The Nines (The Fifth)

In the primordial era, all mortals lived in the same realm as their Eight gods who would each spend time walking among the living, granting miracles and blessings to their creations. The Eight were worshipped by their Children, though the gods likened their creatures more as pets or experiments than beings of any substance. Though the gods were always kind towards their creations, they loved nothing more than the process of refining and perfecting their world, including the mortals living upon it.

As there was no birth and death cycle, the creation of new mortals was managed entirely by the gods. Souls were seen as a strange byproduct of their creation, and an oddly powerful one at that. The souls were entirely imperceptible, making them difficult to destroy if they were set loose from their flesh; only the Fifth had the power to perceive the intangible souls, able to feel them burning within a creature. It was thus tasked to return the mortal souls to clay as the Creators liked, sending them to the Pitch where they would be returned to their base elements and the gods could sculpt something anew. The Fifth is a step down in power level from the three Creators, sharing a tier with the Fourth.

Interest in Mortals

The Fifth spent the most time of the Eight walking among the mortals. Though the Fifth was worshipped the same as any of them, it was not revered to the extent of the other seven deities; the Fifth’s destructive power barred it from any ability to grant meaningful miracles or blessings to the living. No creature truly understood the Fifth’s power or the concept of a true death. If any mortal ever killed another, it was easy enough for the other seven gods to revive the creature. Furthermore, it was not unusual for the Eight to select mortals to spirit away with them to pamper and spoil if they found them interesting enough. If some never returned, it was not something any living creature questioned. To the mortals it was an honour to be chosen; to the Fifth, it knew its fellow deities would grow bored with their pets soon enough and send them to the Fifth to be destroyed.

The Fifth felt trapped in its unsavoury role. Over time, it grew apart from the other seven deities in favour of spending more time on the surface of the Earth, going so far as to disguise itself as an ordinary crow to attempt to live among the mortals and hide from its divine brethren. But the Fifth’s intrinsic divine aura, detached behaviour, and lack of understanding of mortal feelings compelled the mortals to innately fear and submit before it no matter how hard the Fifth tried to act as they did, a fact which it greatly resented.

Meeting So’ra

The Fifth first met So'ra during a time it was disguised as an ordinary crow. So’ra was a child of the First who was bold enough to overlook the Fifth’s divine aura and address it as an equal rather than a deity to be worshipped. The mortal, so enchanted by the world the Nines created, so honest, simple-hearted, and feeling everything in its entirety, captivated the Fifth. It felt seen by So’ra in a way that it did not among its brethren, the mortal burning to witness every facet of the world that the Fifth had helped to bring into existence. The world that had become mundane to the Fifth over the eons transformed into something new and exciting through So’ra’s perspective, and its initial curiosity about the lives of mortals grew into an obsession.

Even when the Fifth eventually revealed its true form, So’ra was not afraid. The Fifth explained that some day, sooner than either of them would expect, So’ra would die at its talons. Rather than flee, So’ra promised to stay at the Fifth’s side until that day, and apologized for the existential burden it had been forced to carry and keep secret for so long, which made the Fifth cry. In a gesture of their friendship and to cement how the Fifth looked upon So’ra as an equal, the Fifth revealed its true name to him, and So’ra became the first and only mortal to have ever known a god’s name.

The Fifth visited So’ra at every opportunity, living alongside him as well as his kin and kith, spending days on end answering So’ra’s many questions about the universe, and taking him to the most remote corners of the world just to witness his reaction. In turn, So’ra answered the Fifth’s many questions about what it meant to possess a living soul, to grow, change, and love, and to choose the kind of creature they wanted to be. The other seven deities often referred to their living creatures as being feeble and simple-minded, but from listening to So’ra, the Fifth came to believe there was a spark within the living, one that no god possessed - something that made them find more meaning in a short life than a god did in an eternity.

Betrayal to the Nines

As the eons had passed, continuously being forced to kill off the mortals it so loved at the Nines’ whims took its toll on the Fifth. The life of So’ra flickered out in what felt like the blink of an eye, gone before it could truly begin, his death ordered by the First. The Fifth begged for lenience from the Creators, asking that So’ra’s spirit be allowed to ascend and run among the sun constellations as the Eight did. It was the only request the Fifth had ever made of them over hundreds of thousands of years doing the Creators’ bidding. The plea was refused as the heavens beyond the constellation of suns were only to be touched by eternal beings, and the simple soul of the mortal was not such. When ordered again to return the soul to the Earth, for the very first time in is existence, the Fifth refused.

Enraged, the Creators decided to wipe out all mortals themselves, destroying every soul on the face of the Earth. Mortal souls were opaque to the gods; not even the Seventh could penetrate into their minds. Over time, the other seven deities had grown unnerved that they'd made something they didn't understand. Only the Fifth had grown to hold genuine curiosity about what laid within the mortal souls, desperate to understand that which it could not see; connection, love, and life, and all that So’ra spoke of with such awe and amazement, how each individual mortal had such a rich inner life, unique personalities, experiences, perspectives; and yet each and every one had nuances and depths that could never truly be understood by anyone else. The Fifth knew that even over a thousand eons, it would still never be able to fully understand So’ra and the other mortals. But more than anything, it wanted the rest of eternity to keep trying, to keep asking So’ra to explain again and again a million times over. One mortal lifetime wasn’t long enough.

With nothing left to lose, the Fifth was faced with the destruction of everything it loved by deities it was not strong enough to oppose. Desperate to save rather than take a life for once in its existence, the Fifth rebelled against its calling. The Fifth stole a sun out of the sky to give to So'ra, creating a ninth god so powerful that not even the Eight combined could ever touch it. The eternally lit world turned dark as pitch for the very first time, exposing the Earth to a cold it had never before faced, plunging it into a seemingly endless winter. With the Eye held by a mortal, the realm of the living was severed from the realm of the gods. Mortals would have to suffer natural death with no hope of revival rather than be 'put down', and they could no longer speak to or walk alongside their beloved gods. The selfless Ninth gave away its powers to ensure the continued survival of the living, giving up on its status as a god to instead join the reincarnation cycle with its new Children, much to the despair of the Fifth.

Exile to the Mortal Realm

Fearing the repercussions of its deed, the Fifth fled from the heavens and disguised itself as a mortal, using the power of its own eternal soul to join an infinite birth and death cycle. The Fifth is feared by all Children of the Nines save for corvids themselves, rumoured to be the bringer of chaos and strife, a malicious entity that takes the lives of others to extend its own. Many Children see the Fifth as having sacrificed their lives in favour of just one creature, and hate it for betraying and dethroning the rest of the Nines. None of the mortals ever learned what their Creators would have done to them otherwise.

Myth Among Mortals

Stories of the Nines vary wildly between their Children. Even between new-age wildcats, each group has their own culture and take on how the mythology of the Nines go. The story of the Fifth is one of the most controversial because no creature can truly agree on what the Fifth actually wants, where it might be at any given time, what form it will take, or how much power it has left.

The disguised Fifth is said to be dangerous, able to play tricks and possess the bodies of seemingly ordinary creatures. Some think it's off consuming the lives of other children of the Nines so it can keep reincarnating as a mortal, some think it spends its time maliciously destroying mortal spirits, the only god that can still do so, to prevent them from returning home to the Great Sun Constellation. Many think it seeks revenge against the remaining Nines who banished it, while others think the Nines didn't banish it at all and it ran off on its own. Few even think it resents the Ninth for giving away its eternal life and hopes to hunt and kill it. But it is most universally believed that the Fifth is a harbinger of the end, that it might even steal the last sun again and run off to a new world with the Ninth in tow, leaving them godless and estranged from even their afterlife.

Children of the Nines who are direct descendants of the parent deity's species typically do not attack each other as per the Eighth’s Law of Honour. But many of them, new-age wildcats especially, kill Children of the Fifth on sight; they believe all corvids to be soulless messengers of the Fifth, hunting for the Ninth. When the next reincarnation of the Ninth returns to the Earth, the Fifth surely will not be far behind. Though both deities are stripped of their powers and their memories have been concealed as mortals, each creature fears the day the two will inevitably meet.