They gathered in the Hollow Above All Things.
Eleven shadows, cast not by light but by memory, drifted in slow orbits around a trembling sphere a planet unborn, raw with breath and impossible heat, suspended in the void like a wound that refused to close.
It pulsed. Once. Twice.
The rhythm of something ancient awakening.
The first shadow moved, silent and vast, shaped like absence. No voice came from it, yet thought echoed from its center, rippling through the stillness.
"It breathes again."
A second leaned closer to the sphere. Its edges cracked with molten starlight, leaking trails of burning symbols that dripped into the void.
"The stars recoil from it. I have redrawn the constellations thrice. They reshape into an eye…., Always ….."
The third shadow flickered like glass under strain, fragile and shivering. When it spoke, its voice chimed with the sound of breaking bones.
"Its crust is alive. The planet's skeleton hums with songs I cannot name. Sometimes it weeps. Sometimes it laughs."
A fourth repeated the words softly, mimicking not only tone but soul.
"It laughs…"
"…songs I cannot name."
"…the breath is not air. It is a dream."
The fifth, endlessly writing into a scroll of flame that devoured itself with each word, spoke without looking up.
"The signs are complete. Red moons falling like rain. Skies that forget gravity. Infants born with nebulae in their skulls. The design is not linear. It spirals. It collapses inward."
Another shadow, cold and fireless ,whispered from behind a veil of inverted heat.
"This seed will bloom into a god, yes. But not one we understand. The last time we allowed such birth, it was an unmade language and fed on its own name."
The seventh shadow, lean and endless, hollow as a grave with no mourner, spoke with dry hunger.
"It carries the scent of void. Not creation. Not oblivion. Just hunger. Pure and divine. It will devour all that is unnamed, and perhaps more."
Another, delicate and tangled in glowing threads, pulled taut across its arms and throat, gave a gentle laugh. It tugged a strand, and a scream echoed from some distant future.
"I tried to weave its path into gentler shapes. They undid themselves. One led to death dying. Another to joy without end — the most dangerous pattern of all."
The ninth blinked. And blinked. And blinked again.
Eyes upon eyes upon eyes.
"Last night, it dreamed."
All the others grew still.
The voice grew heavier.
"It dreamed of war. Then of peace. Then of fire that sang lullabies. And then…"
A long pause.
"…it dreamed of the one who walks the dream."
A ripple of fear passed through the ring.
The tenth spoke at last — its form like a tower made of rusted sorrow, slow and loud.
"So he is inside already"
The echo-shadow replied, in a voice that did not belong to any of them.
"It bleeds like gods do…"
The shadows dimmed.
The planet pulsed again. Louder this time. As if it heard. As if it remembered.
The fire-writing shadow whispered, barely audible.
"There are prophecies carved into the skull of a dead god, still orbiting the black sun. I read them backward. They all ended with his name."
The weaver's threads snapped.
"He is not heir. He is not seed. He is fracture."
The sphere cracked.
A low sound like the birth cry of something that had never been alive before echoed across the Hollow. The light from the planet flickered, shifting between colors that had no names in any tongue.
One of the shadows rose from its seat.
It did not ask for a vote. It simply turned toward the others.
"Then the ******** has chosen. We are already within it."
None disagreed.
The eleven shadows watched as the newborn planet opened one eye.