Revamped, redone, and rewritten. This is how it should be. Enjoy.
prologue
The world of the dead lay in chaos.
The songs of the pyreflies had turned to the screams of a million generations, all crying out in pain, fear, and torment as a dark cloud descended. The Fayth swirled high above, their power drained and their hold over the world slipping. Soon they would fall into their own abyss. The empty trench they dug, themselves, to imprison nameless ancients from nightmares long past and long forgotten. The oceans of crystal water, the spraying cataracts and glimmering seas, had all been replaced by roiling rivers of lava that crawled and swallowed everything that lay in their path. Slowly eating the land of the dead; the kingdom of the Fayth.
Upon an island of flowers stood a single man. A man with eyes of crimson. His right arm was drenched from the same blood that matted his own hair, and his chest heaved with each painful breath as he stood his ground bravely against the falling darkness. He was close to death. Marred by tears in his torso, by a gash on his head, and by lashes on his arms and legs. The wounds showed signs of attempted cauterization, but such measures had been crude, at best. They still leaked blood, and their burning pulsed through his muscles and through his will. Still he raised his head up high, facing the darkness with courage and boundless fortitude.
"Such noble feats thou hast performed in the names of thine gods. And yet, how have they rewarded you?" The darkness asked, its voice rumbling like thunder. A voice felt, not heard. It pounded through the soul and vibrated through the body. Filling and consuming him. "You have lost, little human." It said with a laugh, a single tendril of the murky mist snaking towards him.
He coughed, blood flecking his lips and staining his teeth. The breath he sucked in was wet and ragged, rattling in his throat and in his lungs, which screamed as he prepared to speak, "No living thing can defeat you . . . The dead . . cannot harm you," he rasped, his eyes rising to the swirling storm of the Fayth high above them all.
"And yet, thou art dead. Thou art only a soul feigning breath." The darkness mocked.
He laughed, the spasm hurting so badly he felt that he could cry out at the torment. But, so enraptured by this, he did not, and let his amusement be known to the great darkness. "Can a soul bleed?" He cried out, displaying his bloodied teeth as he smiled. The tendril slowed, and began to retract cautiously.
"But . . you are dead." The darkness replied, fear creeping into the mighty voice of the bane of the Fayth. Such fear lent strength to the man, and he shook his head, his smile growing ever wider.
"I have been restored," he said with a cough. He doubled over, hacking violently and spitting up blood. Gasping torturously, he straightened up to face the cloud. His insides burned at the tension, but he forged onward, saying, "They gave me breath again . . so that I may undo you . . and all that you have wrought."
The darkness rumbled furiously, "Impossible!" It asserted. "Only Fayth can defeat me, and none that exist above hold the power to pose a threat to me any longer."
"Precisely," the man hissed. He drew a sword sheathed at his side and held it before him. His eyes cast hatefully upon the wretched cloud, the man fell on his own blade. His spine severed as the blade bit through, and the last of his willpower gave out. He died.
And so he rose.
From his corpse came a whirlwind of pyreflies. The darkness roared. Tremors shook the Farplane as its rage carried through the ethereal kingdom of the dead. The pyreflies joined with the Fayth in the skies of the Farplane, their light growing brighter, their maelstrom calming. Thunder boomed in the land of the sent, and the Fayth descended upon the cloud with fire, with wind, and with rage. As a tornado, the Fayth swept over the darkness and consumed it. It fell with a shriek, powerless to fight this newfound strength.
The whirlwind dispersed slowly, and when the last of the pyreflies had faded, the man stood once more on the island of flowers. No longer bloodied, no longer wounded. He looked at his hands in shock, not quite sure if what he was seeing was real. His attention shifted to the Fayth, who hovered above in forms shining brilliantly with light and with power.
"Now, reborn for all that you have done in our name, and in the name of this world, you may return to those who fought beside you. To those whom you love. When you return, in death, as it should be, you will be rewarded justly for your servitude and your sacrifice. In your blood runs our power. Your power. You, and those like you, the first of the living Fayth. Our reflections. Go, now. Rejoin the living."
He was swept away like air, finding himself in the world above. In Spira. Lost, to the annals of time, this titanic struggle would be. This war, this discovery, and this clash of god, man, and monster. Known, only by those who remembered, as the "Farplane Genesis".