The Gods Use Mortals as Kindling; I Use the Gods to Forge Steel

At the dawn of the universe, there was a set of "old rules": how fast things could move, how heavy the sky was, how time flowed, which way fire burned, and which events were connected to which others. In primordial times, the parasitic civilizations of the higher dimensions used the "Heaven-Stealing Ritual" to lock these old rules inside their respective "core authorities" (what ordinary mortals call a divine nature).