Long before humans clawed their way into the light, Azragi was silent—a canvas of raw nature, crawling with life and shadow. Qi, the force of cosmic law, was merely an embryo. It shimmered in pockets, dancing like threads of starlight in the air, in the stone, in the blood of the earth itself. It had no will, only presence—violent, unrefined, terrifying. Animals, ruled by instinct, fled from it. They could feel what it was: alien. A force not meant to be touched. Something closer to the divine… or the damnable.
But starvation changes everything.
Hundreds of thousands of years passed, and the world grew cruel. Predators, skin stretched over bone, stumbled into those dense clouds of qi and, in desperation, bit into it. That bite changed them. It seared through their flesh and nerve, reshaped their bones, and filled their lungs with energy that burned like fire and howled like storms. These were the first Beasts—not animals, not spirits, but something new. Something twisted.
The qi spirits, ancient beings that drifted within these forces, had watched silently. They were never meant to be seen. They were part of the universe's skeleton, not its flesh. But when they were consumed, digested by these ravenous beasts, they panicked. Most of the powerful ones lived far beyond Azragi, among the stars, their connection to the world faint—muted. The spirits trapped within Azragi were cut off, vulnerable.
So they hid.
Or worse—they adapted.
The strongest of them enslaved the very Beasts that devoured them, burying commands deep into their altered minds, creating sentinels to guard them. Twisted loyalty from twisted monsters. It was cruel. But it was survival.
Then the meteor came.
A screaming bolt from the sky tore into Azragi, and from the crater rose something no beast or spirit had foreseen: humans. Not particularly strong, not particularly fast. But cursed—blessed—with minds that could dream. Within the folds of their strange, alien brains, something unfathomable took root: souls.
Souls that bent the rules.
Souls that burned like tiny stars.
And that terrified the qi.
At first, humans were little more than prey, running from the beasts, hiding in caves, clinging to life by fingernails. They had no qi. The energy rejected them. Where animals could adapt over generations, humans simply imploded if exposed to too much. Their consciousness—so alien, so complicated—disrupted qi's flow. It was like trying to pour lightning into a glass of oil. But humans endured. Not by power. By suffering.
They learned to work around the pain. To touch qi just enough to survive without dying. Exposure therapy in the harshest form imaginable—bodies breaking, adapting, breaking again. Villages were built in deep forests and poison winds. Death was constant. But the survivors grew stronger, not because they became beasts… but because they refused to become beasts.
Eventually, after centuries of silence, the qi spirits woke.
When humans first laid eyes on them, they fell to their knees. These weren't beasts. These were gods. Glowing beings wrapped in elements and song, who could still the sky and break the earth with a breath.
And in an odd twist of fate… the spirits liked being worshipped.
For the first time, they weren't consumed, used, or feared. They were revered. And something soft stirred in them. Compassion, perhaps. Or curiosity. They helped the humans—shielded them from storms, monsters, and hunger. It wasn't love. But it was something close.
And so bloomed the Age of Worship.
For thousands of years, humans and spirits lived in mutual awe. Small tribes flourished. The beasts still hunted, but humanity no longer cowered. They sang songs of the fire spirit who dried their wet fields. Of the sky spirit who whispered away lightning. But then… came the division.
Humans had never needed gods to create conflict. Ideology split them. Politics festered. One god for one tribe became blasphemy to another. And eventually, war followed.
The War of Righteousness. Ten years of madness. Spears and qi-woven banners. Songs turned to war cries. In the end, one spirit tribe—the Earthbound, children of stone and patience—was annihilated. Their killer? A Water Spirit, long-bonded to a rising human nation, who restrained its kin from vengeance and let the humans finish the job.
The Earth Spirit didn't fight back. But it didn't forget.
In secret, it fed its power into the wild—into beasts. Giving them skins that swords could not pierce. Muscles that could crack mountains. And soon, humanity suffered for its hubris. Hunting became death. Entire villages starved.
They begged their god—the Water Spirit—for help.
And it gave it. Lovingly. Slowly. It fed them its essence. Human bodies couldn't truly absorb qi, but this wasn't direct. It was grace, filtered through compassion. They gained healing, control over blood, a kind of borrowed divinity that danced just beneath the skin.
And for a while, humanity rose again.
The Iron Age arrived. Bows. Farmland that thrived on spirit-blessed irrigation. Steam engines began to hiss in forgotten corners of the world.
But intelligence, unchecked, always breeds ambition.
Some humans began to study the Beasts. Dissect them. Craft weapons from their bones. And others… looked toward the Water Spirit with new eyes. Not of worship—but of utility.
And they did the unthinkable.
They set a trap.
They captured their god.
What followed was decades of torment. The Water Spirit, loyal to the end, didn't resist. It thought they would stop. That they would understand. That they were still its children.
But pain has a way of waking the old.
When the spirit finally screamed across the planes of qi, the other spirits came—not as gods, but as executioners.
They didn't kill humanity. That mercy belonged to the Water Spirit's final plea.
But they banished them. Cast them into a desolate, lifeless wasteland far from fertile qi. Left with nothing but the ashes of their stolen progress.
Yet humanity did not die.
Their research into soul manipulation—dark, forbidden things—had borne fruit. They created rings that could absorb the essence of lesser beings. Not qi, but soul fragments. It wasn't pure power. But it was enough.
And in that exile, humans changed.
They stopped praying.
They started building.
One ring. One soul. One broken god.
And a thousand years later, in a world where two suns still burn over lands of shattered spirit and quiet war, a boy wakes up in garbage, carrying rings on his fingers that hum with death and destiny.
Not blessed. Not chosen.
Just a soul, wrapped in scars not knowing what to expect from this world.