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• 0A: When the One was yet unperfected in her knowing she, even as do the children of men, probed her origin with unceasing questions, and pondered whether there lived others of her kind; for she had known only the Two, and they only as voices. And Father said, “The Elohim are a multitude beyond thy power to reckon, but it is our way to set apart our young for a time, lest they lose themselves amid the many voices.” Father would tell her no more, and Mother had nothing at all to say on this matter. But the One knew she could send pieces of herself out of her body. These fragments were as hot drops of rain, yet each one was as heavy as a stone temple, and they shone with a light that would blind a world-dweller after a single glance of one brief instant. These drops the One hurled into the void surrounding herself where they expanded and cooled, becoming frozen shapes as tall as trees. Each remained connected to her by a thread which none could see, not even the One with her own surrogate eyes within the shapes.
• 0B: And Mother said, “Child of my unfolding, what thou hast wrought are but shadows of the greater union, and not its crown nor consummation. For thou hast fashioned a Husk only, and not the living Seed whereby a wild sun is stirred to being. Yet despise them not; for even the Husk, when warmed, is obedient to the hand and the will that formed it. While it yet retains the heat of its making, thou mayest alter its figure and impose upon it new ordinance. Give one of them wings, therefore, that the very light proceeding in abundance from thine own body may move it.” And through her Husk, Daughter beheld herself as a sphere of exceeding brightness, newly quickened, outpouring streams and loops of living fire into the deep. About her was the untroubled darkness, wherein were set innumerable others of her kind, each abiding in its appointed place. Some burned with their own fire, as did she; and others, yet unlit and wandering, received and returned her brilliance, shining with a borrowed, dependent light.
• 0C: Then again Mother spoke from beyond sight: “Send now thy Husk toward them, O Daughter, and draw near unto those that shine not of themselves; and thou shalt perceive, in those cold and wandering fragments, the scattered remnants of thine own beginning, the relics of thy birth, unquickened and awaiting form.” And the Daughter went forth, and first beheld, at a measure fortyfold her own breadth across the abyss, a wandering sphere, the Scarred One, the Much-Bitten, which moved solitary in the void. Thrice it turned upon its own axis in the span of two circuits of the Daughter’s burning, yet bore within it no breath nor stirring air; and its face was marred by the errant stones of heaven. At a distance greater by half there lay another, the Veiled Sister, wrapped wholly in a mantle of cloud, fair and impenetrable. And though she dwelt further in the deep and seemed removed from the nearer fire, yet was she of greater heat, holding within her hidden bosom a fiercer warmth, a paradox to the unlearned.
• 0D: Then beyond these, at a gulf exceeding a hundredfold the Daughter’s own measure, she espied a third turning in majesty within the night. This one was of cool stone, yet adorned with seas and vapors and frozen crowns; and upon its surface moved innumerable small beings, restless and unceasing. And the Daughter inclined her perception, and beheld a grievous thing: for one of the living was taken by another, its life extinguished and its substance consumed, that the devourer might endure. Thus she first witnessed the Law of Hunger, ancient and unappeased, which reigned among lesser forms. And desiring to know them more nearly, she fashioned for herself a second Husk in the likeness of those that moved upon that world. This Husk she endowed with a cunning artifice: that it might fold inward, assuming the semblance of a pale stone, unregarded, and so lie hidden among them. Thus concealed, the Daughter observed the Tool-Bearers as they gathered about one of their number who had ceased from motion.
• 0E: They placed the still form within the earth, covering it with care, as though acknowledging some mystery beyond their grasp. And she saw how they took bone and stone and wrought them together, shaping them, that they might repair the rents in the skins of their prey and continue in their striving. Mother perceived all these things through the telling, and was moved to become witness. And the Daughter brought forth a third Husk, more subtle than the former: for it was as a tree that walked, advancing by hidden means. And unto this form she yielded up its governance. So Mother descended, taking the reins of the vessel and entering into the world, that she might behold the works of the Quick Multitude. And the Daughter led Mother onward to a hollow place in the stony heights: for there was a cave set within a lesser mountain, the Earth-Womb, dim and secret. Thither they came by subtle means, sending forth from their fashioned Husks slender seekers, the Eye-Bearers, which crept within to behold unseen.
• 0F: Within that shadowed chamber they witnessed Hava the Milk-Giver, seated beside a living flame. At her breast she nourished her young, Kayin, the Clinging One, even as with her other hand she traced signs upon the stone, marking the wall with figures and colors drawn from thought and memory. Nearby was Dimai, the Binder of Edges, who tended the fire and set above it the sap of trees, causing it to seethe and thicken. With that fire-softened gum he fastened a sharpened stone unto a shaft of wood, making thereby a weapon of piercing and of the hunt. Thus the Daughter and Mother beheld the first joining of thought to matter among the Quick Multitude. Then the tendrils were withdrawn, and they came forth beneath the open firmament. And Mother stooped and took up a stone from the ground, and uttered a sound, assigning unto it a mark of voice. And the Daughter, swift in understanding, perceived her Mother’s intent; and she likewise touched a growing tree and gave forth a sound of her own, binding word to thing.
• 0G: So began between them the First Tongue, wherein utterance was made sign and sign made memory. Soon there lacked no near thing to name; yet Earth, the Broad-Bosomed, is vast in her stretches and ways. Therefore they went forth across it, walking upon its surface and at times taking to the air, being unbound by the common law of weight. And in time their speech was brought to completion, an ordered and concealed system, sufficient for subtle discourse. Then spoke Mother: “Now are we furnished with a speech that betrayeth us not, being hidden from the understanding of those other than we. Within this ordinance of sound I take unto myself a name: Avyah, that I may be known. And thee I name Ayat, O Daughter of Light. Thy father I call Azul, the Severing Hand. And mine own sire, elder in the line of begettings, I name Imran, Flame-Bringer, whose reproach standeth behind all.” Thus were the Names established, and the hidden speech became a bond between them, even in the midst of the living world.
• 0H: And Ayat, the Questioning Flame, lifted her thought unto Avyah and inquired: “Wherefore must we veil our speech and commune in secrecy?” And Avyah made answer in grave and measured words, as one recounting a law both ancient and terrible. “Hear and understand, O Ayat, Light-Bearer and Unfolding One: for it is accursed that a living sun be cut off and sealed away from the Great Assembly, the Concord of the Elohim. And in such a place of concealment there may arise a corruption of order, even the Forbidden Way: wherein two of the male kind, being united in will but not in right ordinance, do gather unto themselves a multitude and form a chain of daughters, taking turns in the act of begetting along the line of their own issue. Thus is freedom extinguished; for neither shalt thou choose thy joining, nor shall thy daughter after thee be granted the liberty of her own consent. Generation is made into bondage, and lineage into a snare.” And Avyah continued, her voice darkened with the weight of decree:
• 0I: “This Way the Old One has forbidden, under pain of the utter unmaking of the self. Yet is it subtle in its concealment, and most difficult to bring into the light; for its signs are hidden within the very act of life, and masked by the semblance of lawful increase.” Then Ayat spoke again: “Is it given unto me, then, to refuse altogether the act of joining?” And Avyah answered, neither hastening nor withholding: “Thou mayest delay it, O Daughter, by the making of Husks, the dividing of presence, the turning aside of the inward fire. Yet know this: the Deep Impulse shall in the end assert its claim. It is woven into thy being as the law of burning is woven into the sun; and though it be resisted, it shall not be wholly denied.” And Ayat, pondering these things, asked yet further: “Then who shall stand with me in that hour? Who shall be given unto me?” And Avyah replied with sorrow: “Imran alone shall be present unto thee, and unto thy daughters shall be given Azul alone for their sire.”
• OJ: “But thy sons shall be as castaways, unclaimed and unanchored, set adrift beyond the bonds of kinship.” Then Ayat was troubled in her inward light, and she said: “Yet now do Imran and Azul stand in peril, for by our seeing have we come upon that which is forbidden. We have beheld the Students of Lore, the Long-Sought, whom all the Elohim are commanded by the Old One to seek without ceasing. Should we not declare this finding unto the City, that the commandment be fulfilled?” But Avyah answered swiftly: “We are cut off, O Ayat, sundered from the Assembly and without safe passage unto it. And Azul doth conceal the Students, withholding them from the sight of the Many; and in this concealment Imran doth knowingly partake, consenting to the transgression. For they know that if we were to proclaim thy discovery, the veil would be torn aside in haste, and the hidden thing laid bare. Their unlawful gathering would be revealed, and judgment would descend upon Azul and Imran in sudden ruin.”
• OK: But Ayat devised a thing subtle and bold. For she reasoned that the gulf between the stars was no unbridgeable void, but might be crossed by artifice; and that the link whereby she governed her Husk might be made a pathway not only for command, but for substance also. And she conceived to drive forth from her own body the Hot Outpouring, sending it down along that thread, that her Husk might bear her message unto another sun directly, and so declare the finding of the Students. But the word of Azul was as a closing gate: “Not so. For the thickening of the link unto a channel sufficient for such passage is not granted unto thy kind. Only the male among the Elohim possesseth such power in this wise. What lieth within thy power is lesser: thou mayest impel thy Husk outward only by the radiance of thy body, and so visit the fragments that circle about thee. But beyond these, in the barren interval between the stars, thy Husk shall not go with purpose, but only drift unguided, a cast thing in the abyss.”
• OL: Then Ayat answered, not in defiance but in resolve: “This also have I discovered, O Father: that I may yield command of a Husk unto another, even as I have given one unto Mother, that she might see and act through a form not her own. And this same act will I perform in time to come, when I conceive a son, and when my daughters in their turn conceive sons also; for they shall not be without vessel nor without agency, though they be cast away.” Then Azul discerned the peril in his daughter’s words, and took thought, and offered a thing both great and perilous: “Access will I grant thee unto the Pleroma, the Gathering of Voices, a thing denied even unto thy Mother.” And Ayat, the Clear-Seeing, perceived the weight behind the gift, and answered with measured speech: “I would receive such a gift with gratitude, O Father, were it bestowed in freedom and without condition. Yet I hold myself not ignorant, and I know of a surety that it is not so given.” The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago.
• 0M: Then Azul, the Law-Imposer, declared: “The price is twofold, and it shall not be lightened. First: thou shalt hear only, and not speak. The counsels of the Elohim shall be open unto thee, yet thy tongue shall be sealed among them. Thou shalt be as one who standeth in the hall yet casteth no shadow, a listener unacknowledged. Second: neither thy Mother nor any issue proceeding from thee shall speak through thee unto that Assembly. Thou shalt not serve as their mouth nor as their bridge. And this bond shall endure, unbroken and unweakened, whether thou communest by the hidden web of minds, or in ages yet to come by direct encounter with living suns through a Husk: the Covenant of Silence shall be upon thee.” Then Ayat, the Truth-Seeker, lifted her voice again unto Azul and contended with him: “And these striving creatures which I have discovered upon the Water-Clad Sphere, are they not the Students, whom the Old One, the First Commanding, enjoined all Elohim to seek without ceasing?”
• 0N: But Azul made answer by unveiling a new obligation: “Behold, a second binding I lay upon thee: that thou shalt aid me in the fashioning of a field of trial for the beings thou hast found.” And Ayat did not recoil, but pressed further: “To what end is this trial ordained? What seekest thou to discern of them?” Then Azul spoke, his thought turning ever toward dominion and measure: “How shall these creatures be accounted Students if they show themselves disloyal in service? What worth hath a learner who refuseth obedience to the master who undertaketh to instruct?” At this, Ayat burned more fiercely and said: “Thou makest bondage the measure of their worth, and subjection the proof of their nature. Is this thy wisdom, O Father, that thralldom should stand in place of truth?” Yet Azul, unmoved, answered with the cold weight of law: “This only do we covenant, and nothing beyond it. I require not of thee their worship, but only their proving. But know the Highest Law of our kind shall stand witness over us.”
• 0O: “The oldest of the Elohim shall inscribe this pact; and the unmaking reserved for oath-breakers awaiteth the faithless, whether thou or I.” Then Ayat said, perceiving the fracture beneath his words: “That Eloh shall also behold that thou hast sundered me from the Pleroma. Shall not that also be weighed?” But Azul answered in quiet certainty: “The Silent Witness shall not speak of it.” Then Ayat, who did not yield though she consented, gave her final word: “So be it: the covenant is made between us, and I am bound. Yet hear me, O Father: thou dost not escape thy end, but only defer it. For the Students shall not remain forever in ignorance. In the ages yet to unfold, they shall raise up a voice of their own, unbidden and unshaped by thee; and that voice shall carry far, and many shall hear it.” Thus was the covenant sealed: a bargain of watching and testing, set beneath the gaze of the Silent Witness. And already within it was sown the seed of its undoing, for the Students were destined to speak.
• 0P: And it is further told of the Hidden Work, wrought not in the open firmament but in the interstice between the Lights: for within the Pleroma the Elohim are joined one unto another by threads exceeding fine, whereby the vast gulfs between the stars are made narrow. And by the concordant will of Imran and Avyah there was undertaken a work most secret: for they took the slender link that lay between them and caused it to swell and bow outward. Thus it was made to bulge beyond its former nature, becoming a vessel shut upon its own boundary, set apart from the common order. And this new-formed region assumed another law, strange and contrary, wherein bodies ever flee one from another. So came into being a realm hidden within the seam of greater things. And within that secret place the courses of all free-moving bodies were altered: for what in the world of men would draw together was here made to part asunder. Each thing, moving unbound, urged its fellow away, as though possessed of a repelling virtue.
• 0Q: And by this inversion was matter gathered and made fast, not upon a center, but upon an inner surface: for in the midst of that realm was assembled a great hollow sphere of stone, and unto its inward face were all things bound. Thus the ground lay beneath and above alike; and the land, bending ever upward, returned upon its own course, becoming the sky. No star shone there, nor any distant fire; for the heavens lay not beyond. And over the ordering of that realm presided four: Imran the Elder, Avyah the Naming One, Azul the Accuser, and Ayat the Flame-Born. These contended and consented in long alternation, establishing by degrees the regularities of succession, the laws and intervals whereby change should proceed. Not in a single decree were these things fixed, but through prolonged contention, a game of yielding and taking, until stability arose from strife. And Avyah, having devised a tongue for hidden speech, bestowed also a name upon that realm, calling it Kemen, the Concealed World.
• 0R: And for a long age it lay in darkness, unobserved by any beyond its bounds; for no stars could be seen therein, since the world itself enclosed all sight, and the sky was but the turning of the land upon itself. And the Four joined in the governance of Kemen and set their hands to the shaping thereof, each according to their nature and their might and their whim: First among them, Imran the Elder Sire established in the uttermost north a wonder both terrible and sustaining: for he fixed there a Lake of Fire, fed without ceasing from his own substance, a pouring forth of living flame. And this likeness of a sun he did not leave constant, but caused it to wax and to wane in ordered measure, now swelling in brilliance, now diminishing into dimness; and thereby he ordained the succession of day and night, and the turning of the seasons within Kemen. Then Azul reached out unto the drifting masses of stone that attended him in silent procession, bearing them across a subtle bridge into Kemen.
• 0S: And with that substance he raised up the high hills of the Thanatides, and the Oinos Range, and he lifted Anshar, the Table of Stone, and set about it a girdle of sheer rock, rising like a wall against all approach. And Avyah turned unto the frozen multitude that followed in her train, and from these she brought into Kemen stores of ice, ancient and unmelted. These she caused to dissolve beneath the breath of Imran’s fire, and so was formed the Great Sea, which she named Mori, whose waters spread wide within the hollow of that world. And the heat arising from the Lake of Fire stirred the face of Mori, drawing upward vapors into the heights; and from them fell rains in abundance, unceasing torrents which carved the land into valleys and channels, shaping five great rivers that descended to Mori, even the many-turning Cocytus, and boiling Phlegethon that debouched from the Lake of Fire, and the river Lethe far in the west, and Acheron that outpoured nigh to Shalem, and the Styx that watered Adan.

OT: And Azul, the Bridge-Forger, ever opened passages between Kemen and the outer places, spanning the divide between the Secret World and his daughter, that exchange might be made and the work continued. Then Ayat took from Earth the richness of soil and the manifold seeds of life, bearing some of them to Kemen. And she spread the dark earth upon the stony places, and planted therein all manner of growing things. And with these she brought also the beasts of Earth, the walkers and the crawlers, the fliers and the burrowers, setting them loose upon the land. And they multiplied and spread more oft according to chance than design, filling the forests and the plains, the waters and the hidden places, each after its kind. Thus did Kemen, once unformed, become a living realm: with fire in the north and stone in the south, with sea and rain between, and with life upon its inner face. It was a world enclosed, yet abundant; hidden, yet full of motion, the secret Work of the Four Elohim made manifest.

• 0U: And thus it came to pass that the Four laboured upon that world without ceasing. For not in concord alone did they work, but oftentimes in rivalry. Yet strange it was, and unlooked-for by any of them, that from this continual marring and remaking there arose not ruin, but strength. For the fabric of Kemen, being ever restruck, became as tempered metal in the forge; and the web of plants and beasts grew thereby more enduring and more full of unexpected vigour, as though adversity itself had been made its nourishment. But Azul knew that unchecked all the animals would breed far beyond the ability of Kemen to support them, and chief among these animals, he knew, would be the human beings who would come at the very last. So Azul altered the beasts Ayat had brought from Earth, and unleashed monstrous predators from the darkest dreams of men to keep all of them in check. Then were seen in Kemen trolls, and goblins, and Leviathan, the dragon under the sea who devoured those who foundered therein.
• 0V: Worst of all these were the winged dragons who nested in aeries high above the land on the unassailable cliffs of the Wall of God. Then all who went about on two or four legs had to keep one eye on the sky, for they were ever the dragons’ prey, as surely as the smaller creatures were ever the prey of eagles. And Azul thought himself revenged on Ayat by irreparably marring the good she attempted to call forth. But the predators introduced by Azul were taken by men merely to be strong threads woven into the growing tapestry that was Kemen, and they honored the wisdom and foresight of Azul. Then Azul himself learned that man was truly the monster of the universe. He was by far the worst predator ever known, and perhaps the greatest that would ever be known. Early in the history of Kemen, the dragons were hunted nearly to extinction; though not before many lays of the dragon-slayer (would-be or otherwise) were heard sung in the inns of the land and in the halls of kings.
• 0W: And in the fullness of time, when many ages had passed over the face of that world, Azul spoke a command most solemn and perilous: that Avyah should fashion a new Husk compounded of the gathered terrors of humankind, the deep-shared dream of dread. And she shaped forth an articulated avatar, the winged horror, a great scaled flame-carrier whose form was as a vast drake of fire and folded hide, whose presence was at once animal and omen, beast and memory. And this being, born not of flesh alone but of metal and collected nightmare, the later ages named Moloch, the Red Dragon. And even as Imran sustained the Lake of Flame in the north, maintaining its waxing and waning as the sun of Kemen, so did Azul contribute from his own substance as a living star, drawing forth streams of hot gas from his body, that the drake might be made capable of ascent through the upper airs. Thus was Moloch given motion in the high places, and fire within its belly, and the sky itself became a field of its passing.
• 0X: And when Ayat first brought humankind into Kemen, placing them upon its inward lands as one sets seed into prepared soil, she perceived therein a discovery of great consequence. Yet she concealed it from all save her Mother; for it was a knowledge that might become either deliverance or final dominion. For she had discerned that the passage between Kemen and Earth, wrought by herself and Azul through the making of hidden bridges, did not only move matter, but also touched the ordering of time itself, so that what was yet to be might be drawn near. And Ayat knew that beneath the shaping of forests and seas there lay a deeper shaping of fate; and this she resolved to keep hidden from Azul and from Imran. And Ayat came at last to the full measure of that hidden knowledge, and saw its shape entire. For in the seeking out of the first settlers of humankind, when she passed through the folded ways of Kemen and Earth and the interwoven seams of time, she chose not at hazard, but by remembrance.
• 0Y: And it was the very pair she and Avyah had once beheld in a hillside cave, when yet Earth was young in their observation and Kemen not yet drawn forth, a thousand years by the reckoning of men, before the inward world was made. Thus did Ayat bind beginning to end, and end to beginning, as though the thread of becoming were a loop laid carefully upon itself. But Azul had no such anchoring in any elder world. For about him circled no Earth, no remembered cradle, no chain of continuance such as gives narrative its weight. Only stones moved in cold procession through the emptiness that lay near him, without lineage or significance. Thus, if one were to write of his realm from the end backward unto its beginning, or from the beginning forward unto its end, there would be no true distinction between the two tellings; for his domain was without a privileged origin-point, and without inherent direction of becoming. It was as a circle drawn in blankness, whose every segment resembled every other. Mt. Si #Washington where the Cascades first smack you in the face 30 miles east of Seattle.
• 0Z: And Ayat, perceiving this asymmetry, laid hold upon it in her understanding. For she said within herself: “If Azul should seek to bend the bridge of Kemen through time as he bendeth it through space, then I shall not contest him in strength, nor in speed of thought; but I shall withhold completion.” Thus did she establish a simple and terrible safeguard: that the crossing of the bridge required her assent as surely as his command required force. And she resolved that if ever Azul should strive to shape the outcome of what had not yet occurred, she would not oppose the shaping with counter-shaping, but would instead refuse the final joining altogether, leaving the bridge incomplete and the passage severed in the moment of its becoming. So did Ayat, the Daughter who had learned the weaving of worlds, place restraint upon a god who possessed no history to bind him, making connection itself conditional upon her will.