"Not exactly but some of them, yes." The older Azrael shrugged his shoulders as if it was a simple thing for him. "The others died because of other events."
"And what are those?" Azzy directly initiated the conversation this time as he realized the importance of this meeting. At first, he only wanted to go on with the flow but now, he wanted to learn whatever he can from his future self.
"Be patient, I will tell you about it but before that, learning the rules of time is extremely important." The older Azrael then continued to tell him about time travel. "Okay. First, you learned about the original timeline. Second, you learned about the interim timeline and its effects. Okay, now, thirdly, I will tell you about the history of how the sands of time and the River of time have been created."
"Sands of Time." Azzy heard of it before from his grandpa Oakley and his great grandfather Qridus. He even read it in the Book of Death but he never heard of the river of time though.
"Nearly 14 billion years ago, it was just before space, time or even universe existed, there's said to be a single creature, no one knows why it is there or what is it even.
Religious believers say it is a god or goddess, scientists say it is an atom, some crazy demi-gods say it might be a creature of a 13-star realm from a bigger universe, the true gods never answer about it for some reason.
But, anyway, I will tell you the story which I heard from my future self. You will again hear this again from someone else in the future but never forget to keep quiet then."
Azzy silently nodded.
"Good." Future Azrael continued, "This was when the universe was just created from this Almighty Creator was exploded as it couldn't suppress its powers anymore.
Its body was transformed into the expanding material universe, its positive soul energy led to the creation of True Gods, Angels, Djinns, souls, and all kinds of spiritual beings, etc…
Its negative soul energy led to the creation of the Protos race, deadly beings that even rank-11 Gods are wary of.
And the remaining is its soul. It is said that its soul was divided into either four or five parts. Some think it is four and others think it is five.
In one theory where its soul is divided into four, this creator led to the creation of four beings, except that they aren't beings unlike the Gods because they lack the material form.
These four are Life, Death, Space, and Time. Four are interlinked to each other.
You must have been told by Master Avia about how Life and Death are the hidden attributes but it is a wrong conception of humans that Life and Death are opposite like Light and Darkness."
"Hmm, why is that so?" Azzy questioned the future counterpart. "Just like how light takes away the darkness, doesn't death take away the life? Why aren't they opposite attributes?"
The older Azrael smiled as he shook his head, "you forgot about the reincarnation, Azrael. Life is a path where the soul could inhabit a material body in this world and Death is a path where the soul gets free from this material body and returns to the spirit world. Both of them form a never-ending cycle.
And just like the gods, the Soul is immortal. It won't die on its own. In our simple terms, you can think like the spirit world is the home to our souls and Gaia is like a workplace."
Realization dawned upon Azzy and he looked at his older self in amazement. He felt like new doors opened for him. "Life is not an enemy to death. No wonder, Healing cards work on me. I was a fool not to realize that sooner."
Meanwhile, the older Azrael continued, "Anyway, where was I? Hmm, that's right. The creator's soul was divided into Time, Space, Death, and Life who are all in the 12-star realm.
For a while, everything is good and everyone working is in harmony.
Life gives a body to a soul to form an organism. Space gives the organism a place to live. Time gives the organism to spend it in its life and the Death returns the soul, back to the spirit world.
However, one fine day, Time got envious of its three counterparts that are doing something worthwhile but it was doing nothing but moving forward. So, it started its own experiments.
Time started to flow differently on each planet. At first, no one was against it as this doesn't matter. But then, as time started more experiments, it started disrupting others' works.
Time could reverse the expansion of space, stops the growth of life, stops one from dying, or worse, turns an adult into a baby, and a baby suddenly speed growth into an adult.
It could make massive stars go into black holes and vice versa or even extinguish them.
Unlike Space which has a huge stomach and Life which was too compassionate, Death was a cold-blooded entity and never compromises.
After giving a couple of warnings, when Time started to disrupt its work, even more, the Death decided to extinguish the time itself.
No one knows why or how but in the end, both of them merged to give birth to a powerful consciousness…"
"Chronos," Azzy finished the sentence with a look of surprise. He never expected that there's such a background story to the birth of the Deity sitting inside his mindscape.
Older Azrael nodded, "Yes. Now, the merger between the two cosmic entities released a massive amount of energy, giving birth to a new god.
She's none other than Moira, the daughter of Chronos and the goddess of fate.
Born from time and death, she decides the fate of every living organism in all the words as long as they are bounded by time or death. Only the true gods, rank-11 Archangels and Archdevils, the pureblood of the Protos Race aren't affected by her power.
However, not all the energy was lead to the birth of Moira. Nearly, two-fifths of the energy was left after the birth of the Goddess of Fate.
To make sure not to create another entity, Space confined the energy into a pocket dimension only to realize they later materialize into massive amounts of colorless liquid. It is called the River of time.
Later, when all the gods started to govern the universe, Chronos selected God of Darkness, Erebus' son as his successor as he felt he was quite compatible with the unique death energy.
Thanatos, the new god of death was appointed to govern the deaths of living beings and also act as the keeper of the river of time.
But Thanatos was the son of the God of Darkness. It's obvious that he had darkness in his heart. With the addition of death energy, the darkness in his heart only grew and he tried to harness the power of the River of time.
As a result, an enormous amount of white sand was extracted from the river. Just when Thanatos wanted to absorb all of it, he was stopped by the avatar of Chronos.
As a punishment, not only Thanatos was cursed to be confined to the Abode of Death, the realm itself was detached from the Celestial Empire of Heaven and turned into an underworld.
The Shell of the River of Time was then contained into a soul, creating the Goddess Styx.
As for the white sand, God Hephaestus helped Chronos in creating an hourglass that can hold the sand in compressed form. This is the story of the Sands of time. Any Questions?"
Azzy raised his hand like a student. "I read that Sands of Time can kill the people even above your ranks. If it is true, then, how to unseal it?"
The Older Azrael shook his head, "you can't. Only Chronos can unseal it."
"Is that so?" Azzy's face became dim in slight disappointment. He asked the Reaper before too and only got the reply that he isn't qualified yet to know about the unsealing.
Azzy expected something like he needed to reach rank-7 or something but now that he faced the reality, Azzy's hopes of defeating all-powerful enemies ended up in vain.
Just then, the older Azrael spoke, "well, if you master the Protos Energy and absorb the powers of Vajra and Chronos like me, you will be able to use it without any issues though…"
"Wha… what did you say?" Azzy's eyes widened.
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m