The First Death

As told in Virellian tradition

When the first living soul passed from the world, the wind held its breath.

A child, nameless now, wandered too far into the glades of dawn, their laughter echoing like birdsong. They fell—quietly, peacefully—beneath a blossoming tree. There had been no death before this moment. The world had never known such stillness. Their breath ceased, and something ancient shifted. Life, for the first time, ended.

Elyndra, goddess of creation and memory, came to the child’s side. She wept openly, her hands trembling, her tears soaking the earth. This was not the world she had woven. She had shaped it for beauty, for change, for endless song—but not for silence. Not for this.

She reached for the child’s soul, but found only echoes.

Then came Virelyn, goddess of death, her daughter, born of silence and finality. She stepped into the glade not as a specter, but as a stillness deeper than sorrow. She knelt beside the child and placed a hand upon their chest—not to revive, but to remember.

From the soil where the child lay, flowers bloomed. Pale and golden, they opened their faces to the sky. Each petal whispered memories: a favorite lullaby, a skipped stone, a soft-held hope. These were not just blooms—they were firstborn minds, stirred by the imprint of a life lived and lost.

Thus were born the first plant-folk, seeded by grief, awakened by memory.

Elyndra, watching, understood. Death was not destruction, but transformation. The child was gone—but they had not vanished. They had become part of the world’s song.

She wove a crown from memory and wind, and placed it upon Virelyn’s brow. "You are Keeper of Last Echoes," she said, "and you shall carry all that should not be forgotten."

And so, death entered the world—not as a thief, but as a promise. And in the Virellian groves, where flowers still bloom from quiet earth, the children of that first memory live on, their roots tangled with the very origin of endings.