Chapter 1

They wanted to scream.
  It hurt. It hurt. It hurt-
  They shivered through the pain, moments followed by hours, days, years, centuries, millennia- all piled on top of each other, endless, timeless, stringing the universe together in it's cruel grasp. They would have cried, if they could.
  Eventually it faded, that stitching agony, leaving them floating. Eventually they forgot what it felt like to feel pain. To feel anything. So they floated.
  But then something caught their attention. They startled, spreading their awareness to know what was going on, that surrounding power closing in on all sides-
  There were others. Others! They didn't even know that was possible, there being others like them. They weren't alone. They untensed, in as much as they could without tether to matter.-
  It didn't last long.
  The others were trapped.
  Their souls were strapped to flesh-bodies, compressed into such tiny forms, painfully cramped. What had happened to these people? Should they help? Oh, something was wrong, they knew it- they knew it-
  One of the beings opened their mouth and said something. They couldn't hear it, of course, but it brought their focus back to the group. Nothing could be heard in the void. They shifted closer to that one and tried telling them that.
  Instead, they were wrenched down. The ground hit them hard. It shouldn't have been able to. They should have passed right through it.
  The first thing they heard was concerned murmuring. Something in the air stank, like someone had thrown up, and the grass underneath their back was starting to itch at the open skin on their neck- no, no, no no no no-
  They shot up, their body shot up- they had a body- what- no- they wanted to throw up too, their body gagged. Their skin pulled tight, stringing them together. They hunched forward where they sat and curled more and more into themself, bringing arms they shouldn't have up around their head to drown out the sounds they couldn't even make out.
  "Order! You didn't need to do that!" someone shouted, right next to them. They flinched. The voice was familiar. "Oh, sorry, Chaos-" the voice apologized quieter to them.
  "That's not Chaos." Someone else murmured.
  "Whatever it is, it shouldn't be here," another spat. "Where is Insanity? What of Chaos?" There was a pause, and then hands were wrenching them to their feet. They stumbled, disoriented yet again, arms shooting out for balance but doing nothing of help. The hands stayed and gripped their shirt tightly, and the person hissed again, "Where is Chaos?" They shrinked under the tightly strung glare.
  "Order!" The first voice yelled, and the owner of the voice shoved themself between Order and them. They watched Order, hair tightly tied back, and icy glare turned on this new saviour, tower over the other.
  "Peace," Order replied.
  Peace stepped forward and said something quietly to Order, whose glare softened and turned concerned, then solidified to something along the lines of cold anger.
  While Peace talked, the being that had floated swayed, standing up like that. They rubbed their eyes, blinked, bleary and tired like nothing they'd experienced. They wanted to go back to floating. They missed the void.
  Peace turned around and clapped their hands together.
  They looked up at Peace, who waited a second. Peace was warm. Long curly hair, freckles along their cheeks, soft roundness all over. Peace looked gentle. Kind.
  They looked over Peace's shoulder to see the two remaining others they forgot the names of. A white ghost looked back at them sadly, and the other, covered in creeping vines and warped fungi, picked destructively at a bright yellow flower in their hands.
  They opened their mouth to speak, and cringed when all that came out was a crack. They tried again, and the words fell out in rough scratchy clumps. "What- happened?"
  Peace paused. Something twisted in pain on their face, but it smoothed out so fast they could barely notice it once a strained smile replaced it. "Well, you-"
  "You killed one of your siblings, that's what," Order interrupted, pushing past Peace. "Life, Death, go back to work. Peace, you too," they commanded.
  Of the two that had stood to the side, the one covered in green nodded and disappeared. The yellow flower's tattered remains floated gently to the ground.
  The one that looked like a ghost, though, hesitated. "I should probably stay and make sure whichever one died can be taken care of-"
  "Death! Do it later. Leave," Order snapped. They twisted to Peace. "You too."
  Peace opened their mouth to complain, but Order raised a brow and Peace's shoulders untensed. They gave up. They left, too.
  And then it was them, and Order, left alone in the field of grass. They didn't want to meet eyes with Order. They examined their surrounds instead.
  The grass was perfectly cut. Each blade the same height, width, distance apart- unnaturally so. The skies were slightly better, the colours melded together strictly yet the clouds roamed freely. They turned their eyes to the horizon but found nothing but more sky. An island?
  "Insanity, then?" Order drawled. Their eyes turned slowly to meet with Order's. Order stood straight as the perfect and dead-feeling grass that crushed easily under their boot. "Surely you can say something for yourself." The tone was more relaxed than earlier, but held an edge. Like Order waited for something to snap.
  They tilted their head. "...I'm unsure. What happened?"
  "I already told you." Order walked closer, forcing them to strain their neck higher and higher to watch the other's sharp face.
  "I killed- who did I kill?"
  "That's the question, and you have the answer in answering mine- what did you do?"
  Someone else spoke up. "No, the question should be, are they Insanity, or Chaos, or a new sibling?"
  Order glared over their shoulder, and they turned around to see Death, white hair much like their own pooling around their concerned face. But Death wasn't watching Order glare, Death was watching them. The empty eyes they stared into showed them depths even the void couldn't reach.
  They struggled to find an answer, inside that little head of theirs. They were sure they had memories. They were sure of it. But it was- muddled. The memories weren't theirs.
  They remembered nights, and nights, and some even more. Endless black stretched out beneath them, a sandbox to play with, filled with shoddy castles that looked great in the moment but stood ready to be kicked over.
  They remembered days, and days, and a little more, though not as many as the nights. Staring up at empty skies and questioning what they even were. Pained screams from every creature they passed for even a moment, the chorus of agony and depression that suckled as a parasite to a clam.
  There was only one answer, but it came out as a question. "Both?"
  Death smiled, warmly.
  "I told you to leave," Order said tightly to Death. Death nodded, but turned to Lumin once more.
  "What do we call you, then?" Death asked.
  They blanked. A name? The void didn't need a name, only title. But they weren't the void, as much they felt the tugging backwards to the dark, as much they hated the flesh they filled. So they made a name up, right on the spot, which felt right to do. Randomness had always helped- not them, someone else. But they knew for certain it now cared for them.
  They spoke their name to the two gods in front of them, one angry, one sad, both watching in silence.
  "Lumin."


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