Before the islands, there was only:
Sky without edge.
Sea without floor.
Silence without memory.
From the stillness emerged the First Two:
Aseru, the Bearing Flame.
Sorai, the Veiled Tide.
They were not husband and wife.
They were not gods as mortals would later define them.
They were the first division of existence.
Light and depth.
Impulse and patience.
Spark and reflection.
Together they stood upon the Celestial Expanse and looked below — where nothing yet held form.
To test the waters of the formless sea, Aseru and Sorai shaped a divine instrument:
The Tidemark Lance.
It was not metal.
It was not wood.
It was the will to define.
They lowered it into the ocean of chaos and stirred.
When they raised it, droplets fell from its tip.
Those droplets hardened.
They became the first island.
They stirred again.
More droplets fell.
Thus the archipelago of Asorai was born.
Not carved.
Not assembled.
Dripped into existence.
Upon the islands they descended.
From their union came:
The Mountain Breath
The River Pulse
The Green Veil
The Roaring Sky
The Quiet Hearth
These were not merely elements.
They were proto-spirits.
The first kami of Asorai.
The land breathed.
The seas spoke.
The wind remembered.
In time, Sorai bore a final child:
Kaenor, the Living Flame.
But fire is transformation.
And transformation consumes.
When Kaenor was born, Sorai was burned.
Her form collapsed.
Her warmth dimmed.
She descended into the Deep Below.
Not yet called Yomi.
Simply the Under-Shadow.
Aseru could not accept this ending.
He traveled downward to reclaim her.
But the Under-Shadow had changed her.
Where once she flowed like tide,
now she moved like decay.
She begged him to wait.
He did not.
He brought light into the darkness.
And in doing so, he saw her transformed.
Not evil.
Not monstrous.
But irrevocably changed.
The balance had shifted.
She could not return.
In grief and fear, Aseru fled.
Sorai called after him.
But the path between realms had already thinned.
Their separation sealed the boundary between:
The Living World
and
The Under-Shadow.
Sorai became the First of the Deep.
Not ruler.
Not queen.
But anchor.
The Under-Shadow became what mortals now call:
Yoru’mei — The Root Below.
Aseru returned to the upper world stained by shadow.
He cleansed himself in river, wind, and flame.
From that purification were born three great presences:
Hikarume, Light of Open Sky
Tsoruun, Keeper of Reflection
Ravashii, the Untamed Gale
These were the Celestial Triad.
From them descended the greater ordering of the world.
For an age, the Celestial Triad guided mortals.
But as humanity grew…
They withdrew.
Not in anger.
Not in abandonment.
But in design.
Asorai was meant to breathe alone.
The Celestial Plain lifted.
The Under-Shadow settled.
The islands trembled and fractured.
And the Age of Lingering Light began.