Provenance of Laira

The Provenance of Laira is the first volume in the Tenebra Manifest, as well as a well-known myth documenting the creation of Atheryin. While most races and cultures have different interpretations of the myth and the aftermath, this version is the most widely practiced upon, and is also the only creation myth currently accepted by the Collective. All the names for any gods/deities, etc. mentioned here are the "official" terms set by the Collective.
==Pre-Kudes Era==
~ The First Rift
*Unconscious spirits emerge as identical sparks in a cosmic river, resembling an iridescent fog.
**The Collective believe this "river" began at the Star-Blood, where the detritus of a previous universe poured into the current one.
**Lyrians view the river as circular and self-sustaining, believing universal creation and destruction occur within one singular universe.
*Laira and Kalopsis identify each other's sparks in the river, dream together, and create the concept of existence. This event is usually referred to as the First Rift.
*Laira wraps her arms around the Star-Blood, and is born as the "concept of everything", embodying the entire universe. Kalopsis wraps his arms around Laira, and is born as the "protector of everything", generally associating him as a god of universal order.
**Lyrians believe Kalopsis is the embodiment of a predetermined universal perfection, and will eventually destroy the universe to redeem it in this image.
*Kalopsis receives a vision of a predetermined future, and becomes unable to see anything but a myriad of potential future timelines. While Kalopsis is distracted by this, an entity referred to as "Another" "cracks the bones of Laira". This action conceives Ugana, who begins to form in Cadin, then the womb of the universe. In response to this, Kalopsis executes the entity responsible. Ugana's conception is generally considered the Second Rift.
**The Collective holds that Laira was raped, explaining the unwanted conception of a child. They assign Kalopsis as a trickster spirit that exists in a dualist "orbit" with the entity responsible for raping Laira. In this way, they view Kalopsis and the other entity as one in the same.
**Lyrians view the unknown entity as one of uncountable Other-Spirits (much like Grund) who achieved existence independently. They see the violence enacted toward Laira as the entity blinding (or otherwise mutilating) her, and crafting Ugana from her dismembered eyes.
~ The Second Rift
*Kalopsis begins seeking to kill Ugana within Laira's womb-realm, as her creation marked a dangerous, free-radical deviation in his predetermined futures. He searches "in-between the darkest shadows" and finds Grund and the Tenatua, enlisting their help in hunting Ugana in exchange for the gift of night-eyes. Kalopsis cloaks Cadin in darkness, and the Tenatua are let loose to hunt. Ugana ran for an unknowable amount of time, eventually hiding under the shade of the first Anamnesis world-tree. The tree (an aspect of Laira) gifted Ugana with consciousness, often represented as a crosier or a branch, with which she used to fight and tame Grund and his Tenatua. Ugana left Cadin with the Tenatua by her side, piercing through Kalopsis' skin as she did. Kalopsis fled outside of Laira, and Cadin began to collapse.
*Celarus emerges as an owl from within the Star-Blood, and uses Cadin to seal it off. By doing so, he freezes and contains the universe in gypsum, and creates the concept of space. Celarus speaks Andain's name, and Andain "remakes himself in this universe". He takes up his cleaver, and declares himself the guardian of Cadin, "the great keystone".
~ Creation
*Ugana, floating in the chaos of Laira, creates Kutsal and Kutaru in an attempt to order the universe through dualism of light and dark.
*Kutsal and Kutaru create the light-plane of Arkai and the shadow-plane of Gryka, respectively.
*Ugana, Kutsal, and Kutaru sing Kyros into existence. Meirgan simultaneously comes to be as a mirror-image of Kyros.
*Kutsal bathed in the light of Arkai, while Kutaru bathed in the shadows of Gryka. Their animosity for each other grew over the ages, as Kutaru became jealous of Kutsal's empowering light while himself being consumed by darkness. This culminated in Kutaru attempting to steal half of Kutsal's soul in order to repair his own. Kutsal, indifferent to his brother's suffering, imprisoned Kutaru inside Meirgan and inverted its nature, exchanging Meirgan's verdant paradise for Kyros' twisting chaos. This "unbound" Arkai and Gryka from one another, as a piece of the other no longer existed within either realm.
**also this: "Kutaru stole only part of Kutsal's soul, until the dragon roared extremely loud, so loud that it shattered Kutaru's soul into a thousand pieces. These soul fragments, soon to become the Earth-gods, crashed into the formless Atheryin, forming many of the now-existing impact sites around the globe. What was left of the god-phoenix's soul clung to the darkness, where he regained power in his soul from it."
*Celarus crafts the Marbles of Life from a "memory of the infinite past" he discovered in the rotted bark of the first Anamnesis on Cadin. He distributes them across the universe as the Stars. He creates the Starmakers and binds them to the dim world between the bright light of outer Arkai and the cool shade of Kyros. Andain builds a wall, the Palisade, to protect the Starmakers from Arkai's blinding light.
*Ugana asks if she can use the Marbles for her own creation. Celarus agrees, but only gives ten. Lyrians believe she stole the marbles.
*Lythus appears in the form of a fawn as the result of "a poetic argument over causality" between Ugana and Celarus. Her coming into existence marks the creation of time.
*Peering backward in time, Lythus secretly informs Kutsal and Kutaru that Ugana predestined their animosity toward one another, in an effort to maintain balance. The brother-gods responded by attempting to murder Ugana, but they could only separate her soul from her body. Ugana's soul collapsed into Kyros, creating a reverse-impact centered on the Faelands. This uplifted all the land and continents on the planet from the seas. The vast energetic fallout of Ugana's soul swirled through the winds of Kyros from these impact areas eternally, making the use of magic by mortals possible.
*When Ugana fell to Kyros, she pulled down her Marbles of Life with her, planting the Anamnesis world-trees across Kyros in the process. From the roots of these trees grew the creatures of the land, from its flowers grew the birds, and from its seeds grew all plants.
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