They were called the First People, though they never named themselves that.
They were not human—not yet. Their skin shimmered with the essence of stars, and their bones were etched with runes no god had ever carved. Their minds were primitive, but their instincts were sharp—sharper than the obsidian spears they carved from mountain stone.
They lived in the cradle of the southern forests, where skyfire fell in golden storms and beasts roamed like living cathedrals. They hunted in packs, they mourned their dead, and above all—they remembered.
Not knowledge passed through words, but through fire.
The First Flame had no name. It was a gift born not from divine mercy, but from nature's wrath. A lightning strike to a dry tree during a celestial storm had ignited the forest. They feared it. They fled it. But one—the youngest of their kind, a pale-skinned being with silver eyes—walked toward it.
She touched the flame.
She was burned.
But when she returned to her people, she brought the fire with her. Not in her hands—but in her will.
And the tribe gathered around it, eyes wide. Heat licked their skin. Light scattered the darkness.
Something awakened in them that night.
Consciousness.
A question, silent and impossible: Why does it burn?
They did not yet have gods. No prayers. No temples.
But that night, when they watched the flame dance, they felt something.
A presence.
Distant.
Cold.
Unseen.
The Abyss stirred.
Not by will.
By resonance.
From his dark throne, Shinsui raised his head. His eyes narrowed, crimson with slumbering interest. The firelight reflected within the vast ocean of his gaze, and for the first time since the world began, he smiled.
> "The first echo," he murmured.
Gaia, watching from Heaven, heard the same whisper.
But she did not speak.
She only waited.
Below, the First People began to gather at night. Around the flame. Around stories.
They gave sound to memory. They imitated the sounds of beasts, the rhythm of thunder, the silence of death.
And slowly, unknowingly, they formed the first language.
With it, they named themselves: Ka-Ran.
"We who remember fire."
---
In the forests, the Primordial Beasts sensed change.
The First People had found the flame, and with it—the spark of civilization.
And so the balance of the world began to shift.
Life was no longer wild.
It began to shape itself.
Not by instinct.
But by choice.
---
Far above, neither Gaia nor Shinsui made a move.
Their power, their purpose, was balance.
Interference now would unravel the essence of this world.
But deep in the abyss, Shinsui looked toward the future.