Ages passed.
Stars kindled and died in silence. Worlds formed from dust, their surfaces still and bare. Time gathered weight, and on one of those worlds, the first cells stirred.
Dream wandered among them.
His siblings worked constantly — Eternity expanded, Infinity whispered in branching possibilities, Oblivion pressed against the edges, Death lingered patiently at every flicker of life. But Dream's dominion lay quiet. He was a kingdom with no subjects.
For what is Dream without a dreamer?
He waited. Patient. Eternal. Watching the slow crawl of life across oceans and shores. Watching creatures grow, change, hunt, devour. Still, no spark. Instinct ruled, unbroken and unshaped.
And then — a pause.
On a quiet shore beneath a young sun, a primitive creature stilled. Its movements slowed. Its body quieted. Its mind, fragile and unformed, hushed. And in that silence, a flicker rose.
Not hunger. Not fear. Something more.
It saw.
A shape of light in its darkness. A memory not yet made. A fragment of hope.
The first dream.
Dream felt it as a jolt in his very essence. His cloak rippled like storm clouds. He descended, folding his vastness into something gentler, lest the moment shatter beneath him.
The creature's vision was crude — a chase, a hunger, a shadow. Instinct made image. But it was enough.
Dream knelt. In his hand shimmered a grain of sand, pale and glowing, the essence of stories unformed. He let it fall upon the creature's resting mind.
The dream deepened. The shadow grew teeth. The hunger grew form. The light became sanctuary.
And from that tiny seed, a vast tapestry unfurled behind Dream's eyes.
The Dreaming.
A landscape woven of thought and story, of terror and hope. Oceans of memory, forests of glass, skies shifting with endless imagination. Palaces of nightmare loomed, fields of peace stretched eternal.
It was his. His kingdom. His burden. His gift.
He whispered softly to the dreaming creature:
"You are the first. But not the last."
As the creature stirred, its primitive dream fading, Dream straightened. Already he could feel echoes stirring across the cosmos. Someday gods would rise, mortals would flourish, titans would awaken. All of them would dream.
Already, in the trembling fabric of possibility, he could glimpse them:
A man in iron.
A soldier out of time.
A God of thunder.
A widow steeped in blood.
A Titan with a gauntlet of gold.
All their hopes. All their fears. All their nightmares.
All would belong to him.
Far away, at the edge of vision, he felt a gaze. Death, watching, silent.
For the first time, Dream smiled faintly. Not cruel. Not kind. Just knowing.
Because the story had begun.