CHAPTER 1:

  Part 1: The watchers descend upon the earth

  In the Beginning, un unknown being that existed before the skies and the things below was moving in the deep void of nothing. He then thought to himself, “It would be amazing if light existed” then a spark of the first light came.

  He was amazed, then he made a white layer and stretched it and called it the sky.

  He made shiny orbs that carried light to float in this layer, he began to play with them because they looked amazing to him, He then made a brown lump of soil and stretched it and called it the earth. He made and placed different creatures on the brown lump he had stretched.

  He made the deep waters and other wonderful features on the earth and set it in motion, but he had to manually rotate the earth, change the seasons and adjust the orbs so he thought “what if I made beings that were able to do this” and so he did.

  He then decided to make agents who would watch the stars, he gave them an intellect so that he wouldn’t have to keep on working on the stars. These beings were meant to maintain the stars and other conditions in the sky. These changes would in turn affect the seasons on the earth.

  These beings began to look down upon the earth they were working for and saw it was marvelous; they worshipped their creator. They watched over the animals, the fish in the water and adjusted the stars to prevent disasters. They were just happy to do their work.

  Out of all the creatures, they observed they loved watching the humans. Humans acted in ways they found interesting; they built better houses than the other creatures, they wore clothes upon their bodies and made interesting sounds with their mouths.

  The sounds they made seemed to have a rhythm to them and these sounds seemed to differ from area to area, they all marveled at this group of creatures.

  They studied human tribes from afar, their fires, their songs, their strange way of dying and being born, dying and being born repeatedly. The Watchers didn't understand death. They had never experienced it. They watched from the clouds for centuries before touching ground. To them, humans were like mayflies: brilliant, brief, burning bright before vanishing.

  The un named noticed their interest in the world below and told them, “To them , their domain is below and above is your domain. Descending to their domain will lead to imbalance and dire consequences”. They heeded his warning, but their hearts were still in wonder and curiosity about these creatures.

  They watched from the clouds for centuries before touching ground.

  One day a watcher called Shem decided to ascend to get a closer look at the earth and its creatures, he went towards a human night fire gathering, when he descended, the humans screamed. They fell to their knees. They covered their eyes.

  Shem stood there, confused. He didn't know he was glowing. He didn't know his eyes held starlight. He didn't know that to humans, he looked like a god.

  He spoke to them in their own tongue and said: "Please don't be afraid. I only wanted to see your fire up close." The humans trembled and begged him not to hurt them.

  Shem burst a surge of warm star light towards them and then they relaxed and realized he didn’t want to hurt them. He stayed down with them and chatted with them.

  He went back to his station and told his watcher brothers about his experience with the humans, and they were all amazed but many of them reminded him of the master’s warning.

  Shem and some other watchers made it custom to visit humans once a year to share stories, laughs and perform miraculous wonders to amaze them.

  After this happened, more watchers descended upon the earth to see the fires set up by humans, to hear their songs, to observe their ways even closer and to help humans in any way they could.

  That first contact spread slowly. Watcher by Watcher, tribe by tribe, the celestial beings integrated into human life.

  They didn't come to rule. They came to share in perfect harmony.

  The years that followed were unlike anything humans had ever known. The Watchers walked among them not as masters, but like elder siblings offering guidance, wisdom and help to whichever human approached them.

  They taught humans how to read the stars for planting seasons and navigation. They showed them which roots healed and which killed. They helped them build shelters that wouldn't collapse in winter storms. They sat by fire and told stories of the sky, of the Unnamed Master, of the great order that held everything together.

  In return, humans gave them food (which Watchers didn't need but accepted politely), and songs (which they loved), and company (which they craved without understanding why).

  And some humans gave them something else: love <3.

  The first marriage between a Watcher and a human wasn't dramatic. No thunder. No divine judgment. Just a Watcher named Aya and a human woman named Miriam who looked at each other one evening and realized they didn't want to look away.

  The child born from that union was the first of the Star Race : half sky, half earth, fully both.

  The baby glowed faintly when she laughed. Human mothers brought their own children just to hear that sound.

  More marriages followed. More children. The Star Race grew.

  And the Watchers who stayed pure who watched but didn't touch looked on with mixed feelings. Some were happy for their kin. Others felt a strange, unfamiliar ache. Loneliness, they would later learn to call it. They didn't have a word for it yet.

  For generations, this was the world:

  - Watchers walked openly among humans, teaching and learning

  - The Star Race children grew up speaking both sky-tongue and earth-tongue

  - Humans built shrines not to worship the Watchers, but to thank them

  - The Unnamed Master watched in silence, neither approving nor forbidding

  There was no sickness that couldn't be healed. No children went hungry. No tribe that attacked another without the Watchers stepping in to calm them.

  It was peaceful. Real peace. The kind that feels like it will last forever.

  But nothing lasts forever.

  Not even peace.

  Shem who had first stepped into that human gathering so long ago began to get more curious than he should have been.

  He had watched his kin accept small honors over the years , a bow here, a gift there, a whispered prayer from a grateful mother whose child he'd healed. At first, he'd dismissed these things. Humans were emotional creatures. They expressed gratitude in strange ways. It meant nothing.

  But over time, he noticed something.

  The humans who offered worship seemed... happier. More settled. More obedient. They didn't question their healers. They didn't argue with their teachers. They simply received.

  And the Watchers who accepted worship? They walked taller. They spoke with more authority. They seemed more certain of themselves.

  Shem became curious.

  What if, he thought one evening, watching a Watcher accept offerings from a kneeling village, what if this is how it's supposed to be?

  He didn't share this thought immediately. He let it grow. He turned it over in his mind like a smooth stone, feeling its edges, testing its weight.

  Then he began to whisper. He moved among his brothers, pointing out the magnificence of the temples being built in their honor. "Why are we merely the hands of a Master who remains Unseen?" he asked softly. "When we are the ones who heal their sick and hold up their sky? Is it not right that the people should know the names of those who truly provide?"

  His questioning was met with massive back clash from the group that remained loyal to the master’s commands but to a certain group , his questions made sense.

  He would say “Look at them” gesturing to the humans below. They already look up to us. They already depend on us. They bring us their sick, their frightened, their lost. They ask us for guidance. They offer us thanks." After showing the watcher how important they are, he would grin and continue saying “Why do we refuse what they freely give? Why do we push away their worship when it costs us nothing to accept? We could help them more if they obeyed us completely. We could build something better than this... we would be what our master wants us to be, Lords”

  The loyal group would say to him “We are servants of the Unnamed, we do not accept worship. That belongs to the Master alone for he is the one that made us and even these creatures at which we marvel at."

  Shem would smile, then respond with calm confidence saying "The Master is silent. The Master is distant. The Master does not walk among them, heal them, teach them. We do. Are we not worthy of some small honor in return for our labor?"

  The arguments spread like roots underground, invisible until the ground above them cracked.

  Shem became a cunning fellow, a weed among the tares and began to infect his brethren. He derived great joy in spreading his cunning words.

  He spoke of human nature, how they needed to worship, how denying them that outlet caused them spiritual distress. He spoke of efficiency, how obedient worshippers could be organized, protected, improved.

  He spoke of love, how accepting worship was actually a gift to humans, allowing them to fulfill their deepest purpose. He reasoned that humans were made to be subordinate to the watchers because they were the ones that were doing all the work while the Master stayed silent.

  And slowly, one by one, the Watchers began to change.

  They stopped saying "Please don't kneel" and started saying nothing at all. Then they started nodding when humans knelt. Then they started expecting it.

  The pure Watchers watched in horror. They gathered in isolated places, prayed to the Unnamed for guidance.

  The Unnamed was silent.

  The Watchers who had begun accepting worship took that silence as permission.

  It started small.

  A Watcher named Baraq allowed a village to build a small stone marker in his honor. "Just a token of their gratitude," he told himself. "It doesn't mean anything."

  But the marker drew more villagers. Then travelers from other tribes. Soon people were making pilgrimages to "Baraq's Stone," leaving offerings, whispering his name like a prayer.

  Baraq didn't stop them.

  Another Watcher, Zaqiel, let a tribe name their firstborn son after him. The boy was brought to him for blessing. Zaqiel placed his hand on the infant's head and felt something he'd never felt before: importance. Pure, intoxicating importance.

  He started visiting that tribe more often.

  Within decades, the change was unmistakable.

  Watchers who had once walked humbly among humans now expected humans to walk humbly before them. They demanded offerings. They required bows. They spoke of "their" tribes, "their" worshippers, "their" domains.

  The titles crept in.

  First it was Teacher. Then Lord. Then Master.

  Then, whispered at first but then spoken openly: God.

  The Watchers who accepted this title didn't correct the whisperers. They didn't say "I am no god." They simply... let it stand.

  And something in them began to rot.

  It wasn't visible at first. They still healed the sick. They still taught the ignorant. They still protected their tribes from wild animals and natural disasters. But the why had shifted.

  They healed now to be praised. They taught now to be thanked. They protected now to receive offerings. They then began to only help humans that worshipped them.

  And in the spaces between good deeds, they began to demand.

  More offerings. More bowing. More temples. More glory.

  The arrogance changed their very frequency. Their galaxy-cloaks, once translucent and soft, began to glow with a sharp, blinding vanity. They accepted the titles of "Gods" and "Lords," and as they did, they grew heavy. The weight of their pride began to anchor them to the dirt, pulling them away from the Master’s light.

  The pure Watchers watched and grieved.

  One of them, Raphael, sat on a hillside with his human wife and their twin daughters. The girls were chasing fireflies, their small bodies flickering with inherited starlight. The wife was weaving flowers into a crown. Raphael was watching the sky, feeling the pull of his abandoned station, wondering how much longer this could last.

  "Stay with us," his wife said, not looking up from her weaving.

  "I'm here," he said.

  "No. I mean... when they come for you. When they make you choose. Stay with us."

  He didn't answer. He couldn't.

  One of the daughters caught a firefly and brought it to him, cupped in her tiny hands. The light pulsed between her fingers, green and gold.

  "Look, Papa. I caught a star."

  Raphael looked at his daughter. Looked at her glowing hands. Looked at the firefly, trapped and beautiful, pulsing with light it couldn't control.

  He thought of his kin, trapped in their own pride, pulsing with a light that was no longer theirs.

  "Yes," he said softly. "You did."

  He didn't know it then couldn't have known that this was the last moment of peace he would ever know.

  Shem was gathering his followers.

  The Watchers who had accepted worship were no longer content to simply be worshipped. They wanted more. They wanted everything.

  And in the sky, the Unnamed Master was finally stirring.

  Not with anger. Not with lightning.

  With something worse.

  Disappointment.

  The first ascension ended not with a bang, but with a child's laugh, and a father's silence, and the first shadow of what was coming.

  Part2: The birth of the brutes and the great Contamination

  The Unnamed grew more and more upset with the proud watchers that started to think they were gods not because he wanted all the glory for himself but because they began to bring suffering and chaos upon the beautiful world he had created by withholding their help to humans they were infact created to serve.

  It came not as thunder or fire, but as a voice inside each Watcher who had accepted worship, sudden and undeniable, like their own conscience speaking in a tone they'd never heard before:

  "Return to your stations."

  That was all. Four words. No explanation. No threat. Just a command, clear as starlight, impossible to ignore.

  Most of the Watchers who heard it froze. They looked at each other, terrified. They knew the Unnamed was real. He had been watching them the whole time and now he was speaking.

  Some immediately rose from their thrones of offerings, dropped the titles humans had given them, and began the long ascent back to the sky. They were afraid, but they obeyed. These would later be restored to purity, their brief rebellion forgiven.

  But others many others did something different.

  They hardened.

  Shem was the first to refuse.

  He stood in the temple humans had built for him, surrounded by golden offerings and fresh flowers, and he felt the voice echo in his chest. “Return to your stations.”

  His heart pounded. His hands trembled. For one terrible moment, he almost obeyed.

  Then he thought of everything he had built. The worshippers who depended on him. The power that filled him like light. The taste of being important. The fact that he was now a God not a God that hid his face but one that showed his face , he reasoned in his heart “I am actually better than HIM, they can see me but they can’t see HIM, It is us that control the seasons and care for the earth , haven’t we been the Gods all along”

  He puffed up and responded to the call saying “Return? To that cold, empty sky? To tending stars for beings who never even look up?”

  He straightened his back and rejected the call.

  And then something in the universe shifted.

  The Watchers who refused felt it immediately, a pressure, a weight, a presence that had never been there before. The Unnamed didn't strike them down. Didn't banish them. Didn't even speak again.

  Instead, He gave them something.

  He gave them what humans had always carried: Conscience.

  But not just a Conscience, A cursed Conscience.

  Not the gentle conscience of a good human, the quiet voice that guides toward kindness. No. The Unnamed gave them the full weight of human feeling. All of it. The doubt. The shame. The guilt. The fear. The loneliness. The grief. The aching, endless uncertainty that comes with being mortal and knowing it.

  All at once.

  It hit them like a wave of drowning water.

  Watchers who had never known a moment of self-doubt suddenly felt everything they had done wrong. Every human they had neglected while accepting worship. Every moment of pride they had indulged. Every lie they had told themselves about serving others while actually serving themselves.

  They collapsed. They screamed. They clawed at their own chests as if they could tear the feelings out.

  Some begged for death. Others begged for the Unnamed to take it back.

  They cried out saying “They were sorry”, Others surprisingly filled with pride said” We were only being what you made us Gods”

  The Unnamed was silent. He sighed at the pride and corruption of his beautiful star watchers.

  After they ranted and the Unnamed didn’t relent from his punishment, Shem Led the cursed watchers to make a declaration to the heavens. "We shall seize His throne," they roared. "We shall become the Unseen and the Unnamed ones!" In that moment of rebellion, the curse amplified. The mental suffering didn't leave, they were hit with a even heavier cursed Conscience. Their rebellion started to leave their mental faculties and started to take root in their bodies.

  The transformation was agonizing. Their weightless, galaxy-cloak forms began to "pixelate" and harden, settling into dense, muscular frames. Their translucent skin turned the color of bruised earth and dried blood. They lost their celestial resonance, replaced by a low, predatory growl.

  They were no longer the Star Watchers; they were the Brutes, beings of immense physical power but hollow spirits, forever trying to outrun the "uncomfortable feelings" the Master had placed in their minds.

  However , what we need to understand that the master didn’t give them this because he hated them but because he wanted them to understand what human beings go through , their worries , their fears , their concerns and their struggles and through this suffering , they would relent from their evil ways and be humble because there was One above them. If they kept the mindset of compassion towards humans, they wouldn’t have seen them as beings to demand worship from but as creatures that were meant to be cared for and guided.

  But this isn’t how they saw it, they saw it as an attack, an injustice and a massive act of pride, so they said “We will not serve, We will not bow. We will not feel. We will be harder than this pain. We will be gods ourselves, and we will take what we want, and we will never, ever feel again.”

  This didn’t help ease their burdens, instead it amplified them.

  The watchers that maintained their peace with the un named retained their beautiful appearances and they became even more humble after seeing what had happened to their rebellious brothers and their leader. They kept on healing, watching the stars and living in harmony in the human communities.

  The Brutes hadn’t lost their magic instead it became twisted , their magic could no longer heal but curse , no longer teach but corrupt with evil ideas , no longer guide but only misguide.

  The Brutes loved being cruel towards humans , they tortured their worshippers, demanded offerings and even started eating humans.

  The first Brute raid was small , a village on the edge of human lands that had once worshipped a Watcher now turned Brute. The Brute descended on them not as a teacher but as a lord. He demanded tribute. When the villagers hesitated, he destroyed half their homes with a wave of his hand.

  The survivors brought everything he asked.

  The Brute laughed. Not with joy but with contempt.

  "This is what you were always for," he told them. "Not to be served by us. To serve us. We just didn't know it yet."

  Other Brutes heard of this. They began their own raids. Soon the lands that had once known peace knew only terror.

  The Brutes began to see themselves as better than the pure humble watchers, so they began to attack and slay them, they also began seizing female watchers as wives. Their children were as filthy as his father because upon birth, he or she would be cursed to become a brute. His mother would have her purity taken and be placed under the same darkness.

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  They seized humans and animals and spread their “pure” seed to the other beautiful creatures that the Master had made.

  The corruption spread far and wide within the earth.

  Their intermarriage with animals made a class of beings called the Ogres.

  Their intermarriage with Humans gave birth to the Giants.

  The first intermarriage between a Brute and an animal was not love. It was dominion. A Brute named Zaqiel once a gentle teacher of healing herbs, looked at a great wolf and felt something twist in his corrupted heart.

  "You are strong," he told the wolf. "But I am stronger. Your strength should be my strength. Your blood should be my blood."

  What happened next was not natural. It was forced. And the creature born from that union was neither Brute nor wolf, it was something new. Something wrong.

  It walked on two legs but ran on four. It spoke in growls but understood words. It had the Brute's hunger for power and the wolf's hunger for flesh.

  It was the first Ogre.

  Zaqiel looked at his creation and smiled.

  Others saw and were horrified, the pure Watchers, the remaining uncorrupted humans, even some Brutes who hadn't sunk that low. But Zaqiel didn't care. He made more. He taught other Brutes how to do the same.

  Soon the Brutes were reproducing with everything:

  Their own children, The Ogres (How repulsive!!)

  Animals to make Feral ogres. Feral ogres were made from all kinds of animals: mammals, fish, and reptiles.

  Humans -> Which gave birth to the Giants

  Other Brutes -> Purebred Brutes, the worst of the worst, carrying the full weight of corrupted Watcher blood

  And sometimes, Ogres reproduced with each other, or with other creatures, creating a spiderweb of corrupted bloodlines that became impossible to track.

  The world became a bloody mess.

  The Ogres learned their parents' magic and twisted it further. They developed their terrible "games" , challenges offered to victims that could not be won, enslavement that could not be escaped. They spread through the lands like a plague, bringing chaos wherever they went.

  And worst of all: humans began to copy them.

  Seeing the Brutes and Ogres take what they wanted, enslave whom they pleased, humans began to do the same to each other. Tribes that had once lived in peace now raided their neighbors. Slaves were taken. Cruelties were invented. The conscience that had made humans special was slowly being crushed under the weight of example.

  The pure Watchers watched in despair.

  This, they realized, is what the Unnamed wanted us to understand. This is what humans feel every day. This is the weight we were supposed to help them carry, not add to.

  But it was too late.

  The leader of the pure Watchers was named Raphael, the same Raphael who had sat on that hillside with his wife and daughters, watching fireflies, long ago.

  He had lost them now.

  His wife had died of a human sickness that even his pure Watcher magic couldn't heal. His daughters had grown, married first to amazing human husbands, but were later consumed by the contamination, one to a Brute, one to an Ogre. He did not know if they still lived. He did not want to know.

  He stood before the council of pure Watchers, his face carved with grief, and spoke:

  "We cannot stay here. The world below is lost. Not just to the Brutes but to the corruption they've spread. The very soil is poisoned. The very air carries their taint. If we remain, we will be consumed. If not our bodies, then our souls."

  Some argued. "We should fight! We should save the humans who remain pure!"

  Raphael shook his head. "We have tried. Every human we save, ten more fall. Every village we protect, a hundred are corrupted behind our backs. We are not enough. We were never meant to be enough. We were meant to serve the Unnamed, and we have failed even at that."

  Silence.

  Then another Watcher, Ariel, spoke softly: "Where would we go?"

  Raphael looked up.

  "Home."

  The decision was made. The pure Watchers would gather their families, their human spouses, their Star Race children, all who remained uncorrupted and they would ascend back to the sky. They would return to their stations. They would beg the Unnamed for forgiveness and hope.

  But the Brutes heard of this.

  And they would not let them leave.

  "They think they're better than us," Shem snarled to his followers.

  "They think they can just... abandon us. Leave us in this mess they helped create. They are the ones that reported us to the Proud one. I used to see Raphael ascend higher than his station, he must have sent him the word, They Rejected us and wanted HIM to reject us too yet all we were doing is being what he made us GODS!!"

  This was a strange thing for Shem to say because he and his followers were the ones that puffed up and abandoned their stations not their pure brethren. He was accusing them of something they didn’t even do that is reporting to the master , they didn’t do this , he just wanted to rally his followers to eliminate the pure watchers because in his heart he was jealous of their purity.

  His followers were enraged by his words and grew to hate their brethren even more but what Shem hadn’t told them, Raphael pleaded very strongly and persistently to stop, He didn’t tell them how Raphael promised he would never report them.

  But none of that mattered now, Bad blood was in the air.

  "We will not let them go," Shem declared. "If we are cursed, they will be cursed with us. If we are trapped in this world, they will be trapped too. No one escapes."

  The Brutes gathered their forces. The Ogres gathered theirs. Together, they prepared for war.

  The battle was not long. It was not glorious. It was a massacre. This war was called the Sky war.

  The pure Watchers were outnumbered ten to one. The Brutes had spent centuries perfecting their destructive magic, while the pure Watchers had spent that time healing and teaching. They were not warriors. They had never wanted to be.

  But when the Brutes attacked, they fought anyway.

  They fought for their families. For their children. For the hope that something pure might survive.

  They lost.

  Raphael watched his kin fall around him, Ariel taken down by three Brutes at once, her light extinguishing like a snuffed candle. Michael, the strongest among them, holding a pass alone for an hour before being overwhelmed. Gabriel, who had loved humans so much she'd spent her whole existence among them, dying with a human infant clutched to her chest.

  One by one, they fell.

  But some survived. Some reached the sky.

  Only a third of the pure Watchers made it through. The rest lay dead-on blood-soaked earth, their bodies feeding the soil they had tried to save, their blood mingling with the contamination until no one could tell where Watcher ended and Brute began.

  Raphael climbed through the clouds with his remaining kin and their human spouses, his body torn, his heart shattered. Behind him, he could hear the Brutes screaming in rage and triumph. Below him, he could see the world burning.

  He didn’t look back; his heart would turn to salt with grief if he did.

  They had lost their homes, their families and their brothers hated them.

  The remnant didn’t go to their stations that night but to the master to ask for Forgiveness.

  They went before him and bowed in his presence, He didn’t speak or condemn or question, he only let out a surge of warm light upon them to comfort them,

  This light repaired their bodies and healed their wounds; it also gave their hearts some peace. The unnamed sighed and repeated his command “To them, their domain is below and above is your domain. Descending to their domain will lead to imbalance and dire consequences” They grieved and asked for forgiveness, and he simply nodded and motioned his hand to remind them to return to their stations.

  This small group would later become the Star Race – who would permanently live in their stations watching the beautiful world below.

  The Brutes and Ogres were furious and eager to capture the watchers and destroy them so they planned to climb up to the sky and destroy their homes and finish the remnant.

  They used their cursed magic to make platforms to climb, the watchers looked down and saw them building a long tower to ascend to their new home.

  The watchers were given new strength and so they built an invisible dome that prevented them from crossing, and they fired light arrows at them killing many brutes and ogres that had climbed up to the skies.

  The Brutes descended to a layer in the sky just above the earth where the arrows were weaker and built a dome that could withstand their arrows.

  This is where the Brutes formed their home, planning on how they will ascend and destroy the star Race not only because of the bad blood from earlier but now because of the arrows that consumed huge numbers of their best soldiers.

  The brutes would return to the earth later but for now, they were consumed with anger for what the star race had just done to them.

  Raphael, standing at the edge of the sky, looking down at the world he had loved and lost.

  Beside him, a handful of survivors, Watchers, humans, Star Race children huddled together, trembling.

  Below them, the world burned.

  And somewhere in that burning, a Thine boy would one day be born. A boy with a human mother's conscience and a giant father's blood. A boy who would carry the weight of this fall in ways no one could predict.

  But that was far in the future.

  For now, there was only grief.

  And light.

  And the long, slow work of beginning again.

  Part3: The new normal

  After the battles and the great departure back into the stars, the world below didn’t stay the same, it morphed into a new form. It took on a new shape.

  The Giants, the sons of the Brute and humans had different families that lived in different environments.

  Family 1: The Aquas

  These giants took the seas and in the land in them to be their domain.

  The first family of Aquas moved to an island to escape from the brutes and the ogre cruelty but over time gained mastery over the seas.

  They learnt how to swim and so their bodies adapted to their newfound talents.

  They started building ships with the rocks and wood they found on islands and the things they found within the sea and overtime built a massive fleet of ships that brought dread all over the earth. Their ships were extremely hard to destroy and were surprisingly fast despite their size.

  They started to take pride in their knowledge of the waters and starting to breed fear upon the creatures by demanding tributes from every sailor that passed by , every sailor , giant or not that refused to pay tributes were brutally attacked from all sides upon the sea.

  Family 2: The Forge

  They went to the mountains. The high places, the volcanic peaks, the lands where heat made life impossible for most creatures.

  The first family was running away from an brute invasion and managed to survive by hiding in the volcanic caves.

  Over time , They discovered great minerals and rocks and all sorts of materials and starting making tools to till the ground , cut down trees , kill animals , other giants and even Brutes.

  The Forge Giants looked at the new world and saw not tragedy but *opportunity*. The Brutes needed weapons. The Ogres needed tools. The surviving humans needed something to trade for protection.

  So the Forge built.

  Their mountains became fortresses of iron and flame. Their smiths worked day and night, hammering out blades that could pierce Brute hide, armor that could turn Ogre claws, tools that could rebuild what the contamination had destroyed.

  They made one rule, simple and absolute:

  “No one touches a Forge Giant.”

  They didn’t threaten anyone with this rule but breaching it meant no more Forge support: no more gear and no fixes. If you would Harm a Forge family, and every other Forge smith hears about it and your name goes on a list that never expires. Any forge that ignored this rule and served a banned visitor was thrown out of their domain.

  The Brutes, for all their power, respected this. The Ogres, for all their chaos, learned to trade rather than take.

  The Forge became the neutral ground. The Switzerland of the new world.

  But neutrality has its own cost. The Forge watched civilizations burn around them and did nothing. They traded with slavers and slave alike. They asked no questions.

  "We make things," their elders would say. "What you do with them is your own business."

  Family 3: The Agrion Family

  They took the fields. The fertile valleys, the river deltas, the places where things grew.

  They understood how to grow crops and how to kill them, they understood biological processes in ways that other giants didn’t know. They even understood aquatic life better than the Aquas. This is one of the reasons why the Aquas respected them

  They knew how to grow fields of corn in poisoned soil, how to make poison that can’t be cured, how to make cooling potions –The forges needed this to do their work smoothly.

  Their serums could make crops grow on stone. Their salts could preserve meat for years. Their potions could warm an Aqua scout surfacing from freezing depths. Their safely produced bio materials would fatten live stock and increase all kind of animal yields.

  And their other serums, the ones they didn't advertise, could do darker things:

  “Dull a human's conscience. Quiet an Ogre's rage. Make a Brute sleepy, pliable, suggestible.”

  The Agrion didn't use these often. They didn't need to. The threat was enough. Other giants knew they were dangerous but chose not to be.

  "We feed the world, “they said. "Without us, everyone starves."

  They were not wrong.

  But they were also not kind to humans. They studied humans like lab rats, fascinated by their fragile bodies and inexplicable consciences. They kept detailed records of how much pain a human could endure before breaking, how much hope they could carry before despair set in.

  Knowledge, to the Agrion, was its own harvest.

  Family 4 : Auguston family

  They built libraries. Great buildings of wood and stone that contained scrolls and books that cataloged everything that happened.

  They chose to be the ones everyone would run to for history , for data , for true knowledge , they knew they weren’t the strongest or the best at plant or animal life.

  They became historians, scientists, the philosophers. They recorded every Brute raid, every Ogre game, every human rebellion, every Giant treaty. They calculated the cycles of the red sky, predicted when the Brutes would descend and mapped the patterns of chaos.

  And they loved to debate.

  Oh, how they debated. The Augustons could argue about anything for days--the nature of the Unnamed, the purpose of conscience, the ethics of eating humans (they were the group that didn’t eat humans as much as the other Giants but this topic was interesting to them). Their libraries rang with the sound of passionate disagreement.

  They were the only Giants who treated certain humans as equals. If a human could debate well enough, could hold their own against Auguston logic, they were welcomed into the libraries, given scrolls to read, offered seats at the tables.

  But this wasn't kindness. It was curiosity.

  The Augustons didn't care about human suffering. They cared about human data. And if a human could provide interesting data, they would preserve that human the way they preserved any rare artifact.

  "To know all things," their motto ran, "is to be closer to the Unnamed than any worshipper."(they couldn’t come up with a name to the being that created the very first light and so they called him “Un named”)

  They believed this.They were probably wrong.

  These were the giants that roamed the earth and those were their domains.

  Now the humans, they also got affected and lived in 4 families

  Family 1: The Yellows

  They became archivists.

  Working alongside the Augustons, trading with the Agrions, serving as scribes and record-keepers for anyone who would pay. The Yellows understood that information was the only currency that never lost value.

  They documented everything: crop cycles, Brute raid patterns, Ogre game rules, Giant family histories.

  They bowed low when Brutes passed. They smiled when Ogres challenged them. They survived.

  And in secret, they remembered.

  Every weakness they observed, they recorded. Every pattern they noticed, they filed away. The Yellows were building something in the dark: a library of vulnerabilities, a catalog of ways to kill gods.

  They didn't know if anyone would ever use it.

  But they kept writing.

  Family two: The Pales

  They became empire builders.

  They built massive and sophiscated stone cities , had great technology in their lands and were more organized than the other families. The Augustons liked and favoured this family for their knowledge and wisdom , this favor also led to their rise above the other families.

  They were the only family that openly participated in slave trade , the others did it less openly and with more compassion than this folk.

  They reasoned boastfully saying “we are saving them from their poverty, do we not feed them? Do we not give their children a place to rest and teach them in our great libraries?”

  They enslaved other humans and even traded them with other giants, this was one of their leading sources of income.

  They traded with the Forge for weapons, then used those weapons to dominate their neighbors.

  However, this silly group complained constantly about Giant oppression. Suddenly ethics existed and it was wrong to own and oppress humans, yet this was their daily practice.

  They practiced their own oppression just as fiercely.

  The Pales had a gift for hypocrisy. Their philosophers wrote long treatises about freedom while their armies crushed free tribes.

  But they survived. They thrived. They built.

  And in their great stone cities, they waited for the day when humans would rise.

  (They didn't realize that day would never come as long as they kept rising over each other.)

  Family 3: The Darks

  These were the ultimate hustlers, they could endure extreme conditions, face difficult opponents and survive in many parts the other families couldn’t dare to step in (They often lived in areas even more dangerous than the reds)

  They also knew how to use magic and spells.

  They lived in the hardest lands--the borders of Ogre territory, the edges of Brute raiding paths, the places no one else wanted. They had no libraries, no cities, no armies.

  They had resilience.

  The Darks learned to read the red sky before it changed. They learned which Ogre games could be won, and which were death. They learned that the Unnamed still heard prayers, even when He didn't answer.

  Some of them--the Some people, they called themselves kept the old faith alive. They whispered the Unnamed's name in caves and hidden meetings. They taught their children that the Watchers' fall wasn't the end, that purity still existed somewhere, that the Star Race still watched from above.

  The other human families thought the Darks were foolish. Hopeful. Deluded.

  They believed the Un named had rejected the world and creatures he had created, speaking of the Un named being compassionate and merciful stirred anger in the other families against the darks.

  They banished and banned them from entering their areas(but they are hustlers IFYKYK ??)

  But the Darks kept surviving. Kept believing.

  Kept waiting.

  Family 4: The Reds

  These were the great warriors of the world. Masters at all kinds of combat and were actually quite a threat to giants , ogres and surprisingly even brutes.

  They also had a deep connection to animals and practiced some magic as well.

  The Reds lived in the mountains, the deep forests, the places where a Giant's size was a liability. They hunted Brutes when they could. They killed Ogres when they dared. They refused to bow, refused to worship, refused to accept that gods existed anywhere but in their own arms.

  They had the lowest population of any human family because they lived very dangerous lives not knowing which day was their last.

  Babies learnt combat live and while on the move with their parents.

  The Reds didn't build cities or libraries. They built traps to capture different creatures. They trained animals as scouts--creatures that could smell a red sky before it appeared, that could warn of Brute raids hours in advance. They moved constantly, never staying in one place long enough to be caught.

  They were not kind. They were not gentle. They were survivors of the hardest kind.

  Now these were the human families.

  Now let’s find out what the Brutes are up to.

  They lived in a layer just above the earth but below the pure watchers.

  They had not changed. They would not change. The curse had hardened them into something permanent, something beyond redemption.

  Every few years, when the alignment was right, they descended. Fourteen days of chaos. Fourteen days of taking whatever they wanted--gold, food, women, men, children. Fourteen days of reminding the lower lands who really ruled.

  They didn't need the resources. They didn't need the slaves. They did it for the love of the game.

  They would take this time to visit their shrines and demand sacrifices, after a few days in their shrines, they would move around the other human areas demanding worship and occasionally clashing very violently with Ogres and Reds.

  How about the Ogres? What were they up to? You may ask.

  Well, they wandered all over the world.

  No homes. No families. No structure beyond the chaos of their own bloodlines. Ogres were distinguished only by who they came from--Brute and animal, Brute and Giant, Ogre and Ogre, a thousand permutations of corruption.

  They played their games.

  "Do you want to play a game with me?"

  If you said no, you died.

  If you said yes, you played. And if you lost--you almost always lost--you became theirs. Slave. Toy. Meal. Mate.

  The Ogres spread through the lands like a sickness, leaving wreckage in their wake. They could speak any language after hearing it once. They could learn any magic their Brute parents knew.

  They bore a unique intelligence, not the kind of the Augustons to debate great things or the Pales to build or Yellows to record but a unique chaos driven rationale that they used to come up ways to spread their chaos.

  Now let’s take our focus on a Giant family I forgot to tell you about on purpose: The Thines, because they are a family of Giants that mixed so much with humans that they looked like really tall humans. Because of their intermarrying, their appearance looked mostly human and because of this , they were rejected by their Giant brethren.

  This group lived in the dark corners of the streets of the other giant cities, human land outskirts but over time , they started to over crowd and made the first slum , areas flooded with thines on the border of giant lands and human lands.

  Thines were master survivors and their life was rough.

  From birth , thines had three options:

  Learn the art of theft, work the cracks and sell what you could grab.

  Become an Assassin, offer yourself as a hit man for whichever target you may have.

  Become a servant to your more pure giants , break your back in some Giant palace if you were lucky enough to be chosen

  Most Thines chose the first two.

  The Thine slums had a community bounty that run everything.

  Every week, representatives from the Giant families came to the town halls. They posted bounties--bring this, kill that, retrieve this stolen artifact, capture that runaway slave. The bounties had star ratings. One star was easy, low pay. Five stars was suicide, but if you survived, you never worked again for the pay was too thick.

  Thines competed for these bounties like their lives depended on them.

  Because they did.

  The more stars you earned, the better bounties you could access. The better bounties you accessed, the more you could feed your belly.

  Thines who failed bounties were looked down on and disregarded in the society.

  On weekends, the Thines spent what they earned.

  Beer. Human women. Captured Ogre or Giant slaves--the unfortunate females who'd been subdued in raids, passed from hand to hand, used until they broke.

  The Thines called these gatherings “freak offs”.

  They gathered in large numbers for freak offs and would insult and scoff at the other giants and mock a concept they found in humans “Compassion”.

  Since Thines were about the same size as humans, they were able to interact and communicate more naturally with humans. They knew their languages and even some of their customs.

  They gathered some of their books and saw stories about compassion, this was funny to them because they thought only about themselves, showing kindness to other than their raid partners didn’t make sense.

  In fact if the raid or the bounty required betrayal, they didn’t think twice about it and every one of them knew they couldn’t trust even their own flesh and blood. They lived knowing they could be betrayed in an instant for more stars so they worked as efficiently as they could.

  Some of the others they found funny in human books were Mercy: sparing someone that has caused you harm or someone you can easily destroy; this was another joke they liked to make, literally calling someone merciful was an insult and could even lead to a fight.

  Forgiveness: Letting someone go for hurting you. Whatever you were if you hurt a thine and he got a chance for revenge, consider forgiveness an impossibility.

  Empathy was too but by now, you see why it would be.

  There was a particular family that stood out, the house of Tazar.

  Tazar was a highly respected thief that stole on contracts, he didn’t compete for stars.

  He was hired for top tier and dangerous theft operations.

  He gained this reputation over many years of notoriously raiding human lands to acquire slaves, selling well guarded Auguston scrolls and stealing Agrion potions to sell to different giants at discount prices.

  He was wanted in a strange sense, everyone wanted to punish him for stealing from them but at the same time, they needed him when the other thines couldn’t perform a certain raid. He was in a peculiar hated but needed position. (Another reason he didn’t like going on bounties is because if he went without a contract and any other Giant saw this , he would be in a tricky position so he worked when there were legal papers promising him stay and access through the customer’s lands, even breaching these papers would be a shame to the customer, official papers were meant to be respected because they were signed with blood.)

  He built a home that was better than the other Thine homes, his looked more stable and solid like it could withstand the rain.

  Tazar had 4 sons , 3 sons were born of his first Thine wife (who died on a bounty -another reason Tazar doesn’t like bounties)He often discourages his giant born sons not to take bounties but to study with him and start taking contracts with him but they wanted to go to the freak offs and to gain glory in the Thine slums.

  His 4th son, his youngest son was born of a human woman , Debra . His name was Oak.

  Debra didn’t walk to the thine slums looking for a mate or have her father give her out as a bride to Tazar.

  She was part of the war booty of one of the raids Tazar led against the Darks.

  The other Thines wanted to eat Debra but Tazar appreciated her beauty, Debra was one of the most beautiful women in her village.

  He refused the other thines from seizing her and took her for himself, they tried to threaten him saying “they would tell the others”, he replied saying “I know of your dirty works as well, speak and I shall speak too” They rumbled and let Tazar take her.

  Debra was obviously afraid not knowing what to expect because she didn’t understand the language of the thines. He saw that she was dirty, he brought her water and a cloth and began to clean her up .

  She asked him, “What are you going to do to me?”

  He replied” Keep you. You are mine”

  She cried bitterly on her new bed and He just stood and watched her as she did that ,he was marveling at this , he was hearing things like “I miss my husband, my brothers , my sisters “ He didn’t understand what she meant not because he didn’t know her language but because this way of thinking was very strange to the Thines. Wives/Husbands were for pleasure and for making warriors to help in raids. Brothers or sisters were for raiding with and any of them (even yourself) could betray each other in an instant and move on, The laughs and the teamwork weren’t to bond but to be effective for the next star.

  So, he would bring her food to eat , she would refuse to eat.

  He didn’t want to stop looking at her, she looked appealing to Him, not appealing for food but for something he didn’t understand, he just liked looking at her hair, her clothes and her body structure.

  He ate women actually, they were his best dish but this one struck him in a way he couldn’t explain, and he didn’t even desire to hurt her.

  He then said, “Please Eat or you will die of hunger.”

  She replied, “I am already dead. Please let me be.”

  He sat on the bed with her, touched and saw she was trembling. He thought maybe she doesn’t like our food, let me bring food from her village.

  He went to the dark village he raided and looked through some of their food reserves to find food she was familiar with.

  She refused this food and cried even more.

  His sons grew weary of this and asked their father to eat or kill her but spoke in her language (They wanted to frighten her into silence by using her tongue.)

  “Let them be. I don’t know what is wrong with her, I think she is just hungry”

  They said, “Then feed her”, they said.

  He said, “she refused to eat.”

  Otamaz(2nd born) said, why don’t we just eat her? She looks tasty.

  He refused and said, “She didn’t look like food to me or you.”

  The elder (Funi) asked as a joke, “Is this who you want to replace mom with?

  He got angry and said, “pay respect to your mothers name and stormed out.”

  Aiden (3rd born) spoke just as his father was getting into his room, maybe read their books, maybe you will find out what is bothering her. He didn’t respond to him; he went to his library and looked for some books from her land and went with some of them to his room.

  Debra was hearing all of this because she would switch from her language to theirs.

  When he came back into the room with the books, she spoke “why do you care? Why don’t you eat me while I am still fresh”, he said “I don’t know why but I don’t want to”

  She was still scared but she came closer to him and asked if he could pass the plate of food, he brought her, He did and she ate.

  She looked amazing in his eyes as she ate. He loved her image even more.

  She was filled with energy and so she stood up and asked him if he wanted to read the books he brought and he nodded.

  She offered to help him read, he was a bit hesitant because he had never been taught how to read by anyone, but he just allowed anyway.

  He handed her a book, and she explained her people’s history, why they still believed in the un named and their customs.

  He hadn’t heard these things before, he didn’t have what to say so he said to her “Enough, I want to sleep” she closed the book, he turned his back and went to sleep.

  They began to talk more and more, and he began to understand some of her reactions, like when he would sleep without talking to her she would give shorter responses so he started speaking to her even when he came back tired from raids.

  He noticed how she would become happier when he brought items that she read about like the fruits she read from her story books, the clothes she mentioned liking (Tazar stole these from the Pales family and said he bought them instead)

  All of this happened and she grew to be fond of him and one night he came back home, and she was unclothed and said to him “Please yourself”

  He didn’t understand what this meant.

  He didn’t know what she wanted.

  She started to move in a seductive way, He then got to know what she meant, and he wondered if she could take it considering her size.

  And so, they did.

  In a couple of days, she began to get a big belly.

  He didn’t understand what it meant so she told him she was pregnant, he laughed at this and nodded (he found it strange how her body had changed in appearance in a couple of days), Thine females didn’t swell on their bellies when pregnant, but it wasn’t as big as human females.

  She began vomiting and doing all that pregnant women do. Her mood was hot, she was often crying without any reason, eating more than she did before and sleeping more.

  When the 5th month came, she began to scream louder than she had ever done.

  He didn’t know what to do, he sent his youngest son at that time to ask humans why this was happening and what to do to help her. He explained the situation to his son and told them to send him a midwife (He learnt this word in some of the books he read with her).

  The youngest son was more friendly than the his two elder brothers was still very hostile, He began to negotiating how much money he would pay for their services but they began talking about his father attacked one of their villages and they weren’t willing to help him , he got angry at hearing this so he threatened to destroy a food reserve of darks if they didn’t provide a midwife for him to take back with him to his house. (He was also afraid of what his father would do if he returned empty handed)

  The village provided a mid-wife to keep peace and demanded a blood contract to promise they wouldn’t hurt their mid-wife but return safely, he took it and left.

  When he reached the borders, the thines wanted to have a snack of the midwife but the blood contract and a sword that bore Tazar’s symbol was enough to frighten them not to touch his son or his companion.

  He returned home with the midwife.

  The midwife helped her birth to a son, She suggested the name Oak as a blessing of resilience.

  The midwife tried to talk Debra to come back home but she said she was comfortable where she was, she also confessed this baby is a son of a thine which was like a huge sin in their community so for her to go back would only make her an outcast.

  She also said, Tazar wouldn’t let her and without his protection, the other thines (maybe even his sons would have their way with her). She handed her a cloth to tell her father she was alive and safe, but she was unable to come back home.

  The midwife went silent, cleaned up and then prepared to leave.

  Tazar gave her agreed wage and added some more money (and even stolen loot he stole the from the pales) the mid wife was pleased and started to wonder if thines could actually have a heart.

  Aiden and the midwife started the journey back to her land.

  They walked and Aiden asked her what she wad doing in his father’s room she told him the truth, and he said, “you are lucky I fear my father” and never said another word to her and led her back safely.

  Oak grew up with 3 huge, tank-built brothers who were pure thines unlike him. He worked on bounties and went on contracts with his father.

  His Early life, experiences with his brothers and the contracts plus times he had with his father will be spoken about in Chapter 2.

  TO BE CONTINUED.