Ancestral Lineage

When the ages were still uncounted, when the cosmos was young and the heavens had not yet drawn their borders, there was a realm abandoned by light. It was a place of molten seas and jagged obsidian ridges, where storms of ash and fire raged without end and nothing resembled life as the higher worlds knew it. The celestial archives would one day call it the Womb of Perdition, but those who struggled in its endless torment had no name for it. They were not demons then—merely scattered natives, malformed things of horn, scale, and shadow, clinging to existence amid the choking air and rivers of magma. They knew nothing of unity, only survival, each creature snarling against the other, driven by base hunger.

Among them rose one who did not belong, yet belonged more than all. Lucifer. He had not been born of that land, nor shaped by its primal violence. He was something else—an exile, a wanderer cast down from a higher order whose name had already been etched among the stars. When he fell into that chaos, the earth itself buckled beneath his first step, and the native things shrank from the weight of his gaze. Where others saw despair, Lucifer saw a canvas. Where others tasted only ash, he tasted potential.

In that desolation he was not alone. There was Lilith, a flame as fierce as he was inexorable. She was born not of heaven's scorn but of the abyss's secret desire to become more than emptiness. If Lucifer was the vision, Lilith was the will. She looked upon the formless natives, snarling and breaking upon one another, and saw in them not beasts but clay. Together, the two shaped what would be called the First Sin.

It began in whispers and in fire. They gathered the strongest of the natives, those who had clawed their way to survive centuries in that inferno, and bound them with words older than creation. Lucifer gave them his blood—silver-black ichor that burned yet sanctified—and Lilith gifted them the brand of will, chains of sin that turned their hunger into desire, their rage into ambition, their despair into pride. Thus, the first demons were born, no longer creatures of chance but a race that could name themselves, that could desire, that could build.

The transformation rippled across the wasteland. Natives sought them out, kneeling before the crimson-haired Lilith and the radiant, horn-crowned Lucifer. She whispered of freedom through indulgence, of the beauty of hunger and the holiness of desire. He spoke of order, of rising as one people who would never again be looked down upon, never again be chained to the roles the higher planes imposed. The dissonance of survival became the harmony of ambition. They were no longer scattered things; they were demons.

With a people must come a homeland. Lucifer carved open mountains with a gesture, letting rivers of molten rock flow into canals and cooled them into black stone palaces. He tore thunder from the skies and bound it into towers of obsidian that pulsed with light. Lilith shaped caverns vast enough to house legions, their ceilings studded with crystals that imitated stars so that her children would not live forever under choking clouds. She called it Helheim—a sanctuary wrought from torment. It was not paradise, but it was theirs, a kingdom carved from fury and desire.

The demons gathered there, and from the moment Helheim's first gates were raised, they became one people. For the first time in their brutal existence, they had a home, a name, and rulers who stood as more than predators. Lucifer became Emperor—not because he demanded it, but because the word fell naturally from the lips of those who followed. Lilith became the Paragon of Sins, her very presence teaching the race to embrace what they were and to grow stronger through it rather than cower in shame.

Together they were the beating heart of a new world. Festivals of fire and blood honored their reign. War bands, once nothing more than mindless packs, became disciplined hosts under Lucifer's iron banners. The weak, once discarded, found roles as crafters, seers, and keepers of Helheim's flame. Songs were sung in the roaring dialect of demons, tales of the lovers who birthed a people from ash.

But as swiftly as he had risen, Lucifer vanished.

It was not death—the Emperor could not die as mortals did. One night, as Helheim's spires burned with a thousand crimson fires and Lilith walked among their children, he simply left. Some say he strode into the abyss at the center of their world, where even demons dared not tread, a place where reality bent and the sound of chains echoed from unseen vaults. Others whispered that he returned to the stars, challenging the heavens who had once cast him down, bearing the strength of his people in his heart. The truth was never known.

What remained was absence. Lilith stood alone, and though her chains of sin bound the people together, every shadow of Helheim still looked for the Emperor's return. His name was carved into their cities, invoked in every oath, carried into every battle. He was not a legend—they knew he was real, for they were his proof. Yet he became more than a ruler. He became myth, the origin flame of their race, the one who had taken a wasteland of beasts and made them into demons.

And so the demons endured. Lilith ruled as the Paragon of Sins, her voice the law, her passion the fire that kept them from fracturing. But in the dark, in the silence between battles and feasts, every demon whispered the same truth: the Demon Emperor would return. Lucifer would walk Helheim again, and when he did, the heavens themselves would tremble.

That was the beginning of the demon race. That was the birth of Helheim. That was the story of the Emperor who forged them and then vanished, leaving a people whose very existence was his eternal monument.

"Wow! So, you're basically the origin of demons!" Xander exclaimed as he finished the short extract depicting how Helheim came to be.

"Partially," Geraldine smiled slightly, her voice nostalgic. "I wish to see him once more. I hope he remembers."

"He will. I'm sure of it," Xander said, his eyes glowing a dark pink. Only he knew what he was planning.