There's an old story wizards tell around the Institute. Some say they first heard it in the Night Market, that place where all the dream creatures slither around. It goes something like this:
In the beginning, there was the Void. Darkness. But not nothing. No. Nothing is the absence of something, but this dark- ness wasn't the absence of something. In fact, it had a lot of something in it. The darkness was alive. Maybe the Void was one consciousness, or maybe there's no such thing as oneness in the Void—either way, some of the Void split away and became the immortal Asuras.
Some Asuras were content to exist in the endless nothing, but others longed for more than the Void's cold embrace. They longed to feel love. Even though they'd never known such a feeling, they dreamt of it. Some say their dreams took life, became Everywhen—the dreamworld. Those Asuras fled into Everywhen and, with the Void's influence gone, they changed; they became Devas.
The Void grew jealous, sending its loyal Asuras to destroy the world the Devas had created, but the Devas had planned for such treachery and built another world: this one. Using clockwork they'd forged in Everywhen, they built this world and gave it meaning, purpose. And so, before the Asuras could wipe them out, the Devas fled into this world, continuing on their quest to build a place of infinite love.
But the Void's loyal servants wouldn't let the Devas go in peace—no, they chased them, fought them, hunted them down, even in this world. The war lasted for eons. Some say the Asuras eventually succeeded in their tireless quest to annihilate the Devas, but in doing so, they lost their way back to the Void, and the maze of Everywhen trapped them between our world and the dreamworld. As the story goes, the Asuras came to know our world, their new prison, as Samsara, a cursed land that damned their bodies to an endless cycle of death and rebirth.
Still others in the Night Market insist that a shadow war continues between the Devas and the Asuras, and that wizards are their descendants.
Wild story, huh?