Creation of Arda

[Esraa_Saeed]

The First Will
Before light was named,
before darkness was feared,
there was Ki.
Not a god bound by form,
nor a ruler seated above creation,
but the First Will-
the force from which intention, balance, and judgment emerged.
Ki was not light.
Light was balance.
Ki was not darkness.
Darkness was correction.
Both were expressions of the same origin,
shifting only when purpose demanded it.
When Ki chose to bring existence into motion,
it was not mercy that compelled him,
but necessity.
Stillness could not endure.
The Birth of the Nai
From his own essence, Ki shaped seven entities.
They were not children.
They were not servants.
They were conduits.
Through them, Ki's will could flow without direct descent.
Through them, creation could be guided, restrained, and corrected.
They were called the Nai.
They possessed no fixed form.
Their nature shifted freely between clarity and shadow-
light when creation was required,
darkness when restraint became necessary.
They required no worship.
No sustenance.
No devotion.
They existed solely to translate intention into reality.
The Shaping of Arda
Together, Ki and the Nai shaped Arda-
a realm where energy would no longer drift endlessly,
but take weight.
A world where action left memory,
and consequence did not fade.
Arda was not created to be peaceful.
It was created to be stable.
The Authority of the Seas
To shape life within this realm,
Ki entrusted the Seas with creation.
Not as subordinates,
but because the Seas alone could create endlessly
without attachment,
without memory,
without regret.
They began simply.
Algae.
Fish.
Predators.
Giants of the deep.
Life fed upon life,
and balance endured.
For ages, Arda held.
Serima, the Unreturning
But the Seas, unburdened by restraint,
created something that could not be returned.
From depths untouched by the Nai,
from power that bypassed intention,
they shaped Serima.
A colossal serpent with three heads.

 

[pmmg]

A suitable origin story.

But this is background noise to the story that will go on in this world. Does it matter to those in the story who these beings are?

 

[Fyri]

How dare you tempt me with a discussion about the Silmarillion and the creation of Arda and not give me the song that the Valar sang to put the universe into existence. *grumpy face*

But yeah, you may want to seek a different name for your world, as "Arda" is the "Earth" in Lord of the Rings and nerdy fans like me may get confused or feisty about it. XD

Though, I am curious why "stillness could not endure" here. Makes me think that Ki is less of a "force" and far more humanistic in their need to do something just cause. I'm also unsure how I feel about the name "Seas" for your entities. That really confused me as well until I figured out they were entities and not...bodies of water?

Serima is interesting. Are we sure the purpose of this story isn't more about that creature? Perhaps they are important to the story?

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

continuation:
She did not hunt to survive.
She devoured to erase.
Serima mimicked the forms of other creatures,
luring them into extinction.
The oceans emptied.
Balance collapsed.
And the echo of annihilation reached even Ki.
The Descent and the Wound
For the first time since existence began,
Ki did not act through the Nai.
He descended.
From his own essence, he forged a weapon-
a trident, three-pronged and absolute.
Each blade carried a law:
• Annihilation
• Judgment
• Balance
Ki struck Serima.
The seas convulsed.
The serpent screamed as divine force tore through her scales.
But the Seas rose in fury.
Waves became weapons.
Currents became chains.
They sought to crush Ki beneath infinite pressure.
Bound and sinking,
Ki did not strike Serima again.
Instead, he drove the trident downward.
It pierced the ocean floor.
The seabed fractured.
Stone surged upward.
Mountains erupted from the depths,
lifting Ki toward the surface.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

How dare you tempt me with a discussion about the Silmarillion and the creation of Arda and not give me the song that the Valar sang to put the universe into existence. *grumpy face*

But yeah, you may want to seek a different name for your world, as "Arda" is the "Earth" in Lord of the Rings and nerdy fans like me may get confused or feisty about it. XD

Though, I am curious why "stillness could not endure" here. Makes me think that Ki is less of a "force" and far more humanistic in their need to do something just cause. I'm also unsure how I feel about the name "Seas" for your entities. That really confused me as well until I figured out they were entities and not...bodies of water?

Serima is interesting. Are we sure the purpose of this story isn't more about that creature? Perhaps they are important to the story?

Ki is not human, but will itself cannot remain idle. Creation was not mercy — it was inevitability.

Creation of Arda | Royal Road

Note: The "Cuneiform Language" appearing in the text is fictional and part of the world’s lore.

www.royalroad.com

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

continuation
Thus, land was born-
not as a blessing,
but as a division.
Serima was not slain.
She was wounded and bound,
entombed in the deep,
sleeping,
waiting.
From that moment, existence carried a fault.
The land did not emerge empty.
It breathed.
Stone carried memory.
Roots carried echoes of the depths.
Ki knew the land could not be left without awareness.
From the living energy of vegetation-
not flesh, not clay, not blood-
he shaped the Zeta.
They were small in stature,
green of skin,
hairless by design.
Their bodies bore no organs for consumption.
They did not eat.
They did not hunt.
They did not harvest.
They lived by absorbing plant energy-
not by draining it,
but by harmonizing with it.
Where the Zeta walked, forests did not thin.
Where they rested, soil did not weaken.
They lived long lives,
ended quietly,
and reproduced without excess.
They followed a single law:
That which disrupts balance must not be allowed to persist.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
At the heart of Arda stood the ancient forest that would later be known as Gnarled.
It was not governed.
Not worshiped.
Not claimed.
It decided.
The Zeta lived within it, not as masters, but as extensions of its will.
The Arrival of Humanity
As centuries passed, the forest grew dense.
Animal life multiplied.
The land began to strain beneath abundance.
Ki acted again.
He created humans-
not as rulers,
not as servants,
but as a corrective force.
Humans consumed.
They altered land to survive.
They adapted by taking.
They were placed in the heart of Arda, near-but not within-the forest.
At first, balance held.
Humans and Zeta shared territory, knowledge, and restraint.
Then restraint failed.
Humans cut more than they needed.
Hunted beyond replenishment.
Cleared land not for survival, but for growth.
The Zeta sensed the imbalance before it was visible.
Warnings were sent-not as threats, but as signs.
Humans ignored them.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
When damage became irreversible,
Samo, King of the Zeta, chose war.
He was not a conqueror.
He was a warden of continuation.
The conflict was ordered to take place in the Forests of Mirma,
where numbers meant nothing
and brute force failed.
Humans entered with steel and fire.
The Zeta entered with the land.
Roots shifted beneath advancing armies.
Paths closed behind them.
The forest exhausted rather than slaughtered.
The Zeta struck briefly and vanished.
They broke will, not bodies.
And humanity collapsed-
not from weakness,
but because Mirma was never theirs.
The Black Ink Boundary
Victory was insufficient.
If humans returned, war would repeat.
If peace relied on promises, it would be broken.
So the final measure was taken.
Along the forest's edge, the Zeta inscribed symbols using black living ink-
neither spell nor poison.
An autonomous system of natural governance.
The symbols answered only to Arda itself.
Any human who crossed them was not punished-
they were removed,
as if nature concluded they no longer belonged within the equation of survival.
No hatred.
No mercy.
Only function.
The forests of the Zeta were sealed.
Separation
The Zeta withdrew into the depths of the forest.
They knew humanity would suffer beyond the boundary.
But they also knew that allowing further encroachment
would doom everything.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
Samo watched the ink dry upon the earth,
aware that this necessary act
had fractured the future.
Balance, once enforced, leaves scars.
And through this scar,
all the darkness yet to come would enter Arda.

The Starvation of Humanity and the Descent of the Nai
After the forests of Zeta were sealed by the Black Ink,
humanity was not merely cut off from land-
it was severed from source.
Beyond the forest boundaries, vegetation withered slowly.
Trees did not die all at once.
They simply stopped giving.
The soil no longer carried life,
and the seasons failed to answer as they once had.
At first, humans believed the change was temporary.
Then animals began to die.
Then small rivers dried.
Then hunger came-
not as sudden pain,
but as a constant state of absence.
They consumed what remained.
Then they consumed seed.
Then they consumed what was never meant to be eaten.
And when nothing was left to take from the earth,
they turned their eyes to the sky.
They did not pray to Ki.
Ki was distant.
Silent.
He was not answered when balance was broken by choice.
Instead, they called upon the Nai.
In the early nights, the prayers were simple:
pleas for survival,
offerings of words,
hopes whispered into darkness.
No answer came.
As years passed, the prayers changed.
They grew louder.
More desperate.
Shaped by fear rather than faith.
And in places of ruin-
among collapsed temples,
along the sealed edges of the forest,
within cities hollowed by starvation-
something else began to appear.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
Omen-Beings (The Nerdr)
They did not descend from the sky.
They were not summoned by ritual.
They formed.
From energy drained too many times and never returned.
From fear repeated until it lost meaning.
From supplication emptied of will.
They were called the Nerdr.
Seven in number.
They did not move.
They did not speak.
They did not attack.
Skeletal figures draped in long, dark garments,
like remnants of rituals that had never been completed.
Their eyes were hollow,
yet their presence was heavy.
They stood at the edges of cities.
Upon barren hills.
Before the doors of broken temples.
They watched.
Some believed them to be gods.
Others called them harbingers of death.
But the Nerdr did nothing.
Their existence alone was the message:
What comes next cannot be stopped.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
As starvation deepened,
and fear thickened the air,
the inevitable occurred.
The Descent of the Nai
On a night without stars,
the air split.
The Nai did not arrive in light.
They did not descend in radiance.
They came with weight,
as though the world itself resisted their presence.
Their forms held no fixed features.
Their eyes were entirely black-
closed to both light and darkness.
They did not ask for worship.
They did not linger in speech.
They said only to humanity:
"Stop."
"What you are doing fractures balance."
"Return to the boundaries."
Humanity knelt.
They wept.
They swore obedience.
But their eyes were not honest.
They asked the Nai to remain.
They claimed they wished to learn.
To understand the land.
To restore balance.
The Nai-
who had not yet learned deception-
agreed.
And with their staying,
everything changed.
The Rituals
At first came offerings:
gold,
silver,
precious stones.
Then monuments were raised.
Altars.
Symbols.
In time, the offerings no longer sufficed.
The rituals darkened.
They grew deeper.
More humiliating.
Human women were brought naked,
bowed and broken,
calling the Nai to touch,
to merge,
to unite.
This was not devotion.
It was an attempt to extract power.
And in that moment-
the Nerdr vanished.
Not because they fled,
but because they had fulfilled their purpose.
After the Omen
After the Nai descended and the rituals began,
rain returned.
The land bloomed.
Animals were restored.
But balance did not.
What returned was not life,
but a distorted system.
And from the womb of that distortion,
something was born.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
The Tainted.
The Tainted were creatures carrying the genes of the
Nai and humans, but their skin resembled that of serpents. As a result, ." They had the ability to take human forms, deceive, and manipulate. They were tall, strong, and, as a result, humans placed them in positions of reverence and worshiped them alongside the Nai creature
The Hollowing of the Nai
The Nai did not fall in fire.
They did not perish in battle.
No hand struck them down.
They were emptied.
When they entered the ancient forest and laid claim to the roots of Gnarled, they believed themselves still entitled to power. For eons, energy had flowed through them unquestioned. They were conduits, interpreters of Ki's will, never needing to ask where the current came from-only where it should go.
And so they reached.
At first, the exchange felt familiar.
Energy moved.
The roots answered.
The forest did not resist.
But what the Nai failed to understand was this:
Gnarled did not give. It balanced.
What flowed into the Nai was not nourishment, but passage.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Continuation
what flowed out of them was something they had never learned to guard.
The last residue of Ki within them-
not power,
not memory,
but presence.
They remained standing as the roots withdrew, convinced the ritual had succeeded. No pain followed. No warning. No sign of judgment. The forest simply closed itself, and the Nai departed, certain they had reclaimed what humanity no longer provided.
Only when they returned to rule did the truth reveal itself.
Commands spoken without weight.
Judgments delivered without consequence.
Authority invoked-and unanswered.
Their forms began to thin.
Not visibly at first.
Not to human eyes.
But within themselves, the Nai felt a change more terrifying than death. Their mass no longer anchored them. Their silhouettes wavered. Their connection to the material plane weakened, as if the world itself had begun to forget how to hold them.
They could still be seen.
Still be heard.
But no longer fully be.
Where once their presence bent air and ground alike, now it merely disturbed the light. Their steps left no imprint. Their touch carried no certainty. The Nai had become echoes of intention-will without substance.
They understood then what Gnarled had taken.
Not strength.
Not dominion.
Weight.
The right to exist as something solid.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Contiuation
Each attempt to draw energy after that only worsened the decay. Power passed through them without settling, slipping away like water through fractured stone. They were no longer vessels-only channels leaking into nothing.
And so, they stopped.
Not out of repentance.
But out of survival.
To return to the forest would mean complete dispersal. To press further would mean vanishing entirely-dissolved into intention without form, command without voice.
The Nai withdrew from Gnarled in silence, carrying with them a truth they would never speak aloud:
They had not been punished.
They had not been judged.
They had simply been rebalanced.

 

[Esraa_Saeed]

Contiuation
From that day forward, the Nai ruled only by illusion. Their kingdoms stood, but their thrones were hollow. Their power persisted, but it could no longer anchor itself in flesh or land.
They were present.
Yet absent.
And in the deep roots of Arda, Gnarled remained unmoved-having reclaimed what was never meant to be held
When the Nai entered the Gnarled Forests of Zeta, they believed they were approaching salvation.
They had ruled through kingdoms, drained devotion from humanity, and bent the flow of power for centuries.