Xal'Zirith, the Jealous Eternal

Origin:

Xal'Zirith was not born of hatred, but of fascination. In the early ages, when the celestial spheres still turned with order and grace, he was one of the Vigilant Ones — an immortal entity shaped to watch the flow of time across mortal realms. He was meant to observe and record the brief, flickering lives of mortal beings. But something in him broke.   While others saw mortals as lesser, he saw them as wondrous: full of pain, love, and fury compressed into short, radiant lifetimes. He watched them change, fail, love, and die. And slowly, he began to crave what he could never possess — that raw, burning vitality.   What began as awe curdled into obsession. He envied mortals for their impermanence, for the gravity that death gave to every choice they made. And when he could no longer bear it, he broke his sacred purpose and fell into corruption.   Xal'Zirith stole time from the mortals he loved. He halted it, bottled it, replayed it. He would watch a child’s final breath a thousand times in perfect stillness. Entire villages vanished, not in flame — but in silence, captured in their last moments like insects in amber.

Before the War:

Long before the Great War, Xal'Zirith was already hated by the gods and Demon Lords alike. He was a hoarder of moments, a thief of futures. Mortals cursed his name in whispers, especially those near the leyline nexuses, where time often slipped.   Cultists began to form, worshipping stillness. They sought his “gift” — eternal youth, an escape from the chaos of the world. Some became his collectors, his “Sables,” tasked with identifying mortals of exceptional emotional resonance for him to preserve.   The Divine tried to intervene, but Xal'Zirith never fought them directly. He bent the flow of time to vanish just before their weapons struck. For ages, he was elusive, intangible — more myth than truth.

During the Great War:

When the Great War tore at the earth, Xal'Zirith emerged with silence. As armies marched and demon lords clashed, he slipped through battlefields and left only stillness behind — entire battalions caught mid-scream, never aging, never waking.   But then came the encounter that would change him.   A legendary elven warrior, clad in radiant blue starfire — a magic long thought lost — caught Xal'Zirith off guard. The starfire blade struck true, not merely disrupting his form, but hurting him in a way he had never known. The pain was real, and worse: as the light consumed part of him, he felt something he had never felt before — the death of another Eternal, one of his kind. And for the first time in countless eons, he screamed. That scream echoed across battlefields, shaking even demonkind.   Fear, foreign and bitter, bloomed inside him. He vanished from the battlefield, not through strategy, but panic. The moment was brief — but it shattered the illusion of his untouchability.   He never fought again on the front lines. His pride masked it as disinterest. But in truth, he had glimpsed his own death, and it terrified him.

After the War:

With the end of the Great War, Xal'Zirith retreated into his realm — the Sable Crucible, a suspended world caught between seconds. There, time crawls or halts altogether. The realm became a distorted museum of his victims: heroes, lovers, tyrants, children — all preserved in their most vivid moments.   While other Demons bled into the mortal world in hunger or chaos, Xal'Zirith merely watched. He became quiet, contemplative, watching as mortal empires rose and fell — and stealing pieces he found beautiful.   He continues to seek those who shine too brightly — to trap them before their flame goes out.

The Current Era:

In modern times, tales of Xal'Zirith are rare, often dismissed as ghost stories. But those who study temporal anomalies, dead zones where nothing changes, or areas where people vanish mid-step, know better.   He is still active. He is still watching.   It is said that anyone who lives too fully, who burns too hot in grief or joy, might catch his attention — and be taken.   Some radical cults believe that the time of stillness is near: that Xal'Zirith will soon unleash a wave across the mortal world, freezing it all in a perfect tableau, forever denying death — and life.   The starfire blade that once wounded him has never been seen again. Some say its wielder ascended. Others say the blow damaged Xal'Zirith in ways not yet understood — and that even now, the wound is rotting, deep in the flow of his stolen time.