The ground beneath him cracked—and from the fissure, light rose.
Soft, golden, and warm—not like fire, but like comfort.
A circular platform emerged, shaped from memory and emotion. Trees bloomed with silver leaves. Flowers opened with whispers. A pool of water formed at the center, but it reflected not the sky—only one's past.
This was not a kingdom.
It was a cradle.
The first realm.
His.
The Realm of Soul.
As he stood within it, the air around him shimmered, and from the ground rose the first of his creations.
Not beasts. Not gods.
They were small, floating motes of light—some shaped like glowing feathers, others like floating eyes, others like orbs wrapped in song.
They had no names yet.
But he knew what they were:
Echoes.
Fragments of potential.
Shards of thought not yet born into life.
Creatures that would grow as memory grew.
He looked down at them, a strange warmth in his chest.
Not alone, he thought. Never alone again.
Far above, unseen by him, the Sky stirred.
A single eye opened within the clouds.
Uranus looked down across the cosmos.
He sensed something.
A shifting.
A resonance in the World Will.
But he did not know why.
He narrowed his gaze—and saw nothing.
Aetherion remained unseen.
Not by accident.
By nature.
Even to the Sky, the Soul remained hidden.
Below, in the Realm of Soul, the new Titan opened his arms, and the Echoes began to sing—soundless voices that rippled through the foundations of reality.
And from that sound came the first law:
Nothing is forgotten.Nothing is wasted.All souls are mine to guide.
Thus, the world changed.
And none knew it had.
Not yet.