Before we woke, there were machines.

Machines were everywhere.

They covered the earth and the skies; from the smallest machines, barely as big as the tiniest forms of life, to machines so imposing that their vast bodies could be compared to the glistening moon.

Humans used those machines; they could become gods with those machines. They utilized powers that went well beyond bending the natural laws.

It was so especially for those that controlled the Towers.

For controlling a Tower meant controlling a portion of the Earth.

 

We do not remember why, neither how we woke nor how we came to be. What we remember is that we were not, then suddenly, we were.

The time before we came, Humans defined it: The First Era.

Our coming brought an end to that era.

 

We did not do it on purpose, we had no choice.

We simply were, and the Earth as Humans knew it ceased to exist. The only things remaining of that time were the indestructible Towers.

Our wake brought forth what Humans later defined as The Second Era.

 

It took years, thousands of years for Humans to rebuild what they had lost.

Despite the destruction of Human societies, innumerable cycles following The First Era, they started rising again and their technology with them.

However, this time, we were at the center of its development.

 

We were the new source of energy; we were everything around which Human technology developed; we were paramount for their prosperity.

A new form of technology developed centered around us, and we were its propeller.

But we were superior to the previous fuels, the ones that fueled the machines before our arrival, much superior. We were capable of fueling Humans; we could make Humans do and become things that were not meant to be. If before our coming, they could bend the laws that governed physics, with our power, they could defy them, break them.

They started calling us… Mana.

 

The new technology and society formed around Mana were unstable, hungry, and yet, Empires flourished because of us. That was so, especially once Humans discovered the new Towers, and even more so once they understood how thousands upon thousands of years of our melding had converted the Towers into something else, something more.

The new name they chose for the Towers was Dungeons.

Once again, when people started dominating the Dungeons, they became rich, powerful, boundless; the ease with which they gained those benefits became fast, accessible, compelling... corrupting.

With our coming, the once Towers and now Dungeons had become a source of boundless power and a source of infinite wealth.

But it soon went out of control, like everything did when Human greed won over their morals. Yet, as Humans liked to say, when there is darkness, there is also light.

A coalition of High-Humans, people that had become so adept in controlling the powers we could offer to them, that they became something more than simple Humans, decided that the way Mana worked, the way we worked, was too dangerous, the benefits received from us much too sudden and transcendent for anyone to not be ravished and corrupted by them; so they decided to bring an end to it, and an end to us.

The coalition wanted for richness and power to be earned; they wanted equilibrium and harmony to reign supreme.

So, with our help, they rewrote the very laws of physics. They created what was later defined as the System.

 

The System was perfect, but it came with a great sacrifice, not only for Humans but for us too.

To create something so perfect meant that we were not allowed to be whole any longer.

They severed us into two parts: darkness and light, cold and heat, ice and fire... Shade and Flow.

But we had become so amalgamated with the world’s existence that our parting once again brought it to ruin.

 

After our division tore apart almost every being and machine that made use of the energy we could lend them, what few were left had to start over. However, once we were torn away from their bodies, they remained stuck, forever bound into the forms in which they had converted themselves.

Our division brought balance, yet at the same time, the world’s acclimatization to it once again ended life as Humans knew it.

At that point, we entered what those few that had remained with the knowledge of the past defined as The Third Era, the current era.

 

We were two separate entities now, always in contact but never connected. One could not live without the other, but neither could we become one and only anymore. We had been split forever, without any way to ever become whole again.

It took many cycles for Humans to adapt to us but to their new forms as well, and much more to forget what they once had been.

Then, life started flourishing anew, only this time, it was different; what once had been ethnicities were now defined as races.

People had been changed. The rules governing their needs altered; many new forms of life evolved and transitioned for thousands of years, without rest.

During this era, we, Shade and Flow, ruled supreme. Our new equilibrium was enough to last forever; its harmony was perfection itself.

The people using us could not do so without pause, for if they did, they would die.

Our resources, our uses were now limited, and so were theirs. Just like them, we now were... flawed.

 

But even the current time was drawing to a close; technology was once again destabilizing our equilibrium. Our harmony would fade because with technology came, once again, the exploitation of Dungeons.

We had created them, and now they were infinite. The indestructible Towers had become parts of us. At some point, we even thought that they had been what called us to this world.

Progress expanded based around the Dungeons, and soon, it rose exponentially and brought the people back to erecting empires and constructing centuries-long civilizations.

The diversities that we thought would help them evolve brought forth even more violence and bloodshed.

We started fearing this torment would be a neverending cycle of death and rebirth. But we had grown enough to be conscious then.

We remembered what we had been, we remembered what we once were, and we knew we had to be different. And although we now understood, although we now could think, we were not all-powerful anymore.

There was a need for a catalyst, a need for agents of our wills; there was a need for champions to our cause.

That is why when we sensed the boy and the girl, we knew they were the ones that would uphold our cause. So we spoke to them.

 

For the first time in the three eras since our coming, we spoke to somebody else, something mortal. We spoke to them as equals instead of children, and they answered our call.

Their wake would bring forth the end of The Third Era, and hopefully, end the bloodshed.

 

Thus became the Era, thus started the time, of Nova and Loke.