The goddess had not expected the twins.
Over the eons, the goddess had come to expect many things from those she walked among.
Fear certainly, she expected. Uncertainty. Jubilation at her arrival or lamentation at her very presence.
For these she did not know why; she was not Death, all noise and steel and pain. Nor was she Darkness, lurking in every corner, waiting to rend, to maim, to destroy.
No, she was softer. Gentler.
She was merely Night, and she was merely there to give humanity what they desired. She loved them, as she loved her own children, and her visit was to be nothing but the delivery of her gift. Of her mercy.
Of course, she expected to be misunderstood. The goddess had done what she could to avoid it: she took the form of a mortal avatar; she sent two of her own children to two others that somehow seemed more lost and more fractured than the gods themselves. And yet there were still those mortals that feared her, that vilified her, that climbed the tower to try to fight Night itself. They misunderstood her gift for what it was. And so she struck them down, as she had done time after time, against all those who tried in such vain to escape her.
And yet, she had not expected the twins.
The boy, dark and hunched, the girl, bright and alive. Contrasting not just superficially but at their cores, two existences running side-by-side yet never intersecting. And yet each with a fire that burned within their very souls, with an inner music whose strains could cut through the night itself. Each with endless everchanging manifestations of their endless everchanging potential. The twin Fools who blindly wandered towards death.
The twin Fools who the goddess could not strike down, no matter how she tried.
The twin Fools who met her as she truly was, a young god and goddess ascending as so few mortals had done before.
Against such fire, such life, Night had no choice but to retreat. She could wait, of course. She was timeless, before the Earth, before the Day, before everything but Chaos itself. The few years she would have to wait until her return would be nothing to the goddess who wanted nothing more than to express her love. And yet, when she tried to return, the twin Fools yet again blocked her path. And again, she and Darkness were helpless against such bright fires of life.
And so the Great Seal remained, and the goddess wept: at being cut off from those she loved so much, at one of her sons being trapped forever behind a barrier of mortal folly.
And so the goddess called her daughter to her side, and sent her into the world, blade in hand, to complete the task that she could not do herself. To claim the souls that she had so sought for her own, and finally bring them to her mercy.
And so Nyx waited.
For the Seal to fall.
For her children, all of her children, to return to her side.
For the next Fool, whoever they might be, who would accept her gift for what it was.
From beyond the Great Seal, Nyx watched and waited.
She would not have very long.