Chapter 61:
The Dream of Blood and Ash
I. The Child God's Dream
The boy—still unnamed by mortal tongue—slept beneath the sacred canopy of the Hollow.
But gods do not dream the way men do.
He drifted not into slumber, but into the Root of All Memory, a dream-realm older than galaxies, where every echo of the past whispered in colors, scents, and storms.
He stood at a shoreline of burning oceans, where the sky bled red and the stars screamed in languages unknown. Before him: a tree, charred yet alive, its leaves flickering between birth and ruin.
From the branches dropped ashen feathers, each one a soul—each soul, a sacrifice made in his name… before he was even born.
> "Who are you?" he whispered to the tree.
A voice answered—not from the tree, but from the cracked soil beneath his bare feet.
> "You are the miracle they feared would return."
And then he saw them—visions of himself in other futures:
— A tyrant who crushed galaxies under his will.
— A healer who bled to save others.
— A wanderer lost among gods, forgotten by time.
Each face wore his own.
He turned to flee… but the tree wrapped him in roots of truth.
> "You are not one path. You are the seed of all paths."
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II. Errin in the Forge of Will
While the child dreamt, Errin stood in the center of a celestial chamber deep beneath the Hollow, where the Forge of Will raged in silence.
His soul-body—reforged by flame, light, and ancestral will—hovered above the forge's heart.
His hands trembled. He was afraid.
Not of pain.
But of what he might become if he released the final seal.
The ancestors had warned him:
> "To prepare the divine vessel, you must burn away even love, hope, and memory. Only the true self may remain."
Errin gritted his teeth. He thought of the valley, of peace, of his other children scattered in dreamlike timelines.
> "I am still a father."
> "I am still human."
He held onto those truths—and used them as anchors. Instead of burning them away, he fused them into his soul-core. Not as weaknesses. But as defiance.
The forge raged brighter.
His soul took shape.
And when the final hammer fell—wielded by a phantom of his late mother—Errin emerged.
He wore no armor. No divine robes.
Only a skin of starlight, eyes like collapsed suns, and a pulse that resonated with ancestral rhythms.
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I & II: Destiny Crosses Paths
The child god awoke from his dream with tears in his eyes.
Errin walked into the chamber—neither ghost nor god—but a living legacy.
They did not speak.
They only stared—recognition blooming between soul and soul.
Father and son.
Creator and creation.
The Hollow pulsed as if holding its breath.
> "It begins now," whispered the wind.
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Next:- The Clay and the Crown, where the child god chooses a name and Errin challenges the will of fate itself?