This story is a repost of a story that I originally started about three years ago (first under the name Boogiepop, then changed to Gunso). I'm doing some revisions as I go, so hopefully it will be better than before. I also plan on actually finishing this time.

Standard disclaimer: I don't own Oh! My Goddess, though some of the characters in the story are my own original creations.


Arc I: Prologue

A Place of Subtle Darkness

The wind blew fiercely across what thousands of years before was a temple. A circle of large, cracked, gray stone pillars seemed to have barely stood the test of time. Within this perimeter was a circular tablet of dark marble, almost forty feet across, laying flat on the grassy earth. The solid disk had no seams or cracks and seemed to have been formed from a single piece of stone.

Geologists and archaeologists alike had spent nearly a century trying to answer the question of how the ancient people of Japan had managed to create such a thing, or even where they had obtained such a large quantity of a rock that was not indigenous to the region.

The carvings on the stone itself proved equally bewildering. The ancient runic designs were far too worn and faded to read, but all agreed that the writing was no form of Japanese, or any other writing from the mainland. Some had made the point that the runes seemed to resemble ancient Nordic script, but that line of thinking was discounted by most. What could be read was definitely not Nordic, and to say that the Norse had been in Japan three to four thousand years before would have made any archaeologist an outcast from the scientific community.

The people of Japan didn't seem too terribly interested in such debates, however. To them it was simply another shrine, something to be respected, but not something to worry about. Thousands of visitors came to the mysterious ruins every year to pray to their ancestors, to ask the gods for good fortune, or just to take pictures like any other tourist would. There was no way for any of them to realize what they were truly standing on.

Only a handful of its visitors could feel the invisible heat, the darkness and pain, which revealed the true nature of the site. However even the ones who felt uneasy at this place could never comprehend the true history of the ancient shrine, or the future that would start on those very grounds.

Through the ages of mankind the place had become a ruin that belied its true importance. While the people of Earth paid the prehistoric structure little mind, Heaven had kept a careful eye on it since it was constructed. However, even they had forgotten just why they kept their vigil. Only the Almighty Himself and the Councils of Heaven knew what the place was, and what was truly hidden there.

They knew because they had put it there.