The Breath and The Dream

The Breath and The Dream

(Recovered fragment, origin predating the Codex of Breath; scribe unknown.)

Before time was counted, She lay within Herself.

Darkness and silence were one, and that oneness was peace.

Then She stirred. Not to speak, but to dream.

The Dream was Her body unfolding—rivers became veins, stars Her twinkling thoughts.

But a dream cannot live without breath.

So She exhaled.

And in that breath, the Dream gained form and began to think itself real.

Thus the world was born, a breath mistaken for a voice, a thought believing it had woken.

We are that breath. We are that mistake.

When the Mother sleeps, we move through her dreaming.

When She dreams, we call it living.

But when She breathes again, and Her exhale meets her own reflection—

The Dream will remember that it was never separate.

Archivists Commentary (Solenne, later annotation):

The Veil is the firmament. The sky is but a reflection of the Deep. For digestive understanding—we are on the ceiling staring through the floor. We are upside-down. The reflection believing itself the original, creating a hall of mirrors, thus, many voices. It may then seem natural to view the Veil as protection, keeping the Mother's breath from giving life to the voices. Perhaps the Hollow Ones [voices] are not intruders at all, but fragments of a greater coherence we have yet to perceive. Or perhaps they are what's leftover when the Dream begins to remember its source.

The priests teach that the Breath is creation, and the Dream is illusion. But the Breath was never meant to last forever—it is the moment between the Mother's sleep and Her next waking.

The Veiled Dominion: Episode 1