She once whispered to him,
"If divinity must break, let it break beautifully."
And so he did.
He shattered himself into madness.
Seven fragments of a god who refused to be whole.
The dream remembered.
And so did she.
—
[Start of Book One: Forget Me Not]
—
He emerged without warning, as if the bones of the earth had exhaled him. A silhouette on the shifting dunes, cloaked in a threadbare robe, wandered toward the ruins of a forgotten Citadel. Nothing had changed. Just as he remembered. Shattered columns, towers collapsed in elegant disarray. The echoes of divinity buried beneath centuries of sand and silence.
Infinity did that to you.
He yawned. He waited. He watched.
They would begin to stir soon.
The seven that had been chosen. Still mortal. Still dreaming.
Still unaware of the truth he clung to like a curse.
That infinity was not strength.
It was stillness. Stagnation.
And true divinity would not be found in what one was... but in what one chose to become.
He didn't expect much. He never did.
But the declaration would be made, as it always had.
And Hollow would be here to see how it ended.
Or how it began.
It didn't matter which. He always watched.