Supernatural Odyssey: Death and Rebirth

Chapter 46

By the dawn of Creation, the Great Darkness soon proved to be a horrible, destructive, and amoral force. Seconds after the birth of the Source, Evil extended his right hand--the hand that is empty, the one that takes, and attempted to drag the Source into darkness.

God and his archangels defended their First World in a terrible war. The Presence banished the Great Darkness from Creation where it could do no harm and created a Mark that would serve as both lock and key, which he entrusted to his second son, Lucifer.

With the Great Darkness banished, it gave God a chance to build. Through the will of Lucifer, began to shape that energy into something new...something complex, and beautiful. Those who thought and lived within the Source understood in time that the universe was meant to contain more than its own immeasurable essence...and so by the Morningstar Power, they came to form in the center of the maelstrom of that ancient cosmos...a Second World.

Vast it was...savage, and yet at the same time and the lire brought forth upon the craggy face of the world was likewise savage and beautiful. Lost in the most distant reaches of time, they are now these beings...yet so magnificent was the least moment of their lives that even through the uncountable millennia, the memory of their words and deeds continues to whisper in the minds of mortals today.

Gods they were, and goddesses--celestial beings, servants to the Source and to the Presence. They were the Old Gods. Soon, they discovered the vastness of Creation and began to build outwards. They built their own worlds...galaxies, stars, planets! An entire universe took form around them. The Old Gods also made servants of their own; mortals, clever little pets, industrious in their worship of their makers and their need for favor.

For a hundred thousand ages, the Second World thrived.

Then, there came a time when these Old Gods died. The brave died with the cunning, the good fell, locked in battle with incalculable evil, it was the end for them. Terrible was their final conflict that their world itself, larger than the largest star. was torn apart by the fury of that Ragnarok. No one knew what started the war. No one knew who shook the jar.

The most powerful Old Gods from three separate pantheons joined forces and turned on their maker. They fired their cosmic energies at the Source, bringing cracks across all of reality and the universe bleed. The unexpected force of their assault cracked its very being, triggering an involuntary defense response.

Splinters of its power were ripped from its being, sprinkled across the new universe as the Source fled into the farthest edges of being. A great wall rose between the Universe and the Source, sealing himself off from all that transpired.

What was once a vast and peaceful empire died, giving birth to a wave of cosmic energy that swept out across the universe still raw and ragged, leaving behind a fragment of itself everywhere it touched.

Seeds of the divine.

This power birthed the Sphere of the Gods, a platonic, archetypal realm where dreams and beliefs take on physical form. Gods rose from this sphere, shaped from the dreams and beliefs of mortals across the Universe, immortal until the day their names finally die out down in legends and fables.

It was the genesis of the Third World.

While all this transpired...at the center, at the point from which the empowering Godwave sprang forth...two raging planetesimals slowly coalesced from the swirling fragments of Godworld...they were the Fourth World--New Genesis, and her dark sister, Apokolips!

But this war came at a cost far greater than the death and destruction it left behind. The light was weakened by this loss, and the Great Darkness took advantage of this weakness and attacked. Through the Mark, it began to assert its own will on Lucifer, Son of the Morning, revealed itself as a curse, and began to corrupt...