B6 Prologue

The Realm shimmered, stars dancing with the blood of the fallen. Shadowy figures flickered and crawled out from cracks and Fractures, seeping into the depths of the Primal Realm.

What had once been a prosperous place as extensive as all the other Realms combined was now a shadow of its former glory. And amidst it stood the Devourer, destroyer of the Realms. Glutton of Gods.

It was a creature of shadow and smoke, thousands of meters tall and just as wide, with writhing tentacles protruding from all over its body. It had no face, eyes, or any defining features. The Devourer was a creature of death and destruction. Its body was a void filled with the twinkling lights of distant galaxies – planets it had consumed, alongside all the life that had dwelled on them.

But as powerful as the Devourer was, it could not leave the Primal Realm. It was omnipotent, or considered itself as such, yet the thousands of pristine white chains protruding from the Primal Realm and coiling around its tentacles and shadowy body kept it in place.

The Primal, the most recent of the Devourer's victims, was still alive. It had survived longer than the Gods of the Realms, and it fought back relentlessly, showing the Devourer that it was not omnipotent. For, if it had been, it would have shattered the shackles of Primal Essence a long time ago. The Primal would have become part of the greatest being in the cosmos a long time ago.

But the time had come. The Primal was growing weaker. Yet the pristine existence of the purest Essence did not falter. Fused with the very Realm the Devourer desired to consume, the Primal continued to fight, stalling for time, one century after another, until...

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Something stirred. The cracks permeating the Primal Realm trembled violently, and for the first time in many years, the Devourer moved.

It sensed something. Loss.

Losing contact with its progeny was common. Those deployed to scout the other worlds rarely returned to the Devourer. Most weakened the Astral Barrier protecting the worlds from the Devourer's influence, but it never felt a loss. Up until now, that is.

It was almost like something had been ripped away from beneath the Devourer's tentacles. The sensation was weak and barely worth noting, yet it filled the Devourer with something it had never felt before: uncertainty. Unsure how it had completely lost control of one of its most recent creations, the Devourer woke up. It no longer kept itself in a semi-stasis to preserve as much power as possible and instead reached out to the world where what belonged to it had been taken away.

“You shall not.” The Realm rumbled, its voice echoing with a thousand crooning whispers.

The Primal spoke for the first and last time since it had sacrificed itself to imprison them both, but the satisfaction in its voice did not escape the Devourer's grasp. Neither did it miss the changes in the Realms that followed.

Power that had been infused into the Realm, preserving it as much as possible, flowed toward the chains instead, while the edges of the Realm fell apart.

The tide had changed. And now it was time to do something.

It was not until many weeks later that the Devourer realized what the Primal was doing. It burned through its life, killing itself slowly, all to strengthen the Primal Essence Chains and weaken the Devourer for what was about to happen.

May Primal life and the Spirits blossom.

The Old Era was coming to an end, but the Spirits and all they represented would never. New power was rising, and the Primal could only hope that it was enough to end it all. To exterminate the Devourer once and for all. For that was all the Primal was left living for.