PROLOGUE:

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Precedent to the beginning of Time, there was the Lull. Precedent to system, precedent to chaos, there was the Lull — the gap in history, or perhaps its very beginning, where nothing had yet begun to exist. There was the Lull, and within the Lull, an infinite darkness harbouring secrets that no eye could see and no light could pierce, for its cover laid so comfortably over the expanse of its cosy stomach, like a fleece no one could bear to leave. It was a darkness that squeezed so tight that nothing could be moved, not even a fleck of atomic residue; so there was no conflict, no congregation, nothing. Such a darkness, we name it 'Noir'. Eventually - perhaps owing to the overbearing pressure of the Noir - dust began to seed itself within the womb of the Lull. With the dust came stone, came rock - and when they breathed, pockets of gas started to shyly peek out of the veil of darkness. That was all there was, however, scattered handfuls of vapours and pockmarked meteorite; until five stars, having soaked thoroughly in the essences of the universe as it was back then, gained a curious semblance of sentience, and converged in a fateful collision. The force of their unification was of such utter devastation that its waking roar rang loud and clear through the bone of the universe; that no utterance, stuttered or superfluous or decorous or breviloquent, could hope to convey its stunning magnitude; and with that, everything else was set into motion. The Suns flickered to life and began to burn, and the stones and rocks began to turn, falling into orbit, and one collision soon set off a whole chain of other collision, thumbs and bumps beginning to upset the cover of Darkness that had gradually become asphyxiating. Gases spun into vapours, into mud, into skin and wood, into solid cores and vapourous rings. And the five stars, in the roil and toil of space, molded themselves into one planet, and named itself 'Exordium'. The Suns continued burning. The stones and rocks continued turning. The sand of the hourglass, with the birth of the blue sky, began flowing, pushing the ticking hands of the universe's clock. It gave Exordium soil and brought it purpose, and at the point of convergence where the five stars met, spliced into five, nurtured a seed, that would grow and budgeon to become a tree big as the gravity of Existence itself. It was said, from the Elder's tongues, to be possessed of a golden trunk radiant as the tails of shooting stars, and a lustrous crown, abound with jewels, rich with song, tempered with glass. Daily, like a sempiternal drizzle, gold leaf rained from its robust branches, generous as a field of dandelions, soft and beautiful as plumes of feathers. And, as it grew, its roots would take up the marrow of its cradles, that which they would offer without qualm, and produce fruit that, when ripened, will fall to the ground and break open into a green spring carrying prodigally the promise of Life. That tree, we call the 'Tree of Life'. On the First Spring, the First Fruit ripened, and bore son to Biakko, Master of the Mistrals, who blessed the earth with a breathe and filled its lungs with air. He bounded Northward, where the sky was bluest, and settled in the Heavens, building an empire upon height after height untouched. When the Second Spring came around, the Second Fruit ripened, and brought to wakefulness Seiryuu, Sovereign of the Seas, who with a howl beckoned the storms to split and fill the skin of the planet with plentiful water. He meandered Eastward, where the rivers ran the longest, and snuggled up against the mud of the deepest oxbow, carving civilisation into the shores of wild, jovial seas. With the Third Spring, the Third Fruit eagerly fell, rousing bleary Genbu, Speaker to the Stone, who with a friendly song called the flora and fauna and placed salt and gem in the steady hold of the rocks. He wandered Westward, where the mountains loomed like steady bastions, and made them his home, assembling an impenetrable city with its spires cutting into the sepia horizon. The last fruit, the Fourth Fruit, burst to life in the passion of the Fourth Spring to birth Suzaku, Induna of the Inferno - the Incinerator - nurtured from the ashes of her birth-blood. She sailed Southward, where the Sun hung the highest, and quashed the wrath of a boiling volcano, cultivating a hardy clan in its fertile soil. On the night that dawned on the day of her birth, she stood atop the pinnacle of her work, and danced, dispensing embers with each twirl of her majestic plumes, and spiked the ubiquitous tenebrosity with her feisty brilliance, spread below her feet like a map of lanterns swaying in clandestine felicity. It would be natural that Exordium blossom as it is. The four kingdoms, under the guidance of their founders, prospered, populace and wealth blooming like a field of sunflowers unfurling at the crack of dawn. The Tree of Life born.