“Heya, I’m here with sacrifices!” Gryft shouted, walking into The Temple carrying a few bags in his hands. His words echoed through the hall, condescending and with a smirk, like he was greeting an old friend. In one hand was a box of carvation fruit doughnuts, and he had one in his mouth.

“You wish to offer sacrifice to us?” The Temple asked, amused. “For the first time in your lifespan?”

“Pft, no,” he mocked, holding up his bags. “I’ve got sacrifices from everyone else. It was a busy day and people piled everything onto me.”

“We are disappointed, but it is a familiar disappointment.”

“Hey, ditto here, marble slab,” grumbled Gryft, taking another doughnut out. “I don’t wanna be the errand boy, but here I am.” He approached the statue in the back of The Temple and dumped out a pile of fruit onto the floor. “There. From Moon, Sona, Lon, Myra, Petra, Cyra, Caleh, and Oros.” The food on the floor disappeared into a burst of light.

“We request your sacrifice as well.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“We see that you do.”

“What?” He looked at the box in his hand. “Oh come on, you’re not getting my doughnuts.”

“We require sacrifice, lest you tempt divine punishment.”

“Oh fuck off,” Gryft hissed, tossing the box on the floor. As soon as he did, it also disappeared in a flash of light. “You don’t even fucking eat.”

“No, but we can indulge in your discontent.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he rolled his eyes. “You steal my food, you steal my life, this just sounds like marriage to me.”

“We released you from servitude years ago.”

“But somehow I always end up back here.”

Though Gryft had been released from being The Temple’s servant years ago, he still came by at least once a week to do maintenance, as nobody else polished The Temple unless they were feeling generous. That first time cleaning was by far the hardest for him, but it was just another thing on Gryft’s schedule nowadays.

“I honestly don’t know why people bother giving you stuff,” he remarked. “I mean, you don’t eat anything, and you could still provide us with what we need without them.”

“The sacrifices are not for me,” The Temple explained. “They are for the people.”

“There’s one part of you I love,” laughed Gryft, leaning his back against a statue and sliding to the floor. “How you say cryptic bullshit that means nothing, but still keeps me up at night.”

Gryft sighed and looked down at the plaque in front of the statue he was leaning against. It was a normal enough name, but there was something weird about the date. It was old, and not just kind of old. Really old. He had been there long enough to know the statues around The Temple like to shift around, appearing and disappearing, rearranging themselves randomly. This one showed a lot of wear and tear though. Gryft could make out that it was some kind of bird variant.

“What did this guy win?” he asked. “And the date on the plaque is… a month that’s not even on the calendar.”

“That would be Decalashan'an, and he did not win anything.”

“Did he save the carvation race too or something?”

“No, he was chosen. Long ago.”

“Chosen?” Gryft asked, raising an eyebrow. “You mean he was like me or something?”

“Oh Gryft, we did not choose you. You were purely misfortunate.”

“Good to know,” he growled. “So what was his deal?”

“He was one of many.”

“Oh do me a favor and give me a straight fucking answer!”

“To explain, we would have to tell you our story. How old we really are, and what we were before there was any Temp-”

“You’re putting me to sleep here,” he interrupted. “Less words would do.”

“Would you like to hear the story of how we came to be?”

“If you wanna tell stories for hours, go haunt a retirement home.” He sat there for a few seconds in silence before sighing. “Yeah, fine, whatever. I didn’t have anything planned for today anyway.”

“We are fascinated about how you regard our closest kept secret with such disinterest.”

“Give me a second, actually.”

Gryft stood up and teleported away for a few minutes. When he came back, he had another box of doughnuts and a bottle of soda in his hand. He sat back down next to the statue and popped off the bottle’s cap on the statue’s foot. Gryft put a doughnut in his mouth with a smirk.

“Here, this one’s free,” he said, tossing one in the air. It disappeared before it hit the ground. “Alright, tell me how you were born or whatever.”

“You, Gryft, are about to be one of the sole living carvations who know our deepest secrets. Our story starts long before we were The Temple. Long before there was The Temple. When carvations lived in scattered tribes in The Living, before humans long dominated the Earth. But most of all, back… at the beginning.”

“Literally every story starts at the beginning,” heckled Gryft. “You’re not special.”

“We advise you to not interrupt our story.”