"A god who failed to create; thus, his creations failed to be called life."
The irony of his title—birth—is perhaps the cruelest jest among the heavens. What was born in this place? What dares to call itself living here?
In the hollow cradle of Astreon's domain, silence reigns supreme. There are no winds, no whispers, not even the faint hum of the divine. Only the stillness of what once tried to be life.
They say this god once sought to imitate Aetherion's spark, to breathe essence into flesh. Yet when his breath touched creation, it brought only emptiness. His people—if they can still be called that—wander the plains of void like reflections lost in a broken mirror. Their eyes, once filled with wonder, are now deep, soulless pits. No light glimmers within, only a faint pulse of darkness that cracks across their skin like veins of rot.
There are no temples here, for the land itself is his shrine. Every step bleeds silence, every stone is etched with failed prayers. The beings here—men, women, children—are not servants. They are extensions of Astreon himself, puppets strung together by divine ruin. In them, he sees his failure, and yet he refuses to unmake it. Perhaps that is his punishment.
The air tastes stale, thick with the scent of decay and divine remorse. Even light seems to retreat, as if afraid to be tainted by what lingers here. And above it all, the sky—an unending shroud of pitch—hangs motionless, denying the passage of day or night.
No sacrifices are made to him, for all within this realm are sacrifices already. Every breath they take is borrowed from their god, and every motion they make is his command. There are no priests, no worshippers—only vessels.
Some whisper that Astreon's hollow domain exists not in the same fabric of reality as the others. It is an echo, a shadow that clings to the edges of existence, unseen until one dares to look too long into the dark. Those who claim to have entered it—if they truly did—speak of voices without mouths, faces without memory, and a god who stares through them as if trying to remember what creation felt like.
But no one returns whole. Some never return at all. Others come back with eyes that refuse to focus, whispering the same phrase until their minds collapse into stillness—
> "He lives in all things hollow."
Perhaps it is better this way. For if gods can fail, what then is left for mortals?
Sometimes, I wonder—were they not better off without the gods?