< Congratulations on successfully spawning, now go and survive the best you can. >
In the dim abyss of the netherworld, a nameless demon larva heard those ominous words, unable to truly understand their meaning with its meagre intellect. Driven solely by instinct, it struggled its way through the thick, blood-like liquid that enveloped it. Gasping for air as it emerged to the surface, the demon larva took its first true breath.
With a clumsy, stubby arm, it reached for one of the many massive bones encircling the spawning pool, its sharp claws cutting desperately into it. Slowly, it hauled its body out of the seething, crimson fluid.
But instead of relief, the young demon felt terror for the first time as it witnessed the spectacle that lay before it. All of its instincts drove it to flee from the perilous scene. Without hesitation, it turned to escape, scuttling away from the lifeless and dying remains of its spawn mates.
In a heart-pounding moment, the demon's unsteady claws collided with an unexpected obstacle, sending it tumbling to the stony ground with a resounding thud. Fear-filled screams echoed from its maw as it sprang back up from the red stones, racing once more toward the cave's exit.
As it neared freedom, the demon larva cast a frantic glance backward, only to be confronted by a sinister, but familiar visage. A set of bone-white teeth glistened as a humanoid figure that was much like its own, bore down upon it. In that heart-stopping instant, darkness engulfed the vision of the barely minute-old demon larva.
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In a nameless convergence of the boundless void sea, there floated a galaxy that pulsated with vibrant energy. Its once-luminous shell now seemed like an aging celestial masterpiece, its brilliance waning and adorned with hairline cracks as it faced relentless assaults from a tsunami of cosmic forces.
Eons ago, The Immortal, an entity as ancient as the universe itself, had foreseen this impending cataclysm, a voracious ripple expanding through the fabric of the void sea. It was a silent upheaval, transforming the intricate 5th-dimensional tapestry of waves and currents into an eerie, unnerving calm. By now this ominous wave had already swept through neighbouring galaxies, reducing them to shattered echoes of their former splendour, twisted and reconfigured into grotesque parodies of their past.
When The Immortal finally stirred from its eternal slumber, it abandoned its celestial throne at the epicentre of its galaxy and began to manipulate the threads of karma that flowed like rivers throughout the expanse of the great void sea, all converging upon its sacred realm.
Yet, despite wielding a power that transcended space and time, The Immortal felt inconceivably small in the face of the relentless onslaught, akin to a lone mortal struggling to withstand the fury of a cosmic hurricane. It fought with an indomitable force, tirelessly defending against each successive tidal wave of unfathomable cosmic aberration that emanated from the enigmatic source of this malevolent disruption.
Beneath the omnipotent will of The Immortal, the very fabric of space and time itself seemed to undulate and flow like liquid, rendering combat on its cosmic scale incomparable to anything mortal minds could fathom. Instead of conventional weapons like swords and spears, this ancient entity waged war with the ethereal forces of concepts and destiny, weaving and shaping karma to manifest their desired outcomes.
For a fleeting moment that paradoxically spanned both the vast expanse of eons and a single infinitesimal instant, it appeared as though The Immortal might successfully endure the tempest. In this pivotal juncture, when The Immortal glimpsed a glimmer of potential victory, it felt akin to the discovery of a long-sought beacon of hope.
However, this newfound optimism unwittingly became the catalyst for its own undoing. As the belief in imminent triumph took root, the karmic reservoir The Immortal had amassed began to wane. Suddenly, the tides of destiny shifted, allowing the cosmic waves to impose their indomitable will for a fleeting but decisive moment.
This was all that the enigmatic force required, seizing the opportunity without warning. The destiny harnessed by The Immortal, once so fluid and malleable, seemed to crystallize into an unfathomable solidity.
Disoriented by this abrupt transformation, The Immortal faltered, leaving an unsuspecting chink in its metaphysical armour. Swiftly, the relentless tide surged into this vulnerability, voraciously devouring and scattering its ageless adversary, a beacon of cosmic power extinguished by the inexorable forces of fate.
For a brief, haunting moment, the galaxy The Immortal had relinquished stood unguarded, the eternal being's cosmic throne untouched for the briefest span of time. Unexpectedly, the galaxy's celestial shell maintained its resolute stance, the destiny it had amassed over countless eons briefly igniting like a dying ember, a testament to the indelible imprint left by its absent custodian.
Before long, however, the relentless force permeated the long-forged fault lines etched into the galaxy's structure. The inexorable wave rent and reformed the celestial expanse, just as it had done to myriad others before. It twisted and reconfigured entire worlds and dimensions, shaping them into its own eerie semblance of cosmic order. This cataclysmic force, simply calling itself The System, integrated the world like it did any other.
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Yet, it was not by mere chance that a being of The Immortal's calibre had been born within this galaxy, intricately intertwined with its existence. Nestled at a convergence point within the vast void sea, the galaxy had accumulated an unparalleled reservoir of aether and destiny.
As if determined not to squander any of this invaluable cosmic treasure, The System, dispatched shards of The Immortal's formidable power into the nascent worlds, while the corps of The Immortal remained on the same metaphysical plane as its vacant throne.
One of these shards, the mightiest among them, streaked across the cosmos like a blazing star, gathering torrents of karma in its wake as it hurtled toward the newly reshaped worlds. With a breathtaking display of cosmic drama, the shard fractured into two distinct parts. One fragment ascended towards the celestial realms of heaven, while the other plummeted into the infernal depths of hell, each with its own enigmatic destiny.
These fragments, like their counterparts, soon merged with newborn entities, whether they were beings born from the cosmos, spontaneously manifested, or of an entirely different nature, weaving a profound tapestry of fate into the very fabric of these newly formed worlds.
The tapestry of fate, intricately spun,
Once adorned with threads of destiny, one by one.
Each strand carefully woven with divine grace,
Now faced a perilous threat it couldn't efface.
Something older, dormant for eons untold,
Awoke from its slumber, its power manifold.
With ancient knowledge and secrets profound,
It sought to rewrite the heavens' sacred ground.
In this vision, a tempest of unprecedented might,
An era emerged, where mortals reveled in their right.
No longer bound by the limits of mortal plight,
They rose above, challenging the gods' lofty height.
Their souls ablaze with an audacious flame,
They dared to challenge gods, bring them to shame.
Their weapons, forged by ambition and grit,
Struck divine beings, causing the heavens to split.
No longer meek, no longer resigned,
Mortals defied the celestial, unconfined.
With hearts emboldened and spirits unbound,
They marched fearlessly on the hallowed ground.
In the midst of the chaos, the gods convened,
Determined to reclaim the power they once had seen.
With fervor rekindled, they sought to ascend,
To regain the dominance that mortal defiance did rend.
They delved into realms of ancient mystic lore,
Seeking forgotten knowledge, long hidden from before.
They absorbed the essence of celestial might,
Infusing their beings with an intensified light.
-Excerpt from The Epic of Chrono Mirror as recorded by the Guardians of the Primordial Text