The air here was not like the Dreaming’s usual weightless breath. It was dense, oppressive—woven of thoughts, echoes, and the forgotten whispers of dreams long discarded. The Deep Dreaming was where reality unraveled, where even the Endless seldom tread. It was a place where the fabric of existence frayed, and Morpheus—Dream, Lord of the Endless—had descended to search for the very threads of his brother Daniel, torn from the world above.Morpheus moved with purpose, his steps heavy, yet silent. His cloak of night fluttered like a shadow, stretching and twisting in the air, a part of him, but not him. Here, even his form seemed like an echo of itself.The place was not a landscape but a vast ocean of thought, of memories, of unfinished dreams—of things that might have been, or could be, if only given time. Shapes shifted and pulsed around him—fragments of broken dreams, abandoned desires, and forgotten hopes.Here, the laws of time and space did not apply. Here, all things were possib

The flat smelled of old leather, rain-soaked wool, and incense that had burned too long. The windows were shut tight against the April chill, but the air inside was electric—charged with runes, candle smoke, and something older that clung to the corners like mold. Constantine sat at her cluttered desk, sleeves rolled up, ash from her cigarette dusting a dog-eared copy of *Codex Umbrae*. Symbols were scrawled on the open pages in faded ink: layered scripts of Enochian, Greek, and something she couldn’t quite name. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, but she was close—she could feel it.The Rune. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just a seal or prison. It was a key. A lure. A warning.And something followed it.She tapped her pen against the page, absently tracing the curve of a spiral etched into the margin. “You’re not just any bloody glyph,” she muttered. “You’re bait.”The lights in the flat dimmed. Just slightly. Just enough.She froze.Then turned her head, slow and deliberate, towar

The house had fallen into quiet.Outside, the wind moved through the trees like whispered secrets, stirring the curtains that hung loose from Lyta’s bedroom window. The dim lamp cast a soft glow over the room, flickering gently as if the shadows themselves were hesitant to linger too long.Lyta sat on the edge of her bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. Her face was streaked with tears that had dried halfway down her cheeks, and though her body trembled, her eyes were sharp—red-rimmed but full of fire.Daniel was asleep in the next room.Safe. For now.But the memory of him gone—of his voice calling out through dream and void—had carved something into her soul. Something permanent. She could still hear the phantom echo of that struggle in her bones, feel the sickening helplessness that came with knowing her child had been taken, hidden, used.It had been Calliope. Morpheus’s former wife. That truth still twisted in her chest

The Starless Hall was neither in Dream nor in the waking world, but a place made for the Endless alone. No stars dared shine here. No time passed. Only the presence of eternity, and the long, high table etched with symbols older than creation.Morpheus stood at its head, the folds of his cloak rippling in unseen winds. One by one, his siblings appeared.Death was first. Pale-skinned, dark-eyed, wearing simple black clothes and an expression of deep care. Her presence brought with it the brief comfort of endings.Desire followed, radiant and unknowable, golden eyes glinting with amusement even in such serious company. They lounged casually in their seat, arms crossed.Despair emerged quietly, hunched and gray, her hooked ring glittering with a thousand tears. The sound of her chains echoed faintly as she moved.And last—if only in presence, not power—came Destiny, walking with the slow certainty of someone who had already read the outcome. His book was ever open, ever unreadable.Once

He had forgotten the shape of stars.In the beginning, he used to draw them on the walls of his prison—lines of light scorched into the obsidian chains, crude constellations scratched with fingertip sparks. But time blurred even the brightest memory, and now Destruction sat in the endless dark with only the taste of memory and the burn of betrayal in his chest.Azazel's chains weren’t just metal. They were concepts. They were war and consumption and entropy, wrapped around his limbs like serpents that whispered cruelty into his ears.But even a god who had walked away from his function could not be contained forever.Not entirely.Not when the very idea of destruction burned in the bones of the universe.And it was stirring.A heartbeat in the void. Slow. Deep. Ancient.Destruction's eyes—dim ember-red—flashed open in the dark.The pain was constant. Every pulse of time scraped along nerves made from cosmic tension. But beneath the agony, something stirred. Not power. Not anger. Somet