Angels – beautiful, winged beings with golden blood called ichor – lived in the sky, in a place they called Zion. Only the Angels knew what Zion looked like, and few of them had ever deigned to describe its wonders to any of the others.
The Angels were immortal, and a secretive race; their skin was marked with shimmering golden Runes, which were purported to have been etched with their blood. For millennia, Angels were the only race to walk the universe, and they were ruled by a council of seven, known as the Eldest.
They were Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Camael, Jophiel, and Zadkiel – the Angels who surpassed the beginning of time – and together they formed the universes.
It was Michael who crafted Zion from the very stars, who had once glowed golden, like the blood of the Angels, until all their warmth was stolen to create the City of Heavenly Fire. Zion was said to be a city that blazed aureate flames, when the Angels could be convinced to reveal any of its mysteries. Zion was a golden city which was eternally burning.
Gabriel was the one who claimed the hearts of a million suns, and he crushed them and reformed them into the planets which circled devotedly around the cold, heartless stars. The planets cut through Zion's skies, but they did not orbit the Golden City, and many of the Angels believed that Gabriel had been mocking Michael when he molded the worlds. Gabriel named the most rebellious of these planets Earth; and it hid away from Zion and refused to come into the city's sight.
Raphael was the next Angel to steal from the stars, and he took their souls and with them populated the earth. Raphael was perhaps the most generous of the Angels, for he gave parts of himself to his creations: from the bones of his right hand, a magnificent city was borne; from the breath of his lungs and the souls of stars, the red-blooded Mundane race came to life; and a single drop of his blood gave Mundanes the ability to create in a way different to the Angels. And so, the First Men took up residence upon the earth, and they lived and created within the City of Bones.
Around this time, Michael revisited the stars, and he stole from them their memories, and he spirited them away, and hid them within the golden halls of Zion. In a display of selflessness which Michael had never once exhibited, he sacrificed a fair portion of his golden ichor, and bled across the memories of the stars. And to each of the memories he sacrificed a downy feather from his wings, until they were wilted and bare as bone; then, like Raphael had (though Michael was, at that time, unaware of his brother's creations), Michael breathed life into the stars' memories, which dripped with glittering ichor and trailed bloodstained feathers; and a new generation of Angels were born.
Of these new Angels, Lucifer was Michael's favorite, for he possessed the memories of the oldest, brightest star in the universe, and so he was wise and powerful. But Lucifer, like many of the Star-born Angels, remembered how Michael had stolen the warmth and memories of the stars, how Gabriel had stolen their hearts, and how Raphael had stolen their souls.
And so, Lucifer and his Star-born allies warred against the Eldest; and when they were inevitably defeated, they were cast out of Zion. They burrowed beneath the earth, and they carved an obsidian palace with halls of stone, and over the centuries an entire city was formed; it had seven circles which were devoted to the demise of the Eldest, and pools and rivers of liquid fire raged against the banks of the Ruinous City, and from it Lucifer created Demons, who had the metallic black blood that came from mixing silver star-born ichor with fire: burned life-blood flowed through their veins.
The Eldest called Lucifer's home the City of Fallen Angels, but Lucifer and the Star-born and the Demons called it Edom.
The Eldest, who were content in their superiority now that the Star-born had been banished, returned to their bickering: Gabriel, who was furious with Michael's treatment of the Star-born, fled to Earth, and there he consorted with the race Michael so disdained (for he had by this time learned of Raphael's creations) in a vain attempt at revenge.
The results of Gabriel's dabbling were half-Mundane and half-Angel, and when he told Raphael of this hybrid, winged creature, the two of them spirited the Nephilim away from Zerithra, and together they created a city that was hidden within the mountains. Soon after, Raphael returned to Zion in an attempt to redirect Michael's attention from the happenings on Earth, and Gabriel remained behind in the City of Glass, where he taught the Nephilim Runes which they could Mark into their skin. He showed them, too, the weapons the Angels had used in the war against the Star-born and gifted them the knowledge which allowed the Nephilim to use the adamas and electrum which was so abundant in Zion.
Fearing that Michael would learn of their deception, Gabriel and Raphael (when the latter was not tied up in his interactions with his Mundanes) visited the Nephilim under the guise of an Angel named Raziel, one of the Star-born who had remained in Zion and managed to remain so far out of Michael's sight that the Archangel had forgotten Raziel had ever been born. Knowing, though, that the Nephilim might find themselves in need of an Angel's protection, Gabriel and Raphael provided the Nephilim with an intricate golden goblet made of Angel blood; a sword made from the soul a dying star had gifted them; and a lake which was smooth as glass and reflective as a mirror, and whose waters were so potent that the safest place for them was on the outskirts of Alicante.
Soon after, Gabriel departed from Earth with Raphael on his heels, and together they convinced Michael that the one planet he could not see was not worth seeing, and they waited for Gabriel's Nephilim to call upon them, for Raphael's Mundanes could not.
Meanwhile, the other Eldest journeyed down to Earth to create their own cities and their own peoples.
Uriel, who had once been close with Lucifer, visited Edom, and there he befriended many of the Star-born and the Demons they had created. Uriel was fascinated with the black blood of the Demons, and so he took some for his own purposes. With the blood and the bodies of Raphael's dead Mundanes, Uriel created a species of bloodthirsty creatures who could not bear to wander about beneath the sun. These creatures – Vampires, as Uriel called them – had lost their souls sometime between their deaths and resurrection, and so Uriel – who felt guilty for the part he had played in the separation – helped his creations search for their lost souls, and he guided them all through the night, and together they worked to tether their souls. They built a city of their souls, and the Mundanes and Nephilim and Demons called it the City of Lost Souls, but Uriel knew that his Vampires called it Hel, for they and their souls were trapped in a city which was made of them, and they could only leave its safety beneath the shadow of the night.
Though Camael also consorted with the Demons during the times he slipped away from Zion, he was kinder to his creations: they were living beings and could wander in the daylight. They were half Mundane and half Demon, and though they had strange markings which denoted them as such, they could do incredible things with the magic that ran through their veins. Camael took everlasting flames from Edom and fire from the stars, and he created for his Warlocks a city that burned in a way that Zion did not: Maelstrom rained ash that looked like snow, and Camael assured the Warlocks that as long as they and their powers took up residence there, it would always remain the City of Ashes.
It was debated long after whether it was Uriel or Jophiel who was cruelest to their creations: Uriel may have separated his people's souls from their bodies when he fed their Mundane bodies Demon blood, but it was Jophiel who tied his creations to the whims of the moon. The moon, Jophiel's Werewolves would lament throughout the centuries following their creation, was a cruel mistress, for she twisted their bodies from those of Mundanes into those of wolves when she was at her fullest, yet on those nights, which were few and far between, when she hid herself behind the cloak of the night, she stole their wolves from them, leaving them feeling weak and and incomplete. To be sure, Jophiel never intended such a fate for his creations; he was an Angel, but he was not so thoughtless as Michael, nor so cruel: Jophiel simply wished to give his people the same advantage Uriel had: humanity combined with Demonic strength.
He had not intended immortality, for he knew how tedious never-ending life was, and so his Werewolves were not immortal. But neither did he wish to tie his creations to Michael's will (for though Michael did not know of the other races beyond the Angels and the Star-born, all the Eldest knew that it was their ichor which bound them to Michael, and Jophiel was unwilling to take such risks), and so, instead of creating a race like the Nephilim, who were not immortal, he adopted Uriel's method, and instead used live Mundanes for his purposes.
And so Jophiel's Werewolves had the strength of Demons, and the lifespan of Mundanes, and while they were bound to neither Michael nor the Princes of Edom nor eternal life, they were slaves of the moon, and their home in Dianthra – the City of the Moon – reported this to all who cared to wonder.
For millennia, there were seven kingdoms which split the world. There was Zion, where Michael and the Angels lived their endless lives; Alicante, where the Nephilim dwelt; Zerithra, which was home to the Mundanes; Maelstrom, where the Warlocks' presence ensured the continued fall of ash; Hel, where Vampires and their souls resided; Dianthra, where the Werewolves were slaves to the moon; and Edom, the obsidian and stone city, where the Star-born and Demons lived their lives in circles.
Once upon a time there were seven great cities.
At least, that was the way it used to be.
But there was another Angel. Zadkiel spent centuries in the shadows while the other Eldest created. He feared that Michael would hear of the rebellion happening in the ranks, and Zadkiel, who had long ago been cursed by the stars, was unable to lie, and was unskilled in the art of verbal deception. He had spent eons, though, pretending that he did not resent Michael, who had forced him to join the fight against the Star-born, and who – despite his assurances – had cast them from Zion.
Zadkiel had spent that time in the shadows, learning to travel from Zion to Edom undetected, and he – like so many of the Eldest – was close to Edom's residents. Beelzebub, one of the Princes of Edom, and the son of Lucifer and Lilith, was one of Zadkiel's favored beings, close behind his rebellious brothers (for the other Eldest were his brothers, as much as Angels could lay claim to such a Mundane concept).
It was Zadkiel and Beelzebub who approached one of the women from the race Raphael had created. It was they, with their Angelic and Demonic ichor and their peculiar magic, who created the creatures that were caught somewhere in the crossroads of all three of them: a third Angel; a third Demon; a third Mundane.
The Mundane woman raised the children, and when she died, Zadkiel and Beelzebub took their offspring, who were now grown, and created a city for them, just as the other Eldest had done for their own creations. The City of Knowledge borrowed from all the other cities, and yet it was still a place all its own: like Edom, it lay beneath the earth; like Alicante, there was something forbidding about the smooth, reflective water, though this was more to prevent unwanted visitors than to terrorize the minds of the cities people or summon an Angel. As in Zerithra, many of the structures were formed from bone; and as in Maelstrom, it was perpetually snowing, though in the Seelie Court, the snow was snow, not ash. As in Dianthra, the moon hung unfailingly in the sky, which glittered with the stars which were as soulless as the inhabitants of Hel.
Like Earth, which was the true home of the Seelie Court, the landscape was expansive, and terribly, brilliantly beautiful; the bone edifices were crawling with ivy, and the ground was carpeted with moss; the kingdom was protected by a circle of tall, stone-faced mountains, from which waterfalls flowed to the earth, where they crashed into silvery rivers that wound their way to the center of the Court, where there sat a golden fountain, which was said by Zadkiel (though it may very well have been pride which tainted these words) to be more intricately and beautifully formed than anything in Zion. Within the fountain grew a tree with gilded bark, whose green leaves were washed silver by the moon. The boughs were heavily laden with fruit, which was so ripe it dripped its juices like tears into the basin below.
It was believed that the sweet-smelling liquid which filled the fountain, somehow never spilling over its edges, would grant immortality to the drinker; and that the fruit from which the lauded drink flowed would open the mind to the wonders of the universe, past and present.
Of course, no one knew whether these claims were true or not. The Seelies could not lie, but they were adept at twisting the truth; and even without that uncertainty, the children of Zadkiel and Beelzebub were immortal as only the offspring of an Angel, a Demon, and a Mundane could be, so they had no need to drink from the fountain. Nor did they desire the fruit which grew in their midst, for the Seelies, like so many descended from Angels, were confident to the point of arrogance, and believed that they knew all they needed to about the world.
No one had ever been able to confirm or deny the myths of the fountain and the fruit, though many had tried. But the Seelies were jealous with their city, and they would not allow the others passage in or through their lands; they were vicious, too, and dangerous with their ferocity: the Seelie Queen allowed no one near the well; and even before her were the Wild Hunt, who rode through the skies; and the Valkyries, who were famous for their fighting prowess and the numerous mortals whom they had led to death.
It was not just between the Seelies and the other races that tensions were high: Mundanes lived in direct conflict with Vampires, who had no qualms against feeding on them when night fell. There came a time when the Mundanes grew so outraged by the Vampires' attacks that they attacked Hel with torches in one hand and stakes in the other; it was broad daylight, and it was less a fight and more a massacre that resulted in the permanent deaths of nearly a quarter of the Lost City.
After that, though, Vampires avoided Mundanes, for the most part, and fed on animals instead, for Werewolves had senses so keen that it was impossible to sneak up on them (as a few unfortunate Vampires had discovered), and Nephilim and Warlocks would never let a Vampire get close enough to feed. The Seelies weren't even an option, for they were locked away within their Court; and the same went for the Star-born (whose blood would have been too potent for a Vampire) and Demons (whose blood was too vile); and the Angels, who were untouchable by all, and who lived in a perpetually sunlit city.
Then there were the Nephilim and Warlocks, who were as alike as they were different. Both had Mundane blood, but while the former had ichor in their veins and graceful wings sprouting from their backs, the latter had Demon blood and strange features that distinguished them from the other races.
The Nephilim liked to boast that they were the children of the Angels, and it was well-known that Warlocks were the children of Demons, and so they adopted from their ancestors the hatred for each other and disregarded the fact that it was only Michael and the Star-born who held any ill will against each other.
While most of the kingdoms were relatively neutral toward the others, there were certainly a few who stood out. So it had been from the beginning – Michael against the Star-born and Demons; Seelies against the world; Vampires against Mundanes; Warlocks against Nephilim – and so it would always remain.
But time always had a way of dragging those who lived within it into the future, and so nearly two thousand years after the Angels retreated to Zion and the Star-born shut themselves away in the bowels of Edom, the Shadow World was able to come to an accord.
Rather than further their feuds, it was agreed that the Nephilim and Downworlders would be stronger if they worked together; it was agreed that the world would be safer if they learned each other's ways and worked alongside one another to protect the earth and the Mundanes from the ongoing war between the Angels and their adversaries, which often threatened to spill over the borders of Edom and Zion – as far removed from the other cities as they were.
And so, despite their forefathers' enmity – despite their own centuries-long quarrel – the Nephilim and the Downworlders united with a common goal in mind: they would protect the Mundanes, and themselves, for they knew that none of them could stand against the might of the Angels, nor the Star-born, alone.
Thus the Institute was born; and after the first, hundreds more were scattered across the surface of the earth. Nephilim and Downworlders alike congregated in those places, and they learned to work unitedly, and they set aside their differences for the good of the many.