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Hours passed, then a day, as the fatigue of an almost endless race for survival ended, each member of Fein's tribe allowing themselves--for the first time in many moons--to give in to their body's needs and simply rest. All the while, the 'Caster watched over them, vigilant. Though he understood this being to be one of supreme power, he had yet to trust it. Instead, Fein had spent much of the last day in silent observation of the darkness beyond their eyes' reach. Over the hours that he'd watched, he mainly saw the colorless void of that vast expansive cavern, but in some moments, he heard--and caught brief glimpses--of something beautiful and monstrous in equal measure. On the second day, when some of his people had yet to wake, Fein became suspicious. So it was that on the third day--when his patience betrayed him--he decided that it was time to break the silence that had stretched for so long between gods and men.

[color=#7bc6bf][b]"Why have you done this?"[/b][/color] He asked, accusation in his tone--for once, his voice bereft of pain. It had been so long since he'd last spoken--and since his voice had lacked the rasp of strain and exhaustion--that he hardly recognized the sound. How was it that he'd healed so quickly? Fein frowned, but before he could truly consider the implications of his revelation, a sonorous drone echoed through the black before him.

Slowly, the sound took shape, the great voice answering his query. [color=#596075][b]"Burdens too heavy to bear,"[/b][/color] rumbled the god, [color=#596075][b]"...without you, they would have broken each and every one."[/b][/color]

Fein gritted his teeth, anger welling in his chest, almost clouding his vision. He rose from the ground, pressing forth and into the murk. [color=#7bc6bf][b]"How dare you!"[/b][/color] His emotions screamed, but he had not stopped them, and so the sound carried through the mountain, reaching the monster that surely lurked within.

[color=#7bc6bf][b]"You would take away the one thing they desired most, after how hard they fought to keep it?!"[/b][/color] His voice rose into a scream of rage, the emotion let loose, yet he could not help but feel that his body was different than before. Stronger, his voice louder and more melodic than even in eons long since dead and gone. Nonetheless, he raged, and the god listened in utter silence, unperturbed. With time, Fein's fury cooled to embers, and he was left almost gasping for breath. Some few among his clansmen had approached him, Rha Lia among them. She laid a hand on Fein's shoulder and met the 'Caster's gaze. Lia gave him a sympathetic smile and nodded as if to say that it was okay.

In that somber moment, warmth blossomed in his heart, soothing the burn of his anger, calming his mind. From the emptiness beyond them, light shone, then dulled in turn. Slowly, it became a pulsing, and that sight too became a sound--throbbing gently through the stone beneath their feet. It spread, and as it did, the stone shone a glossy black, and light fled further towards the entrance. Yet the clansmen found that they could see as if a faint bluish glow had suffused the space. Fein blinked and took another step forwards before reaching out not with his body but with his mind. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, the wind picked up, and Fein closed his eyes, joining his voice with the humming intonation of that monolithic being. For the first time since the Crippling Descent in the forgotten ages now lost to the world, he sang, and with the sound, the world bent, remembering his Will.

Beside him, Rha Lia covered her mouth, going wide-eyed as wind and snow and leaves danced about her friend in dizzying patterns. Each arrangement was almost too beautiful to bear, and before she knew it, there were tears upon her cheeks. Fein's voice soared in harmony with Malath Kaal's, growing stronger by the moment. Where before the mountain simply hummed, now it almost [i]shook[/i] beneath the intensity of their might.

The stone, now black as basalt, seemed to spread its hue unseen. Their songs gave new life and purpose unto the tiny microbes which from Malath Kaal had spawned to blacken stone and flesh. The creatures crept upon the sleeping forms of men and women who could not wake, and on them markings began to form. With each hill and valley in their music, the microbes sank deeper into the flesh of those few mortals they had touched. They wove through every cell, through hair and eyes and spine; with them came change.

The song drifted into echoing melodies, resonating through the cavern, cutting swaths of sound through the earth, melding flesh, binding bone. Those remnants of sound drifted, carried far and wide by the wind, and they touched other tribes miles askance of their location, blessing them in times of need. It faded from the cavern, but its echoes remained, calling back and forth through the mountains. It was a melody of warmth and wellness.

Fein wiped tears from his reddened cheeks, the faint wrinkles less defined than even minutes prior--before their song had started. He choked down quiet sobs and, with a gasping breath, collapsed into a huddle on the floor. For so long, Fein had sung, and the world had remained silent and dead. For so long, he had hummed and bade the trees to listen and respond--all for naught. The apocalypse, its terrible destruction, its decay, had rent the spirit of the world as surely as it had its shape. In so doing, that dying world had worn away the spirit of a man at peace, a man who had lived longer than most.

Fein cried, not for the loss he'd suffered, nor for those born or dying in a decaying world bereft of peace or even mirth. No, Fein sobbed because the Primal's arrival signaled the return of something greater: Hope.

The god's Eye opened before him, and it spoke, flesh unfurling downwards from it; first bone, then ligaments and muscle, tissues, then nerves and skin. It was almost human, but it bore four eyes, two of flesh, and two of essence transposed upon each other at the center of its forehead. Beyond this, something long and sinuous stretched out behind it and into the darkness. The Eye of Malath--now embedded into its forehead, glowed a gentle light. Its eyes of flesh were featureless and white, its lips closed, and its form utterly naked--yet still androgynous.

[color=#596075][b]"You are Fein no longer,"[/b][/color] the figure said, but the voice was Malath's, shaking the cavern. Its lips did not move, but its limbs did as it knelt before the man and placed hands upon his shoulders. [color=#596075][b]"Be reborn within my gaze, Aged One. Bearer of burdens, he-who-carried-knowledge thought lost. Willcaster."[/b][/color]

Malath spoke the final word with a mix of awe and deep respect. Fein could only nod in response, but the vessel of Malath understood for it felt every sensation of the human's body. He knew the man, from every sinew to every synapse. Though Malath could not grasp entirely the power that Fein had once held--nor could the Great Presence ever truly understand the laws by which magic moved in this land of new beginnings--there were some things within his power.

So it was that his vessel began to dissolve into a haze of black limned with azure light, its essence touching once-Fein and making him anew. The glowing mist suffused the human down to the atoms of his being, then deeper into the quintessence that had wrought him. His power touched the decayed seed of divinity that had once been kindled in his soul, and then it grew.

Likes vines or nerves, something blossomed within the human's mind, taking root within his brain, then entwining with his nerves. The haze of black pressed itself upon his skin, and so like his kin, he gained markings of swirling pitch. Yet his were not like the others, they had an iridescent sheen, and they writhed and changed across his form from moment-to-fleeting-moment. He shuddered at the sensation as he felt even his heart grow steadier, his lungs stronger, his muscles better. Then sound burst from his throat in one melodious note, and the tears evaporated from his face. That single note drove the sleep from his slumbering clansmen, from the children they thought would never wake, and it ignited within each of them a fire all their own.

The cavern echoed into silence then the God of Form did speak.

[color=#596075][b]"Vhan-ka, you are my children born anew,"[/b][/color] hummed the deity, his voice a quiet, deep-toned hum. They felt his words, for he knew them now as his people: His first sapient creations. Gently, what seemed an impossibly long digit of far too many joints, emerged from the formless black and rested its taloned end upon once-Fein's hair. [color=#596075][b]"Meae Natah, I anoint thee,"[/b][/color] whispered the mountain, its voice a tickling wind.

Once-Fein smiled, and for the first time since his transformation, he opened his eyes--all three of them. The third was as the vessel's had been, itself a luminescent facsimile of Malath's own Eye. Meae Natah laughed, the sound filled with boundless joy, and such was the power of his voice--indeed, his Will--that his clan too came to share his joy.

[color=#596075][b]"Go forth..."[/b][/color] said the Great Presence through the din.

His work done, yet only now begun, Sa'a Malath Kaal slipped back further into his abode and dissolved into the black. Though the clan could not care to notice in their joy, the cavern they had inhabited for three days moved beneath the earth until it was far afield from the domain of Malath Kaal.

Quietly, his voice only within, the Primal sent out his first edict unto the world. It was only one word, and above all others, the Vhan-ka would [i]feel[/i] it.

[center][h2][color=#596075][i]Thrive.[/i][/color][/h2][/center]

[hider=Summary]Fein and his clan rest beneath the mountain within the great chamber of the Primal, its deific attention protecting them from harm. However, as time passes, Fein grows suspicious as some of his people fail to wake up, as if driven into comas. Eventually, the 'Caster grows sure that it is the god's doing and so confronts the being.

The confrontation becomes something else entirely and soon after, Malath Kaal bestows upon the man-who-was-once Fein new forms and power to match them. Lost in their joy, they fail to notice as the god relocates them.

Alone once more, Malath Kaal releases an emanation of his essence outwards from his demesne, casting it across the vast breadth of the Shard.

Thrive, his will commands.

[i][b]Thrive.[/b][/i][/hider]