Prologue
The dimness of the cave shrouded the councilman’s wrinkles as he recollected every memory he could: the creatures he had seen and the horrors his father had told him about. He clutched his robes closer to his bones, tightened the red sash around his waist, then took a deep breath.
“Only twenty-seven Nephilim survived the Anchor Crystal’s breaking,” he said, “and they lived in bitterness and agony until the end of their days. The Anchor held everything together, and when it shattered, so did their world.”
The old man spread his arms outward. “These empty caves were their just reward—their prison—where they spent decades in pain, vigilant in their grief for what they had done.”
The boy at his feet bounced on his knees, eyes fixed to the councilman seated in front of him. “Tell me the part where we come in,” he begged.
“I will get there, Udug. Be patient.”
The child stilled.
“Those that survived hated one another, and while they did not mate in a physical sense, their savagery should be indication enough that most of their offspring were the product of rape. Their children took a different shape and were weak compared to them. Some were let free or escaped, but most were consumed by their parents.
“A few Nephilim tried again and again to keep their bloodline pure and bring about a child like them, and it was a vicious cycle until one of them, on a whim of curiosity, began to look after her deformed child. She tried to learn what it was that made their offspring different in this new world. The boy was given the name ‘Dalkhu,’ and as the centuries passed and the boy grew, he watched many of his kind being slaughtered.”
“That’s when we learned their ways, right, Master?” the boy asked.
The councilman sighed at the interruption but nodded. “Dalkhu asked his mother to sharpen his mind, give him control over the soul inside him, and teleport by traveling outside the veils of the world. He thought that if his kind were to offer servitude to their parents and find them food in these desolate caverns, they would become valuable and the killing would stop. So Dalkhu learned and, in turn, taught the others. Thenceforth, we, as a people, were named after him.
“It took years before the Dalkhu, now young adults, lived in relative peace with their parents, but it was short-lived. One of the Dalkhu discovered something in the veil that would change the course of history.”
They smiled at one another.
“Earth,” the boy said.
“Yes. The discovery of another world just beyond the invisible layers of the veil shocked the Nephilim. They did not know that their world had fractured into three all those years ago and assumed that these caves were all that was left of their world. Anger returned to their hearts. They feared that their Dalkhu servants would flee to this new world and it shattered what little peace there was.”
“So we killed them!” the boy exclaimed.
The old man’s face straightened. “Not all of them, I believe. There were Dalkhu who wanted freedom and others who defended the Nephilim in search of favor and power. No one clearly won. Some Nephilim fled to Earth and beyond, but those who wished to retain their oppression may still be sealed below. Regardless, the Dalkhu freed themselves and formed leadership in the Council. Laws were created, and we officially became a society of our own.”
“So why are we different from the Anunnaki?” the boy asked. “We are both children of Nephilim, right?”
“When the Anchor Crystal broke, more than just the physical makeup of the world changed. Auras and streams of invisible energy separated when the world was no longer held together. In these caverns of Kur, one of those streams settled, and our souls are affected by it. The same goes for the Anunnaki in Dingir. We are both children of the Nephilim, but the energies that give birth to our souls are ethereally opposite. Things between us and our brothers got out of control before we even understood these waylines of energy and how they affected our souls, so we accept that things are set in motion and our destiny will remain unchanged.”
The boy looked to his hands for a moment as he contemplated this. “We will never stop fighting?”
The old man shook his head. “It is not likely.”
“Then we should seek to win: fix the Anchor and reunite the worlds and the energies in them. Our children would be like the Nephilim, wouldn’t they?”
The old man’s wrinkled forehead tightened. “The Nephilim had their time. They were cruel and horrifying creatures that deserved the fate that was handed to them.”
“But there is beauty in power, is there not?”
“Boy,” the old man said, “you know nothing of the monsters you speak of.”
