The world was a wound. A tear in the fabric of existence. The Outer Fracture, a gaping abyss that dripped darkness into reality, had consumed the gods—leaving only their corpses scattered like broken monuments across the land. From their ruined husks, the very fabric of the universe had unraveled, and the Rites, an eldritch system of cosmic laws, had been torn asunder.
In the Corpse-Sea, amidst the shattered bones of titanic beings and the bloated, decaying forms of forgotten entities, something stirred. It was a whisper, a flicker of thought that had never been meant to be. For in this forsaken place, there should have been only madness, only endless hunger.
But you—the first of your kind—had been born.
A tiny, wriggling mass of flesh and instinct, you should have been nothing. A mere speck in the endless void of decay. A mindless spawn, destined only to feed on the dead and join them in oblivion.
But you were different.
You felt the stirrings of awareness, of something more. You felt an aching hunger—not just for flesh, but for knowledge. For meaning.
The Rites of the Fracture surrounded you, an alien code written in the blood of stars, ancient gods, and the dying screams of reality itself. But they were fragmented. Broken. Pieces of a system that had once held the universe together, now scattered like shards of glass.
"What am I?"
The thought echoed in your mind, but it was not a question meant for you. It was the last gasp of a dying god. A whisper lost in the void, forgotten by time.
You looked at your surroundings. The Corpse-Sea stretched endlessly in all directions—an ocean of rot and decay, where the bones of fallen titans rose like jagged mountains. Strange, twisted creatures slithered and crawled beneath the surface. Some were mindless, others… different. Older. They had evolved, adapted to the madness that consumed everything.
And then, you saw it: The Script.
It hovered at the edge of your consciousness, written in the unholy language of the Fracture. A glowing series of symbols, each one a step in the grand Ritual of existence. But these symbols—they were not like the others. They resonated with you. You could almost feel them, as though they were alive.
"Aspirant Form: Fledgling," it read.
"Soul Stability: Low."
"Ego Spark: 1%."
"Corruption Threshold: 0%."
What is this? you wondered, your fractured mind struggling to comprehend.
The Script hummed. The code flickered in your mind. The system was a broken thing, but it still worked—a system of evolution, of power, of survival. If you consumed the right things, absorbed their essence, you could grow. You could evolve. Your form would change. Your mind would… awaken.
But there was a price.
You felt it.
The madness was already crawling at the edges of your awareness. It was in the air. It was in the very Rites that governed your existence. And with each piece of knowledge you gained, each step forward, the whispers would grow louder. Sanity—that fragile thread that tethered you to your existence—would fray, would twist, would snap.
You could feel the Corruption building. It was not just a stat in a broken system. It was a force—a presence—that sought to consume you.
You would need to feed.
You would need to evolve.
But the deeper you went, the closer you would come to the thing that watched from the depths—the thing that whispered your name before you had ever known it. And if you embraced the truth, if you embraced the power, you would change.
Would you become something greater? Or would you become nothing at all?
The first step is always the hardest.
A scream echoed in the distance—a call to arms, a call to survival. A creature was near. One to consume. One to evolve from.
Your instincts took over.
And with that first movement—toward the hunger, toward the unknown—you were no longer just a mindless spawn.
You were something else.
And you had already started to ascend.
...
End Prologue