Chapter 1 - The Birth

The newborn announced his entrance into the world like any other, crying his fear and frustration with all the force his tiny lungs could muster. For a long while, there was no one around to hear. Eventually, the child came to an exhausted quiet, laying in a puddle of coal-black ichor in the remains of his shattered mother. White flecks of bone stuck oddly out of her quickly rotting carcass. Almost on the edge of perception, liquid-black spirits crawled on her remains, sucking greedily with barbed leech-mouths.

All of a sudden, the room filled with a sense of Presence, or more specifically, two presences. One spirit turned to The Other and then back to the newborn. At this point nothing at all remained of the mother, save a thick, cloying scent in the air and a fine, black dust that had settled in the cracks of the wooden walls and between the bamboo slats of the floor. One spirit bent over and gently lifted the baby up off the ruined mattress with slender, translucent-violet arms. Her (for the spirit hitherto known as One came to be something of a mother to the child) flat face tilted lovingly towards the poor child as she rocked him gently. The only features on her visage were slight differences in coloration which could represent wide, almost owl-like eyes and a long, tapered marking to represent a nose.

One's counterpart - The Other - had similar, but more angular markings as well as a hulking body and thick hands tapering to pointed claws. His body was as translucent as One's but colored a deep burgundy. He remained utterly motionless as One cooed softly to the newborn she rocked in her arms. The baby's pudgy, red face; round, steel-blue eyes and soft tuft of black hair covering the crown of his head seemed the picture of perfect peace, despite his bizarre circumstance.

"Yang." One said suddenly, realizing she could speak, "I shall name him Yang." Her voice reverberated in Yang's infant mind like gently plucking strings on a harp. He stirred and continued crying vigorously.

Upon leaving the small, vile-smelling bedroom, One found the main room of the small cottage filled with animals of all sorts. Lichen-frogs and tiger-herons, winged boars, feral eel-dogs, bugs, reptiles and rhino-newts and other swamp-dwelling creatures crowded the low-ceilinged room. They were everywhere, perching on the sparse furniture and hanging from the herb-wrapped rafters, all seeming to strain to catch a glimpse at the newborn Dark Avatar.