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Kolis, the then Primal of Death, used to enter the mortal realm. Those who saw him cowered and refused to look him in the eye. On one trip, he saw a beautiful young woman picking flowers for her sister’s wedding. That woman was Sotoria.
Kolis watched her and immediately fell in love. He was utterly besotted with her and eventually stepped out of the trees to speak with her. Sotoria knew who he was—back then, mortals knew what the Primal of Death looked like since his features were captured in paintings and sculpture. She fled, and the chase ended in her falling from the cliffs.
Despite dying young and much too soon, she accepted her fate, and her soul arrived in the Shadowlands, passing through the Pillars of Asphodel and entering the Vale within minutes of her passing. She did not linger. She was at peace with starting the next stage of her life.
Decades after her death, Kolis remained obsessed with bringing her back and being with her. Eythos, the then Primal of Life, warned him that he shouldn’t pursue it, but he didn’t listen, and knowing the Primal God of Life had the power to do what he wanted done, Kolis found a way.
Only he and Eythos know exactly how he managed to do it. One will never speak of it, and the other isn’t here to tell. We do know that it involved the Star diamond. Kolis was successful in trading places and destinies with his twin. The act had catastrophic fallout, though, killing hundreds of gods who served both Courts and weakening many other Primals—even killing a few, thus forcing the next in line to rise from godhood to Primal power. Many draken were also killed, and the mortal realm suffered devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. Many places were leveled, and pieces of land just broke off, some forming islands while others sank.
Eythos warned Kolis not to bring Sotoria back, saying she was at peace, and it had been too long. He said if Kolis were to do what he planned, she would not come back as she was. It would be an unnatural act and upset the already unsteady balance of life and death. Still, Sotoria rose, and as predicted, she was not the same. She wasn’t grateful that Kolis brought her back; she was frightened, unhappy, and horrified by what had been done to her.
Kolis couldn’t understand why she was so morose, and nothing he did made her love him. No one knows how long she lived the second time, but she eventually died again. Some say she purposefully starved herself. Others think she might have started living again and fought her captor, despite his power.
Callum says Eythos killed her that second time.
I have yet to see more that confirms one way or another.
During the time of that second death, Eythos did something to ensure his brother could never reach her—something only the Primal of Death could do. With the aid of Keella, the Primal Goddess of Rebirth, he marked Sotoria’s soul, which meant she was destined to be reborn and would never pass the Pillars. Her soul would continually come back, over and over, though her memories of her previous lives wouldn’t be anything of substance—if she retained any at all.
Because of what Eythos and Keella did by marking her soul, Sotoria would be reborn in a shroud (as you know both Poppy and Sera were, the most Chosen of the Chosen). Kolis knew this and continued looking for her in the mortal realm. Even entombed, he searched, using his power to extend his will. What Eythos and Keella did wasn’t perfect, and some might argue it was worse than what Kolis did, but it was the only thing they could think to do to keep her safe.
Both Eythos and Keella paid dearly for what they did. Kolis grew to despise his twin and vowed to make him pay, eventually killing Mycella—Eythos’s Consort—while she was pregnant. He did it because he believed it was only fair that his brother should lose his love just as he had. He also destroyed Mycella’s soul, bringing about her final death.
Losing her destroyed a piece of Eythos.
Kolis also annihilated all records of the truth—both in the mortal realm and in Iliseeum. That was the start of the Primal God of Death no longer being depicted in any artwork or literature. Kolis went to great extremes to hide that he wasn’t supposed to be the Primal of Life, even when it became apparent that something was wrong with the balance of power. He started to lose the ability to create life and maintain it. The destiny was never meant to be his, just as the powers of the Primal God of Death were never meant to be Eythos’s.
It took centuries for the powers to wane, and by that time, Eythos was dead—killed and captured in the Star diamond by his twin—and Kolis had mastered other powers, creating the Ascended and Revenants as a way to prove he could still create life.
The fallout of what was done was far-reaching. Despite Ash being born into the role of the Primal of Death, what his uncle did reshaped his destiny and caused the balance to shift even more toward death—the end of everything in both realms. And while it should have taken several mortal lifetimes for the destruction to be absolute, it had already started. Two Primals of Death were not meant to rule, and that was exactly what happened because, at his core, Kolis was the Primal of Death, not the Primal of Life.
Before his death, Eythos took it upon himself to give Nyktos and the others a chance for salvation. He placed an ember of life in the mortal Mierel bloodline, as well as the flicker of power that had been passed on to Nyktos at the time of his birth. Once done, he just hoped for the best. Still, the unbalance of power progressed in its destruction and caused the Rot, continuing and intensifying when Sera was born because it put the embers in a vulnerable vessel with an expiration date for efficacy.
The bits between Sera realizing that she was the true Primal of Life, Sotoria’s soul being placed in the Star diamond, and Penellaphe Balfour being born are a bit hazy, but I gain additional information all the time and will continue updating my files as I am able. What we do know is that Poppy is finally aware that she is descended from Sera and Nyktos and is thus the Primal of both Life and Death. And we can suppose that Sotoria’s soul will come back into play as Isbeth has awakened Kolis—I mean, have you seen pictures of Poppy and Sotoria? There is definitely an uncanny resemblance there. Regardless, things are about to get very interesting for us all.
Forgive me for jumping back there and then surging forward again. I’ll try to get the story’s timeline a bit more on track linearly.
Where were we? Ah, maybe we should tackle the Ascension. Ascension in the time of the gods meant something entirely different than it does in our time.
Ascension:
Originally, the act of Ascension required the blood of a mortal to be drained from their body and then replaced with a god’s or Primal’s blood. The mortal completing the Ascension was not always guaranteed, however (more on that later). Those Chosen in the time of the gods were born in a caul and always carried some Primal essence within them, which allowed them to Ascend.
The Rite existed then and was an honored tradition. The Chosen—third sons and daughters—crossed into Iliseeum to serve the gods. They were then given a choice of whether to Ascend and become immortal or not. That all changed when the power shift in Iliseeum happened. Kolis took away the Chosen’s free will and brought them to Iliseeum to be treated as objects—used, traded, toyed with, and ultimately tossed aside. If they were Ascended, it wasn’t like it should be. Either Kolis used the blood of the gods in his Court to transition them, making them what we know now as the vamprys—dark-dwelling near-immortals with an insatiable thirst for blood; or his twisted essence coupled with their mortal death made them into something not alive or dead, turning them into what we know to be Revenants.
In more recent times, the Rite became something very different. The vamprys needed a food source, one that wouldn’t be questioned, so they convinced the mortals to hand over their children to honor the gods. They even created an entire religion around it, forcing families to turn on each other if one refused to relinquish their children.
During the Rite, the Ascended take the third sons and daughters to feed upon. If they don’t drain them dry and kill them, they become Craven—though most are dead before they even learn to speak. All second sons and daughters are used to make more Ascended—this is different than the time of the gods, when the third sons and daughters were those Chosen to Ascend. However, the dirty little secret there for the vamprys is that Atlantian blood is required to complete an Ascension; therefore, the Ascended always have an Atlantian held as a prisoner to use for bloodletting.
All history of the Atlantians was erased within Solis, and the Ascended don’t tell people that it is absolutely possible to survive outside the Rise. A crucial part of their control is to create a rift between the mortals who have and those who don’t, causing the poor to turn their hatred on the wealthy and never the Ascended. They believe the Ascended are their direct access to the sleeping gods and thus an answer to their prayers, therefore above reproach.
Let’s take a closer look at how Ascension ultimately became the start of the vamprys…
The First Ascension After the Time of the Gods:
Atlantian King Malec O’Meer fell in love with a mortal woman named Isbeth. When she was mortally wounded, Malec committed the forbidden act of Ascension in a bid to save her. He drank from her, stopping only when he felt her heart begin to fail, then shared his blood with her. While this should have created the first vampry, it ultimately turned her into a demis because Malec was much more than a King, and Isbeth wasn’t a third daughter. Malec was a god, and gods cannot Ascend mortals—in the traditional sense of the word.
After Isbeth’s Ascension, King Malec lifted the Ascension ban, and many others followed suit, making the first vamprys. As more were created, many were unable to control their bloodlust, thus creating the pestilence known as the Craven and decimating mortal populations. The Craven are created when a vampry feeds on a mortal to the brink of death—or to death—but does not complete the process. Originally, this was thought to be the result of them not feeding the mortal their blood, but we have since come to understand that it’s the magical missing piece: the Atlantian blood—blood with the essence of the gods.
