Compared to the ones I've skimmed, this one is...well, a little grim.Once upon a time...so it was said...this part of the world was ruled by emperors and kings. They built magnificent cities of stone, spanning to reach the sky - and day by day as their empire grew, so did their hubris and pride. Like any who have created something magnificent and fine, they felt that simple praises weren't enough. And reach for the sky they did.
They styled themselves as gods.
"Do not be fooled," they would laugh, as wiser people came to them and entreated them to stop, to stop, before the gods - what gods there were - took notice and decided to correct them. (The gods' mistakes are titanic, but when gods choose to overturn these mistakes - well, anything can happen.) "There are no gods. Can even gods make anything as magnificent as this?" they would say, before they drove their critics from the cities and bolted the doors behind them.
The years moved passed, and soon, every day it seemed, the outsiders would bang upon the city doors, asking not to be let in, or for alms, but for the repentance of the emperors and kings. And it was at this time that a prophecy was made....Not the usual prophecies for repentance or humility, but a prophecy of intervention.
The gods had taken notice, it seemed....
The response?
"Beware, citizens, for we live in end times, and not all is as it seems to be. There will be upheavals and signs in the sky, and what falls from the dark spaces in between the stars may not be the rain," so the kings acknowledged. And then with a contemptuous smirk, they changed their tune: "And outsiders will walk among us and call themselves gods, but do not allow them to perpetrate this falsehood, for the gods did not make us.
"We made the gods."
And the doors were shut and barred once more....
No one knows where they came from. They might as well have fallen out of the sky.
The first of these was a man, or one like a man. He was tall and strong, with eyes that flashed fire, but for all his strength and fierceness, he was nothing against the wrath of the people. He came to them as a messenger of the end, and they would not believe him, so they beat him and threw him outside the city to die.
The second of these was a girl, and the third was a boy. They were laughed at and turned away, but when they came to claim the man's body, and when they rebuked the people for what they had done, the people were incensed. They would have laid hands on them, but the girl grew wings and soared up into the sky with the child in her arms. That night, blue meteors raced across the sky, and fire fell from the heavens. The people were afraid and left the dying messenger where he was. The next day, his body was gone.
They know where the fourth messenger came from. She rode in with the river, on a ship like dark obsidian, with its dragon figurehead writhing as if to escape from the wood. It was the distant cities she first took the life from, in a single breath; wherever the dark ship appeared, cities would fall, and dead bodies would be found on the ground the next day.
The doors of the empire remained shut, barred and warded against her. "And we are so far inland," they would say, looking out across the land to the silver ribbon the fourth messenger used as a road. A river broad and mighty, but distant, so terribly distant.... "She does not dare come down from her ship. She can't stop us."
They were only half-right. The fourth messenger didn't dare come down from her ship.
She didn't need to.
She raised her hand, and then, with a groan and a roar, the dry land wrenched itself apart. The gaping chasm was filled with water, as the river was diverted to form a new road....
Water splashed against the city gates. The people were listening.
They turned and watched as water started to trickle in, slowly, terribly slowly....
The gates started to groan.
They bent inwards, and with a mighty crash the river surged in. No longer a calm, wide river, but a more volatile force of nature. A sea, an ocean, a storm.
And the dark ship rode in with the waves....
The storm has passed.
What happened to that empire? you may ask.
Bend down...Bow beneath the sky...There. Look deeply now, into the water, into the sea, the ocean....
There is no empire now, and the storm that erased it has long since passed. But the ocean...The ocean remains.
Spoiler
A/N: Come to think of it, you could take the pokey towers of the old empire and use those for island chains....But that's another story, I think. 
And thanks to those who gave me presents this year! 
I was a bit worried because it's kind of grim and sad....So...