Chapter Three: Divergence Prime

There is no unified explanation of Divergence Prime. It has never been truly observed, yet it has never left sentient beings. In the oldest temples, priests whispered to the undying flame: all things are born from Divergence Prime. At the farthest edges of the star-sea, observers turned their telescopes toward the end of the universe. Amid countless noises and fading lights, they seemed to glimpse traces of something long vanished, and recorded: all laws originate from Divergence Prime. In the deepest domains of the Realms, an enlightened one secluded himself for ten thousand years. He forgot his name, his past, and the Great Way, and in the end left only two words carved into stone: saw divergence. No one knows what he saw, just as no one knows what Divergence Prime truly is.

Some believe Divergence Prime is a history that has already ended. Some believe it has never ended. Some believe it exists beyond the universe. Some believe it exists in every present moment: in every choice, every change, and every birth. There are countless texts about Divergence Prime, schools devoted to it across the Realms, and faiths built around it across innumerable civilizations. Yet the more people study it, and the closer they seem to come, the more they discover that they know nothing. No one has seen Divergence Prime, but no one can deny it, because the world itself is the trace it left behind.

If the first difference was the universe's first heartbeat, then Divergence Prime is the long and endless echo after that heartbeat. After the first difference appeared, Absolute Unity was broken. Yet the universe was not born immediately. There were no Realms, no Stars, no Interspaces, no Lands, no territories, no civilizations, no life, and not even what later ages would call laws. Time had been born, but it had not yet begun to flow. Space had appeared, but it had not yet taken shape. The seeds of all phenomena existed, but the forms of all phenomena had not yet been decided. That was the age closest to the origin, and the age farthest from the understanding of sentient beings.