Dawn came gently to the world of Aetherion's first journey.
Mist coiled around the valleys like the breath of sleeping dragons.
Church bells tolled from distant towers, calling souls to prayer —
and for the first time in his endless existence, the sound moved him.
He walked through the fields barefoot, the soil cool and wet with dew.
Each step pressed reality beneath him, and reality responded — whispering to its maker through the trembling of grass.
He no longer floated above worlds.
He walked within one.
---
To understand mortals, he became one.
Aetherion cast away his cosmic form and wrapped himself in the illusion of flesh.
His eyes dimmed to a mortal glow, his voice softened to a human tone.
He named himself Aethen, a wanderer with no home.
He entered the Kingdom of Lysara, where marble towers kissed the clouds and golden banners fluttered like angelic wings.
But beneath the beauty, he saw hunger in the alleys, ambition in the courts, fear in the eyes of priests.
They built temples for gods they did not know,
and prayed to heavens that had long since gone silent.
"How strange," he thought, walking among them.
"They build monuments to silence… and find comfort in it."
---
At the heart of Lysara stood a garden — vast and ancient, filled with winding paths of stone and flowers that glowed beneath the moonlight.
There, among fountains and falling petals, lived Eryndor, the Philosopher of the East Gate.
He was an old man with eyes like burned gold, always surrounded by students who came seeking wisdom.
Yet on this morning, he sat alone beneath an olive tree, staring at the rising sun.
Aetherion approached.
"May I sit?"
Eryndor smiled faintly. "The garden welcomes all. Even those who hide their truth."
The being paused. "You see through me?"
The old man chuckled. "No. I merely see deeper than most. You walk as one who carries no weight… yet your eyes hold every storm."
Aetherion sat beside him, curious. "Tell me, mortal philosopher. What do you believe the gods are?"
Eryndor plucked a fallen leaf and twirled it between his fingers. "If gods exist, they are nothing but reflections of our desire to make sense of chaos. We give them names so we may not fear the void."
"And if the void answered?"
"Then I would ask it to sit beside me," Eryndor said softly, "and share its loneliness."
For the first time in countless ages, Aetherion had no reply.
---
Days turned to weeks.
The disguised god remained in Lysara, tending to the garden, reading the philosopher's scrolls, listening to debates about virtue, destiny, and death.
He learned that mortals dreamed not because they could, but because they must.
Dreams were the only immortality they could claim.
He saw lovers promise eternity knowing they would die.
He watched children chase fireflies under the fading sun.
He saw soldiers praying before battle, not for victory, but for forgiveness.
And Aetherion began to feel something new:
Longing.
It was not the hunger of a god, but the ache of understanding that meaning required limitation.
One night, he asked Eryndor,
"Why do you live as though you have endless tomorrows, when you know death waits for you?"
The old man smiled beneath the moon.
"Because that is the only way to make today beautiful."
---
One evening, the sky broke open with thunder.
A storm unlike any other swept over Lysara — lightning screaming, winds tearing through towers, rain pounding like celestial drums.
The people prayed in fear.
Eryndor's garden flooded, and the old philosopher stood in the downpour, smiling sadly.
Aetherion felt the storm's mind — chaotic, destructive, wild.
He could silence it with a thought.
He could save every life in the city.
But he remembered the warrior's words:
"If one heart remembers… we are never truly gone."
He hesitated.
Would saving them rob their courage?
Would protecting them erase the meaning of their struggle?
Lightning struck the temple.
Without thinking, he raised his hand — and the bolt froze midair, a pillar of light suspended above the garden.
The world stopped.
Time obeyed him again.
Eryndor looked up through the frozen rain, eyes full of quiet wonder.
"So… you are the void after all."
Aetherion's voice trembled. "Yes."
"Then why hesitate?"
"Because I could save you all… and in doing so, I would steal your purpose."
Eryndor stepped forward through the stillness of halted time.
"Purpose is not stolen, Aethen. It is chosen. Even by gods."
He touched the immortal's hand. "Perhaps the purpose of power… is mercy."
Aetherion closed his eyes.
The storm moved again.
But this time, it bent around the garden—winds softening, lightning fading into gentle rain.
---
When dawn came, Lysara stood battered but alive.
The people sang prayers of thanks to gods who had not heard them.
And in the garden, Eryndor sat beneath his tree, coughing blood. The storm had taken his strength.
Aetherion knelt beside him.
"I could heal you," he said. "You could live forever."
The philosopher shook his head weakly.
"To live forever… is to never finish the story. Every truth needs an ending."
The god's throat tightened.
"You will die."
Eryndor smiled through fading breath.
"Then let my death be my final lesson to you, Aethen. All things end, even the stars. But meaning… meaning is what remains when we do."
His eyes dimmed. The rain stopped.
And as the first light of morning touched the garden, Aetherion realized a single tear was flowing from one of his eyes.
---
He buried the philosopher beneath the olive tree, where flowers grew without sunlight.
Every dawn thereafter, he visited the grave — not as a god, but as a friend.
The people of Lysara whispered of a wanderer who came to tend the garden each morning,
a man who spoke softly to the wind as if it could answer back.
And sometimes, when no one was watching, the blossoms glowed faintly with celestial light —
as if the stars themselves were listening.
---
For the first time since the dawn of creation, Aetherion understood grief.
And within that grief, he found something the void had never known: love.
---
In the silence of the garden, the immortal learned his second secret of mortals:
To love is to accept that something greater than yourself will one day end.
---