FULGORN

PROLOGUE

The Canticle of Light

-As told by the Triarch High Creed

Before the first spark, there was only the Void—empty and still. Yet within that stillness stirred three primordial desires: to know, to be, and to shape.

From this triad of desire, the Great Flame was born. Not fire, but Fulgoria—the first light. A sentient force that shattered the Void’s silence with her hunger to create.

Fulgoria wept into the dark, and where her tears fell, three suns ignited—Solan, Velas, and Koreth. They swirled in celestial unity, their dance birthing Fulgorn itself.

Into this world, Fulgoria breathed her three gifts:

Omnipotence—the gift of shaping. From her boundless strength, she forged all life in Fulgorn and beyond. Then coded the laws of motion and mass, and granted dominion over the fabric of reality itself.

Omniscience—the gift of knowing. From her infinite mind, she mapped the ley-lines of truth and embedded celestial blueprints into the veins of all life. She unveiled the symmetries of time, the dance of particles, and wrote the song of every atom.

Omnipresence—the gift of being. From her eternal essence, she suffused the spaces between. She became the breath in lungs, the pull of gravity, and the hum of quantum fields unseen but unyielding.

These gifts were then bestowed upon sentient beings forged from stellar ash and fractal thought. Fulgoria then divided them into three castes:

The Traktators, architects of matter, whose minds bent metals and energies alike. To them, mountains were clay and metal became a servant.

The Pallators, scholars of the cosmic ledger, who parsed the codes of creation and glimpsed into the edges of infinity.

The Wisps, phantoms of the interstitial realms, who could split their forms into spectral echoes and slipped through dimensions like shadows.

United as the Triarchs, they vowed to steward Fulgorn as living temples to Fulgoria’s design.

But even perfection fractures; A fourth caste emerged—Imparen—flawed versions of the Triarchs. Born without Gifts. They became equations unsolved, vessels devoid of Fulgoria’s sacred charge. The Triarchs condemned them to serve as hands without will. They labored in the shadow of their betters, and were forbidden from touching the tools of their makers.

Fulgoria, her creation complete, dissolved into the substrate of her creation. Her final decree echoed through the new world: “Let the Triarchs reign, until the stars rewrite my name.”

***

THE HARMONY CHAMBER

The cell door slid open—a sound Moon knew meant pain.

Its brass edges scraped against cracked walls, grinding like broken bones. A draft carried the stench of rust and despair. Moon’s bone-white hair glowed in the gloom, a ghostly beacon marking the prisoner everyone called a monster.

A man in scarlet robes stepped inside, keys chiming like funeral bells. Light from the cell’s lone window split his face—half scarred, half menacing.

Moon squirmed in his chair. The thick chains binding his small frame to the floor barely shifted.

“Where is she?” The words tore from Moon’s throat before the guard fully entered. “Where have you taken her?”

The man said nothing. He pulled a parchment from his robes and unfurled it, his voice cold and flat.

“By Lord Hasaki's decree, I, Larioth, Over watcher of the Dreadspire, deliver Moon the Imp to the Harmony Chamber. He stands trial before the Triarch Counsel for hoarding Fulgornian tech above his caste. By law, I speak no word to the accused—unless the Counsel wills it”

“WHERE IS SHE?” Moon bellowed, ignoring every word.

Larioth stepped closer. The light caught his eyes, sharpening their evil glare—a look of pure hatred. For seconds that felt like hours, he stared at Moon, a muscle twitching in his temple.

Silent, he raised a hand. The chains snapped free. They coiled around Moon’s body like steel serpents, crushing his limbs. Moon floated upward, suspended by nothing but Larioth’s icy gaze.

The guard clenched his outstretched fingers into a fist. Moon’s jaw clamped shut, teeth fused as if magnetized. Only muffled grunts escaped.

Larioth turned, robes swirling like bloodstained smoke, and strode out. Moon’s levitating form trailed behind him like a puppet.

The corridor erupted. Hands clawed through cell bars—desperate, skeletal fingers in tattered green sleeves. Prisoners wailed, their voices raw and animal-like. Scarlet-clad guards stood motionless, statues unfazed by human emotion. They nodded at Larioth as he passed.

At the exit, Larioth stepped onto a floating metal disc. It hummed to life, lifting him from the Dreadspire and into the open air. Moon followed, chains rattling, as they soared above a smog-choked hellscape.

Below, Volcanic vents belched ash. Hundreds of floating pierced the haze, their engines humming in unison. Skyrails snaked through the sea of megalodon spires like tendrils weaving through trees. Larioth drifted calmly, hands behind his back, as if touring a serene vista.

Moon’s gaze dropped to the ground far beneath—a wasteland of ash and lava. On areas where molten rock was absent, Grey specks filled the void: the Imp slums. Thousands of cottages built from hovels of generator scraps, stitched together by lesser Fulgornians.

They passed floating residential spires, windows glinting with amber light. Inside, Triarchial families carried on with their privileged lives, oblivious to the shackled boy floating past them.

The smoke in the air thinned. Ahead, a spire materialized right in front of Moon’s eyes. A black flag danced in the rhythm of wind. The emblem, a golden Wyvven clutching twin spears, made Moon’s gut twist. The wind that howled in his ears now sounded like his sister’s screams—flooding his feeble mind with memories of the raid: The day they stole her from him.

Two Traktators guarded the dome’s entrance, balanced on hovering discs. They nodded as Larioth landed with a metallic clink. Moon trailed him inside, heart drumming in time with the guard’s footsteps.