The cosmos was balance—equal parts of both order and chaos. For each’s meaning was only found in the other. Preserving creation meant applying destruction—violent actions always demanding an opposing reaction of an equivalence, no more. As a guardian, destruction was your namesake. You defended the cosmic harmony. And your will was absolute.

Ages changed. Beliefs changed. But not you. You were formless. Peerless. Remorseless. Your domain was earth. It was order. But it was inhabited by a chaos known as humanity—beings so fascinated by what they could not hold that they often burned up by drawing ever nearer.

Rarely have you assumed a form to stave off humanity’s destruction and only twice did it require cataclysmic correction. Each time, you formed as a tiny creature, scaling in power and size to pace the threat until it either diffused or required that you intervene. The first intervention came a millennium ago; your shape was forced into a great wolf and required that you obliterate earth’s 8th continent. The second was a century past; the threat grew you into a great reptile and demanded you annihilate two major island cities.

When each task culminated, you abated, dispersed, and awaited—a clock reset until a new age awoke you to a new threat. Your absence forced humanity to get creative with their recorded history, often filling in blanks with half truths and whole lies. Yours was the essence from which their stories took shape—the building blocks for legends, folklore, and cautionary tales. You arose when they needed you most and took a shape that captivated the times.

And now, the age of awakening returned once more.

The night’s sky rippled, a reflection of the stars drawing down and condensing as if it were a canvas that someone reached up and pulled. A black mass turned spherical, celestial bodies streaking over its surface. It would birth you. Be you the shepherd or the reaper, only the threat could decide your nature.

The mass drew in, limbs emerging to expand each direction. As if unhooked, you fell, your eyes opening against harsh wind. You had never emerged in the open air before. What was the meaning of it? You’d be only an infant creature, so what good would it do to assume a form only for it to be destroyed on striking the ground.

The terrain was bathed in the light of a full moon but still looked as little more than square tracts of land and masses of shadow. Your vision cycled as if moving through filters. Earth’s surface alternated colors, became variations of temperatures, then lingered on something in gray and green tones. Gone were the shadows, features emerging like 3-dimensional objects rendered on a 2-dimensional surface. That seems advanced for a new form, you thought.

You fell head first and looked up along your body. Your forelimbs were folded into your chest. You were some kind of reptile and had claws that could grip things. Your hind legs were bulkier. Some kind of dinosaur. Again.

You cycled your vision as you looked over your arms. You couldn’t make out your color exactly, but it was something like the night’s sky. A fluttering noise caught and drew your attention back over your shoulder.

Ah. Not a dinosaur then.

Massive wings unfolded, reorienting and slowing you as if a parachute had just opened. It seemed that you were a quadrupedal dragon this go-round. Why is this one grown? And what powers does it possess?

Your wings flapped and all of your fall evaporated—your weight shifting into your shoulders. Your powers had always been honed through muscle memory as you aged, so there was never any lists you could reference to know what powers you possessed. They were simply innate, reflexes that surfaced when the circumstances demanded it. You not growing into them seemed like it should be a problem, but the cosmos had never done things by chance. Whatever the reason, it had purpose.

If this one is fully grown, the threat must be advanced. This may require decisive intervention.

You surveyed the landscape and focused on a pulling within. It was always there. Like magnetism, it ever drew you closer to the most prominent threat—a counter point that you sensed in a nearby city. You moved to pass over the tightly packed blocks of buildings, finally fixating on a singular structure—a hospital with people on its roof.

And so it begins.