From chaos and song, Skazka rose.
Beneath the obsidian veil of eternity, an endless astral sea sprawled — a blackened abyss that swallowed all light and hope. It was a void eternal and unmoving, where silence rotted in the bones of time. Yet, from the crushing depths of that dead stillness, an ember flickered to life. The abyss flared with a blaze — flames that burned with a hellish coldness, both scalding and frozen.
That cosmic fire raged, consuming the astral sea in its grasp. The fragile weave of the cosmos tore apart, cracking like shattered bone under an ethereal force. Splintered into countless jagged shards, the universe bled fragments into the dark expanse. Each shard, a realm cast into its own shadowed corner of time and space — birthplaces of realms both cursed and blessed, the fractured planes of existence.
For an age, the planes roared with untamed fury — flames of creation and chaos alike — but eventually, the fire began to fade. From its embers arose stars, worlds, and places of great power. And from those places, the first gods emerged: the Vekya, or Primals.
There were three:
Alone while Kronos and Kaos toiled without pause, Uzume tore a shard of her own essence and shaped companions: the Annarr and their Annarr-kin. The Annarr were gods—mighty and strange—while the Annarr-kin, though formidable, fell short of divinity, more like great familiars. Envy curdled Kronos and Kaos, yet a higher law forbade them from striking Uzume directly. They sought turncoats among her creations; only one answered—Fafnirog, the Great Dragon, devourer of light—tempted by the promise of godhood. Luring Uzume to the Celestial Forge where the first spark was born, they hid in shadow as Fafnirog sprang, rending her and scattering her essence to the void.
As Uzume’s divine light faded, the remaining Vekya tried to consume what remained—but her essence had become poison to them. In her final breath, Uzume cast the last of herself into the cosmos, a gift to all—but the Vekya.
And this is why the flowers bloom and wither; why trees grow from seedling to ancient oak; why the races of Skazka can create life in each other.
Uzume’s gift lives on—in all things, except the gods who betrayed her.
