Syd slept restlessly, dreaming of another life in another age. Dark shapes and dreadful whispers troubled his slumber.

    He had felt it, the same as every other Solar Exalted. The deep cold sting of betrayal as the Unconquered Sun had bowed his head and swore fealty to Theion the Empyreal Chaos, the Primordial King. The icy venom had wormed its way into the darkest recesses of his heart and led him to a journey amid the lowest coil and darkest stars of the Spiral of Galaxies. Those lonely places where the spirits of the dead outnumbered the living. Here were the phantoms of stars and worlds themselves, slowly spiraling into the galactic tomb; the Black Non.
    He gazed upon the swollen black star that loomed and swallowed the horizon of a world long abandoned by gods and mortals alike, face twisted with bitter hate and steeled resolve. The eerie white light formed a halo against which a galaxy of dead celestial objects were illuminated. It was soon joined by a false sunset surrounding him, a half-filled circle blazed like a miniature star in his forehead.
    "Oh dread powers of the Black Non, you dreaming heralds of Oblivion, the End of All, grant me the power to exact vengeance on the Tyrant Sun! In return I gift you three things!"
    "The first gift I bequeath unto you is my name, for it is now thrice-damned by its nearness to the Tyrant Sun."
    "The second gift I bequeath unto you is my life, for it means nothing in the face of the certain doom the Sun has condemned all who love life to."
    "The third gift I bequeath unto you is my soul, for the Tyrant Sun has crushed it with such despair that I turn to you, the dead and dreaming Titans."
    "These I freely give to you, the Neverborn, in exchange for becoming an instrument of terrible and awesome vengeance!"
    With this last pronouncement, he fell silent, joining the dead world in its stillness. He waited, counting heartbeats as he strained with the very fiber of his being to discern some answer from the inscrutable powers of the Black Non.
    The Neverborn answered as the last breath left his lips. From his mortal remains arose a ghost swollen with enough power to be named a lord of death, bequeathed a new name even as his mortal one was consumed by the dying Titans of the Black Non. Even the divine shard of his exaltation forgot his name as it unerringly sped through the vast cosmos towards the next hero worthy of it.