At first, it seemed benign.
A disciple would wake from sleep, eyes fogged, heart racing. They would stumble from their quarters whispering strange fragments:
"I saw a tower without doors."
"There was a hand made of stars."
"A voice spoke backward, and I still understood."
Kaelira dismissed it at first—side effects of prolonged proximity to divinity. After all, the child's aura reshaped causality on instinct. It was only natural that dreams would fray.
But then the dreams spread.
Not like a plague.
Like roots.
One by one, acolytes began sleeping longer.
Some could no longer wake without assistance.
And when they did, they came back changed.
Quieter. Slower. Like echoes of themselves.
Some forgot their names.
Others remembered names that had never been theirs.
Lucien watched Kaelira perform rites of grounding over the fourth affected follower. It failed. The woman simply wept at the sight of her own reflection, murmuring, "I am the wrong shape."
Eluth stood nearby, hands folded, eyes serene.
"She dreamed of who she was meant to be," he said gently.
Lucien stepped closer. "And who told her that?"
Eluth blinked slowly. "Not who. What."
Talia intervened.
She entered the dream of a fallen disciple herself, guiding her mind through the fog like a mother through a fevered child's nightmare.
And she saw it.
A room with no walls, where thought bled into shape.
In the center: a mirror, not of glass, but of dripping memory.
And kneeling before it, the silhouette of Eluth.
His hand hovered over the surface, as if tending to a garden.
He turned—and smiled.
"They're remembering too much, Talia."
"That's dangerous."
Talia awoke with a scream.
For the first time since ascending, she broke into sweat.
The child stirred.
Not in fear—but in preparation.
That night, ten more disciples collapsed in their dreams.
Kaelira refused to sleep.
Lucien sharpened a blade that no longer held a name.
And Eluth, ever soft-spoken, walked calmly beneath the starlight—planting forget-me-nots into the earth.
They bloomed blue.
And bled red.
In the sanctum's deepest chamber, the child sat up.
His eyes glowed with waking memory.
He looked to the stars beyond the ceiling, and whispered not a name—
But a warning.
"He's trying to remember it back into being."