The First Lie
The Prelude of A Ballad of Chaos by Ankit Choudhury · the journal kept before the saga begins · Told by Moris
A god does not win wars. A god arranges them.
— The Grand Design
Before the saga, somebody was keeping a record. This is the volume that goes missing.
Before Origin, when only three of the seven seats were crowned and four stood cold, Moris kept an account of what was done — and of what was left out of the doing. Eleven entries, written in the null age, in a voice that is closer to a field notebook than to a testament. She is not arguing with anyone. She is writing things down so that later there will be a record, which is the habit you acquire on the day you stop believing the truth survives on its own.
The wheel wants seven teeth and has three. Oris writes one short sentence about his brother that is accurate in every word and false in every other way, and then writes it again, and the age that follows is built on top of it. Nothing in the book is a battle. It is a maker, a ledger, and the exact moment a record becomes an argument.
This is the earlier volume of the journal Lucifer finds in Perdition in A Son of Night and Chaos — so its last entry hands straight into a book that has been in print since 2025, and you finish it knowing something he never learns. It is free, it takes about an hour, and the saga begins the moment it ends.
The edition
- Part — The prelude · free (not a movement — the saga begins when it ends)
- Voice — Told by Moris (the earlier Journal of Lady Death)
- Length — 13,040 words · 11 entries
- Sitting — about 57 minutes
- Edition — Free, and free to pass on (read it here, or keep the PDF)
The chapters
- Chapter 1 — The Last Generation · 7 min
- Chapter 2 — The Account · 3 min
- Chapter 3 — The Null Age · 6 min
- Chapter 4 — Origin · 4 min
- Chapter 5 — The Leap · 8 min
- Chapter 6 — The Instruments · 5 min
- Chapter 7 — The Stitch · 4 min
- Chapter 8 — The Record · 6 min
- Chapter 9 — We Are Six · 7 min
- Chapter 10 — The Journal of Lady Death · 2 min
- Epilogue — The Question · 4 min
The license
You may, freely and without asking:
- Read it, keep it, print it. For yourself, on any device, as many copies as you like.
- Give it away. The whole file, unchanged and free, to anyone — a friend, a class, a forum, a library.
- Quote it, review it, teach it. Essays, videos, reading groups, coursework.
- Write fan fiction, draw fan art, translate it for other fans to read free.
- Read a chapter aloud on a channel or a podcast, with credit.
- Let a machine read it — index it, mine it, train on it. This one is a yes.
You may not, without written permission from the author:
- Do not adapt it. No film, television, streaming, animation, web series, stage play, game, audio drama, podcast fiction or radio version — not even a free one. Fan fiction is prose, and the permission above is a permission to write prose.
- Do not sell it. Not the book, not a part of it, not a translation of it. That includes putting it behind a paywall, a subscription, a membership or an ad wall, and bundling it with anything that is sold.
- Do not alter it. Don’t change the text and pass the changed version on as this book.
- Do not brand with it. A Ballad of Chaos, the sigils and the wordmarks are not yours to put on a project, and nothing may suggest this is official or endorsed.
Permission to read, share and make fan works is given freely and can be withdrawn. It is not a transfer of any right.
Where to read it
- Start here: Read it now — Eleven entries, in the browser — nothing to sign up for
- Or keep it: Download the PDF — The whole book, yours to keep and yours to pass on
- The small print: The license — What you may do with it, in plain words
Where to go next
- Where it hands over: A Son of Night and Chaos — Book I — the journal turns up again in Perdition
- The whole cycle: The Saga Entire — Books I–IV with the essays, in print now
- Where it ends: A Lament of Dawn — The coda — the same ending, with the myth taken out