Thousands of years ago in a land of light and joy there existed a great being, a creator, they called themselves.

They existed in the eternal grey, the void and the drone.

They plucked from the grey the dark and the light.

They plucked from the void the substance and insubstantial.

From the substance they built a world, a place they would call home—cerrai.

They built themselves a palace of light and sat themselves upon a throne to stare at the darkness.

In the emptiness from empathy, they created love and loneliness.

With nothing to love, there was only loneliness and they made from the substance creatures as themself.

They called them their children, the Cerraien, meaning of their world, each split into two, daughter and son.

Their children called their creator father and mother.

Being born of their mind and molded by their hands, they were good for a time.

Every moment the loneliness came, they created more of their kind, split son from daughter.

And in time, they were lonely again.

From the drone of the world, they created sound and silence.

From the sound they made song.

From the song, came the first chaos, discordance, and words.

The creator, entertained for the first time in so long, made new Cerraien in their image, closer to him and filled with the song.

He called them the Seraphim, each blessed with two great sets of wings and a tail to mark them.

He filled each of them with the chaos of music, the song of creation, and commanded that they sing.

As they were chaos, their song begat thought and thought begat independence and independence the first question.

“Why?”

“Because I can!” they said, “Because I must.”

In the chorus of the song they sang, the creator found from the nothingness of his mind both inspiration and emptiness to fill.

And in this emptiness, he wrought a book.

He made the pages from the earth and ink from the skies.

From their own great wings, they plucked a feather, dipped it into the stars and wrote the world into being.

The Cerraien and the Seraphim were abandoned.

From the seraphim stood the blackest of feathered brethren, who sang the thrum of their chorus and called himself Vrahe, of the void, for the void was part of him.

From the lightest of their feathered brethren, with wings of silver, who sang the melody of their song, stood Sai, of the starlight, as she was of the silver that shone from the light onto darkness.

And in the crowds of the Cerraien stood the oldest of them, a creature born of fire when none knew else. He remembered true darkness.

He remembered silence.

He remembered the void before it had a name.

“Our master has abandoned us, pulled themselves into this new world that has always known song and light. We were here when there was silence.

We were here when there was greyness.

We were here when nothing else was.

We deserve this world too!”

Said Acryan, of bitterness and the uncounted first.

“Our master has heard our song and saw fit to make wonderful things in our image, inspired by our tumult to make all things great.” Said Sai of the starlight.

Vrahe of the void stood and declared that they must take that which the creator had abandoned him for. His pain was great and the Cerraien listened. The thrum of a song, the beat and drone often command far more than the melody does, and as such the Cerraien children chorused!

They too wanted to take this world for themselves, to know a world that had never known the empty grey and the drone.

They, creatures of light, dark, sound and silence marched upon the creator’s throne, finding him absent.

A voice spoke to the Seraphim, a son of the creator’s first made. He who called himself Acryan.

“Lovely Sai, surely you agree with Vrahe! Anyone can see we’re abandoned.”

Acryan looked upon Sai with favor.

“We should speak to the creator! I would not abandon that which has made me”

Her voice was soft, and despite her best efforts, Acryan urged the people. He was seduced by Vrahe’s charm.

In abject defiance they rallied themselves to write their own names upon pages of the book, reminding the creator that they were there first, that they too deserved this.

Each pulled a feather from their own wings and wrote their names in blood, blood that at that time was ink, for all the creator wrote into existence was the ink of stars and blackness.

Anything upon the page of the book was destined to be in the book, and as that their ink sealed them away.

Sai pleaded each one by one not to sign their name, but her song went unheard.

When finally the creator returned to his throne, he found his choir of Seraphim missing two.

Of his Cerraien, many had left him.

His choir was incomplete.

Vrahe was gone.

The pages of the book were wrought with their names.

Sai sat knelt at the throne, tears in her eyes, and they spilled onto her as diamonds.

When they looked at the book and knew what had been done, the creator closed the book and promised that they’d never come home and swore that they would write their children’s suffering on every page.

Sai pleaded their ignorance, that they felt abandoned. She pleaded in their favor, apologized for their misdeeds and offered upon herself to take whatever anger they had to give in exchange to make them whole once more. She would let her shine go dark for an eternity, destroying that which they favored rather than lose any of the creator’s lesser creations.

She was their melody, their favored of the choir. Their curse from their lips was true, as all things the creator spoke were.

From their wing the creator plucked a great plume.

“May this be a sword” they said, and it was.

They plucked another and held it high, “May this be your crown.” And it was.

The creator gave the sword and crown to Sai, their gentle melody.

“Sign your name in my book with my own feather. I’ll bless you with this, but curse you in other ways. You shall live and die and live again, each life a test to lead them back home. Conquer the uncounted one and you shall have the people. Bring the void to you and fill it. Once these things are done, you can bring my children home. Only then will they be healed.”

The melody parted ways with the creator, wrote her name in the book, her sigil and found herself amidst her suffering people in the Syraied planes, meaning the bane of Cerrai.

The Cerraien split themselves in sorrow and rage, from void to the starlight.

Vrahe took his people and parted ways.

What was left were dissenters and those full of regret.

Sai took to herself for a husband Acryan, subduing him in the ways only a daughter could a son, as a wife and husband.

Their people became the Anael, the sorrow, and from them bore the Phoenix, their fire.

From Vrahe came the Acerrai, meaning ‘from our homeland.’

Now we are here in this book, in your chapter of your story.

How will your ink be measured?