Reforged from Ruin [Eldritch Xianxia Cultivation]

In the beginning of all things, Existence was Not. All was formless, endless nothing, existing without time or space or dimension. A first and final state of existence, unknowable and empty of life and motion.

And then there was Qi.

Formless, endless, infinite and nonexistent- the lifeblood of what Is. Energy and concept and idea all in one, all-encompassing possibility and potential- with nothing to achieve.

And so, the stillness remained.

Existence was Not.

Then came the Gods.

They came from out of the nothing, and they looked upon all that was and is and would be and, in their blind madness, created something different. These writhing things of strange aeons, in their delusions divine, their madness and dreams of meaning and concept, shaped formless possibility into reality.

And then Existence Was.

They warred there for an age, ignorant, blind to what Is and thus, capable of forging all that was/is/could be. Their endless forms touched and crashed and killed and ate and loved and comforted each other, spawning life and concepts that writhed and ate and killed and loved in turn, until, in that blind, squirming chaos, the nothingness was filled, and possibility became manifest.

In that moment, after and before time, the Gods came awake. Only for an instant, but long enough to understand what they were, and what they believed to be TRUE.

ALL THINGS BEGIN, said the First God, whose form and existence are eternity and continuity, and thus were born time and causality.

ALL THINGS HAVE AN OPPOSITE, said the Second God, whose form and existence are mirrored and endless and finite, and thus began duality, the one which became two.

ALL THINGS ARE A SPECTRUM, said the Third God, whose form and existence is multitude, the infinite and ever-moving devouring itself, and thus was reality gifted transformation and change.

ALL THINGS ARE MEANINGLESS, said the Fourth God, whose form and existence are void and darkness, the mewling abyss within a forever-shell, and thus was made emptiness and freedom.

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ALL THINGS HAVE MEANING, said the Fifth God, whose form and existence are structure and pattern, sequence and connection, and thus was crafted purpose and thought.

ALL THINGS CAN BE DIVIDED, said the Sixth God, which is a foul and jealous thing, whose form is the endless line from one point to the next, and thus was cut multiplicity and reduction.

ALL THINGS END, said the Seventh God, smiling coldly at all that is, whose form is death and whose existence is entropy, and from this TRUTH, all reality came to know that each story and particle would one day return to the nothing that was before.

And so, having spoken into the Nothing and Everything the foundations of all that is and can be, they returned to their slumber and delusions. Their dreams followed the tracts set into place by their WILL and TRUTH, and from them, spiraling up through the layers of what is now a spectrum and is now reality, came the worlds. Like a great tree growing from the depths of a bottomless ocean, existence grew out from the Gods, with their idle thoughts forming the foundation of every creature and reality to populate the formless infinite.

Through time and space, these dreams, these bubbles of existence formed, began to intermingle, coming together and apart across dimensions. From their joining, their deaths and births and lives, came further dreams, new possibilities made real as life and reality multiplied. From their sheddings and waste, their fitful slumber and passing thoughts, fragments of divinity traveled from the Gods onto the pieces of reality that could hold them, forming new things that can once again dream their own dreams- mortals, and the sapience they wield.

Now, there is an age of chaos. The gods look upon the permutations and malformations of their original TRUTH and dreams with DISGUST and LOVE in turn, hating that such meager things possess and pervert their own image, while loving them as one loves the bacteria of fresh soil. They enjoy and despise in equal measure that such small, malformed versions of their great dreaming TRUTHS seek to crawl their way out of dreams, to try and craft their own, to transcend the limits placed upon them by All That Is. Those with power draw more of it into their own gravity, plucking all who manage to ascend from the furthest realms up for their own goals and plots. The worlds at the furthest points of the dreaming of the Gods are fragile, suffering from divine ontological drought, and make prime feeding for Daemons, bottom feeders and mutations that hunger at the whalefall of reality-deaths. All is madness, for madness is TRUTH. Those with power rule, those who are vicious prosper, and those who are weak are cast aside to squirm in the rot.

And in the end, all that is left will be Ruin.

Welcome to Existence.