He emerged without warning, as if the bones of the earth had exhaled him. A silhouette on the ever shifting dunes, a hooded figure, cloaked in a threadbare grey robe moved leisurely towards the Citadel, taking in the ruins of a once-glorious city long forgotten.
It had been lost to a trick of fate no one remembered.
Hollow stopped only to yawn and stretch, nearing the end of a long journey.
Everything was the same. Just as he remembered.
Being roused from a slumber spent watching the slow rot and beauty of the world was… inconvenient.
They all slumbered in one way or another. Infinity did that to you.
He could spend a million years simply watching the stars of this realms eternal night sky. Well, they weren't stars, not really. The Reverie held no stars. What shimmered overhead were the fading embers of the Sunfather's once-infinite flame.
He sneered inwardly. The pompous fool had been so caught up in his own perfection he never considered that he, the most powerful of the Gods, could be shattered and left grovelling before a mere human.
The memory brightened Hollow's mood.
The God of Unbreaking Light had been the most fun to break.
Humming a familiar tune, he approached the massive gates of the medieval castle. Hollow didn't open the doors. He hadn't done something so pedestrian in centuries. Hollow faded through the entrance of the Citadel of Oblivion.
—
He wandered slowly through the halls that led to the throne room. How many times had they summoned him for a reunion? Hollow had lost count. The meetings happened like clockwork, except for the few times she swapped the clocks.
Not that he ever bothered to keep track. Being the least respected among them, he often wondered why they even bothered to invite him.
He preferred the background.
It was easier to let the pieces fall when no one noticed your hand on the board.
—
At the end of the hall, where a throne should have stood, loomed Oblivion's Gate, standing as a large arch almost as tall as the room, deactivated. Curtains of decadent silk draped from second-floor balconies. The room was lit only by candles.
"Still dragging your feet, Hollow?"
Scourge spat his name like a slur, the venom in his tone sharper than any blade. Hollow didn't take it personally. Someone had to carry their wrath. A roundtable stood in the room's centre, seven chairs placed around it. Five were filled.
"Yes, come sit down so that Sovereign can make his dramatic entrance."
Shade leaned back, one half of his smug face visible under half a glossy white mask. He always had something to say. Not entirely wrong, but tonight, things would change. Hollow had watched long enough to know how each of them could achieve what they wanted. If not tonight, then in the next cycle. It didn't matter. The plan would unfold eventually.
He sat. Siren's laughter broke the silence. She swirled a glass of wine, draped in a form-fitted ensemble of flowing layers that revealed just enough, while always concealing something more.
"So how's it been, Hollow? Still taking it slow, as always?"
Her voice was teasing but warm. Siren smiled at him, radiant enough that even Hollow had to glance away. Humans never stood a chance. He supposed that was part of her allure.
Maw was already gorging herself on the food set before her. Hollow glanced at his own stomach. He hadn't eaten in eons. None of them had. Maw ate enough for all of them.
Then there was Hoard. Cloaked in layers of glittering fabrics and jewels, pockets bulging with hidden treasures, he tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table, each ring clinking in turn. Despite the rich clothing there was no taste, no class. Hollow mused that someone had to bear their greed.
They all stared at the empty chair across from Oblivion's Gate.
He would arrive soon.
Scourge's leg jittered, making his armour clank and his smouldering cape sway. Hoard's tapping filled the silence. Shade watched Maw's feast with quiet disdain. Siren tried again to spark conversation with Hollow, who leaned back with his eyes closed, caught in the mystery of her everchanging perfume.
Black orchid. Scorched vanilla. Myrrh. Beneath them, salt air and crushed rose. Beautiful but overwhelming. Like a secret whispered too close.
This was going to take a while. Not that time meant anything anymore.
—
When what felt like years but really only a few days passed, the air thickened and became warm, weighty, reverent. Hollow, listening to Hoard's constant finger rapping, snapped back from a silent reverie.
The doors opened on their own.
He entered.
Sovereign stood tall, hands clasped behind his back. No dramatic flourish, no grand announcement. He wore a simple black tunic and matching pants, the fabric catching just enough candlelight to hint at elegance. Around his left ring finger a simple gold band, worn, unassuming, and more valuable than anything Hoard could covet.
A gift from another life. They had all been human once, after all. It was always shocking though, to see someone in their original form with such clarity.
Tricksters by nature, they had all forgotten their original forms.
Unlike the rest, he had never once shifted forms. He bore the same face his lover once touched, the same eyes that once wept as the world fell apart. His right eye burned with a warm amber hue, mischief forever gleaming in its depths. His left eye, cracked and pale blue, shimmered faintly in the candlelight, like a scar that remembered too much.
He wore them both proudly. A silent defiance. A statement of identity.
All of them had the same cracked eye, somewhere hidden or obscured. A fragment of her. A curse or a blessing, none could say. But Sovereign was the only one who displayed it openly, without shame. As if to say he remembered what the rest chose to forget.
That, Hollow mused, was what made him dangerous.
Sovereign walked past the table with quiet precision, stopping at Oblivion's Gate. This archway served as the only path back to the real world for those who couldn't move freely between realms.
For days, he had listened to Shade explain the instability of the citadels, how unreliable they were as both gateways and anchors to the shards. These fragments of divine realms, left floating in the void left behind in the wake of the Veiled Dreamer, the Goddess of Dreams fate, were recovered by Hoard, who also managed the treasures and weaponry within. At each shard's centre stood a citadel, a precarious foothold in what was now called the Reverie. Shade had created the citadels and the systems that kept them stable.
But now, Sovereign, as the mad architect of the Reverie's inner workings, had come to test a deeper function.
Could Oblivion's Gate do more?
Originally built by the humans to create an artificial sun, it might have the ability to restore the day-night cycle that had vanished with the Sunfather, his light lost in six of the seven realms after he was stripped of infinity.
For now, Hollow had maintained the stars in the human realm himself. It was better than what Siren had to deal with, designing the trials that shaped each soul.
His own domain was simpler, a corner of the universe known tentatively as the planet graveyard.
There, he moved planets like chess pieces, sending them on collision courses while orbiting a massive gas giant. Occasionally, he miscalculated and a star would implode or go supernova, but that was part of the entertainment. If this experiment worked, Hollow could finally begin his plan. If it failed, well, time was not a problem. He could wait.
Sovereign channelled his energy through the portal.
A low hum filled the chamber, reverberating through stone and soul. Candle flames leaned toward Oblivion's Gate, pulled by a gravity older than Gods. The archway, once dormant, flickered with cracks of golden light, like veins of sunlight in marble. Dust rose from the floor as the fabric of reality thinned.
None of the Sworn spoke.
Siren leaned forward, wine forgotten. Maw, for once, paused her feast mid-bite. Scourge's clenched fists trembled beneath the table, molten veins pulsing brighter across his gauntlets. Even Shade had gone still, mask tilted just enough to betray unease. Hoard clutched the rattling trinkets around his neck tighter, as though fearing they'd be pulled through the Gate.
And Hollow watched.
Watched Sovereign's hands rise; slow, deliberate, as though holding something delicate. He whispered not in words, but in thought. A command written in the language of purpose. The light deepened, from gold to white, then fractured into a spectrum of shifting colour.
Then, a sound, not heard, but remembered.
A heartbeat.
Steady. Singular. Vast.
The Gate pulsed in rhythm. Slow and Steady.
Sovereign's left eye flared, its fracture glowing like moonlit frost. Across the chamber, each of the seven felt the resonance. In that moment, something reached through them. Not from the Gate, but from beyond it. Something older. Hungrier. A memory buried in the bones of the cosmos.
Hollow stood. Slowly.
Sovereign pressed his palm against the heart of the Gate.
And it opened.
Not like a door. Not like a portal.
It bloomed.
Petals of dark light spiralled outward, revealing a sky that was not a sky. A horizon made of song, of sorrow, of beginnings too ancient to name. Within it shimmered the suggestion of a sun. Not the one they had lost, but something new. Raw. Untamed. It radiated potential, not warmth. A forge without fire. A star unborn.
A land of eternal night, once again, basked under the warm glow of the false sun.
Sovereign stepped back. His expression unreadable.
Hollow exhaled.
"So it begins."
Shade rose.
"You mean it ends."
"No," Sovereign said. "It ends when I say it does."
He turned, and for a moment, Sovereign seemed to shimmer; his form stretching thin at the edges, not from instability, but from something vast pressing in behind his frame. The others saw it then. Not a God. Not a man. But something in between. Something that was not yet. Something becoming.
Siren smiled first.
Then Maw.
Then the rest followed, one by one, standing from their seats around the roundtable.
This wasn't a plan anymore.
It was a declaration.
"The age of stagnation is over," Sovereign said at last, voice quiet but thunderous in its certainty.
"Humanity has been dormant too long. Caged by fear, by comfort, by complacency. But the Vows... the Vows were never just a gift. They were a blueprint."
He turned toward them all.
"They were designed by the Veiled Dreamer, before her fall. A system not to create Gods, but to unlock the divinity already buried in every soul. Infinity isn't strength, it's static, a limit. And that is something the old Gods never understood. That divinity, real divinity, evolves."
A scoff from Scourge. A nod from Siren. How many times had they heard this all before.
"I've found them," Sovereign continued.
"The candidates. Seven souls with the potential to break through the divine ceiling. To surpass infinity through becoming, not being. They don't know it yet. But they will."
Hollow's pulse quickened. Not from fear, but anticipation. The arras wrought through countless eons now unravelled at last, just as they had foreseen.
"We are the architects. Siren shapes the Trials. Shade keeps the system from collapsing. Hoard takes the broken fragments of the old Gods realms. Maw ensures hunger never dies. Scourge tests their will in fire. Hollow watches. And I… I will show them the door. They must choose to walk through."
"Another seven to inherit what we broke to build? Brave or blind, I can't tell."
Shade looked unconvinced.
But in every plan lies the seed of ambition. And ambition, unchecked, demands blood.
So then came the part they didn't speak of. After the Gate's test ended and Sovereign, the seven stood in silence. No words, only eyes locked, minds racing. A clash not of powers, but of wills, sparked behind closed doors.
Who would lead? Who would carry the vision?
Scourge struck first. Siren followed. Hoard bargained. Maw devoured. Shade deceived. Sovereign stood unwavering.
And Hollow waited. Watched. Calculated.
And when the moment was right, he made his move.
Amidst the chaos, someone laughed. Not one of the Sworn. A whisper in the bones of memory. Forgotten, but not gone.
—
The Gate pulsed one final time. Then silence.
Seven had entered. Only one returned.
Not the strongest. Not the first. But the one who watched.
And with him came silence.
And from that silence, the Reverie began to remember... and so did she.