Kronos sat atop a silent cliff, watching the sky coil above the horizon. Uranus was there—he always was. A shroud of pressure, silver and cold. The sky had no face, but Kronos had long since stopped needing one to feel its presence.
The images haunted him still.
A blade. A scream. A separation.
Each night, they returned—burning in the space behind thought.
And always, the same echo after:
"The world must breathe."
Below, among the younger Titans, Rhea noticed the change first.
She, too, had grown quiet over the centuries. Once filled with laughter and curiosity, now her eyes were darkened with understanding. Like Kronos, she heard things beneath the world—the whisper of roots, the ache in Gaia's heartbeat.
She approached him softly, her hair woven with moonvine, her robes the color of dusk.
"You do not speak," she said. "But you burn."
Kronos looked up, violet eyes steady.
"I dream of freedom. But I do not yet know if I dream against the world… or for it."
Rhea nodded.
"We are born of Earth and Sky. But Sky never asks. He only claims."
In the Echoing Hollow, Elias watched the conversation unfold like a leaf unfurling from its stem.
He did not intervene. His Hollow was still. His hands rested in his lap. But around him, the air shimmered with expectation.
He had seen this story in a thousand forms.
The one who hesitates. The one who listens. The one who acts.
But he could not yet see how this telling would end.
Logos stirred nearby, his form briefly appearing as a tangle of ancient script.
"You give him dreams, but not answers."
Elias replied softly, "Myth cannot be forced. It must hunger first."
That hunger was growing.
Kronos began to visit the mountains at night, speaking to the wind, to the rocks, to the silence. He spoke to the world because the world was mother, and the sky was not.
Gaia listened.
She did not speak aloud, but she let her winds carry leaves to him—leaves that bore runes. Runes that only he could feel, and only Elias could truly understand.
One day, Kronos found a smooth stone. Flat. Plain.
But it pulsed with a strange heat.
He held it, and for the first time, he heard his mother's voice.
Not a word.
Not a command.
Just this:
"Choose."
Kronos returned to his siblings.
To Coeus, who studied stars. To Iapetus, who carved bones of beasts. To Hyperion, who spoke with flame. To Rhea, who waited like dusk before dawn.
He spoke carefully.
"The sky smothers. But what if the world rose back?"
They were silent.
None spoke of Uranus. None dared. Even among gods, fear has weight.
But Rhea stepped forward.
"And if we fall?"
Kronos did not flinch.
"Then we fall free."
In the Hollow, the sickle reappeared.
This time, it no longer shimmered uncertainly. It gleamed. Not like a weapon, but like decision made real.
Elias stepped closer.
He studied it not as a smith studies a blade, but as a poet studies a name.
Its edge was made of memory. Its handle, of consequence.
He did not touch it.
Instead, he asked, "Will you be mercy, or wrath?"
And the sickle answered by humming—soft and steady.
It was not either.
It was change.
That night, Gaia wept for the first time.
Rivers bled. Mountains cracked. The stars turned their faces away.
And deep in the core of the world, the buried children stirred.
The time had not yet come.
But the shape of rebellion had formed.
And myth had found its spine.