It is a truth multiversally acknowledged that a single deity in possession of a new world must be in want of powerful worshippers.

Kelos, Third Divine Scion of Clan Lifespark, was certainly no exception.  Where the majority of his colleagues had gone the traditional route, organizing into pantheons for mutual support and assistance in their worldcrafting, Kelos had preferred to go it alone.  Delving off into the Great Fabric, he had staked out an unoccupied piece of Chaos in an obscure plane in the middle of nowhere.  Over the course of a surprisingly few number of eons, he organized the chaos into stars scattered across the plane, then built up a solar system around one of them filled with hundreds of celestial bodies of all sizes, including a small handful of proper worlds.

Upon the most suitable of these worlds, he began to seed life, from the simple to the complex, imbued with the sparks of Essence that his clan drew their name from.  The greatest of species, he formed in his own image, as deities across the Great Fabric had been doing since times before Time had any meaning.

And then he rested, for this had been an exhausting work.  Almost too much for one deity to handle all on his own.  There were good reasons for the popularity of the Pantheon model, afterall, and one of them was that the amount of Essence required to take a chaotic plane and build it up from scratch into a populated world was perilously close to the amount of Essence a neophyte godling was capable of wielding.  And until he managed to successfully bring forth worshippers, the return on that massive investment of Essence would be nil.  But as those on the world below began to call upon Kelos' name and praise him for his goodness and mercy, the deity slowly recovered his strength, and began to put the second phase of his plan into action.

The upside of the pantheon model was having more Essence to work with.  The traditional downside, which led many godlings like Kelos to strike out on their own instead, was that the reward was then split among many members of the pantheon.  And there were many among the clans that oversaw the Great Fabric who simply did not wish to share.

Many, but not Kelos himself.  No, he had chosen to go it alone for a different, less common reason.  It was not the Essence he wished to keep to himself; it was the idea.  He had a plan, a plan that, so far as he knew, no other godlings among his peers had conceived of, a plan that would juice his Essence returns far beyond what any worldcrafters would typically expect, and propel him through the Path of Ascensions at an unheard-of pace.

Once he had recovered his strength, he began to put his plan into effect, bending the forces of the world to his will, spending an entire eon meticulously forging an intricate work of soulcraft, a system that would imbue all life under his hand with a degree of guidance and intelligence, to bring order to all, and through order, strength.  More powerful followers meant more Essence, more Essence to reinvest into the [System] made for more powerful followers, and he should be at the Second Tier in a cosmic eyeblink!

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It was then that disaster struck, as a foreign presence intruded upon Kelos' consciousness.

Even among deities, no one knew the origin of the Demons.  Some claimed that they hailed form a foul and corrupted pocket among the vast infinities of the Great Fabric.  Others, that they were the hungering souls of failed deities who over-invested their power and perished, unable to reach a sustainable level of worship.  Others still supported the ludicrous theory that they had originated at some inconceivable point outside of the Great Fabric itself!  But whatever their origin, all agreed that they were here now.

Dread-lords.  Mundivori.  The Adversary.  The Great Evil.  Lifesbane.  Demons bore many names across the infinitude of celestial clans, but these names all meant the same thing: the mortal foes of deities, despoilers of Creation that sought to return all that was to the disorganized primordial chaos from which the worlds were originally built.

And one had somehow stumbled across Kelos' plane.

Fighting back emotions that lesser beings might identify as panic, Kelos cast his attention about, seeking some resolution, some alternative to the doom he could clearly foresee.  Here it was, at full strength, whereas he was at the lowest he was likely to ever be, overseeing his newly-created first world.  He could not hope to overcome it in battle.  Neither could he flee; the process of investing so much of his Essence in this plane bound his soul to it, and would continue to do so until he reached the Third Tier.  He could not even call for help across the Great Fabric until the Second Tier.

He had wished to establish himself in this new plane all alone, and now he was.  Helplessly, hopelessly alone, trapped and alone with a dread-lord.

But never let it be said that deities, those endless wellsprings of creation, lack creativity.  As the dread-lord approached, Kelos labored with all his soul to complete the [System], infusing it into the [Core] of the world.  He gave it autonomy.  He gave it direction. He gave it the slightest sliver of divine intellect to deal with the unforeseen.

And, knowing the most likely outcome of the upcoming confrontation, he gave it a new directive that had never been part of the original design.  It would need to finish what he now knew he could not.

As he felt his fate approach, Kelos brought the [System] to full activity, and the World below him was changed forever.  Its inhabitants were so enthralled by the changes it brought to them that few even noticed the cataclysmic confrontation in the heavens.

They did not see the dread-lord set its bleak, inexorable power upon their creator.

They did not see their god writhe as the demon crushed the divine spark that gave him life, particle by particle.

They did not see Kelos' final act of desperation and sacrifice, reaching into his divine [Core] and inverting his Essence into Annihilation Essence, his remaining power washing over the demon and reducing it to something lesser.  Much, much lesser.

They did not see the terrible enemy fall to the World, half-dead, insensate, greatly reduced, scattered, but not destroyed.

They knew not that demons were never a part of the Lifespark's creation.

They only knew, as centuries came and millennia passed, that when a Demon Lord arose, the [System] would provide a counterpart, a [Hero] to rise up and put down the threat.

Critically, they knew not that the [Hero] protocol was the hastily slapped-together work of a panicked Creator working under a tight deadline, and spliced into the [System] at the last possible moment, without testing.

A divine creation, to be sure.  But not one without its flaws.