Where Myths Are Born

"Every silence draws breath again. And some breaths are hostile."

The Hollow had grown quiet once more—but it was not the calm of peace.

It was the pause before a scream.

Elias stood at the edge of his realm, feeling the ripple in the Weft. A stitch had come undone. Not by force. Not by chance. But by a return.

The Watcher had reformed.

Not in the waking world.

Not in the sky above.

But in dream.

It had learned from its first failure—when it shattered like glass against the veiled edge of the Hollow. Now, it did not charge through time. It slithered beneath it.

And it had chosen Kronos.

The young Titan was not sleeping when it came.

He had collapsed—exhausted from days of training, sleepless nights, and quiet dreams filled with echoes that did not belong to him. The sickle no longer left his side. Even in sleep, it hovered by his chest like a guardian or a shadow.

Elias sensed the breach the moment it occurred.

The Hollow's roots screamed—not in pain, but in warning.

And without hesitation, Elias stepped into Kronos's dream.

The dream was wrong.

It was not shaped by Kronos's mind.

It was smooth. Geometric. Clean. Too clean.

A circular room of white marble floated in an endless void. At its center sat a table with no chairs, and upon it—nothing. No memory. No shape. No story.

Only emptiness.

Elias entered silently.

And then he saw it.

The Watcher.

Reformed.

But no longer humanoid, no longer faceless and still.

It was now fluid, like living ink folded into a celestial diagram. Its eyes—if they could be called that—were concepts: the idea of sight, the absence of blindness, a thousand unspoken gazes in every direction.

It did not move.

It simply turned the dream against itself.

The table vanished.

So did the room.

Kronos's body appeared in the dreamspace—young, vulnerable, floating in the void.

Around him, fragments of memories began to fall like shattered glass: Gaia's sorrow, Rhea's laughter, the whisper of rebellion, the fear of failure.

And with each memory that shattered, the Watcher fed.

It absorbed the pieces into itself, growing sharper, more defined.

It was trying to unmake Kronos by unraveling his story.

Elias stepped between them.

His cloak flared, runes glowing faint silver, and the dream steadied—for a moment.

The Watcher reacted.

Not in sound, but in absence. The stars in the dream flickered out one by one. The void thickened. The silence became pressure.

Elias whispered:

"You were broken once. You will break again."

The Watcher surged forward—more blade than thought, more algorithm than will.

Elias met it with memory.

He cast outward the birth of fire, the first breath of mortal man, the moment Gaia cradled her son in darkness, defying the sky.

The Watcher staggered, repulsed.

But it did not stop.

Kronos stirred.

The dream around him bent as he resisted the unraveling.

"No…" he muttered. "I… am not hollow…"

But the Watcher reached him.

Its tendrils pierced memory. Moments began to slip.

His name faltered. His purpose blurred. The sickle cracked, just slightly, in the dream's hand.

Elias stepped in fully now.

No longer merely observing.

But defending.

He lifted both hands and unleashed a myth.

Not a memory.

Not a soul.

But a story unwritten.

A version of Kronos who never struck.

A world where the sky was never severed.

Where Gaia never cried again.

The Watcher reeled.

This was not what it fed on.

This was possibility.

And it burned.

But it wasn't enough.

The Watcher adapted.

It collapsed into a spiral of lightless threads and lashed out—striking Elias directly.

Elias convulsed as a piece of him tore free.

A soul-fragment.

Bright. Unbound. Raw.

It shot from the dream like a comet, fleeing not into the Hollow—but toward Tartarus.

The Watcher had not intended it.

But it had wounded Elias.

And now, part of his essence was loose.

Elias fell to one knee in the dream.

Not from pain.

But from knowing what had been lost.

The soul-fragment was unique.

It was doubt, curiosity, rebellion.

A seed of unpredictable myth.

And it now drifted toward rage incarnate.

Kronos rose.

The dream steadied again.

Elias raised his head and whispered into the young Titan's mind:

"Remember your shape."

"You are not sky."

"You are not silence."

"You are cut."

"You are beginning."

And Kronos remembered.

His eyes glowed gold.

The sickle reformed in his hand.

And with a wordless cry, he swung—not at the Watcher, but at the space it occupied.

The dream bent.

Time in the dream bent.

And the Watcher screamed.

It shattered again.

Its form broke into whispers that fled in all directions, its void collapsing.

The marble room returned.

The table cracked.

But Kronos stood, whole again.

And Elias—

Elias was already gone.

Back in the Hollow, he collapsed beneath the Tree of Echoes.

The dream-path sealed.

The branches wept light.

A single rune on his right arm flickered and went dark.

He did not move.

But he breathed.

And the Hollow responded by wrapping him in memory.

Preserving him.

Cradling the Weaver of Echoes in silence.

Far below, near Tartarus, the soul-fragment drifted.

It was glowing, spinning.

And something ancient turned its gaze upward.

A voice, echoing in stone and shadow, whispered:

"Who dares send me a seed?"

And the rage of Gaia's buried children stirred.