The Beginning
In the beginning there was nothing but a single speck of dust, a tiny grain of sand in the Void. It floated around for an infinity of eternities, never changing, simply existing. Aeons passed as the particle did nothing.
Until one moment it did.
No one knows what caused this sudden change, but once the door was open, every change that had not happened suddenly took place in an unimaginably small amount of time. That was how the World exploded into existence. The particle expanded at unfathomable speeds to form the World as we know it today; the myriad variety of planets, stars, galaxies and everything else in the World stemming from that one single speck of dust.
In that gigantic explosion, three things were born. The World, of which we’ve already talked a bit, the Elements and the Guardian Thaumyr. Each of those had a mind of its own, but they were as different as could be. The World was the canvas: it was the framework of a universe, fond of instructions and rules. It let itself be manipulated in order to create and evolve itself.
The Elements were the paint. They were forces of nature, raw and wild, unpredictable and always trying to expand themselves into the World. Their only goal was to grow, without end and without any purpose but to grow. However, such mindset was dangerous for the World, since if any single Element could gain an advantage, it could suffocate the others and lead to the World being controlled by a single Element, effectively ending it.
The Guardian was aware of this. It took the role of the painter. Thaumyr trapped the raw Elements inside itself, releasing only as much as was needed at the moment and thus ensuring that no Element gained supremacy and that everything was balanced. Balance was vital, and Thaumyr knew that the World thought of only its current instructions and the Elements had no reason to uphold balance, so it knew that it would have to be the one to maintain balance in the World.
Having trapped the Elements inside itself, Thaumyr started to shape the World so that it could grow and evolve. Finally, it created a world on a barren planet, shaping the rock into a paradise of life, and watched different beings live out their lives. Over time, the Guardian found ways to develop life elsewhere as well: in the cold, empty void of space, deep inside the planets it’d populated, even inside stars.
All the while, the Elements raged against each other in perpetual war inside Thaumyr. They could not win against each other, because they were all equally matched by all the others, but none could lose for the same reason. For centuries and millenia, ages and aeons without end the Elements were locked in everlasting battle inside Thaumyr and the clash soon began to take a toll on the Guardian.
Thaumyr was being slowly destroyed from the inside. It knew that and to make sure that it wouldn’t die and the Elements wouldn’t be released uncontrolled into the World, Thaumyr needed some way to stop the battle. That, however, required drastic measures. The Guardian knew that the only way to achieve this was to separate the Elements. To do that, Thaumyr started cutting off pieces of itself and giving them pieces of its immortal soul capable of containing a single Element. With every bit the Guardian cut off, it grew weaker, but every bit became a new Guardian, created to hold not all the Elements, but a single one.
Finally, the two most basic Elements remained inside Thaumyr: Law and Magic. Law was the Element that controlled the laws of the World. Everything in the World abided by the Law. Magic, on the other hand, was the opposite of the Law. Magic was the Element that would convince the World that the impossible was possible and the possible was impossible. Magic was the Element of breaking the Law. With those two Elements, everything else was given shape and form and ability.
The Guardian split itself one last time to form the Guardian of Law and the Guardian of Magic. With this, all the Elements had been separated and given Guardians of their own to advance them, but also control them. The World was safe from the Elements, who were now securely contained each in a separate immortal soul of a Guardian.
That is the story of the origins of the World, the Elements and the Guardians. The Guardians continued to shape the World with the power of their Elements, to watch over the different lifeforms that appeared here and there, often with the help of the Guardians themselves. They continue to do so even now, shaping and watching over the World as this story is told to you today.