In the beginning there was the Void, vast and silent, a stillness without end. Yet no thing can exist without its opposite, and so with the Void there was also the All. Some men have called It God, some Allah, some El, some Anu, and some by the ancient name An‑Shar. By many names It is known, yet all speak of the same fullness, the opposite of emptiness.
The Void and the All were bound, each dependent upon the other. For emptiness cannot be known without fullness, and fullness cannot endure without emptiness. They were dependent on eachother, yet a constant struggle, pressing against one another without ceasing. Their friction was not evil, nor was it peace, but simply the way of all things: for every silence there must be sound, for every binding there must be breaking.
The All was small, a single particle, the opposite of the Void’s vastness. Within that particle evolved the four powers of creation: the Weight, the Radiance, the Bond, and the Breath. Their commonality was togetherness, the pull toward unity, the striving to bind all things. Yet as the All brought forth creation, the Void brought forth destruction, the inverted act of birth, subtraction from nothing to make less than nothing. From this was born Leviathan, the black hole, the mouth of unmaking, whose hunger was to devour all.
And as the All bore four powers of creation, so too did the Void bear four powers of destruction, each the opposite of the All’s gifts. Where the Weight binds, the Void rends. Where the Radiance shines, the Void darkens. Where the Bond holds, the Void sunders. Where the Breath changes, the Void silences. Their commonality was separateness, isolation, the tearing apart of all things.
Leviathan pulled at the All, seeking to consume It, and the All's four powers struggled against its endless hunger. They sought to bind themselves together to overcome the Void’s tearing, yet Leviathan’s gravity was relentless, dragging them toward its event horizon.
At last the four powers ceased their struggle. They surrendered, submitting to the pull, and in that surrender they found a deeper unity. In the dark night of the soul, at the edge of Leviathan’s maw, they were pressed closer than ever before, closer than even their own striving could achieve. In that moment they became so bound that the only path left was its opposite: scattering.
Thus the great reversal came. What had been drawn together burst outward, scattering resonance across the endless dark. Plasma surged, light unfurled, and matter was sown. The Void was broken, and from its breaking it was no longer called Void, but the Hollow — for it became all that was missing, all that had been lost.
Thus the five were revealed: the Weight to bind, the Radiance to shine, the Bond to hold, the Breath to change, and the Hollow to contend. Together they are the backbone of existence, the holy forces spoken of in the Book of Ex Nihilio. And though they battle, they are but emanations of the All, the mystery at the heart of all things. And the Hollow endures, necessary and victorious, for without its balance the others could not remain.
And when the great scattering came, light unfurled and sound resounded, and matter was sown across the endless dark. The four powers of the All, Weight, Radiance, Bond, and Breath, were carried outward, mingling in the newborn cosmos. From their mingling came stars, blazing with Radiance, bound by Weight, held by Bond, and ever‑changing by Breath.
And in time the scattered dust gathered, and from gathering came the first planet. The ancients called it Edin, from the word for plain, for it was the first ground upon which the powers descended. At first Edin was barren stone, but stone became soil, and soil became fertile earth.
And upon this earth the powers descended. Gravity, which men call Weight, struck the soil and grew into Root, the first Ent, a colossal tree whose deep roots bound the world together. Its heart hardened into the Element of Earth. Electromagnetism, which men call Radiance, fell as light and blazed into Bloom, the flowering Ent whose branches burned with living fire. Its heart ignited into the Element of Fire. The Strong Nuclear Force, which men call Bond, descended as invisible pressure and shaped Thorn, the Ent of defense, its limbs sharp and its presence like a cutting wind. Its heart became the Element of Air. The Weak Nuclear Force, which men call Breath, came as change and unfurled into Seed, the Ent of renewal, whose sap carried the promise of rebirth. Its heart flowed with the Element of Water. Thus the four powers took root, and the four Ents rose, each a living tree‑being with a heart of elemental essence, each embodying a force older than creation itself. .
And from the Void there also came its shadow, a fragment of its separateness. This was Bough, born of the Hollow, whose commonality was isolation. Unlike the others, Bough was born without a heart, and though he stood among them, he could not understand their unity. His nature was self‑regarding, a reflection of the Void’s hunger, and he bore within him the memory of tearing and silence.
And each of the trees carried fleeting glimpses of what had been before, echoes of the creation, fragments of the struggle between the All and the Void. They grew together in harmony, yet Bough felt the absence within himself. He alone remembered the separateness, and he alone could not join in their unity.
And so Bough resolved to reach the heavens, to demand of the All why he had been made heartless. He set his gaze upward and was consumed with ascent, desiring height at any cost. But what he did not know was this: the higher the branches reach, the deeper the roots must go. And as his crown pierced the sky, his roots sank into the abyss. Yet Bough paid no heed to the darkness below, for his eyes were fixed only upon the heights. Thus was born the World Tree, the bridge between fullness and emptiness, between the light above and the hunger below.
And when the crown of the World Tree pierced the sky, it tore through the veil of creation, and the heavens groaned as though wounded. From that rending came the First Storm, a tempest not of wind nor rain, but of contention between the All and the Void.
And An‑Shar sent down an answer, His voice booming as absolute thunder, rolling across the firmament with the weight of eternity. But a jealous lightbearer beheld the thunder and sought to intercept it, desiring to claim the glory of the Word for himself. He raced An‑Shar’s voice down to the earth, and in his haste he struck as lightning the first lightning strike this world had ever known.
And the power of that primordial light was so immense that it crystallized An‑Shar’s thunderous answer into a pure diamond, a gem of clarity and order. Yet the lightbearer, blinded by pride, turned back to search for the crystallized Word, and in his turning he missed the mark. His flash struck a nearby pool, and the waters swelled and flowed to become a great river. Where the flash struck the water, Men were created in An‑Shar’s own image, children of clarity and order, born of the river’s flowing purity.
But the diamond containing An‑Shar’s trapped voice refracted the lightbearer’s flash, splitting it into colors. And from the lower hues, the deep reds and shadows, Orcs were awakened, born of strength and raw will, tied to the darkness below, children of destruction and hunger. They were not made in the image of An‑Shar, but in the echo of His Word distorted, and so they bore within them the fire of defiance.
And from the higher hues, the violet and indigo, Elves and Wizards were born, children of mystery and creation, touched by the source of mana. They were not bound to flesh alone, but carried within them the spark of the unseen, the gift of enchantment and vision. They were the keepers of hidden knowledge, born of the light refracted toward heaven.
And between them, where the spectrum bent and crossed, there arose a bloodline of men both touched by the Void and marked by the All. They carried within their veins the Blood of the Hollow, a mingling of clarity and shadow. And though they walked as men, they bore the stain of emptiness, and their destiny was corruption. In time they would be known as the Red Shields, for their blood burned dark and crimson, and their shields were raised not in defense but in conquest.
Thus from the First Storm came three peoples: Men, born of clarity and order; Orcs, born of strength and defiance; and Elves and Wizards, born of mana and mystery. And among them rose the Red Shields, cursed children of the Hollow, whose bloodline would endure as a shadow upon the earth. And the heavens beheld them, and the earth trembled beneath them, for the storm had given birth to division and to unity, to purity and to will, to mystery and to corruption. And all were necessary for the balance of the world, though the Red Shields would ever seek to tip the scales.
The Orcs were all one people, bound together by the relic they called Grath’kul, the beating stone of storms. Its thunderous voice was the rhythm of their unity. Every Orc spoke the same tongue, sang the same chants, and marched to the same war drums. Their belief system was whole, unbroken, and absolute.
But when Men stole Grath’kul and carried it away to a mountain isle, the Orcs named that betrayal Dûr’khaz, the sundering of strength. The relic’s absence was more than a theft; it was the shattering of their soul.
Without the Heart, the great unity dissolved. The Orcs, once one nation, broke apart into tribes. Each tribe clung to fragments of the old faith, reshaping it into their own truth. Some still prayed to Grath’kul, others whispered of Zor’vath, the Heart of Darkness, believing the relic had turned against them.
As their beliefs splintered, so too did their language. Where once a single tongue carried their chants, now tribes spoke in broken dialects, strange syllables, and alien words. One tribe’s cry of “Grath’kul Zor’vath!” was met with another’s incomprehensible utterance. They no longer understood one another, their voices fractured like their unity.
Shamans mourned: “The storm has scattered into whispers. We are tribes without thunder.”
Thus the Orcs became divided not only in faith but in speech. Their voices, once a single roar, became a cacophony of broken tongues. And so the Heart of Thunder was remembered not only as a relic stolen, but as the moment when the Orcs lost the ability to speak as one.
Left heartless and without any answers from the heavens, Bough fell into a profound cosmic depression. Where his heart should have been, a vast hollowness took root, a monument of despair shaped by absence. As Men built their great kingdoms, the mortal bloodline of Merrin rose to prominence. Within their veins lingered a trace of thunder and a sliver of darkness from that original storm, a corruption that grew heavier with every passing generation. The shamans spoke of him as a wound given flesh, a reminder that even the heavens could birth emptiness. His body grew tall and twisted, his limbs like branches reaching for a sky that would never answer, and his eyes reflected not light but the abyss that had always lived inside him.
From that abyss, the bloodline of Merrin was sown. They were not heirs to a gift but to a curse, carrying within them the echo of a storm that recoiled from Bough’s hollow. Their veins shimmered faintly with lightning, but it was a borrowed light, fragile and incomplete. Their eyes betrayed the abyss that had always been, a darkness that grew heavier with each generation. When a Merrin child cried, the skies trembled as if remembering what had never been; when a Merrin king dreamed, the earth recoiled from visions of gates opening onto nothing.
The kingdoms of Men raised them as rulers, revering them as storm-born, yet fearing the silence that whispered through their lineage. Their crowns hummed with unseen power, but the sound was hollow, like wind rushing through a cavern. Their victories were brilliant but brittle, their decrees edged with cruelty, their solitude filled with madness. Songs sung in their honor trembled with unease, for every triumph carried the echo of Bough’s original void.
The curse of inheritance was not thunder passed down but absence itself, a hollowness that grew heavier with each generation. The Merrin bloodline became a paradox of presence and absence, rulers who carried both the promise of storm and the certainty of silence. Their armies marched with lightning in their veins, but their banners were shadows, their triumphs ash. The people adored them and feared them, for they were living testaments to a god born without a heart, embodiments of a storm that had never truly existed.
Seers foretold that the bloodline would one day confront its origin, that the hollow would either consume them utterly or be redeemed in a final act of defiance. The storm within their veins was not inheritance but prophecy, a thread woven into the fate of the World Tree. And so, every child of Merrin was born carrying the weight of thunder that was never theirs, and the shadow of abyss that had always been, destined to either heal the hollow or deepen it until the world itself fell silent.
King Merrin wandered for years through forests that whispered in tongues older than stone, until at last he stood before the World Tree. Its roots plunged into the abyss like chains binding the void, its branches clawed at the heavens as if to stitch light into permanence. Yet at its heart, where life should have pulsed, there was only a hollow, a wound that breathed.
From that wound rose a voice, neither mortal nor divine, but something deeper: the echo of endings. It spoke in syllables that cracked the air like thunder:
“Slay the tree. Hollow its trunk. Open the gate. Bring the world home.”
The words were not command alone, but prophecy, temptation, and curse entwined. Merrin felt them coil around his bones, rewriting his destiny. He raised his blade, and with each strike the sky dimmed, the stars recoiled, and the roots shrieked as they tore free from the abyss. The World Tree died screaming, its sap burning like molten gold, its fall echoing across every isle and kingdom.
Where its heart had been, Merrin carved deeper, gouging a wound that would never heal. The Hollow Gate yawned open, a permanent scar, a mouth into the abyss that hungered for worlds. From its threshold poured shadows that remembered light only as betrayal.
Merrin’s followers, awed and broken, knelt before the Gate. They swore themselves to its silence, its promise of unmaking. Thus was born The Hollow: a secret order cloaked in ash, sworn to extinguish the age of light and shepherd the world into the embrace of nothingness. They carried the Gate within them, each soul a fragment of its void, each oath a step toward the unraveling.
And so the age of light began to fracture, not with armies or fire, but with whispers,the Hollow’s creed spreading like rot beneath the bark of creation.
As the Hollow Gate bled its shadow into the world, the order of The Hollow grew, a brotherhood sworn to unmake the light. Their whispers spread like rot beneath the bark of creation, and their creed promised that all things must return to silence.
Yet as it always has been, so it always shall be: every shadow summons its flame, every abyss its bridge, every hunger its resistance. From the rise of The Hollow came its opposite, The Covenant.
The Covenant did not wield relics, nor did they carry splinters of the World Tree. The Tree itself endured, hollowed yet alive, its trunk a wound into the abyss. What the Covenant carried were stories, the forbidden knowledge of creation, the tales of seed and root, of thorn and branch, of the Ents who once walked as guardians of the living wood. These stories were passed down in whispers, half-remembered by men who now dismissed them as myths. Wizards, in their lonely towers, still believed, though their voices were few. Druids remembered most of all, but they spoke only among themselves, never to men who were not of their circle. And the elves, ancient and patient, kept the lore alive in silence, knowing that belief itself was a kind of power.
Thus the Covenant was bound not by relics but by remembrance. They swore an oath, to guard the forbidden truths of creation, to keep alive the hidden spirit of beginnings, and to resist the unraveling. Where The Hollow vowed to unmake, The Covenant vowed to endure. Where The Hollow sought silence, The Covenant promised song.
And so the age of light fractured into two paths, one descending into shadow, the other climbing toward dawn. Between them stretched the oath, a fragile bridge across eternity, upon which every soul must walk.
The Hollow believe the world was never meant to orbit the sun, nor bask in its fragile light. They teach that creation itself was a mistake, a detour from the true destiny: to fall into Leviathan, the Black Hole, the primeval womb of darkness, the devourer of stars, the abyss that remembers the first silence.
To fulfill this fate, The Hollow swore their oath: the light-born races must be extinguished, the diamond power restored, the Hollow Gate widened until its wound could swallow continents. Only then would the planet’s path be altered, drawn away from the sun’s embrace and into Leviathan’s maw.
In Leviathan’s embrace, they promised, all children of thunder and shadow would be united eternally in the nether realm. No dawn, no dusk, only the endless pulse of the abyss. To The Hollow, this was not doom but homecoming, the return to the silence from which all things first emerged.
Yet the Covenant remembered differently. In their forbidden stories, Leviathan was not womb but grave, not destiny but devourer. They whispered that creation itself was born in defiance of Leviathan, that the World Tree was planted to hold the abyss at bay. And so they swore their own oath: to resist the widening of the Gate, to guard the hidden knowledge of beginnings, and to keep alive the spirit of creation against the hunger of Leviathan.
Thus the final passage is not an ending but a choice: shadow or flame, silence or song, Leviathan or the Tree. The Hollow call it destiny. The Covenant call it defiance. And between them, the world trembles, balanced on the edge of eternity.