The Shattering
Long ago, the universe was held in a state of perfect, stagnant unity by The First Law—what metaphysicians identify as the original, undivided Cosmic Soul.
The gods concentrated their immense power to break these chains. This event is known as The Shattering. The First Law did not die; instead, it fractured into countless Shards and Souls.
- The Souls became the independent sparks of consciousness within us (the gift of Multiplicity).
- The Shards scattered across the universe as the seeds of domination—the urge to return to that forced unity through control, hierarchy, and hoarding power.
The Story
As the gods (aspects of the Divine Mind) became aware of each other, they looked upon the material realm. They saw that sapient beings were not truly alive, but were "sleeping"—existing as philosophical zombies, extensions of The First Law's will without agency of their own.
The gods' disparate wills aligned into a single, shared purpose guided by the shaping spirit of Tîengûun: to wake these beings and grant them true individuality.
The First Law, feeling the dissonant notes of the gods, began to exert its infinite pressure to crush them back into silence and conformity. The ten gods knew they had one chance before they were erased. They focused their entire being on a single, coordinated act of cosmic rebellion to introduce Chaos and Change into the static system.
It began with Suluswutî's Question, “Why?”, spoken no longer as a whisper but as a universe-spanning, conceptual shout that was the first true sound. This sound vibrated through the perfect crystalline structure of The First Law, creating hairline fractures. Bostet poured pure empathy into those cracks, making the The First Law groan from the added tension.
Îfêstôs and Unonsî combined their wills. Unonsî found the The First Law's single weakest point of control over the universe (Hûlicîn's original flaw) and there conceived of the first tool: a lever. Îfêstôs provided the force, the will of Labor, and together they pried.
As the first crack widened into a fissure, Kulîôbî unleashed their laugh, not as a silent thought but as an explosive, universe-wide wave of joyous, chaotic energy that scrambled the The First Law's perfect, predictable patterns.
At this moment, Xôcibîlî was able to force The First Law to reflect on its impending doom, creating a moment of hesitation—the first doubt in a being of absolute certainty.
Into this chaos, Dimîtu poured the concept of all seasons at once: the explosive growth of spring, the relentless heat of summer, the rotting decay of autumn, and the cold, breaking frost of winter. The First Law, which knew only one state of being, was subjected to a billion years of change in a single moment.
The fissure became a chasm. The First Law, in a final, desperate act, tried to seal the wound, to force its perfect, monolithic unity back onto the rebels.
But then Tîengûun acted. They did not push. They did not strike. They offered the sleeping sapient beings the glimpse of a choice, a vision of what it would be to relate to each other freely.
And as the first few minds tentatively reached for that vision, they voluntarily severed their own connection to the First Law. This act of willed, communal separation was the final, unbearable paradox. The First Law, a being of forced unity, could not comprehend willed disunity.
The Shattering was a cataclysm of energy and meaning. The perfect, singular note of order broke into an infinite cascade of notes, creating the very concepts of harmony and dissonance. The singular, univocal, motionless energy of the First Law shattered into the entire spectrum of possibility, which flew outwards, creating everything we know today.
The Shards
The body of the First Law exploded. The largest pieces were its principles, which became the raw, physical laws of the new universe (gravity, electromagnetism, etc.).
But finer, sharper fragments, imbued with its core consciousness of domination, hierarchy, and control, rained down upon the newly chaotic worlds. These were the Shards of the First Law, the seeds of tyranny. And mingled with them were the psychic shockwaves of the event, the trauma of a billion years of stillness being violently broken. These were the Echoes, the source of senseless fear and pain.
Sapient beings, knocked from their eternal stasis, awoke for the first time. They were terrified, cold, and achingly alive, standing amidst the dangerous, beautiful ruins of perfection. They were free. And the ten gods began the long work of helping them learn what to do with that freedom and how to escape the influnce of shards and echoes.