Where Myths Are Born

Where Myths Are Born

In the beginning, Vaenor did not lie.

He was shaped from breath before breath, woven from the same quiet threads that held stars in their orbits and dreams in their cradles. Aetherion knew him as a creature of stillness—his soul more resonance than reason, his gaze deep enough to drown gods.

But even truth has a shadow.

And in the silence after Gaia's second sleep, when the Soulforge pulsed with songs unsung, that shadow stirred.

Not with malice. Not with rage.

But with choice.

The lie was not born in speech.

It was born in withholding.

Vaenor returned as quietly as he had left. His form shimmered like fractured memory, pale silver upon the edges of Aetherion's Realm, his footfall leaving no echo, no mark—only feeling.

Aetherion, who had been feeding the Soulblade with fragments of essence and stillness, lifted his gaze. He said nothing. But his eyes, luminous with ancient knowing, narrowed.

"You return," he said at last.

Vaenor tilted his head. "You knew I would."

"That was not the question."

There was a pause. A breath shared between forces older than fate.

And then, Vaenor smiled.

It was a small smile.

Too small for the weight of what it concealed.

He had gone beyond the edges of the Soulrealm, beyond even the dreaming roots of Gaia's own abyss. He had followed echoes that Aetherion had allowed—no, intended—him to chase.

And what he found was not a truth denied.

But a lie promised.

The lie that there was still time.

That Gaia could wait.

That Uranus could be watched, managed, perhaps even understood.

But Vaenor had seen what Aetherion had not shown. A moment hidden behind seven veils of silence. A vision Gaia once locked in the marrow of the world—now seeping through her dreams like oil through stone.

He had seen the third dream.

The one Gaia herself refused to speak.

Vaenor stood at the edge of the Forge now. The Soulblade hovered between them—neither taken nor offered.

"Do you still believe silence will hold him back?" Vaenor asked softly, voice laced with shadowed grief.

Aetherion's gaze didn't waver. "He is not yet aware. Action before the soul is ripe invites obliteration, not change."

"And yet," Vaenor whispered, "the seed already splits."

Aetherion watched the flicker in Vaenor's aura. There was something different now. Not betrayal.

But doubt made manifest.

And within that doubt, the first flicker of a lie.

He had spoken to another.

Not Coeus, whose mind ran toward futures.

Not Themis, whose law was still unformed.

Not even Cronus, who slept in dreams of rebellion.

But to a presence older than even the Titans. A being whose name was once erased from the stars because it would not kneel to order.

A primordial one—hidden beneath the molten crust of forgotten matter. A creature who had once whispered to Chaos itself and survived.

Its voice had not offered promises.

Only questions.

And Vaenor had listened.

"I found something," Vaenor said at last, voice steady, eyes strange.

Aetherion turned toward him fully.

"What did you find?"

Vaenor hesitated.

And in that pause, the lie was born.

Not a word.

Not a falsehood spoken aloud.

But the decision not to tell.

That Gaia had already begun to sever something within herself.

That the third dream had shown a realm where soul and form were split by force.

That in that place, a blade had already fallen—one shaped not by Aetherion, but by another.

Vaenor exhaled.

"Only echoes," he said quietly. "Dead ones. Too distant to matter."

Aetherion watched him long.

Then nodded.

And did not believe him.

Later, when Vaenor left the Forge once more, he stood at the boundary of the Realm of Soul and stared into the dark. The stars hummed in patterns only half-formed. The edge of being itself wavered.

And he whispered to the nothing:

"I'm sorry."

In the depths of Gaia, her third dream stirred again.

Unspoken. Undreamed.

And watching.