Chapter 1: 00. Prologue: The Beginning Pt. I

Before they came, everything was a specific kind of normal. No Origins, no monsters. Simple wars amongst humans alone with everyone existing and surviving in a dog-eat-dog world. There was a fragile balance, a status quo that had never been disturbed by the powers that used to be.

Until two-hundred years ago, that is.

Two centuries ago, mysterious stone-looking structures suddenly showed up on Earth. There were one-thousand of these mammoth formations, all of which were placed in the middle of the one-thousand most densely populated cities in the world. From what used to be Beijing, Tokyo, and Shanghai, all the way to New York, Toronto, and London, it seemed that all the epicenters of human life had one of these structures at their core.

Each of the formations were gargantuan, about the width of half a football field and twenty storeys tall. All of them had strange writing carved onto each of its surfaces, endless lines of script showing a language never before seen on Earth. Some of the structures were of different colors as well, some beige, some bone white, some black, some gray, and some a bright cobalt blue. The only one that differed was the one located in what used to be Los Angeles, which became a part of the present-day city of Halcyon. It was a bright crimson red and its different features made the entire world even more weary of it, relative to how worried they were already with the other formations.

The morning after the discovery of the monuments, that was when they came down and spoke to the human race. They, who put the monuments there, began to speak. Taking shape in the form of a mosaic of bright lights that covered the entire sky, they spoke in their true voices and language, which was somehow understood by all humans.

“Since your creation, we have observed. For millennia, we have fought. On this day, we will be one.” Their voices were a contradictory melodic cacophony, a screeching choir whose words were recorded for the coming generations to come.

One thing was certain: whatever they were to ask for was not a request or demand. It was a simple fact, a statement of what they were going to do.

The voices and lights belonging to the divine beings that spoke that day came to be known as the Empyreans. Nobody could really explain them, but humans settled with the closest pre-existing idea that they already had: they considered the Empyreans to be like actual gods and deities. The comparison wasn’t too far off the mark. The Empyreans were powerful and each one had unique abilities and niches. Their celestial forms existed in another realm, difficult to comprehend and impossible to see by human minds and eyes.

The Empyreans gave humans two missions. The first was to give them amusement. After millions of years of doing their duty of keeping the essential balance, the Empyreans had gotten bored. They had become fatigued and spiritless from fighting monsters, protecting the universe, and fighting each other. When one high-ranking and powerful Empyrean proposed that the divine beings use humans as an equivalent to fighting and hunting dogs, it seemed only natural that this was the path they would go down. Second was to kill the monsters that would come out of the monuments, which they called the Origins. In the first year of the harsh and hostile coexistence of humans and Empyreans, hundreds of millions of people perished when the Origins were activated.

Monsters and beasts of all kinds emerged out of the glowing portals that were housed by the mysterious angular structures. Though guns effectively wiped out the weaker low-level monsters, human weapons could do nothing to the eldritch and malevolent beasts, of which resembled mythical creatures such as dragons and giant predators that soon came after.

People attempted to destroy the Origins to halt the emergence of monsters, but found that no matter the weapon, the monuments were indestructible. Empyreans had attempted to do the same eons ago but their efforts were futile and fruitless as well. Their cocky hostility worsened their conditions when they angered the more powerful and overwhelming beasts.

Cities, countries, and all of human society as a whole came to the brink of destruction. Buildings could be rebuilt, but the spirit of the people was in a dire state. Humans came to live in fear, hopeless of the future which caused a morale so low that many chose death over fighting for survival willingly.

Change didn’t come until one of the most powerful and ancient Empyreans, the same one that pushed for mankind to be used as mere pawns, felt a deep regret and dishonor towards what he had suggested. Due to the immense guilt and remorse that he and all the other Empyreans felt from seeing the small and hopeless humans die, either through the beasts that emerged through the Origins or by their own hands to prevent suffering, they began to think of a solution.

During the millennium that the celestial beings observed mankind, they came to be fond of them and saw them as more than just simple creatures. Sure, they attempted to use them as tools, but they valued humans because they were durable and capable. Humans were also interesting. Different from their base primal instincts, but never truly belonging to the realm of the divine, the Empyreans were enamored with their perfectly flawed and strong presence.

As entities whose existences resembled those of the gods that the humans so thoroughly cherished, the Empyreans had never expected this to be an outcome; where their presence would be so repulsed and creating catastrophes so terrible it would cause a potential extinction of one of the greatest creatures in the universe. They had overestimated the humans. They had made the mistake of creating an idealized plaything. That the Empyreans had made the most inhuman vision of humans: they saw them as perfect beings.

Empyreans hearkened to the cries of mercy of mankind. For a decade, while the people and their civilizations recuperated, the celestials showed and taught them how to fight the weaker monsters. When larger and more hostile beasts materialized from the Origins, the divine themselves would take on tangible forms to fight the beasts for them. Through that collaboration and nurturing intervention, the celestial beings were able to regain some of mankind’s trust… but not all of it. The Empyreans weren’t able to gain the favor of the humans, nor were they able to create change that was enough to turn the ideas and stigma against the celestials positively.

The faction of the divine knew it was too late to close the Origins, for it would have taken another thousand years to seal and destroy them all. Instead, to remedy the hostility and make up for their wrongdoings, the celestials posited an alternative solution that would allow for humans to survive and coexist in a beneficial and more permanent manner with the Empyreans. The Empyreans, as much as they wanted change, were also imperfect themselves. They were selfish in that they still wanted to keep their contact with their beloved humankind, addicted after their first taste of being with those they have put on a pedestal for thousands of years.

To ask for forgiveness from the humans of the planet they barged into, to give them a fighting chance at survival, the Empyreans proposed the Champion Contracts.

You are reading story Genesis: Para Bellum at novel35.com

You can find story with these keywords: Genesis: Para Bellum, Read Genesis: Para Bellum, Genesis: Para Bellum novel, Genesis: Para Bellum book, Genesis: Para Bellum story, Genesis: Para Bellum full, Genesis: Para Bellum Latest Chapter