Once upon a forgotten time, the universe was without limit. There were infinite possibilities beyond the horizon’s Black Border.

Mortals were not confined to World Islands nor their home Realm. The superoceans of the Grand Realm were not the tidal anomalies of space and time. The layers of Realms were still visible in the infinite sky. People were free to journey to the endless World Archipelagos to admire the colossal works of art made by the various Deities of every Realm and pursue the thrill of adventure. They were many cultures, as much as grains in the sand, and as rich as vaults of gold.

Deities were not dying husks that consume the will and souls of their followers, nor bound to mortal objects, nor petty tyrants. They were artisans first and foremost, who used the boundless skies as their canvas. They were carvers and builders, who sculpted great monuments to the Creator and their vanity. They were performers, who sang songs that made skies serenely still, who fashioned aetheric strings for their immaculate instruments, who orated literary perfections that their voices still resound throughout time, and who danced and dueled with weapons made with crystallization of pure distilled skill. Their reward was the awe of the mortals, their peers, and the affections of the Creator that watched them.

There were once as many deities as mortals. They were not in total harmony. There were conflicts and disputes between them as much as there was cooperation. Groups of deities and mortals often challenged each other in every contest imaginable.

Beyond the universe that was lovingly written by the Creator for their Patrons is an eternal war against parasites that cling to stories to infest. Entire realities are sacrificed out of necessity to prevent countless others from their inevitable fate. The greatest of them, the End Lords, were named the Devourer of Tales, the Primordial Beast, and the Bygone Crown: heralds of the End of Everything residing in the Lacuna of tales.

A fourth one was born from the corpses of countless stories. Its nature is Contradiction. Like moths to a flame, it climbed up from imperceptible obscurity, drawn to the infinite realm. Countless parasites like it soon followed its patient climb. Soon, it punctured the skin of the realms as its Creator looked away. The uninvited lord of pataphysical parasites molested the skin of its reality with uncountable fingers and broke the laws that made the universe. Contradiction drank the infinity of every Dimensional Plane and invited the rest of the pests in. It was not in a hurry, savoring its meal as countless worlds and histories were forgotten in its gullet.

The Grand Realm and its other planes of existence’s infinite horizons found themselves swallowed by swarms from beyond. Deities and mortals joined hands and clashed against the Rot Between Worlds, the inevitable Ends that consumed all universes. They had fared better than the pataphysical universes unknown to them. However, Contradiction forced itself in with its indefinite digits–from them are mirrored shards that mocked the gods. Its roots pierced the world’s foundations and its firmament was punctured by its branches. The laws of the universe weighed it so.

The gods and mortals cried havoc. Beams of light unleashed from their divine domains. Quakes and tsunamis were unleashed with the power to swallow entire worlds. Crystallizations of the martial and the magical had lacerated its being. They drained the Luck of the universe to increase their chance of victory and distilled the courage and potential of every mortal in their war.

Yet, the newborn invader slowly learned how to use its powers. The infinity of deities and the limitless energies that fuel the realms was inverted to finity when its fingertips touch it. It touched time and space itself, instantly closing the distance to trap deities and consume their mortal followers. The immortal and mortal were reduced to a rout as they divined their defeat by the hands of the abomination. Many Realms had collapsed unto themselves, melding them together.

Too late, the Creator of the universe had noticed the parasites eating its creation. With the tacit permission of its Patrons, it summoned the heroes across every age; the warriors of tale and dream had tried to defeat it. Yet, the martyrdom of the gods of time and space only trapped it in stasis at the new edge of the Realms: there shall be no divine overseer of time, nor supervisor of space. There were not enough gods, nor sufficient powers drawn from the realms to deal the final blow. The infant lord of the pests was too embedded in the foundations of reality; ripping it out would shatter its creation. Seeing its predicament, it had slumbered, waiting for the inevitable moment when its stasis will degrade.

What was once a distorted reflection of the gods, a tree of fingers that grasped and infected everything it touched with the blight of contradiction, with discordant whispers that disrupted reality, is a sleeping child that reclined at the end of the final horizon. It had fashioned a coat from the skeins of divine essence, a blanket of the skins of a million gods that stretched from shore to shore, covering the border between reality and oblivion. Even in its slumber, its child-like cruelty was unmatched. The despairing screams and sobs of the divine were its lullabies.

This was later called the “Devouring of Reality” by the scattered remnants of the civilizations of the remaining World Archipelagos. Conflicting accounts and the sheer physical, mental, and temporal destruction inflicted by the event had made the task of writing a definite history impossible.

The Creator saw the remnants of the Realms that were partially consumed. The Grand Realm, the realm of mortals, was fused with the Realm of Boundless Heaven that became its sky, and the Hollow Realm was now buried in the deepest layer of the Grand Realm. What were once great works of divine art were ominous ruins scattered across World Archipelagos. The debris in the war that still rained in anomalous stasis became the Sky Islands. Continuity and distance became warped across the Grand Realm.

Stolen novel; please report.

Fewer mortals were left and the deities took the brunt of the eldritch invasion. Lacking divine essence, they had withered into what people would call “Dungeon Cores” later in history. Many also bound themselves in physical locations and objects or became tyrants of mortal souls to survive. Civilizations regress far away from the halcyon era when the divine and mortal coexisted.

The Creator saw potential in the remaining mortal species. Although the deities were timeless artisans, they were predictable in their art and thought. Mortals were the opposite, and their ability to create new possibilities gave the Creator the framework for a new system to prepare the world when Contradiction wakes:

The power to make the impossible possible.

It would attempt to emulate much of the greater picture beyond its creation. The ontology of story and myth. Many rules that made its universe were erased or inverted, giving leeway to the new order that will govern the world. It repurposed the remnants and their functions of its offspring’s greatest creations of the Divine Age:

The Chronographic Observatory.

The Forges of Thaumaturgy.

The Die of Entropy.

The Eternal Athenaeum.

The Slate of Thought.

The Garden of Souls.

The Creator channeled its prime aspect as one of the Versesmiths: the crafters of tales. It spooled the Mythos generated by the great event of the Devouring of Reality, distilling the bravery and struggle of the universe's gods and mortals. This fueled the pataphysical machine of narratological power that the Creator had made from the Six Works,

The Narrative Engine.

It's metaphysical ink and invasive pen wrote new laws on mortal and immortal souls. It wrote on the reality of every Realm. It wrote on time and causality itself. None had escaped the revision of the universe, for the Narrative Engine will make use of all of the energies found in the world and the past, present, and future. Life and the afterlife, entropy, and causality, were within its command. It was on the side of every mortal that would do great or terrible things, for the sake of power, at the cost of challenges, stagnation, and strife.

Every person will be their own story. From the young to old, they were instilled with the potential to become heroes and great men and women throughout the pages of their souls. When they set out to do great things, they will be rewarded by Arcs through the process of Awakening; markers of achievement and ascension to more powerful abilities. It, in its unbiased sentience, will judge every mortal that will ever exist based on their merit and potential, as well as need, to bless them with abilities.

These abilities are written through a page shaped like [this].

[Feats] would emulate every feat and achievement of both the mortal and the divine during those halcyon eons. They would be able to draw from the energies of the universe to exceed their limits. From empowering their strikes, and increasing their persuasion ability, to creating castles from nothing, and many more, these abilities will be written on the page of their souls when they achieve something. [Arts] are Feats only obtained from true mastery and learning, available in fields that allow for artisanry and esoteric tradition.

Magic was now more accessible through [Spells], discrete, efficient expressions of magic in any magical discipline, powered by conceptual or physical mana. [Miracles] were now more defined and only limited by the belief one has. Powers too, could be inherited in the form of [Legacies] and [Inheritances]. These were confined in their [Role] to play, influenced by the [Themes] they embody, and empowered by the [Titles] they earned, with their ultimate goal of reaching their [Archetype].

The Narrative Engine illuminated all mortal souls, and soon, people gave it many names and even worshipped it as their new god even if some deities still exist.

Millennia after mortals had learned to use it, the cost became apparent. Bending the laws of the universe had eroded its integrity. Eldritch offspring which mortals call by many names sprang from the shadows of Contradiction’s coat, who now threaten to infest the remaining World Islands. Zones of disjointed temporality appeared and expanded, giving various regions difference senses of time within the Grand Realm. Tears in reality occasionally open to new Realms. The damage done to the planar universe now manifested into great typhoons, blights of wild magic, and other disasters that swallowed the World Islands.

Most of all, the mortal quality of innovation dimmed, as they relied on their newfound powers. Instead of inventing new things, most of them rely on the fact that a Feat will provide their needs. Instead of learning the steps of building a complicated machine, Feats expedite the process. Only a lucky few civilizations rose up from this induced phenomenon of technological stagnation.

Inequality between the “haves” and “have-nots” widened. The powerful not only have influence and wealth, but these could have a tangible benefit. A ruler’s Feats could tangibly improve their domain: such a Feat could strengthen every structure within their domain or a field that repels all disaster. A [General] can transform his formations into men as strong as iron. However, even a [Farmer], with enough Feats could feed ten cities on their own. A [Smith] can make a hundred swords a day or a single masterpiece fit for a [Hero]. With the Narrative Engine, people played the role of infrastructure and pillars of society.

This new order now governed the natural rules of this universe. Every new achievement or feat and every [Hero] or [Villain] that rose and fell will be etched into the eternal record of the Narrative Engine, which became the reference for the generation of new abilities in every era. When the eater of worlds wakes beyond the edge of the Grand Realm, the mortals would be prepared to deal the final blow.

Mortal civilizations across the various World Archipelagos survived the disasters that would’ve swallowed or destroyed them. People fortunate enough to live in World Islands that were least affected by the Devouring of Reality or the myriad of world-ending disasters roaming in the Grand Realm. A select few were able to flee to other Realms and Demirealms of their making to begin anew. All because of the powers granted to them by the Narrative Engine.

This includes the Six Lands, where many such stories also take place.