The sanctum, a pace crafted of shimmering stardust and resplendent divine architecture, was the domain of the gods and goddesses who watched over the worlds. It was a pce for divine judgment and deliberation, and it was there that Klotho, the exiled Goddess of Fate, was made to confront her cruel fate once more.
As they entered the sanctum, the celestial attendants presented their shackled charge to the gathered pantheons.
The gods and goddesses, their regal forms arrayed in celestial splendor, looked upon Klotho with a mix of revile and judgment.
I'm a prisoner in a domain of my own making and now a captive of my own kind, she thought bitterly.
Klotho struggled to her feet, “I am to be judged again, by those who once cast me aside. What awaits me now, after ten thousand years of isotion?”
Her bitter words echoed through the hallowed hall.
One by one, the gods and goddesses questioned her actions and her motives. Many decried her bckened garments as all the proof they needed that she was truly an evil deity.
They bmed her for things she had no insight into: A rebellion of celestial attendants, who had imprisoned their own God and split their realm’s connection from Aevum.
The celestial attendants, supposed to be entrusted with upholding the divine will in the lower realms, had revolted. In an aetherial pne distant from the pantheon's gaze, these attendants had overturned their divine overseer and seized the threads of fate and destiny tied to their realm, perhaps believing they could weave a better future.
The Gods initially had turned their wrath upon the attendants, but the bme soon fell upon Klotho. In their judgment, her supposed abandonment had allowed this rebellion to fester unchecked.
The divine pantheon decred her an "Evil God," a true pariah in the divine hierarchy.
To reinforce their decision, Klotho was decred guilty of causing all the chaos that had taken root in the realms below while she had been in exile. Entire worlds of mortals had shunned the Gods and were reaching their grasp beyond the stars.
The God’s divine judgments were harsh and unyielding, and cast her in the role of the malevolent deity—Klotho was the root of all evil. The originator of Chaos.
“Was my punishment not enough?” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the celestial deliberations. “Must I now be branded as an Evil God?”
Iridescent tears stained her cheeks.
She knew that it was not her abandonment of duties that wrought all the chaos in the beginning, it was the failure of other Gods who did not guide or assist the mortals in their times of need.
Whatever had happened with that group of celestial attendants, was something that they inspired themselves. How could she, adrift in exile, have influenced their actions?
As the fixed trial raged on, Klotho knew her desires no longer wavered. Shackled and forlorn, she awaited the final verdict she knew was coming. The sanctum would bear witness to the culmination of her divine odyssey, a journey fraught with isotion and despair.
Klotho’s divinity was severed and she was banished from Aevum. Her power over Fate was expected to be recimed by the pantheons and soon a new god or goddess would take the mantle.
She was exiled anew, her presence to one day be forgotten.
Klotho awaited the dreadful moment when her existence would fade away. Her heart was filled with trepidation as to what would become of her essence, her sense of self.
But that moment never came.
Instead, Klotho found herself in an endless void—much like the sea of stars she’d spent so much of her time while exiled.
But this new emptiness was a true void.
Devoid of stars or any other source of light.
It felt familiar in some ways, and unsettling in others.
This pce felt to her as if it was home. Klotho knew instinctively that she could twist and bend this pce to her will, if she’d wanted to.
And so, she weaved her fingers through the aetherial space, as she knew to do, and formed the first thing she thought of. Something she longed for.
A brilliant star, bright and warm, came into existence. It dazzled her, bathing her skin in the color she’d loved the most, violet.
She looked lovingly at the sphere of light and a spark ignited within her dull and sorrowful eyes. They reflected back the radiant light of this star, her star, and shined like polished amethysts.
Klotho wondered what else she could bring about in her new home, and eventually, a rge sphere of rock and dirt began to orbit her star.
She smiled at this new little world and began to carve channels to fill with running water. She pnted assortments of bright and lovely pnts that she'd only seen through the distorted gleams of mortal souls. To her dismay, the water quickly turned to ice and the pnts withered away.
The goddess frowned, cursing her ck of knowledge of the inner workings of creating a world. Many deities in her past had bragged about how great their worlds or realms had been.
If only she knew what was missing, she wouldn’t have to be alone anymore. If she knew how to create a real world, Klotho could fill it with mortals who would love her.
She pushed forward, trying to add molten rocks to her world to keep it warm but they too would eventually grow cold. She noticed that whichever side of her world that was facing her star would stay warm for some time, but it would lose all the heat once it was turned away.
Klotho then tried keeping her world from spinning, but that just caused one side to be too hot while the other was too cold.
“What am I doing wrong!?” She mented.
After spending ten thousand years in exile, she hadn't expected a response.
But a response did come.
A feminine voice called out from somewhere in the darkened void behind her, “You’re cking the airy gases that trap in the heat and diffuse the air living things need to breathe.”
“Who’s there!?” Klotho yelled back in surprise, “If you’ve come to accuse or snder me, I don’t want to hear it! I’ve already been cast out, please… just leave me alone!”
There was a silence that sted for an uncomfortable amount of time, but the silvery voice eventually replied.
“I don’t know who may have come before, and I don’t quite understand the implications behind your wariness, but I am not here to cause you any more grief. May I come closer to you? I felt your presence in this space and I simply wished to know more about you.”
The unexpected visitor’s voice sounded sincere, and Klotho, who desired friendly company more than anything else in the entirety of existence, agreed immediately, “Yes! You may come to me.”
Klotho had expected her visitor to be distant, far enough away that the light from her star had not lit them. However, visitor had instead been cloaked in a bnket of shadowed magick—effectively shielding her from view through a trick of stealth.
The shimmering of magick particles—stained throughout with a strange orangish shade that Klotho had never seen—faded around the visitor, revealing her form. She was unlike any being Klotho had ever seen. Odd in appearance compared to any mortal race she knew, and different from any celestial attendant she’d encountered.
The visitor had a pale skin tone that glimmered in the starlight, pinkish hair, and had a pair of rge golden horns that arched up along her head and curled back down towards a pair of pointy ears. Her eyes were a luminous orange, the light in her iris' swirled like a set of miniature gaxies. Bck leathery wings fnked her body and a slender tail snaked down her between her legs, moving through the air in anticipation.
“You can call me Ophi,” the visitor started, “And I think we’re something akin to neighbors, I believe they'd say.”
“I’m gd to meet you, Ophi. My name is…”
The ex-Goddess of Fate trailed off. Was she Klotho? She was no longer a member of any pantheon. She was no longer a goddess—or was she?
This little world and the beautiful star she created implied otherwise.
But she no longer wanted to be tied to a name that held the disdain of others. A banished and exiled failure. An Evil God. Klotho, that was no longer who she was.
She wished to live out her life in peace—for however long that would be, if not infinite—away from the squabbles of the Gods and mortal realms beyond her control.
“My name is Serenity.”
Serenity smiled. A mix of emotions she didn’t realize were raging in her heart, stilled. And for the first time in over ten thousand years, she felt happy.
Ophi continued her introduction and eborated on what she meant by “neighbors”.
She was a “newborn”, for ck of a better term. Gods weren’t born the same way as mortals. They didn’t grow up the same way or have a need to study and learn certain things.
All new Gods had an innate knowledge of whatever it was they were created to do—just as Serenity had always known how to weave the threads of fate the way she once did. Though, when it came to doing something outside their domain, such as the overbearing expectations id atop the newly born Goddess of Fate millennia ago or Serenity’s attempts at world creation, they would have to learn how to do that those things from scratch.
Ophi expined that she didn’t know what she was the goddess of, exactly. She hadn't existed one moment and then suddenly there she was, lying in a crater of rock and dirt on a world she had no knowledge of.
Her first memory was of her powers being so immense that she caused a massive discharge of both divine energy and elemental magick that caused hundreds of strange beings to spring into existence alongside her.
It turned out they were on a world already inhabited by other mortals and hostilities ensued. She was forced to fight back against those mortals to keep herself and her strange new companions safe.
Once Ophi had gained control over her powers, she managed to take her companions to a pce identical to the space Serenity was occupying.
“Double the size of your world—actually, no, triple it.” Ophi told Serenity, “At that size, it will be massive enough to keep hold of all the gases you create for it. After that, the proper mixture of air will retain the heat from your star and you won’t have to see your pretty little flowers wither and die anymore.”
Serenity did as instructed and within a short time, she had rivers, kes, and oceans of liquid water flowing all through her world.
“We did it! I can’t believe it, we actually did it.”
Serenity rushed toward Ophi, embracing the fledgling goddess in a great hug. Serenity could feel warmth radiating out from beneath Ophi’s skin and after having struggled for so long without physical contact, Serenity began to weep.
Iridescent light streaked down her cheeks as she held Ophi tight.
“Waah! I’m so gd you found me!” Serenity cried, “I don’t know how long I would have struggled before falling into despair.”
Ophi’s hand gently patted Serenity’s back.
“I’m gd to have found you too. Though, it kinda feels like I gained another daughter instead of a new neighbor.”
Serenity’s neck pulled back, “You have a daughter?”
“I do,” Ophi chuckled lightly, “You and she are very simir it seems.”
Serenity’s face flushed red with heat, embarrassed at how she, the goddess who’d lived over ten thousand years, had acted so immature as to be compared to a retively newborn goddess’ daughter.
When Serenity had time to calm down and had become reinvigorated in continuing her world creation efforts, Ophi said her farewells.
“If you focus on me and really mean it, I’ll know you’re trying to get my attention and I’ll come by when I can. It works the other way around, but until you get the hang of phasing through the pnes it would be safer if I visited you instead.”
The two goddesses shared one more hug, at the behest of Serenity, and Ophi blipped out of her aetherial space.
I’m going to create a beautiful world that is full of the nicest and prettiest things, Serenity thought to herself with a smile growing on her face. And then, maybe I’ll make my own daughter—oh, well I guess I don’t know how to do that.
Serenity paused, then her smile grew even wider. Because she knew within her powers remained the ability to grant a soul another life. The power to reincarnate them.
I don’t have to make a new daughter, I can save a soul from the terrible cycle of Fate instead.
With determination raging in her heart, Serenity created a body for her daughter. A delicate and beautiful one, with eyes like hers; a striking violet that warmed her heart. The very same shade that lit up the skies of her paradise-like world.
Serenity looked down at her own golden locks which contrasted with the light-absorbing bck raiment she wore and frowned.
There is nothing evil about this color. I’ve grown quite fond of it.
And with that thought, Serenity ran her fingers through her soon-to-be daughter’s hair and it was washed in a raven bck.
Serenity ran a gentle finger through the threads of fate, and plucked out the most beautiful and vibrant soul there was.
The soul looked like a sea of rainbows, and iridescent light cascaded all around the cozy sanctum Serenity had created to house herself.
“I bet your life was truly painful, but look how hard you struggled to keep going. I’m sorry there was nothing I could’ve done in the past. From now on I hope only good things happen to you. My daughter, my Eve.”
