Long before the cities, before steel pierced the skies and before Erythia knew of war, there was Malithra.
She was not born of humans. Not truly. Not of anything recognizable to them. Her first sight of life was the chaotic symphony of creation—stars igniting in darkness, oceans swelling with potential, creatures crawling from the primordial mire. Her kind, the Jinque had sent her to Erythia as an emissary, an observer, to learn, catalog, and study the species they deemed… intriguing.
A thousand years she lived among them, cloaked in forms they could comprehend. She wore their faces, spoke their tongues, moved with their frail rhythms, learned their customs, their wars, their betrayals. At first, she admired them. Their fragility was beautiful. Their determination, radiant. Every child, every laugh, every fleeting gesture of love fascinated her.
But fascination curdled into contempt.
It began with small acts—the casual cruelty of humans toward one another, the lies and corruption that crept into their institutions. Then came the wars, the slaughter of innocents, the willful ignorance of consequences. She watched generations repeat the same mistakes. She witnessed leaders feed thousands into meat grinders of ideology. And when she tried to intervene, to sway them toward preservation instead of annihilation, she was rejected, mocked, hunted.
Her disgust deepened.
By the fifth century, she no longer hid it. Humanity's achievements became grotesque distortions to her eyes, monuments to hubris and arrogance. Their "Empires" rose like putrid tumors upon the land. Her interventions became strikes of judgment—harmless at first, subtle—disasters that redirected rivers, froze crops, collapsed bridges—but humans adapted. Always they adapted. Always they survived. And each survival, each defiance of the natural order she sought to enforce, was a personal insult.
It was the massacre of so many innocent people that did nothing wrong that finally broke her restraint. A city of scholars, priests, and children, burned alive in the name of conquest, and she had been powerless to prevent it. She descended as Judicator, a storm of wrath and cold logic, cleansing entire armies in a single night. Humans called it divine punishment; she called it a test they failed.
They were unworthy.
The Jinque elders intervened. A being of her magnitude could not roam freely, not yet. They encased her in a vessel of paradoxical containment—a music box, ornate with impossible geometry and etched with sigils designed to bind consciousness. Within, time dilated. For centuries she seethed, thinking, learning, planning. Each tick of the mechanism a reminder of her captivity, each note a mockery of the life she could no longer touch.
When she awoke, it was because of a being in a dark black cloak, a Malevolent entity who had stumbled upon the vessel. Curiosity, ambition, and hubris combined, and the cloaked figure unwittingly shattered her prison, freeing the storm she had contained.
Her eyes opened upon a world she no longer recognized. Civilization had spread like veins across the land; new empires had risen, yet the pattern remained the same: ambition, greed, violence, lies. Humans had changed in form, but not in essence. Her contempt, once a simmer, became a roaring inferno.
She descended upon them then—not as a visitor, but as judgment incarnate. Entire districts became unlivable zones within hours. Governments collapsed beneath her power. Military forces, the best and most disciplined humanity could muster, fell before her in seconds. Every blade of grass, every spire of concrete, bore witness to her fury.
And yet, her focus was singular.
She had learned much during her long exile, observed the subtle fractures in human morality, and found Netoshka. The Glitching Aberration—a hybrid of human and alien influence, a nexus of an anomaly—She represented everything Malithra hated and feared. Not for what she was capable of doing, but for the audacity of her existence.
She should not exist.
Malithra's hatred was now concentrated, a laser against the collective failings of mankind. Cities, armies, civilians—they were all part of a pattern that had led to corruption, war, and ignorance. Humanity had defied logic, flouted reason, and survived despite their own flaws. That survival was a mockery, and Malithra's punishment was absolute.
As she surveyed the cityscape below, now writhing in chaos, she whispered to the wind:
"You were given time, and you squandered it. You were shown mercy, and you spat upon it. You are nothing. And yet… I have chosen to endure your filth once more, for I am the reckoning. Humanity… will be purged."
And with that, she spread her wings of psychic energy and stepped fully into the mortal plane, her essence radiating an aura of inescapable doom.
Erythia would remember this day. Every scream, every crumbling building, every life snuffed in an instant—it was a lesson. A warning. A testament to the price of hubris.
And humanity's punishment had only just begun.