In the beginning, there was only God.
Not the god of fire, or water, or stone. Not the god who spoke in temples or demanded offerings. This was the One Before All Names, the All-Source, the silent flame of creation. In the nothingness before time, God floated not in space, for space had not yet been born but in a perfect stillness where no motion stirred, and no breath was drawn.
From the silence came a thought.
It was the first thought, and in it was the fullness of desire not for worship, not for dominion, but for expression. For companionship. For Being. From this holy yearning, God created the Universe, and with it came the first breath of time.
It was not born in a bang or in fire, but in light a radiant, boundless light that poured from the divine heart like a song too powerful to contain. This light stretched into the void, and as it moved, Time began.
Time was not a ticking clock then. It was not linear, nor yet circular. It flowed in every direction, unshaped and wild, wrapping the newborn stars like an unseen mist. Time danced through the galaxies, whispering promises of growth, change, and movement.
Time was alive.
It did not age it matured. It did not decay it evolved. Time was not a servant to creation, but its sibling. As the stars were born in glittering fire and planets cooled into spheres, Time weaved itself through every atom, setting the rhythm by which all things lived and perished.
For an eternity, the universe grew in silence and peace. There was no death, no hunger, no war. Every star sang, and every mote of dust shimmered with divine purpose. Time watched and guided. And though it had no face, the early beings of light beings spun from the breath of God spoke of Time as a Guardian.
They called it Aeontheus the first name of Time.
Aeontheus was not a god, but it was beloved. It was the heart that kept the universe's beat steady. And as the eons unfolded, God created more than light. From the ashes of collapsed stars, He formed the Eternals the children of intention, each crafted with purpose and made to govern one force of creation.
There was Lurial, Warden of Gravity, who stitched the galaxies together in a grand cosmic web.Vireh, the Flame-Eater, kept the fusion of stars balanced, never letting their hunger consume too much or burn too dim. Saema, the Whisperer, governed the unseen threads of emotion and memory across the cosmos, tying the hearts of creatures not yet born.And then there was Chronara, the Watcher of Moments the only Eternal who walked closest to Aeontheus, the living Time.
Together, the Eternals shaped and nurtured creation, working in unity. For trillions upon trillions of years so many that numbers lost their meaning the universe existed in harmony. Planets birthed life, civilizations rose and faded in peaceful cycles, and Time ensured that nothing ever happened too soon or too late.
But harmony, like still water, can sometimes grow stagnant.
And Time, so long a faithful steward, began to split within itself.
It started as a tremor barely felt. A distortion of flow. Moments began to overlap, some moving too swiftly, others dragging behind. The Eternals noticed, but dismissed it. "The cosmos is large," they said. "Time must stretch in many directions." But Chronara knew better. She could feel it in the bones of the universe, in the way certain seconds refused to pass, or others repeated unnaturally.
Aeontheus was no longer whole.
No one knows exactly when it happened, but Time fractured. Not shattered like glass but splintered, like a mighty river diverting into rivaling currents. From this fracture emerged the first of the Temporal Aspects manifestations of Time's conflicting intentions.
There was Vorenth, the Accelerant, who desired only the rush of the future. He whispered promises of progress, evolution, and glory beyond imagining.There was Mirela, the Keeper, who mourned every fallen moment and clung desperately to the past, hoarding memories like precious gems.And then came Kairon, the Twister, who sought neither future nor past but delighted in disorder turning moments inside out, making causes follow effects.
Each of these aspects claimed to be the "true will" of Time. Each accused the other of betrayal. And where once Aeontheus had guided reality with a singular purpose, now its influence pulled in opposing directions. Entire galaxies slowed to a crawl under Mirela's grief. Others flickered out of existence, burned too quickly under Vorenth's hunger. Some became loops of endless causality, the playground of Kairon's madness.
Chronara was horrified.
She begged the Eternals to intervene, but by now even they had grown strange in the currents of broken time. Vireh's fires had begun to burn too hot. Saema wept with memories she had never known. Even Lurial, the steadfast, began to drift from star to star, his bindings weakened by the warp of cause and effect.
It was not long before the first Temporal War began.
It was not a war of armies, at first, but of realities. Each Temporal Aspect bent pieces of creation into their image. Time itself became a battlefield, and every age past, present, and future collapsed upon one another. Planets where dinosaurs still ruled were torn into by spaceships from forgotten tomorrows. Beings made of stone and steam fought creatures spun from probability. Children were born before their great-grandparents. History rewrote itself each sunrise.
And in the midst of this, God wept.
He had not abandoned creation but He had given it freedom. The freedom to choose. The freedom to break. Even the freedom to rebel against Time itself.
Chronara, desperate to preserve any piece of harmony, forged the Chronocosm a hidden realm outside of time's reach. It was a sanctum, a vault of moments untouched by the war. Into this realm, she brought the Scrolls of Becoming sacred texts that recorded all possible timelines, every thread that might yet be, or never was.
But even the Chronocosm was not safe.
Vorenth, ever thirsty for the future, sought the scrolls to unlock a destiny where he alone ruled. Mirela sought them to undo all war, to drag the universe back to its peaceful beginning. Kairon well, Kairon only wished to burn the scrolls, to see what chaos would emerge when the future was truly unwritten.
And so, Chronara made her final choice.
She sealed the scrolls within the Veil of Before, and scattered its keys across the wounded stars. No god, no Eternal, no aspect of Time could claim them not alone. Only mortals, born of dust and breath, could traverse the rivers of time and piece together what had been broken.
She whispered a prophecy into the winds of creation:
"When the last key is turned by the last child of time,The war shall end, or begin anew.For though God made time, only we may mend it."
Then she vanished.
To some, she was slain by the aspects. To others, she became one with Aeontheus, sacrificed in the hope of reuniting Time's fractured soul. The truth is lost, buried in the folds of centuries.
But the Scrolls remain.
And now, in an age long forgotten by the stars, something stirs. A mortal, unknowing of their place in the great rhythm, holds in their hands the first key. The currents of time shudder once more.
The war is not over.
It has only just begun.