The Dawn

The age before shape — before names, maps, or time dared call itself time. There was only drift. Mountains walked like beasts, rivers unspooled into the sky, the wind forgot where it came from. The Prime Beings roamed this primal dream: hunger, storm, ash, birth — forces, not gods. Out of the Dawn came the First Architects, who pinned the world down through the Weaving and produced the First Map, the Pattern, and ultimately the Everloop. The Dawn is the world before the Pattern began telling it what to be. Vaultkeepers say the Fray is the Dawn returning through the cracks in the Weaving; the Luminous Fold prefers a more orderly account. Both are partly right, which is the Knowledge Fragmentation Principle in action.