Stories all have one thing in common—a beginning. Whether it is random, calculated, or ordained by fate, all things must start somewhere.
And for our little tale, it begins in a world not too different from our own. For the sake of understanding, let us call it IV or Four.
Universe Four.
Here, in this peculiar plane of existence, our story commences with Yuga—our strange and humorous protagonist—who, through means most unfortunate, has found himself cast into the fray. He had slain a man named Darwin, a name now rendered meaningless in death, and in doing so, tore open a portal into something new.
There was a particular kind of horror in falling.
A terror that clawed at the mind, a sensation that ripped away all pretense of control and left only helpless fear.
Yuga plummeted through the sky, his body twisting violently as gravity wrenched him downward. The wind screamed past his ears, a deafening roar that swallowed every other sound, even his own ragged breath. The force of it pressed against his chest, flattened his ribs, tore at his clothes like grasping fingers. His stomach coiled, lurching with every uncontrolled spin, and for a moment, he could no longer tell which way was up or down. There was only motion—endless, merciless motion—dragging him deeper into the grasp of the heavens.
Above him, the world had already been left behind, reduced to a distant, meaningless blur. Below, there was nothing. A vast emptiness stretched out in all directions, a sky painted in layers of storm-gray and deep, endless blue. The clouds rushed past in fevered swirls, their edges curling like ghostly fingers reaching for him, swallowing him whole.
The air was sharp, colder than any winter night, biting through his clothes, clawing at his skin. His eyes burned from the force of the wind, but he forced them open, blinking against the sting. Through the chaos, through the whirling mist and the aching pull of the fall, something stirred far beneath him.
A shape. A shadow.
No—not a shadow. Something alive.
It was vast. Too vast. An undulating, shifting mass, moving like waves upon an unseen ocean. At first, it was nothing more than a silhouette, a ripple in the storm, but as he careened closer, details began to emerge—snow-white fur, flowing like water, stretching out into the sky itself.
And then—impact.
Soft. Silken.
The world did not shatter around him. He did not crash against the earth in a ruin of broken bones. Instead, he sank, enveloped in warmth, as though the sky itself had opened its arms to catch him. His breath left him in a sharp gasp, his limbs weak, his body stunned from the sheer force of the landing. For a moment, everything was still.
And then the stillness moved.
The thing he had landed upon was breathing. The realization sent a fresh jolt of fear through his limbs. His hands grasped instinctively, fingers tangling in thick, downy strands.
It moved like a whisper in a cathedral—silent, slow, reverent. Not so much flying as existing in motion, the way clouds move when you're too young to know time, or the way a dream pulls away just before waking. The creature curled through the heavens with the grace of something that had never touched the ground, and never would. It was far too holy for that.
It was massive. Not in the way of mountains or beasts, but in the way oceans are massive—endless, living, older than memory. Its body stretched across the sky in impossible, elegant arcs, each movement sending ripples through the air like music over water. Yuga could barely comprehend it—he couldn't even see where it ended. It just went on and on, coiling through the mist like a ribbon made from smoke and moonlight.
It looked like something between an eel and a serpent, with the softened features of a catfish, gentle and strange. Its form was long and fluid, flowing with a rhythm no landbound thing could ever mimic. As it turned, great waves moved down the length of it, each ripple slow and sweeping, like the tide turning under a full moon. Its movement wasn't urgent. It wasn't hunting or fleeing or struggling to stay afloat. It simply moved because the sky welcomed it.
And its colors—Gods, the colors. They shimmered like oil in a sunbeam, shifting between shades of pearl, silver, and lavender, the hues bleeding into one another like melting light. Sometimes, when it dipped through a bank of cloud, its scales would flare gold, as though the sun itself had kissed it. There were no hard edges. No jagged horns or dreadful spines. Just softness. Just silence. Just the glimmering hush of something too perfect to speak aloud.
Running down its back was a mane—or something like one. It wasn't hair, not really. It was finer than that. Like long strands of snow or threads pulled from the belly of a storm cloud. They drifted behind it, long and curling, miles and miles of them, trailing in the wind like the tails of forgotten comets. When it passed, the air didn't rush or roar. It whispered. It sang.
And the eyes.
They dotted its sides like stars flung across a velvet sky. Some blinked slow and soft, no bigger than a thumbprint. Others—great, luminous things—swiveled gently, wide as wagon wheels, glowing with deep cerulean and molten gold.
Each one shimmered with thought. Not intelligence the way humans understand it, but something older. Something gentler. They watched everything with the reverence of the moon, as if they had seen the rise and fall of kingdoms, and were neither impressed nor surprised.
Yuga stood there, a speck of warmth on its vast, living spine. The warmth of its body rolled beneath his boots like the thrum of the earth itself. He could feel it breathing—feel it—like standing on the belly of a slumbering god. The sky around him was wide and cold, but atop this being, the air was calm, strangely warm, as though the creature had carried the sun on its back.
He didn't speak. He couldn't.
There was no language for something like this. No word that could describe the way it hollowed out your chest with wonder, or the way your heart slowed when you realized it was real. All he could do was stand there, small and blinking, swallowed by the vastness of the sky and the endless spine of the creature beneath him.
It wasn't just beautiful.
It was sacred.
Slowly the creature's body began to rumble and shake before crashing into a collective of mountains. the beast had laid its head and began to rest but the random halt of motion caused yuga to fall into a patch of snow.
Yuga's head shot out from the snow like a startled marmot, hair tousled and eyes wide, blinking against the sudden light. He coughed once, spat out a bit of frost, and dragged himself upright with the dignity of a man who absolutely meant to faceplant into a snowbank from a flying sky snake fish.
Brushing himself off, he revealed the same sleeveless, hood-stitched shirt and black pants combo that screamed, "I didn't check the weather." Bandages hugged his forearms, already damp with snowmelt. From one pocket, he pulled out a pair of goggles—square-framed, black, absurdly bulky, with pink-tinted round lenses that somehow matched his equally absurd pink eyes.
He looped them around his neck, like it was the most important part of his outfit, then sighed, stuffed his hands back into his pockets, and began trudging down the mountain like a man with no plan—but excellent accessory choices. He had traveled for over ten days and finally made his way into a city. A city known as Iota.