A blazing white mist rose from nothing and slithered into the path ahead, swallowing the ground in its lifeless embrace. She crawled backwards on her palm, her buttocks against the ground, trying to escape from it. The mist which began to form a fog divided the way, forming a barrier as she caught up to her feet and sprinted toward the last sliver of open road.

Then, the moon stirred.

The clouds unraveled, and silver light poured down like liquid divinity. It wasn’t just illumination—it was presence. It moved, it pulsed, and suddenly, enloped the mist.

She ran, her heavy breath, dying slowly in her chest. Just as the fog’s walls threatened to merge and save guard her in the abyss, the moonlight flared and heated the fog.

The fog screamed.

Not aloud or in pain, but in the way it convulsed, in the way it twisted upon itself ossifying upon an extra layer. The ground quaked as the mist hardened, as if something greater had commanded it to yield still. It did and bore deep into the soil. Everything near it, near the fog began to die from its harsh form. It came with rot.

I watched, watched from the other side, standing still and lost in the sight of what unsure event I just experienced while my mother got separated from me.

The road remained—just long enough but she could barely see the other side she had come from, the side I was still in.

Mother leapt forward, the very air shifting around her. And as she crashed onto solid ground, rolling, gasping, saved, the fog snapped shut behind her.

The abyss sealed. The night grew still.

And in that moment, she knew. The moon retreated behind the clouds. The goddess interfered.

The sky cracked open above, and icy rain spat down in sharp, stinging bursts. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth as the rain danced in delight, washing over the fog like a cleansing breath. The hardened mist, once immovable, began to soften, curling into tendrils of dissipating steam. The division between the roads remained—still strong, still there—but almost invisible now, like a faint scar on the earth.

Father arrived, standing behind me; he couldn't see me, his silhouette framed against the fading mist. I watched him step forward, watching in confusion at the mist. His eyes were wild. He reached out, stretching his arm towards the fog, ahay he barely could comprehend, but before his fingers even grazed its surface, a scream ripped from his throat. His skin burned—blackened, blistered, as if the very air rejected him. Rot took place. He staggered back, his face contorted in agony, his hands clawing at his flesh, just like me.

I could only watch. Frozen. Helpless. Sweat broke from my skin as I stood still.

But there, by the road, was my Mother. Her body, exhausted, trembling in the rain, rested against a fully grown cinnamon tree. She parted her legs, grimacing as she cried out in agony. Her face twisted with pain, and her breath came in sharp, ragged gasps as she struggled to deliver me on her own. I could see through the fog, but I couldn't move an inch. It was almost like I had become paralyzed in my pace.

The division stretched endlessly before me—far to the left, far to the right. There was no way across. Not unless one dared to pass through it.

She held me in her arms so dearly and from her lips she uttered my name;

"I will call you Caelan, and the name that has made us all you shall take; Hrothgar."

With words that had me in awe.

"And you shall protect the trinity, from the chaos which shall soon come.”

I have lived a hundred years being hidden from this veiled truth now. I could feel the hatred I had for him, for father, returning back. I could feel the emotions that I felt before the hundred year series of trauma memories.

I was cold for my father, not even knowing who he was. And this didn't by any means make me veer from what I just heard.

What chaos did she speak of? What chaos was to come?

.