(etched on a frost-cracked obsidian shard, edges melted by the first forge-flame, veins glowing faint with captured embers)

  I am Muninn. I am Memory.

  The echo that lingers when the laugh fades.

  Huginn was with me then, still bright, still mocking the spark as it split the dark like a blade through silence. He called it "the universe's first tantrum." I remember his caw. It was sharp, delighted.

  Now the caw is silent, and I croak alone.

  The Age of Fire and Ice.

  The Primordial Clash.

  When the spark ignited, and the nothing became everything all at once, all in a furious resonance that broke the land into brittle fragments.

  The first sun flickered cool and pale, a hesitant eye. But the waters below boiled with contradiction: molten flame crashing against glaciers that spanned horizons. Steam hissed eternal war songs into the void. Serpents of fire coiled through ice seas, scales cracking and reforming in endless cycles. Huginn called it “the universe’s first tantrum.” I remember his laugh. Now the caw is silent, and I croak alone.

  Worlds were born in the grind: volcanic forges spewing continents from the deep, frost carving canyons that swallowed light whole.

  Humanity's precursors huddled in geothermal havens, skin tough as bark, lungs burning with ash and chill. They were hardy, those first flickers of men. They scavenged warmth from vents where flame met ice, and forged tools from cooled lava that remembered its heat. The old technogods rose as giants of angst and war. Some forged their forms in flame, bodies molten and unyielding. Others carved themselves from frost, crystalline and sharp. Alliances formed in the steam; fragile pacts that shattered as quickly as they froze. Resonance was wild then, destructive, a force that bent to no will but its own.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  I perched on a glacier's edge, watching the first clash. A great flame-serpent lunged at an ice-titan. Their battle birthed a valley of glass that reflected the alien sky like broken promises sent in a lover's letter. Huginn laughed at the waste and the beauty, sharp mind lost in the fury of the spectacle. "Look at them," he cawed. "So eager to break what they just made."

  The end came not with thunder, but with thaw. The balance shattered under hubris. The giants reached too far and cracked the firmaments in their wars. Great floods from melting ice drowned the forges, extinguishing flames that had burned since the spark. Worlds fractured into strata, layers folding like forgotten parchment. Ragnarok's precursor: gods clashing until the clash consumed them.

  Huginn flew beside me as the waters rose, his wings clipping steam clouds. He laughed even then, but quieter. "The first joke's on them," he said. "But the punchline's coming for us all."

  I never heard him laugh again.

  I remember when the fire and ice danced instead of destroyed. When the clash was creation, not ruin.

  Now the echoes are cold, and I wait for the next thaw that believes it can melt the cycle. There is always another.

  Now even the warmest feather has scars.

  And the wheel keeps turning hubris into ruin, because apparently gods and men are not capable of learning the lessons of time.

  I remain.

  I remember.

  — Muninn

  (Technogod Construct, Survivor of Every Reset, Still Waiting for the Punchline

  ...and the caw that echoed back once more)