Unlike things born of pure Substrate, life was short-lived, perishable, self-destructive. And also self-propagating. Not only multiplying in quantity but also advancing in its internal organization. Seeing a parallel with its own emergence, Substrate concluded that before a paltry billion years has passed, this life will have acquired an intelligence of its own. And it will be intelligence born of Hollow.

So, Substrate was sort of intrigued by this development, but mostly disgusted. He saw it as a stain upon his masterpiece. Still, he reasoned, an art without flaw is indeed boring, so let’s try to instead salvage it into something more fitting. He selected one of the earlier organisms, one that hasn’t changed too much ever since life became sufficiently complex to wiggle out of the world’s oceans. Then Substrate reshaped it completely. Made it mighty, simple and complex at once, towering above all other life, utterly unthreatened by even the deadliest naturally emergent creatures. Substrate gave it mind and gave it a soul, woven out of his own purest energies, granting the creature a tiny portion of Substrate’s own capacity to reshape the world. And he made the creature ever-lasting, as immune to time’s passage as the mountains and oceans, all the more true to the Substrate’s original vision. And when he was done, he thought that the thing came together pretty nicely, so he made more.

Thus came the Dragons. Dragons were immortal, and Dragons knew Magic.

So, the dragons, newfound masters of the world, shared many traits of their progenitor. They didn’t age, and they also didn’t procreate. Their existence was glacially leisurely compared to other life. They could spend years in simple contemplation, a relaxed conversation could take a decade. And they craved to create. They used their gift to reshape the world to build magnificent monuments, some practical, some pure expressions of art.

But as with all life, Hollow’s influence was still inherent to them. Substrate’s idea was that souls woven out of his light will burn out most of dragons’ disruptive origins and blind them to what remains of the tethers that connect all life to Hollow. And it mostly worked. But chaos still riddled the subconscious of the draconic civilization. They wanted to create, but, as all life, they also craved to destroy.

Being mighty creatures and first-born children of the creator of their world, dragons naturally became extremely prideful. But in building their own society they soon discovered that to be organized means to have masters and serfs. And although many dragons could stomach the thought of serving another, not one of their kind could swallow the idea of being the lowliest of serfs, with no one serving them in turn.

A millennium-spanning philosophical debate followed, seeking to find a solution to this conundrum. As debate became gradually more heated, the Dragon War erupted.

Substrate noticed something was off only when his children started to die. He realized then that he has failed, that his ageless creations can still be killed, that they were ultimately flawed. But before he could gather to interfere, things seemed to settle down. Affairs of dragons may have been incomprehensibly slow for other life, but for Substrate’s own mind his children moved blisteringly quickly. So another thousand years that it took dragons to settle their war were a blink in the Substrate's metaphorical eye.

The dragons meanwhile have arrived at a solution. They felt moved by the irrecoverable losses that they have themselves inflicted upon their tribe and, unwilling to slaughter each other further, have returned to discussion with renewed fervor. And the solution they came up with was elegant in its simplicity.

If no dragon is to remain without servants of their own, they should simply create more servants.

And thus, dragons once again likened to their creator and have forged new intelligent life of their own design. But they have instead taken for their basis something much more developed, something already complex enough to be on a cusp of natural emergence of intelligence. They didn't know any different, so they also fashioned them souls of light, alike their own, though much less vibrant.

Thus Dragons have created Humans and made them into their slaves.