A/n: Arg, bear with me please! This is an updated Prologue. Recently, I've been doing A WHOLE HELLUVA LOT of revamping on this story. Here's the deal in a nutshell: I pretty much feel like I've outgrown this whole thing, but I love the story too much to put it away just yet.

So consider this my baby blanket-- newly made into a quilt or something. Yeah. I suck at metaphors.

Prologue

Once upon a time-- outside of time, beyond the realm of reality where the stars burned bright and galaxies grew in milky patterns on the black vacuum of space-- there were ten Gods.

Gods of element and Gods of spirit, they held the life of mankind within their divine imaginations, working like separate wheels in a clock to make the whole system function. Mapmakers of the universe’s timeline, the Gods painstakingly molded the modern world through stages and stages of carefully controlled evolution and gradual extinction. All-powerful were they, entities of every aspect of the lives they created. They aimed to create the utmost idyllic existence, a utopia for their underlings to flourish and grow.

You see, human beings were supposed to follow a plan… Those who fell out of line were swiftly and silently terminated through divine intervention.

However, the Gods alone could not convene the spiritual power to affect the physical plane of existence. They found their power in an ancient stone that was created with the galaxies, the compressed discharge of power emitted when the timepieces fell into motion building the universe. Though a tangible object of the corporeal realm, the gem held the power to foal a new galaxy, to bend the indelible blackness of eternity. The Gods pulled strength from it, their own power running parallel to its own; the stone was a living entity and a fountain of life itself, to which all ten were connected.

They called it ‘the Lorelei’…

But something so powerful had to be protected-- not all the supreme powers hovering between reality and fantasy had the good of mankind as a first priority. Thus, since the beginning of time, the jewel had had a keeper: the blind Goddess, the Goddess of Life.

Because of this grand possession, the Goddess became the essence of the other nine Gods’ existence, for Her power far exceeded their own. Beyond the conception of all time, they protected Her from the invisible demons of sin, guarding her immaculate purity and preventing the corruption of the cosmos.

For years, the Gods dutifully protected their Supreme Goddess and Her crystallized Pandora’s box, feeding off of its life-energy and allowing the revolutions of the universe to pass without concern.

However, one of the powers was unsatisfied.

The Goddess of Lost Souls, a spirit betrayed by her lover and forced to spend eternity confined to the dreary barrenness of the Otherworld, soon grew to envy the Goddess of Life, craving the power She wielded with the ancient gem and ravenous for release of her empty prison. Only the Lorelei could set her free, and once liberated the Goddess premeditated to conquer the rest of the immortal world. She yearned for years, until jealousy escalated into an insatiable hunger that demanded action.

The Goddess of Lost Souls stole the Lorelei from The Goddess of Life, intent on using it for her own devices. But in her consuming desire to wield it, she was overwhelmed and consumed by its force. Her soul, absorbed by the gem, fought to escape-- and succeeded. The Lorelei splintered from the inside out and split into two pieces, lost amidst the vastness of the mortal and spiritual realm. The spirit of the Goddess of Lost Souls-- a lost soul itself-- fell to Earth, quickly disappearing into the cosmic maze of human life, death, and rebirth.

The loss of the Lorelei set the entire universe on a tilt, unbalanced and without means to be righted. Powerless to stop corruption from filling their perfect universe, the Gods could only watch as their toil and love became defiled with the greed and duplicity that tied itself to human nature. The world became dark, cold, and bitter; death and crime festered in the dirty streets where lush foliage once grew.

The Gods were helpless to rebuild until the jewel was recovered.

In order to protect the universe from further contamination, the Gods adopted physical bodies called “Renatas” and left the spiritual plane for the earthly one, seeking out obscure prophets in hopes to reveal the secret of the shattered gem and the soul of their lost Goddess. The ten of them, unable to return to their true spiritual forms until they corrected the disarray, wandered the mortal plane for hundreds of years, ever searching and growing more prepared as the eons pass.

There is a belief-- no more than a scarcely believed rumor-- that under the third cycle of the cosmos, the Goddess of Lost Souls will be reincarnated into a human vessel to continue her crusade for complete and total control…

…And the ultimate battle for command of the universe will inevitably ensue…