Before the Binding: The Two

Prior to the cataclysm later sources name “the Binding,” all extant pre-Binding records I have examined speak of only two deities, Light and Darkness, twin and opposed. Then, abruptly, the record ends; then nothing but silence for millennia. When written sources resume, the world’s peoples venerate fifty deities: the original two, plus forty-eight new names with distinct spheres and cults. Over the ensuing near hundred millennia, those fifty have dwindled to thirty-two, with whole divine lineages simply… absent. What, precisely, was the Binding, and what became of the civilization that thrived before it? By what mechanism were dozens of new deities introduced into the world’s consciousness? And conversely, how does a god vanish? Forgotten, destroyed, or something stranger still? It vexes me that I have no answer.