Three Days Ago
The Void - In Between The Nine Worlds

Today was the day that many things ended. Today was the day that many more things began. There were new paths stretching out ahead of Mordelain Saythrou. She was still uncertain which would lead her to her chosen destination. She had choices to make. She had hearts to break.

Time may hold sway over the here and now, but in the future and in the past, it is easily malleable.

Mordelain had seen the worlds end, and all the worlds begin. She had stood at the centre of the Cataclysm as her home broke apart piece by piece. When the crystal spires rose from the core of Junkyo, she had been there chronicle the last days. She knew pain, suffering, chaos, and death as if they were old friends.

“I think I understand now,” she whispered.

Standing once more at the heart of the worlds, where silence was deafening and all the realms of the Nine convened in a primordial tapestry, she looked down at a fragment of Althanas and picked out the city that stood at the centre of a vast river’s tribute.

Irrakam looked like a mosaic, the bastion of the Mother Goddess splendorous with the glow of the cosmos.

“You had to fall to let the other worlds rise,” the metaphor played three histories in every syllable, which would take a chronicle centuries to unravel. Mordelain had only one moment, but somehow, the threads came undone and settled like three beacons, stretching as far as the eye can see.

One strand wound down to the island of Fallien. There, Mordelain could bring the Outlanders out of their shadowy pit, lead them to equality and bring about a zenith of progress on the golden sands. She would be happy there, a newfound purpose giving her drive and hope.

One strand vanished into the shadows that loomed behind her. In those dark vortexes of nothing, she would find the abyss of uncertainty. On one of the ruined worlds of the Kalithrism, she could perhaps find a way to unravel all that her people had done. Perhaps, on Petra, or Bulganin, or in the dead markets of the Highway Quarter, she could find something to save the cosmos.

A lifetime spent searching for something that may never happen…
The final strand wound from her waist to her headdress, a spiral of colour glimmering with starlight. In Mordelain, Mordelain would find a journey to self-discovery. She did not know what would blossom from the arid dirt that had become the ground beneath her feet, but it would be an instinctive route to follow.

“So many have died already, I cannot let this world perish too…” She had to live for herself now; she had spent far too many years in the servitude of others.

Each of the three routes lead to the same end game; destroying the gods themselves. Each lead to exoneration for failing to convince the council of twelve, seven centuries ago, to embrace the Khalithrism. She had to save Fallien, she had to restore it...

Mordelain did not know how she could do anything of the sort.