In the beginning, it was said the world was spun from the strands of forgotten dreams.
It was not carved by hands divine, nor born of cosmic fire. No sacred hymns heralded its making. It simply came into being—quietly, like a breath caught between sleep and death. Shaped not by gods, but by longing. Longing so vast and so ancient, it seeped through the seams of dying minds and broken hearts. This world was seeded from dreams—the kind whispered to the dark in childhood, and the kind clung to in the fading beats before death. The dreams of lovers lost, of children never born, of forgiveness never given. And more than dreams—regrets, too. Those bitter, last fragments of thought as breath escapes the body. I should have left. I should have stayed. I should have told them. I wish I could start again.
And so they came, drawn from every forgotten corner of creation. The unloved. The broken. The remnants of stories abandoned mid-sentence. They arrived here not through doorways or death, but through yearning alone. And when they opened their eyes, they believed, for a moment, that they had arrived in paradise.
Vast lands unfolded before them—hills embroidered with wildflowers, rivers singing in silver tongues, mountains older than time itself. Above, a sea of stars spilled across the heavens, not distant and cold, but brilliant and near, as if one could reach out and pluck them like fruit. The air was clean. The nights gentle. The silence was not empty, but soft, like a lullaby hummed from somewhere just out of sight.
They wept. Not from grief—but from relief.
Here, they found all they had once begged for: shelter, love, beauty, and peace. The things denied them in life came easily in this realm. Their homes were palaces. Their hunger was met with feasts. Every thirst, quenched. Every wound, unseen. They did not age. Their skin remained smooth. Their hair did not gray. Their minds did not dull. Time passed—but they remained, perfect and untouched.
And yet—something hollow festered beneath the surface.
It was not immediate. Not even visible. But over time, it grew. A slow ache in the soul. A weight in the chest when laughter faded too quickly. They began to ask themselves strange questions.
Why does wine taste less sweet, now that I know I will never grow old enough to miss it? Why does love lose its luster, when there is no fear of losing it?
They had all they once prayed for—and still, they were not whole.
That was when they understood the truth.
They were not hungry—but they still starved. Not for food. Not for riches. But for something no dream could give. For pain. For struggle. For meaning. Immortality had not been a gift, but a sentence. And paradise, it turned out, was a prison made of fulfillment.
And so they turned on each other. Quietly, then violently. Not for more—but for something else. Something they could not name. Not greed. Not vengeance. But for control. For agency. For the illusion of purpose.
And from that need, the first war began.
They turned on each other.
Not for wealth—they had more than they could carry. Not for dominion—they each already ruled their own piece of paradise. No, what they sought now was control. Control over the shape of dreams, over the boundaries of this world that had once been their blessing. They wanted not what had been freely given, but everything that could be given. Not just land, not just sky—but the meaning of it all.
Their wishes began to twist. Their dreams, once innocent, grew sharp with intent. Desire curdled into obsession. They dreamt of a world remade in their image, of heavens bent to their wills. They could not accept a shared paradise—not when they now believed it could be owned.
And so the wars began.
Slow at first—clashes of ideals, cold withdrawals of alliances, the quiet cracking of unity. But it spread like sickness, festering beneath the surface until it erupted into fire. Entire realms were razed. Rivers turned red. Towers that once reached for the stars crumbled under the weight of betrayal. Those who had once sung songs of gratitude now screamed through smoke and steel.
Heaven bled.
The cities collapsed. The golden orchards withered in flame. The starlit skies dimmed, as though even the heavens had turned their gaze away. What was once peace had become desolation. What was once eternal became unbearable.
And amidst that ruin, came a boy.
He was not born of this land, nor raised by its people. He arrived as so many others had—forgotten, discarded, erased. A child cast out not just from his home, but from memory itself. His first sight was not a paradise, but a battlefield. His first breath was not of hope, but of ash and blood.
He did not cry. Not because he was brave, but because he did not yet know the difference between heaven and hell.
The boy had not known love.
Nor kindness, nor mercy. He was a prince—though no crown had ever graced his brow, no lullaby sung his name. His birth was not celebrated. It was hidden, scorned, silenced. His own parents, draped in gold and power, ended his life before it could begin, not out of hatred, but indifference. He was not wanted. That was all it took.
And yet, death did not hold him.
He fell—no, was cast—into the dream-woven world like a forgotten shard of a broken mirror. He landed not in paradise, but in its remains. His first memory was a river, dark and slow, thick with blood. He drank from it—not knowing better, not knowing worse. His stomach, empty since before birth, accepted the filth as though it were nectar. Hunger drove him to feast on the blackened meat of the dead. Rotten flesh between teeth still learning to chew.
He wandered through streets that had once gleamed with light and laughter. Now they were littered with bones, cracked gold, rusted chalices. He curled beneath dead trees in plains once rich with golden wheat, now soaked in blood too old to flow. He did not cry. He did not scream. He simply survived.
He climbed the mountains when there was nothing left to fear.
At the peak, the world widened. He saw the city below—its domes shattered, its towers aflame, all beneath the gaze of a blood-red moon hanging heavy in the sky. And as it reflected in his wide, unblinking eyes, he whispered to himself, "So this… is heaven."
The clouds gathered. They wept crimson rain. The boy sat beneath them, his body thin, his eyes hollow but watching. And he wondered.
Why do men dream of heaven, if this is where their dreams lead them? Why do they carve palaces into graves and call it peace? Why do they hunger for a world only to strangle it?
He looked to the red-soaked plains, the broken temples, the twisted silence of the dead, and he thought:
Perhaps hell would have been kinder.
He sat as thunder split the heavens.
The winds howled like dying beasts. The earth trembled beneath the weight of its own sorrow. And then the sky cracked open, not with rain, but with a flood—vast and merciless, born not of clouds but of judgment. It came down the mountain's spine with deafening force, swallowing the land below in a tide of ruin. Streets vanished. Temples crumbled. Armies were washed away, their banners and blades dragged into the depths like dust before the tide. Men, women, children—none were spared. Their screams were drowned in a single breath of water and silence.
But the boy endured.
At the summit, above the wrath of flood and flame, he remained untouched. Soaked in moonlight and grief, he watched the world be unmade beneath him. And at last, he cried.
Tears, warm and silent, traced the lines of his hollow cheeks. Not for those who had died, but for the world itself—this cursed illusion called heaven. The clouds thinned, peeled back by winds too tired to scream, revealing the moon once more. Its golden light kissed his face, not like warmth, but remembrance. As if even the sky mourned with him.
Time passed, and the boy did not move.
He did not eat. He did not drink. He simply sat, and stared, and breathed in the scent of a world that no longer deserved breath. Days faded. Seasons crumbled. The sun forgot how to rise. Darkness fell, not as a storm, but as a quiet permanence. And in that endless night, the boy stayed.
Ages passed.
New souls came, born of other forgotten dreams. They arrived like moths drawn to a light that no longer burned. They looked upon the desolate land, now a graveyard littered with bones and rust, and wept. This was not what they were promised. This was not the heaven they had hoped for.
And then they saw it.
At the top of the tallest peak—far above the ruins, beyond the reach of death—there was a glow. A single, golden point of light, shining though the skies held no moon. It shimmered like a candle behind a veil of shadow. It did not waver. It did not move. And yet it called to them.
One by one, they fell to their knees.
Starved and lost, their bodies brittle from fasting, their mouths stained with blood-filled water, they cried out. They prayed—not to gods, for none remained—but to the light. To the golden spot. To the last ember of a world that once knew wonder.
And so they waited. For days. Then years. Then centuries. Their prayers soaked the soil. Their bones became the new foundation. Beneath the mountain, a sea of weeping voices rose like incense into the eternal night.
More came.
They wandered from distant lands and broken realms, drawn by the faintest memory of light. Each had seen the golden shimmer from afar—a soft pulse at the mountaintop, like the last breath of a dying god. One by one, they arrived. The desperate, the damned, the forgotten. They gathered beneath the peak where the boy had once stood, their bodies trembling, their mouths parched, their eyes fixed upward with a longing that bordered on madness.
And then there were hundreds.
Then thousands.
A sea of broken humanity, crying out with voices hoarse from prayer, withered from hunger. They joined those already kneeling, turning the base of the mountain into a vast plain of suffering and hope. Time slipped between their fingers like ash. Days became decades. Then, something changed.
A sound.
It was soft at first. A subtle groan, like stone sighing beneath unbearable weight. Then came the crack. The peak of the mountain shuddered—split as if by a blade from the stars. And in an instant, the golden light vanished.
Darkness fell like a curtain, thick and absolute.
For ten days and ten nights, the mountain stood silent. The people below wailed. Some tore their eyes from the heavens and cursed them. Others wept without end, their prayers rotting on their tongues. But none left. Not even as madness crept into their minds. Not even when the bloodied wind whispered that all hope was lost.
And then, on the tenth night, beneath a full moon painted in gold—
It happened.
From the crack in the peak, something stirred. A sliver of light emerged, coiling upward like smoke. And then, from the mountain's wound, a tree was born.
It grew not like a tree of earth, but like something ancient and divine. Its bark shimmered with veins of gold, and its branches soared skyward, seeking not the clouds but the heavens themselves. Leaves unfurled like fire-dusted feathers, and when they fell, they did not wither. Instead, they descended upon the people like blessings. Each one tasted of forgotten joy. Each one filled the starving with a warmth that could not be named. For the first time in centuries, the people rejoiced.
Their prayers had been answered.
They named it divine. They sang to it. Danced beneath its shade. Worshiped it. But the tree was not a god.
It was a hunger.
As it stretched higher, it demanded more. Its roots delved deep into the soil, searching for what remained. It drank the bones of the dead, the last dregs of mortal sorrow, but still, it was not enough. Its ascent slowed. Its leaves dimmed. And so it turned to those who had given it birth.
Gently—almost lovingly—it reached for the faithful.
Vines like golden threads wrapped around their limbs. They did not scream. They believed they were being taken upward, toward paradise. A reward at last. And in a way, they were. But not in the way they imagined. The tree did not lift them into heaven. It devoured them. One by one, it drank their dreams, their memories, their final shreds of hope. It consumed their longing and made it part of itself.
And with each soul, it grew taller.
The Aurean Spire, they came to call it.
It was not born of soil or season. No sun had coaxed it to life. No rain had nurtured it. It had not sprouted by nature's law, nor grown by any hand of god. Instead, it had risen from agony—pure and undiluted. From the final exhalations of hope, the desperate wishes muttered by dying mouths, the regrets screamed in final moments too late to matter. From these, it took root.
It was made of yearning.
Of dreams that were never fulfilled, and of the cursed devotion of those who believed paradise could still be earned. The tree fed on them all. Not just the living, but the forgotten remnants buried in time's shadow. It drank deep from the bones and despair buried beneath the surface, its roots reaching far into the underworld, threading through layers of rot and ash, feasting on the sorrow of centuries.
Its trunk—smooth as polished stone, veined with golden light—rose like a monument not to glory, but to silence. It spoke nothing. Promised nothing. Yet still it called. Its surface shimmered in the darkness like a lie dressed in wonder. It towered above ruins, above blood-soaked valleys, above the collapsed temples of a thousand dead faiths. And still it grew.
Its branches stretched ever outward, vast and endless, eclipsing the skies themselves. They offered shelter, not from rain or wind, but from the unbearable light of the stars above—those distant, watchful things that seemed to judge the world in silence. Beneath those branches, the desperate once found comfort. Now, they found only shadow.
The Aurean Spire had reached the heavens. Its peak kissed the unseen, its limbs brushing the edge of divinity.
But it had taken no one with it.
Not yet.
And still, it waited.
Still, it hungered.