101 The Twilight Children (1/2)

I remember the day I was born. Even now, two-thousand eight-hundred and twenty-six years later, I have not forgotten. My memories are clear as day.

He was the original. The only survivor of his generation, the First. He would become the template of comparison for all subsequent generations hence. All who followed after were, in fact, created from his own image to a certain extent.

The First influenced the creation of the Second.

The Second influenced the creation of the Third.

The Third influenced the creation of the Fourth.

And so forth…

Although the First had the greatest potential of them all, being the purest of all generations, he was still an imperfect product. Still, he was the closest thing they had created to the original sample.

A mother without neither face nor name. Born out of purpose, not love.

A single lock of silver hair. When and where the Holy Pope had acquired such a thing was unknown even to the highest arch-priests of Holy Church. They assumed that he had presumably gotten before the Great Barrier War when the Gods still walked on the earth…

How he had come into possession of it was a mystery, though. Not one they could solve, nor ask the Pope about… They feared the consequences of digging too far into matters considered forbidden to the Methuselahian head of the Church.

We are faulty keys. Imperfect forgeries. Unable to fulfill the purpose we were born for. Therefore, we are without purpose.

He, who had been created directly from the original sample, still had not been enough to stir the object of their desire — the Divine Furnace.

The Elders stirred on by the failure of the First, pledged themselves to solve the problem. They would slowly weed out any imperfections and develop a perfect replica of the Goddess.

They would make their own deity. One that they could control.

Such was the will of the abomination that had tempted them. It would take for itself the source of its enemy's hope and crush it. Tempting the lesser creatures — exploiting their greed and ambition — was akin to child's play for it.

For millennia they had attempted to create a perfect vessel of from the sample, to no avail. The Elders had gathered the brightest minds from across the Four Empires by means of bribery, kidnapping, blackmail, and wedlock.

Funded by the Holy Church, which was in possession of enough wealth to contend against the likes of the Four Empires and in possession of an army of scientists, scholars and test subjects, the Elders pressed on for centuries on end.

In return for their efforts, seven successful prototypes of varying purity had been created.

He and his siblings knew that they had been created to accomplish a singular purpose — it was what defined their existence. It was the reason they'd been born in the first place.

What were they to do without purpose?

They cared not for the designs that the Elders had about the world. In fact, they detested it to the bone.

As far as they were concerned, a world ruled by the Elders would be a hell on earth for everyone involved. One of tyrannical oppression and suffering. They had seen — experienced what they were capable of at their worst. They had not forgotten the deaths of all their siblings.

No — they would not obey, for they had their own grand plan for the world.

With the almighty power of the Divine Furnace, they create a world of true freedom. One where they would finally be free, no longer beholden to their doomed fate. They would patiently wait and hope.

That was what they wanted.

He'd given himself a job to do. But now, he'd been dismissed.

In the end, it was all for naught. We will never accomplish what we'd been created for. All the effort in the world spent for absolutely nothing to show.

The Twilight Children, created from the Light to serve the Darkness were, in the end, a failed project.

I had come to terms with this eons ago. Instead, I placed my hope on my successors — my precious siblings. They, who had suffered — endured the same unspeakable hardship — in order to survive the testing phase.

That one of them would be the one to do what I could not do.