Great! Let's move into:
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Chapter 60:
The Shattered Moons
I. The Hollow Awakens
Three moons hung above the Hollow—silver, amber, and black—once protectors, now watchers.
As the Terminators struck, their collective force shattered one: the Black Moon, the seal of restraint. Its pieces rained down in cosmic fire, burning forests, boiling rivers, silencing the cry of beasts.
But as its fragments struck the ground, the Hollow changed.
Stone faces in cliffs began to weep starlight.
Buried runes on temple floors pulsed with forgotten formations.
The Hollow had not been just a sanctuary. It was a womb of war, once created by a divine sect to house the last of the ancients.
The goddess stepped back, placing the divine child at the center of a twelve-pillar circle.
> "Awaken," she said. "Not as a child. Not yet a god. But as a storm."
The boy opened his eyes, and each iris reflected a different moon.
He raised his hands, and without knowing how or why, his small voice called out the names of the elemental lords.
> "Water." A hurricane formed above the Hollow, washing away flames.
"Metal." Spears rose from the ground, impaling Terminators.
"Wind." Blades whirled through the sky, splitting machines in half.
Even in infancy, he was beginning to channel the essence of pre-creation.
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II. Errin Walks the Warpath of Memory
In Gate Nine, the reward for passing the Serpent's Sleep was not rest—it was memory.
Errin stood on a crimson battlefield, one foot in the past, one in spirit.
The land was the cradle of his mother's clan—the once-great Starflame Lineage—now dust and ash. He walked among the corpses of his kin, their bones lined in gold, their final expressions frozen in defiance.
He saw her.
His mother.
Before she was ever a goddess, she was a girl with twin blades and eyes full of sorrow, protecting her dying father—the patriarch who refused ascension to stay and protect his people.
Errin fell to his knees.
> "This is what you wanted me to see… Not your power. But your pain."
From the skies, he heard the words spoken by the dying patriarch—words sealed in time:
> "Our line was erased not by might, but by betrayal. The real war was not of gods... but of hearts."
Errin wept.
But even as he did, the war chants of the Hollow called to him.
He rose, and the serpent coiled around him once again, now loyal. The soul-forged body shimmered, and his bones vibrated with ancient names.
> "Come, ancestors. Let us guide the storm."
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I & II: The First Divine Strike
As the child god raised his hands again, a fissure opened in the sky.
Errin's spirit descended—not as a body, but as a glorious echo—standing behind the boy, guiding his gestures.
The moons responded.
The Second Strike fell—moonlight turned to judgment.
Half the invading Terminators fell.
The rest vanished into wormholes, injured, confused, fleeing.
But they left behind a message: "We'll return. With the One Who Ends Stars."
The Hollow was safe—for now.
But the child god had begun his path.
And Errin had remembered who he was born to become.
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Ready to continue with Chapter 61: The Dream of Blood and Ash, where we see Errin and the child god in dreamspace—facing the choices ahead: godhood, humanity, or something in between?