Vardor.
A warrior. A conqueror. A man who defied kings, who bent armies to his will but never bent his own. A man who felled kings and didn't ask for rewards.
I watched him fight. I watched him lead. He fascinated me because he was so different from the other mortals. He was proud and hard. But where success led lesser men to greed, he stayed with his roots, laughing at all the rewards offered to him.
And I was fascinated.
A plan formed in my head. He was the warrior I needed to restore balance to our world, so I made him mine. I took him, lifted him beyond mortality, and shaped him into a god of war—my warlord, my weapon.
He defeated my brothers, one by one. All but Maezharr, who escaped. If only I had pressed harder for him to finish Maezharr, but I was selfish too. He made me feel things I had never felt before. He made my body sing in a way no one ever had.
With the mortals believing in me again, I grew stronger, and the world prospered once more. All was well. Or so I told myself, knowing all the while that we were living on borrowed time.
One day, something changed. He looked at me differently and said the words that had never meant anything to me. He said, "I love you."
Words I’d heard so many times from mortals' mouths. For the first time, I wondered what love felt like.
I had no childhood, no mother, no father, no history. No warmth. I didn't know how to love. But I wanted to. Very much so. I tried, I really did. But then nothing mattered any longer, because he betrayed me. He caged me.
That's when I felt something deeper than rage. It was sharper, nearly unbearable. I didn't have words for it then; it was almost like... pain?
Vardor had put himself above me. He had unbalanced the scale of power. An act I couldn't let stand. He had to be punished. Not only for what he had done, but because I was angry. In all our years together, he had finally made mefeel.
I sealed him away. Because I was angry. Because I was wounded. Because I didn't know what to do with those feelings.
I missed him so much that, over the millennia, I woke him three, four, five, ten times. Whenever I did, I realized just how much I missed him. I wanted nothing more than to be in his arms. But then the confusion and rage would return, and I put him back to sleep. Unsure and afraid of my emotions. Afraid of doing something I would regret until the end of time. Gods could do many things, but they could not create life nor bring back the dead.
And so one millennium passed by, followed by another.
Things began to gradually change. A power of evil was coming, building, growing, and I knew I could not stop it or stand in its way.
So I ordered this city built underground and the beacons above. They led the true believers to me, and my kingdom grew. Over time, the mortals turned my beacons into things they weren't meant to be, but that was fine with me. Mortals would do whatever mortals did.
Empires rose and empires sank. Life moved on. Life without Vardor.
I wanted to forgive him. I truly did.
Then the visions started.
A glimpse of the future, a rip in time too powerful to ignore.
I saw Malzhaedon.
Not as the warlord Vardor had defeated twice, but as something bigger, darker, a force that twisted the world in his hands. I saw what he would unleash—demons, horrors, the monsters of the abyss pouring into the mortal world. I realized that I would lose. Not only my existence, but that of all these mortals who had put themselves into my hands. There would be no more balance. Evil would prevail and good would be lost.
I knew I wasn't strong enough to stop him.
Not alone.
Not as I was.
Not even with Vardor by my side.
No, in order to defeat my brother's new army, we needed tobean army. We needed demigods at our side. Sons. Not just the sons of mortals I picked for Vardor to breed, but sons of him and me.
That's when I knew.
That was when I made my choice.
