Pre‑Genesis
The Genesis War

PROLOGUE
Azre

The sun was already warm when Azre stepped out of the doorway, the damp air smelled of baked clay and the smoke of morning fires. The village hummed softly—iron striking iron, women chattering as they carried wood for their stoves and water for cooking and washing. A child’s laughter echoed down an alley from the direction of the grain yard. It was a peaceful morning, the kind that filled his mind with calm.
The bucket felt heavier than it should, but he did not complain. The well sat just beyond the eastern wall, near the olive grove. His mother always said the water was sweetest there, where the roots grew deep. Azre liked to think the trees were listening when he drew the bucket up—their leaves shivering as the rope creaked.
He watched the other boys on the path as he walked back. They ran alongside their fathers, carrying tools, playing with wooden swords and spears. He kept his head down, pretending not to notice. He wasn’t going to be jealous. His father’s tools still hung behind their house, rusted and untouched. When the wind blew, the old axe handle knocked against the wall—a hollow sound that made his stomach twist. Too many things reminded him of his dead father.
As he got close to home he could see his mother waiting outside. She was rolling her sleeves in preparation to wash the dirty clothes with the water he was toting, face glowing with sweat and sunlight. She smiled when she saw him, and for a moment everything felt still—like the air itself was holding its breath.
“You took your time,” she teased, winking at him.
“I filled it all the way this time,” he said proudly, pretending the weight was nothing. She laughed softly, the sound small and bright.
Then she looked past him, toward the northern sky, and her smile faded.
Azre turned to follow her gaze.
At first, it looked like distant stars—faint sparks gliding across the blue. But they moved wrong: too fast, too bright. His mind couldn’t make sense of what they were. He had never seen stars that fell and did not fade.
The bucket slipped from his hands as he realized they were growing larger—descending.
The first rumble came a heartbeat later. The ground shivered and rolled beneath his feet. A low, endless roar rose from the horizon, as if the earth itself had remembered something terrible and was trying to shake it off. People were shouting—confused, pointing. One of the lights burned brighter than the rest, swelling until the sun paled beside it.
His mother seized his hand. “Inside!” she cried, but her voice broke halfway through the word as the air trembled and grew hot.
A second later, the world broke apart.
The sound was like thunder—but something deeper, older. The street lurched as walls shuddered and cracked. Azre stumbled, catching a last glimpse of the sky—dozens of burning shapes tearing through the clouds, trailing smoke and fire. Another shock wave struck, flinging dust and debris through the air as people were tossed like leaves.
He and his mother were torn apart in the upheaval of the earth. After a brief flight through the street, Azre struck something hard—a remnant of wall still standing—and the world went dark.

***
Lucifer

The sound of rocks hissing from heat was the first thing he heard as he regained consciousness. Pieces of gravel and ash were the first thing he saw when he managed to open his eyes a sliver. His whole body hurt like he had been crushed under a mountain.
The ground hissed where his hand touched it as he tried to push himself up on his knees. Molten stone cooling beneath his fingers. He drew a breath that trembled, tasting iron and sulfur. His wings—once radiant—hung tattered and torn, feathers burned to brittle edges. The pain was distant, unimportant. The ringing in his ears pressed harder than the wounds.
He rose slowly, his knees trembling beneath the weight of the fall. Fragments of glassy rock clung to his skin, reflecting dull light from the burning horizon. Above him, the sky seethed with the scars of their descent—rivers of smoke where the others had fallen.
Earth… The word felt small. He turned his eyes eastward, toward the faint shimmer of distant water. The sun had dimmed behind veils of ash, painting the land in copper light.
One thought came before all others.
Abaddon.
Lucifer could almost feel him, buried somewhere beneath the same ruined sky. And the other eleven of his most trusted—scattered, broken, but alive. Out there among the rest of his army. They were his army still, though Heaven had cast them down.
A faint smile touched his lips. Not joy—something colder. Defiance.
He raised his face to the heavens, to the distant light that had once been his home. The clouds glowed faintly with unseen fire.
“I will rise again,” he whispered. The words stirred the air and it seemed to recoil at his proclamation.
He took his first step from the crater. The ground cracked beneath him, crumbled and broken from his impact, leaving a crater the size of a village. Yet he moved forward, one foot, then another, until the pit that had held him was behind.
Above, the smoke parted for a moment, and a shaft of pale sunlight broke through. It touched his face like a memory, and for an instant, something inside him faltered—an echo of what he had been.
Then it was gone.
Lucifer turned his gaze east again, his expression unreadable. His mind was already shaping paths through ruin and shadow, already reaching for Abaddon, for order, for dominion.
The first plan was forming. The first lie for this world. The first spark of a war to be reborn.

***
The Wolf

The fires were still burning when the Wolf came. Ash drifted through the air like snow, settling over the broken stones and twisted beams. The village lay silent beneath a haze of smoke and dust, its life faded. The Wolf moved through the ruins without sound, his paws pressing shallow prints into the gray.
He had known where to come. He always knew what had to be done, and he always did just that.
Among the fallen walls and shattered clay, one life still stirred—a faint pulse beneath the weight of ruin. The Wolf stopped beside a mound of stone and splintered wood, lowering his head to the earth. Beneath it, the boy’s heartbeat flickered, weak but steady.
For a moment, the Wolf stood motionless. His golden eyes caught what little light remained, and something vast passed behind them—an awareness beyond instinct, a memory older than the world. He did not question why this one lived when so many did not. He simply knew he must act.
He dug through the debris with slow, powerful motions until the boy’s face appeared, pale beneath the dust. The child did not stir. The Wolf took him gently by the cloth of his tunic and pulled him free, dragging him across the ruined ground toward the darkening edge of the forest.
The sky rumbled far above, and a wind moved through the smoke, carrying the scent of fire and salt. The Wolf paused, lifting his head to the heavens. His gaze followed the clouds as if waiting for a sign, though none came.
Still, he understood. The boy was not to die here.
Without a sound, the Wolf turned and vanished into the trees, the child limp and dragged by the tunic between his jaws. The firelight dimmed behind him, and the ruined village sank into silence once more.
The forest was too quiet after the fire, as if it were waiting in anticipation. Only the wind moved—whispering through the pines, carrying the scent of ash and wet earth. Smoke still drifted on the wind from the destruction that had fallen, curling into the gray sky like ghosts unsure of where to go.
The Wolf padded silently among the trees, his coat streaked with soot, his golden eyes alert. He had carried the boy here three nights ago and laid him in a hollow beside the stream. The child had not stirred since. His breathing was shallow but steady, his small chest rising and falling beneath the torn fabric of his tunic.
The Wolf had watched him, waiting. The command to keep him alive still echoed within—a purpose not spoken, not questioned. He felt it the way a flame feels wind: invisible, but undeniable.
When the fourth morning came, the scent of something familiar drifted on the wind. It was faint but unmistakable—a trace of Heaven’s fire and blood long cooled. Abaddon.
The Wolf turned east. His paws sank softly into the blackened soil as he moved, following the smell across the scorched ground. Trees gave way to stone, and soon he stood on the rim of a great crater—one of many that had torn the earth open days before. The bottom still glimmered with molten veins, cracks glowing like dying embers.
And there it was. A blade half-buried in the glassy ground, black as shadow yet gleaming faintly in the haze. The Wolf descended carefully, the heat brushing his fur. When he reached it, he studied the weapon in silence.
He remembered it well. Heaven-forged. Balanced perfectly for a hand that no longer served the Light. He had never seen the blade not in Abaddon’s possession since its forging. Abaddon must have been in bad shape to have left without it. Or perhaps “He who sees all” had a hand in it remaining. Even more likely, Abaddon was still close by and searching.
The wolf’s muzzle brushed the hilt. A flicker of something old stirred behind his eyes—a memory of battlefields that had never known the earth or its sky. After the memory passed, he gripped the sword gently in his teeth and climbed from the crater.
By dusk, he returned to the stream where the boy lay. Rabbits hung from his jaws with the blade, their bodies limp, their scent clean. He dropped them near the fire pit he had cleared with his paws, setting the blade beside them. The boy had not moved, but his breathing had grown stronger.
The Wolf sat beside him, watching the shadows lengthen across the trees. The sword gleamed faintly in the last light, its black metal drinking the fire’s reflection, turning it to a blurry haze on the surface.
When the stars came out, the Wolf lowered his head, resting it on his paws, and closed his eyes. Not in sleep, but in patience. Tomorrow, the boy would wake. And when he did, the world would begin a long road to change.

***
Azre

Azre awoke to the sound of water. For a moment, he did not know where he was. The ground beneath him was damp and soft, the air thick with the scent of moss and smoke. His head throbbed with a deep ache, and when he tried to move, every muscle answered with pain.
He blinked until the blur faded. A forest surrounded him—tall trees swaying in the wind, their branches dripping from recent rain. The sky above was pale and fractured with ash clouds.
Then memory returned.
Lights in the sky. His mother’s hand. The roar of things falling from the sky. The thunderous sound of impacts, near and distant.
He sat up suddenly, heart pounding, and the world tilted. The smell of burning clay and iron flooded his nose—memory so sharp it became real. He saw the street splitting open, people vanishing in flashes of fire. He saw his mother’s face as she pulled him close, her mouth forming words he never heard. The light behind her swallowing everything. He remembered her hand leaving his, fingers slipping away as the ground tore apart. He remembered the scream she let out as she flew through the air before the crushing weight of a falling stone wall silenced her.
Stone, dust, silence.
Azre clutched his head, the forest around him spinning. The quiet felt wrong, too alive compared to the broken world that had burned behind his eyes. He pressed his hands to his face, dirt and tears smearing together. Nothing moved around him but the wind.
When he finally looked up again, he saw the rabbits first—two of them, neatly laid beside a dark object that gleamed faintly in the light. A sword. Short and black, the metal smooth as glass. It looked out of place, too perfect for the world he knew. He reached toward it but hesitated. The weapon radiated a strange stillness, as though it were waiting for something. His hand hovered above the hilt, then he drew back.
Nearby, faint impressions marked the earth—paw prints, large and deep. Whatever creature had been here was gone. Had it left the rabbits for food? The blade? He didn’t know.
Azre looked around, half expecting to see eyes watching from the trees. But there was only the sound of the stream and the rustle of the wind through the forest’s trees.
He turned back to the rabbits and the blade.
Someone—or something—had kept him alive. There was no way he ended up here from the village without being brought.
He stared at the sword one last time before lowering his eyes to the fire pit, then got up to gather sticks. His hands were shaking, but he did not stop. He was alive. And though he did not yet understand why, the forest seemed to breathe with him—as if it, too, was waiting for what came next.

And it breathed with him for ten years.