Henry had never once thought of comparing himself to his father. It was not modesty, and it was not fear, it was only that the idea had simply never made sense to him.
He had grown up with a father who came back from apocalypses of Domains and Wheels and Observable Existences different every time, and then from things far worse than apocalypses, and somewhere along the way Henry had simply accepted that his father was the kind of being existence rearranged itself around, and that he himself was not.
But he wanted to make him proud. That had never gone away, not in all the centuries he had lived inside the Dream Engine, growing and learning while his father fought somewhere outside, and not after he woke up and his father turned him into something new.
