"Time does not pass here. It coils. And from the coil, stories are born."
There was no sun in the place Elias created. No moon. No wind. Yet somehow, light existed—soft, bluish, always on the edge of becoming shadow. It came not from a source, but from the space between things. This realm had no name in any tongue.
Elias would later call it the EchoingHollow.
It was not carved from Aetherion's stone, nor plucked from sky or sea. It was imagined into form. Where Elias stood, there was only what he willed to exist: soft ground woven from unspoken myths, trees shaped like ideas half-remembered, and a still lake so dark it reflected not the sky, but the possible. The realm was small at first, fitting in the palm of his mind. But like language, it grew each time he thought.
Time meant nothing here. It didn't tick or fade. It curled—slowly, gently—like smoke rising from the mouth of the first fire.
Elias sat beneath a silver-barked tree and watched its leaves fall into the lake, where they melted into glowing words before sinking. He didn't need food or drink. He didn't sleep, not truly. He existed as a ripple in a larger stream.
And yet… he was more aware of time than ever before.
In the world beyond the Hollow, things had begun to stir. He could feel Aetherion's great weavings shift—the threads of becoming tightening around certain presences.
The name Gaia began to hum in the weave.
She was not born. She arrived, like the settling of soil after a storm. Elias first glimpsed her while meditating in the Hollow. His mind brushed against hers across the vast, pliable space of Aetherion.
She was warmth. She was grief. She was the dream of form and the burden of bearing it.
From Gaia came valleys and forests and mountain-spines that reached upward. And when the sky kissed the edge of her—when it pressed too long, too hard, too possessively—Uranus was made.
He was the sky itself—bright and endless, but heavy. His voice was silence. His touch, suffocation.
Elias watched from the Hollow. Through a tear in the veil of the world, he observed the birth of tension. Uranus pressed down upon Gaia without pause. He covered her completely, hiding her children from light, forcing them to remain within.
Not out of love. Not even dominance.
But fear.
The idea startled Elias. Fear was not yet common in Aetherion. Most beings simply were. But Uranus feared what might come from below. He feared what Gaia might create without him.
Elias whispered into the Hollow, not to interfere, but to record:
"Sky, afraid of what Earth might bring forth, becomes the first tyrant."
His voice created no ripples. No answer came.
He was still alone.
So he watched.
Aeons passed. Or perhaps only a moment. In the Hollow, it made no difference.
Once, he dreamed of a well that ran through the center of all realms. When he reached down into it, his hand found nothingness. A cold absence that did not wound, but unmade.
He awoke from that dream with the taste of shadows in his throat.
That was the first time he sensed the presence of Nyx.
She came in darkness that didn't threaten—but revealed.
He found himself walking one day through a corridor of black stone, carved not by tools, but by silence itself. It was not the Hollow. It was older. More ancient than even Gaia.
A realm beneath light.
There, by a river that ran backward, Nyx stood.
Her skin shimmered like starless void. Her eyes held no pupils—only the suggestion of memory and inevitability. She did not speak when Elias approached. She only nodded, once.
"You know what I am?" she finally said.
"I know that the dark is not your enemy," Elias answered. "Only your veil."
She smiled, not with warmth, but with understanding.
From the shadow behind her, another figure emerged. Quieter still. Less like a shape and more like an absence.
Erebus.
Her husband. The darkness between things. The night within matter.
Together, they ruled no throne. But the realm they shared was older than time's first ripple.
They led Elias deeper into the realm of twilight.
He saw their children.
Hypnos, draped in flowing silence. Thanatos, pale and still, with eyes that saw endings before beginnings. Moros, the personification of doom, who muttered in a tongue Elias almost understood. Nemesis, who watched everything and weighed it before judging.
Dozens more—some seen only in silhouette, others who shimmered between concepts.
Elias understood then: these were not gods of cruelty. They were measure. They were balance. They were the reminders that not all myths shine.
Nyx placed a hand on Elias's shoulder.
"Why do you not name yourself?" she asked.
He did not answer immediately. He stared into the endless sky of their realm, where no stars pierced the dark.
"Because I am not finished becoming," he finally said. "And stories are not named until their ending."
Nyx nodded once. "You walk alone, Weaver. But even solitude echoes."
She turned and vanished into the shadow. Erebus followed without sound.
Elias remained.
He stayed in the shadow-realm for what felt like centuries, listening to the breath of death, sleep, doom, and punishment. He recorded none of it. He simply absorbed.
And when he returned to the Hollow, the darkness followed him—not as burden, but as context.
He wove a new branch from the center tree in his realm. Its leaves were pitch black, and when they fell into the lake, they didn't vanish—they lingered.
The first myths of mortality had begun.