Excerpt:

ACT I: The Zenith of the Gods Chapter 1: Hixtalis, the Capital of the Gods

It was the Year One since Creation.

The Pillars were beginning to grow accustomed to their new existences. They were not born as children; rather, they emerged slowly, first taking shape as titanic lights before assuming the forms that proved most comfortable to them.

With their emergence and the expansion of their Essences, life began to manifest throughout the universe, growing in parallel from the Point of Origin—the place where they were born. From there, they journeyed outward, leaving their imprint upon a cosmos still in its infancy. It was within the first galaxy to form alongside them that they forged their dynasty.

Life flourished at an ever-accelerating pace the closer one came to the center of creation, and the Hixtalis solar system became the first stronghold of both mortality and divinity coexisting.

Five planets orbited its star, but for now, our gaze will rest upon the most important of them all: the planet Hixtalis, from which the system itself took its name. It was upon this world that the four Pillars chose to inscribe their vision, shaping it in their own image and likeness.

To the eyes of the Pillars, evolution advanced swiftly, though this was little more than an illusion. Their divine nature caused them to perceive time differently. A planet might require millions of years to fully form—especially if it lay far from the Point of Origin. For this reason, the Pillars created the Universal Calendar, intended to record the passage of time as witnessed by their eternal gaze.

This calendar advanced by one year after 365 days per month had elapsed, in a cycle of ten months per year—that is, 3,650 divine days per year. It affected only the creator gods, as each civilization maintained its own reckoning of time. To determine where an event on a specific planet fell within the Universal Calendar, one need only consult that world’s records and the greater god assigned to it.

In the case of the Hixtalis system, during Year One of the Universal Calendar, the first humans were living in the tenth year of their own count, for they shared their world with the gods and dwelled at the very heart of creation.

When the first conscious beings set foot upon solid ground, the first thing they saw were vast lights drifting through the clouds—the celestial bodies of the gods. As they evolved, contact with the Pillars grew more frequent, and reverence for these imposing figures spread like sacred fire.

Settlements, kingdoms, and dynasties were founded upon Hixtalis, and in time, the planet came to be regarded as the central world of all creation.

Years later, each of the planets in the solar system was claimed by a god, yet Hixtalis remained a unified territory—the most important of them all. No god resided there permanently, but they visited often, for it was there that the Senate of the Lakan was founded: a council of sages charged with conveying the will of the Pillars to the emissaries of their faith.

The Lakann served as the central government of both Hixtalis and the other planets, managing the affairs of mortals—matters considered insignificant by the gods themselves. In time, this government solidified into the Unified Republic of the Hyx, the first form of divine administration over inhabited worlds. At that time, only five planets were aware of the existence of the gods.

The three central powers of the Hyx were:

• The Church, which preached the doctrines of the Pillars;
• The Senate of the Lakan, charged with governing in the name of divinity;
• And above all, the supreme authority: the Pillars themselves and the primordial gods.

This order maintained a delicate balance between power and freedom for mortals, though they remained under the judgment and absolute dominion of the divine.

On Hixtalis, each god received their own veneration according to the personal inclinations of the faithful. There was no conflict in this: every mortal was free to follow the Pillar who inspired them most. However, as the Republic expanded and the number of colonized worlds grew, divisions arose…

…"

–Continue reading in its original Castilian language at https://fictograma.com/ , an open source Spanish community of writers– Photograph of the Republican Capital on the Planet Hixtalis and images of protagonists inside the post