The Granites ( GTD+FCFS)

The Granites. Before there were names, there was weight. The world was not made, it was pressed. Layer under layer, stone under stone, until the deep forgot what light looked like. Nothing ruled down there. Nothing prayed. There was no hand shaping what the pressure would become, only the pressure itself, indifferent and endless, doing what pressure does. Some things broke. Most things broke. Sand stayed sand. Clay stayed soft. They surfaced early, easily, unchanged and the world barely noticed them. 950 did not break. They held their shape through heat that unmade lesser stone, through weight that would have flattened kingdoms, through centuries with no sky, no witness, no reward for enduring, because there was no one down there to reward it. No god counting their suffering. No king waiting to knight them for it. They hardened because hardening was the only thing left to do, and they did it anyway, in the dark, for no one. When they finally broke the surface, they didn’t emerge as subjects or chosen ones. There was no ceremony. No bloodline to slot them into. They came up as exactly what they’d made themselves into, nothing more, nothing granted. That’s the only inheritance in this world: what you survived becomes what you are. 950 stones. No kings. No gods. Just the hardest to ever exist.