Chapter Text
In the age before ages, there was no heaven above, nor earth below. No sea stirred, no wind wandered, no fire burned. There was not even darkness, for darkness itself is a thing that must exist beside light. There was only the Hollow Vastness, endless, silent, and without memory.
Yet within that emptiness, a thought arose.
From no womb and from no maker came the First Goddess, she who was named Creation. She awakened as a single pulse within the void, a will that desired form where there was none. The void could not contain her longing, and so she opened her eyes, and the first distinction was born. That which was, and that which was not.
Her body was woven from silver mist and sleeping stars, and wherever her feet touched the emptiness, possibility bloomed.
At first, Creation wandered alone through the endless nothingness. Though she possessed infinite power, there was no motion by which to wield it. Her thoughts hung unmoving around her like paintings upon unseen walls. Mountains could not rise, for rising did not yet exist. Seas could not crash, for there was no before and after. Even her own breath lingered forever upon her lips.
And Creation looked upon this stillness and felt the first sorrow.
So she reached into her own breast and drew forth a shining thread spun from her divine will. With her hands she stretched the thread across the void, and where it unfurled, moments began to separate from one another. The first instant died, and the second instant followed after it.
Thus was born Time.
Time emerged as a veiled maiden with countless eyes hidden beneath her robes, each eye seeing a different age of the universe. Around her ankles coiled golden serpents that devoured their own tails, for beginning and ending were one within her nature.
When Time took her first step, eternity shattered into flowing moments.
The stars that slept within Creation’s mind began to ignite one after another. The heavens expanded outward like a great unfolding flower. Silence gained rhythm. Motion awakened. Change became law.
And Creation rejoiced, for at last her works could live.
Together the two goddesses shaped the newborn cosmos. Creation formed the bones of existence, the heavens, the deep places, the hidden fires beneath reality, while Time carried all things forward upon her endless river. One gave form, the other gave becoming.
Yet even then a secret tension was born between them.
For Creation desired permanence, wishing her works to endure forever in perfect beauty. But Time, by her very nature, could not allow stillness. She carried all things toward transformation. Stars into ash, mountains into dust, memory into silence.
This the first conflict of the cosmos was not war, but change itself.
And from that sacred struggle, all later things would come to be.