Within the crushing weight of the Holy Abyss, the two chosen witnesses remained
kneeling, their forms completely dissolved into the ink-black void. Even though they
were the first chosen rulers of the South, the Holy Darkness refused to grant them a
shape. To any observer, they were merely two flickering sparks of consciousness,
devoid of gender, face, or race. They were souls stripped bare, existing only to hold
the weight of the divine mandates.
The siblings, those formless pillars of cosmic static, looked down upon these two
nameless anchors. The absence of their physical bodies was a necessity; for a mortal
to stand fully realized in this sanctuary would be to invite instant madness.
"You shall return to the world as shadows of our will," the voice of the Gilded Rose
echoed, vibrating through the witness who had received the golden seed. "Your
people will look to you, but they will not see a man or a woman; they will see the
Foundation. You are the mask that the Gilded Rose wears to speak to the earth."
The second sibling, the master of the Winged Messenger, surged forward, his
presence cold and absolute. "And you," he rumbled toward the second flickering
spark, "shall be the silence that guards the depths. Your race, your face, and your
name matter not to the abyss. You are the vessel for the Current of the Draco. You
shall lead through the unseen, a ghost presiding over an empire of tides."
The two sparks bowed low, their "heads" touching the floor of the void that didn't
exist. In this moment of divine selection, the history of the South was finalized by two
beings who had no identity, witnessed by two mortals who had surrendered theirs.
As the swirling darkness began to pull them back toward the physical realm, the
siblings issued a final warning. "When you wake, the world will seek to define you. It
will seek to put a face to the Crown and a name to the Law. Hide within the tradition.
Hide within the myth. For as long as the rulers remain as mysterious as the gods, the
foundations shall remain untouchable."
The sparks flickered one last time before being cast out of the abyss, descending
through the fourteen skies toward the mountains and the seas below.