Ashes of the First Flame

The flame always dies. Someone always rekindles it. Until no one can.

In the beginning there was only grey: a world without form, without warmth, without distinction between day and night. Then some found souls in the ash, and with them, the Primordial Flames. Nito found the Flame of Death. The Witch of the Left found the Flame of Chaos. The Alliance of the Ancient Dragons found the Flame of Disparity. And Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, found the Flame of the Sun. With the power of the flames, the Lords ruled the Rings of Fire for millennia. They built empires that lasted so long they began to seem inevitable. They built gods. They invented meaning. Then everything began to rot. The Rings of Fire always cool. The First Flame fades and the cycle demands that someone rekindle it with their own soul — or that darkness replace fire as the condition of the world. Gwyn chose the former and immolated himself in the First Flame ages ago. Since then, successive Lords of Ash have done the same, and the cycle repeats, and the flame grows weaker with each turn, and the world grows older and greyer, and the Undead who cannot permanently die wander the ruins remembering there was something they were supposed to do but unable to remember exactly what it was.