The Sundering of Kalhalla

In the beginning, there was only war.

A war before time, before thought, before mercy.

The gods of the Prime Pantheon, beings of celestial dominion, ruled the vast expanse of creation, shaping the cosmos with their will, carving order into the void. Their kingdom was endless, their thrones burning with the light of a million stars.

But from beneath creation, from the black pit that lay beyond the reach of the divine, something else stirred.

The Hellbound.

Born not of light, nor law, but of ruin. The first demons. The first betrayers. They rose from the blackened depths of Hell, clawing their way into existence, their forms shifting and writhing, neither living nor dead. They bore no crowns, no banners—only the hunger to consume all that was.

And so the war began.

The sky split as gods and demons clashed. Celestial lances of burning gold rained upon the abyss, piercing the twisted flesh of the Hellbound, incinerating them in white-hot radiance. Divine warriors, clad in molten steel, descended from the heavens, their war cries shaking the stars.

But the Hellbound did not flee.

They devoured.

They fed on the corpses of the fallen, their forms growing, twisting, warping into horrors unseen. Their flesh was a tide of shifting shadows, their limbs extending and retracting in impossible forms. One, vast as a dying sun, rose from the wreckage of a shattered realm, its body composed of writhing, grasping hands. Another, eyeless and screaming, spewed forth rivers of black fire that unmade the very fabric of reality, consuming time and thought in its wake.

The gods fought. And they fell.

Their celestial citadels were torn from the sky, their once-glorious temples crushed beneath the weight of a war that no longer obeyed reason. Blood, thick and luminous, flooded the battlefield, drowning the stars. The heavens became a graveyard, strewn with the severed limbs of gods and demons alike.

But the Prime Pantheon did not yield.

Their greatest warriors formed a final stand, a last desperate act to break the cycle of slaughter. They gathered at the precipice of existence itself, at the edge of the abyss, and with their last breath, they unleashed the Sundering Light—a cataclysmic wave of divine power that tore through the Hellbound, searing their forms from reality itself.

And for a moment, there was silence.

Then, the gods screamed.

For in their final act of destruction, they too had been undone. Their souls, sundered. Their bodies, torn asunder and flung into the void.

And from their remains, the world was formed.

Not a world of life. Not a world of order.

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A tomb.

A corpse realm, shaped from the shattered bones of fallen gods, the twisted remains of butchered demons, the rotting marrow of all that once was. Mountains formed from ribcages. Oceans from seeping ichor. The very air was thick with the scent of burning divinity, the afterbirth of slaughter.

And in the depths of this dead world, something else was born.

The Red Crystals.

The shattered souls of gods and Hellbound alike, their hatred and agony condensed into jagged shards of blood-red light. They pulsed with unspent wrath, with the last, lingering whispers of those who had perished in vain.

But death was not the end.

For even in ruin, there were those who would seek to claim power.

The Rise of the False Angels

At first, Kalhalla was empty.

A silent wasteland of endless decay. But in time, life crawled forth from the filth—blind, wretched, desperate to survive. The first mortals, clinging to existence, building their meager kingdoms atop the graves of gods.

And from among them, the False Angels arose.

They were not gods. They were not divine. They were men—weak, fragile, dying. And yet, they sought to become more.

They found the Red Crystals.

They listened to the whispers.

And they learned the truth.

The False Angels mastered the power of Soul Magic—the ability to extract, shape, and consume souls. They carved open the Red Crystals, prying free the still-screaming essence of dead gods, binding their tortured fragments into their own flesh. They shed their mortal husks, transforming into something beyond human comprehension.

They spoke of salvation. They promised a New Land, a paradise beyond Kalhalla’s corpse.

But the price was death.

To reach the New Land, the soul must be freed from its decaying flesh.

And so, the slaughter began.

The Age of Blood and Fire

The Crimson Plague swept across Kalhalla.

Entire kingdoms fell overnight, their rulers twisted into puppets of the Red Crystals, their minds hollowed out by the voices of long-dead gods. Some turned to madness, their people reduced to cattle for slaughter, their cities burning with ritual sacrifice. Others were more subtle—whispering ruin into the ears of kings, guiding them into war and famine, until all that remained was ash and bone.

Then, the False Angels descended.

They came as saviors, clad in golden radiance, their porcelain faces flawless, their hands outstretched in mercy. Their voices were layered echoes, woven from the stolen tongues of countless souls.

They offered peace.

They offered ascension.

They offered chains.

The defiant were branded with the Mark of Rot—a living curse that blackened their flesh, rotted their bones, and shattered their minds. But they did not die—not quickly. The Rot kept them alive, trapped within bodies that decayed while their souls remained, screaming in silent agony.

The obedient were taken to the World Tree.

A monument to a hollow victory, its roots burrowing into the soul of the last great ruler of the Hellbound. A king long thought dead, but whose will had never broken.

The False Angels did not destroy the tree. They corrupted it.

They fed it.

They poured the souls of the slain into its roots, forging new False Angels from the essence of their victims. Flesh was flayed. Souls were unwoven.

And Kalhalla became a land of silence.

A land of suffering.

But even in the depths of despair, something still lingered.

The Hammer of Uuen

After the Sundering, there had been another war. A war waged not in the heavens, but in the depths of Kalhalla itself.

And in that war, there had been a king.

Nacht, the last ruler of the Hellbound. The only one to have wounded the False Angels, the only one to have seen through their lies.

And when he fell, he left behind a weapon.

Not a blade. Not a sword.

A hammer.

Forged from the bones of a dead god, tempered in abyssal flame, bound in runes older than time itself. The Hammer of Uuen.

A weapon not only of destruction, but of creation. It could shatter False Angels, crush their stolen forms to dust. But it could also forge anew, remake what was lost.

The False Angels feared it.

For the hammer remembers. It knows their true names. Their true forms.

And when it awakens, it will ring across Kalhalla like a funeral bell.

Now, the heavens are silent. The Red Crystals pulse in the dark. The World Tree looms, its roots thick with suffering.

But somewhere in the ruin, a child was born.

Born with the Mark of Rot.

Born with the Hammer of Uuen.

And none can say why.