Tiribtalla Legends and Myths Anthology II: The First Trial
(South Cordilian Studies, General Anthropology, Religious Studies, Literature, Ancient History)
Collected and Translated by PUZ Yayyára & PULA Panata
The First Trial
When Kalutir sank into the Heartfire and Arkanaari rose once more to the heavens, the younger gods were left to watch over Kraua. However, in defining their domains, their unity was soon put to the test.
Velakar, Lord of Tides, grew restless. His storms lashed the coasts, drowning the seedlings Kevhirra had coaxed from the fertile soil. Waves devoured the shorelands, salt crept into the rivers, and the villages of the first mortals were swept away. Kevhirra, furious and grieving, confronted his brother.
“Brother, you drown what I raise, you salt what I sow. Have you no thought for balance?”
But Velakar, his pride sharpened by restless whispers from the Void that had crept into his dreams, would hear none of it. His voice thundered across the waters, proclaiming, “The coasts are mine alone! None shall root themselves where my tides beat eternal.”
The siblings quarreled, and in their wrath, a cataclysmic storm struck the land. Rivers overflowed, valleys drowned, and entire plains were reshaped. For three days and nights, thunder shook the mountains and lightning split the forests. The tempest did not tire— for gods do not tire.
On the dawn of the fourth day, Talen descended into the storm, his hammer brilliant with the forge-light of his father. With mighty strikes, he shattered the shores, casting cliffs as walls along the coast to mark a boundary between the land and the sea. Each strike of his hammer stilled the tempest, but, too, scarred the lands. Leaving in its wake jagged bluffs where the waves now break in fury.
Though still, the storm raged. And then Vyranaz, cloaked in shadows, drifted down into the chaos. Whispering words only the true-of-heart can hear, she dimmed the lightning, and the thunder ran asunder. She enfolded Velakar in her shadowed embrace, and for the first time, he felt tranquility greater than the chaos of his waves. Gradually, the rain ceased, and the seas calmed.
Yet serenity alone would not hold him. The sea is never still for long.
It was then that a new, unfamiliar voice emanated from the waters— a voice unlike storm, or shadow. From the calm of a protected sea, Tiaepo, Goddess of Pacifica, emerged. Her form was mirrored in the still surface of the water, her eyes like depths untouched by storm. She laid her hand upon the cliffs Talen had struck, and where she touched, the waves were brought to a steady rhythm.
“Tide and soil need not devour each other,” she spoke, her words like ripples on still water, spreading outward. “Let the sea breathe, and let the land root itself. I will keep the balance when your wrath grows restless, Velakar, for the deep is mine as much as the shore is yours.”
Velakar gazed upon her, torn between his pride and recognition of her power. Her stillness unsettled him, for it was a mastery of water he had not known— the ocean at peace, vast and unbroken. He gave no answer, but the fury in him slowly waned, subdued by her presence.
This great quarrel came to be known as the Sundering Tempest, and became the first great scar upon Kraua’s face— the cliffs that today still divide shore from field. But from it came the first lesson: that unity, not rivalry, was their greatest weapon against the Void. And though the siblings did not yet see it, the arrival of Tiaepo was the beginning of bonds that would shape their fate for ages to come.
As the cliffs still smoked of Talen’s hammer and the villages mended slowly beneath Kevhirra’s patient hands, the goddess of the deep moved among them not as a storm but as a guardian. She came often at twilight, when the line between water and land went quiet and the moons tilted their silver bowls toward the sea. There she would sit, ankles lapped by tide, fingers tracing runes on the wet sand— and invite the others to sit with her.
Though where cliffs had risen and salt had bitten the fields, grief and stubbornness grew in equal measure. Velakar’s tides still tested the fledgling shores, as Kevhirra’s seedlings plunged bright and fragile into the softened earth. Where their edges met, the waters lay restless— these were waters that could neither give life nor take it away.
One morning, as a pale mist braided itself over the coast, Kevhirra stood at the mudline with his palms cupped to the soil, coaxing tiny green stems from the salt. Velakar brooded offshore, more thunder than thought, and the waves answered him in kind with a hunger that curled into Kevhirra’s sprouting life. His voice rolled across the ocean, “You would plant where the sea must pass. Rootless things will drown, the coast should bow to the tide.”
“And you would wash away what gives the land its bread. The seed must take, the mortals must eat. Your pride will leave them with empty hands,” Kevhirra retorted. Velakar’s unbridled anger instantly took hold. He curled an arm of water toward the nursery beds, meaning to raze the seedlings with the wave. The sky then tightened, and gulls fell silent. Kevhirra stepped forward to defend the sprouts, summoning a shield of wind and soil. For a breath, the world held still, again waiting for the ruin to begin.
Then Tiaepo came, not in a rush, but as one who had always already been there. She rose from a sheltered inlet where the sea held its breath, her robes wet with the deep-blue quiet of places that remember things long after men forget. She did not speak at first. She instead sat on a weathered stone between the salt and the mud and watched the moon walk its slow silver arc across the sky.
Kevhirra flung down a handful of seed and scolded the sea. “Brother,” he proclaimed to Velakar, “your tide will drown the roots before they take.” Velakar answered with a swell and a taunt of spray. The argument devolved toward the old noise the gods made— a noise that split tree from root and made the first mortals perish.
Tiaepo lifted one slender hand, and the world fell silent as if someone had cupped the sky. Though just as she began to speak, the silence was shattered not by storm or wave, but by a new sound. From the cliffs struck by Talen’s hammer, a sharp grinding roar pierced through the air, like stone being chewed by its own shadow. The air grew thick with dust and the taste of iron. The surf pulled back from the shore, exposing blackened sand, and from that barren stretch rose a shape that was not sea, not soil, not sky.
The Kankri had come.
It moved as smoke does in a windless cavern— shifting, slithering, but with a terrible weight that pressed on the heart. Its body was a coil of darkness, faceless save for jagged hollows where eyes should be, burning not with fire but with absence. Mortals who watched from afar cried out and fled, for the sight of it hollowed their breath and made their hearts stand still.
Velakar recoiled, then bared his teeth. “This is no child of the tide.” His voice was laden with rage, but beneath it trembled a fear he had never known. He struck the surf with his arm, sending a wall of water toward the beast. But the Kankri did not waver, it dissolved the wave into itself as if it had never been.
Kevhirra then rushed forward, summoning roots and winds, but where her roots struck the shadow, they simply withered, green shriveling instantly into grey husks. He staggered, clutching his hands as if burned by the beast.
It was Talen, summoned by the terrific chorus of battle, who moved next. With hammer alight, he brought it down upon the black coil, and for a moment the cliffs themselves rang out with a sound like a forge bell. The Kankri let out an earsplitting shriek— it was no cry of life. The shadow recoiled and split apart, reforming from the edges of the smoke. Each blow fractured it, but each fracture only multiplied the dark.
It was then that Tiaepo rose from her stone, with Vyranaz now by her side. They stepped barefoot into the brackish tide, their robes dragging a path of calm over the water. Tiaepo spoke, her voice a ripple against the Kankri’s deep bellows.
“Patience. Not all battles are won by brute force.”
Tiaepo looked to Vyranaz, who then knelt, pressing her hand to the sea. Where her palm met water, the tide stilled and deepened into a mirror. The reflection of the Kankri appeared upon its surface, then twisted and shrieking, its form was pulled thin across the calm expanse. It writhed against itself, bound by its own reflection. For a heartbeat, it was trapped— unable to strike, unable to grow.
“Now, brother,” Vyranaz said to Talen.
The war-god brought his hammer down once more, though not upon the shadow, but upon the water’s surface where its reflection lay. With that strike the mirror shattered into spray, and the Kankri’s wretched, piercing scream faded into silence. What remained was only mist, rapidly dissipating back into the fading Void.
The gods stood uneasy, watching the last remnants of shadow dissolve. Though it was no occasion to celebrate. For in that silence, Vyranaz spoke, her voice as low as a graveyard wind, “This was no beast born of pride. This shadow is the whisper that stoked your fury, Velakar. This is the hand that creeps from the dark between the stars. The Void has tested us today, and it will not cease. Existence is vast, and we are not alone.”
References
Krauanagaz Historical Institute. (2017). Tiribtalla Pathenon: A Review of the Gods. National Academic Library.
International Federation for Early Civilizations. (2008). Polytheistic Religions in Southern Cordilia. Grovne: IFEC Publications.
University at Yayyára Department of Religious Studies. (2020) Tiribtalla Mythology and Early Adapatations. National Academic Library.
University at Yayyára & University of Panata. (2025) Tiribtalla Legends and Myths Anthology I: Story of Creation and Birth of the Younger Gods. National Academic Library.