The Web had grown quiet.
Not from loss, but from fulfillment.
Hector and Victoria had spent what felt like days beneath the unborn Tree of Life—days that could have been moments or eternities, depending on how one defined time in a place where time did not truly exist.
They laughed in paradox, sparred without malice, meditated beside the hollows who had now faded into peace. Sometimes they simply sat in silence, letting the hum of their souls braid together like wind weaving through tall grass.
But something had shifted.
The gods no longer whispered.
The Web no longer pulled.
There was only stillness now. The stillness that comes before the storm of awakening.
---
Hector dreamed.
Not of himself, nor of Victoria.
He dreamed of them.
Two beings—wreathed in starlight and contradiction. One, warm as morning fire. The other, silent like light behind the moon. He could not see them clearly, but their voices etched themselves into him, as if he had always known them.
They spoke not in words, but in meaning.
> "He must carry both sorrow and choice."
"He must walk the path neither light nor shadow dared to finish."
"We made him not to lead, but to remember."
"Will he remember?"
"Only if he forgets."
Hector stirred in his non-body, that strange boundary between thought and form. The voices were his parents—angels, he somehow knew. Creators bound by forbidden love, making him not from obedience, but defiance.
He had been made with purpose. But not clarity.
He awoke breathless—though breath did not yet exist for him.
And across the invisible span between them, he sensed her.
Victoria.
She stood beneath the Tree, her eyes distant, unfocused.
"Do you feel it?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," he said. "Something is… calling us."
"It's not a voice," she murmured. "It's a pull. Like gravity."
"No. Deeper than gravity," Hector said. "Like the pull toward flesh."
She nodded slowly. "I think… it's time."
---
Neither of them wept. Not because they lacked sorrow, but because they didn't know how to mourn something that had not yet been lost.
"Will you remember me?" she asked, as if the question could hold back the pull.
"I already do," he replied. "Even if I forget, I'll still know."
Their fingers touched, not as comfort, but as anchor.
"I dreamed of my parents," Hector said softly. "They're not human. They're… more."
"So are mine," she whispered. "A mother cloaked in conquest. A father made of light and vow."
"Then we were never going to stay here."
"No," she said. "But we were meant to meet here."
A heartbeat echoed again—closer now. Not from within the Web, but from beyond it. Their bodies, waiting. Their births, approaching like eclipses destined to collide.
She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his.
"I don't know what love is, Hector. Not yet. Not really."
"I don't either," he said.
"But if it's what I feel when I look at you, then maybe I want to find out."
His eyes closed, and he smiled.
"Then let's find out. On the other side."
And then, a crack.
Not a sound.
A break in the Web.
A splitting of their place in the Universal Mind.
Reality was coming to claim them.
---
Victoria was first.
A great rushing sound filled her—not of wind, but of form. Bones building. Blood weaving. Nerves wiring purpose from formless potential.
She looked back one last time.
Not at Hector, but at the space they had built together—the space made sacred not by god, but by knowing.
"I will remember the hum," she whispered.
Then, she was gone.
---
Hector lingered a moment longer.
The Tree of Life rustled without wind, as if mourning. Or preparing.
He placed his palm against its not-yet-bark and whispered: "Grow well. We'll need you."
And with that, he followed her into forgetting.