The Dreaming breathed with him.
Not as a world, but as a thought remembering itself.
He walked through shifting dunes of starlight and black sand, where every footstep scattered memories that weren't his — fragments of stories, hopes, and half-formed faces that drifted into being and dissolved again. He did not yet know their names, only that they existed because he did. His awareness filled the void, and the void shaped itself to hold him.
When he exhaled, winds carried the first whispers of dreams.
They came like echoes of his human past — laughter, song, rain on an old window, the weight of exhaustion that followed kindness. Those were human things, fragile and fleeting, yet they hummed in the foundation of this newborn realm. The Dreaming was made from what humanity might one day imagine, but its heart still beat with one man's quiet memory of being alive.
Something vast stirred in response.
He turned toward it. From the distance, where time hadn't yet chosen a direction, a figure took shape — green and gold and older than the earth that would one day form beneath her feet. She walked with the patience of mountains. When her eyes met his, he felt the calm weight of a mother's gaze — curious, tender, and utterly ancient.
"You are not what I expected," she said softly. "You are… quieter than most beginnings."
"I suppose I'm not good at dramatic entrances," he replied. His voice surprised him — not divine, not commanding, but human. Calm, thoughtful. He hadn't spoken since dying, yet his words felt like a continuation of that same breath.
The woman smiled. "I am Gaea. I am the shape the world takes when it decides to nurture life. And you—" she paused, tilting her head as if listening to something within him "—you are older than I am."
"Older?" he echoed. "You make the soil and sea. I'm… not even sure what I make."
"You dream," she said, stepping closer. "And that is what shapes us all. Even I began as a dream."
There was warmth in her tone, but also wonder — as though she recognized him as something familiar and beloved. Her presence radiated gravity, yet she spoke as a mother would to a child she somehow already loved.
"Then perhaps," he said gently, "I'm dreaming you."
Gaea's smile deepened. "Perhaps we are dreaming each other."
When she vanished — or perhaps folded back into the breath of the world — the silence that followed wasn't empty. It was watchful.
The next presence arrived like a crack in that silence. The air thickened, tasting of blood and ink. Shadows swirled, and the first sorcerous words of the cosmos burned faintly around the figure that emerged — angular, deliberate, and venomously elegant. His voice rasped like a page torn from a forbidden book.
"So. You are the one who makes the illusions real," he said. "I am Chthon — the first word that meant 'below.'"
Dream regarded him quietly. "And what do you seek below?"
"Everything that hides in fear. Everything your dreams protect them from." His smile was all teeth. "I taste your realm, and it feels… alive. Mutable. A place that remembers every fear it invents."
Dream folded his hands behind his back. "Fear is part of dreaming."
"Yes," Chthon said, circling him, "but unlike you, I will not be bound by it. The first mortals will whisper my name when they wake shaking. And in their nightmares, I will live."
Dream's expression didn't change. "Then we will see each other often."
Chthon stopped — caught off guard by the calm reply. The ancient god of chaos studied the quiet being before him, then let out a laugh like a crack of thunder. "Careful, little one. I devour the things that do not fear me."
Dream smiled faintly. "You can't devour what isn't afraid."
When Chthon disappeared, the Dreaming's horizon rippled, the sands trembling from the echo of his departure. Dream stood alone again — but only for a breath.
From that trembling rose heat. Scales brushed against time itself as the next presence descended: a serpent vast enough to coil around the sun. His form shimmered between shadow and fire, his eyes two molten coins of amber. Set, god of storms, predator and destroyer.
He circled Dream in silence, testing him with the quiet patience of something that had never met an equal.
"You do not flinch," Set said finally.
"Should I?" Dream asked.
Set's laughter was dry thunder. "Most do. Even gods."
He leaned closer, voice low. "I know what you are — a thought that became aware of itself. Such things usually crumble when they learn they exist."
"Perhaps I did," Dream said softly. "And this is what's left."
Set drew back, amused. "Then you are dangerous."
"Only to those who would make the world smaller."
For a heartbeat, there was a spark of understanding — predator to predator, creator to creator. Set nodded once and vanished, leaving behind the scent of heat and lightning. The Dreaming adjusted around the silence that followed, as if breathing easier in his absence.
Dream stood still for a long while. The encounters had been strange but familiar — like echoes of stories he'd once read under a mortal sky. He knew these names. Chthon. Set. Gaea. He had spoken them once in fiction, never expecting to meet them in truth. Now they were real, and so was he.
He almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
Almost.
Then he felt another presence — not loud or sharp, but inevitable.
The air around him softened. The Dreaming's colors dimmed, not out of fear, but reverence. And there she was — a young woman with dark hair, eyes kind enough to unmake grief, dressed in black that wasn't mourning but elegance. A silver ankh hung from her neck, and when she smiled, everything in him stilled.
"Hey," she said gently. "Took you long enough."
He stared, speechless. Of all the beings he had expected, this was the one that hit him like recognition rather than revelation. "Death."
She tilted her head. "That's what most call me. You can, too. It's been a while, Azrael."
The name pierced through him — not as a title, but as the echo of his human self. "You… remember?"
She stepped closer. "I remember everyone. But you? You're special. You're not supposed to be here again. Not like this."
He tried to speak, but the words came out unsteady. "I was human once."
"You still are," she said softly. "That's the trick of it. You never really stop being what you were — even when the universe makes you into something more."
He looked down at his hands — pale, steady, dusted with starlight. "Why me?"
She shrugged lightly. "Maybe the universe needed someone who remembered what it felt like to dream before they were divine. Or maybe you just had the stubbornness to come back."
He laughed quietly. "That sounds like me."
"I know," she said, smiling.
They walked together for a time, through a field of unformed stars. The Dreaming around them pulsed with quiet color — ideas blooming like flowers at the edges of thought. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler, but carried the weight of eternity.
"You'll build beautiful things here," she said. "But don't forget — everything that dreams must one day wake. Even gods."
He looked at her, something like sorrow flickering in his expression. "And when I wake?"
She met his gaze, unflinching. "Then I'll be there. Like always."
He nodded. There was no fear in him, only understanding. Of all the beings he'd met, she was the only one who made him feel seen.
Before she left, she turned once more. "Don't let them harden you, Dream. You were human first. That's your strength."
And then she was gone — like a shadow vanishing at dawn, leaving warmth instead of absence.
Dream stood alone again, surrounded by the hum of his creation. The Dreaming breathed with him, endless and alive. He thought of Gaea's kindness, Chthon's hunger, Set's fire — and Death's quiet certainty.
He closed his eyes and whispered, "So it begins again… for all of us."
The Dreaming answered with the sigh of a million sleeping worlds.