Interlude: Threads of Her
"Between the fire that scorches, the wind that carries, and the silence that binds—he loved them all, for each gave him form."
—Inscription found in the Ancestral Book of Errin's Memories
---
The valley did not speak in tongues, but in echoes.
And in the echoes, three names arose—Ka'il'a, Echo, and Lauren. Each a woman. Each a force. Each a reflection of Errin's fractured journey toward godhood.
They did not compete.
They coexisted—like past, present, and future.
And yet... the heart, even when divine, remembers the ache of choice.
---
Ka'il'a – The Flame Behind the Blade
"He once said I was war in a woman's bones. That I turned his breath to metal and his will to fire. So I burned... not knowing he would become something that couldn't burn with me."
—Ka'il'a, speaking to the windless moon
Ka'il'a was his rebellion.
When Errin still bled as a mortal, it was Ka'il'a who taught him to wield that blood like scripture. She was laughter forged under falling stars and kisses stolen between crumbling walls.
They trained, fought, and bled as one.
But when Errin's destiny shifted from the blade to the cosmos, she could not follow. Or perhaps—she refused to.
She still wears the scar he gave her when he turned away—not as a wound, but as a vow.
---
Echo – The Womb of Infinity
"He did not love me first. But he loved me as only a god can love—without beginning or end. And from that, I birthed not just his son... but his peace."
—Echo, before the Grove of Becoming
Echo never asked for him.
But the valley knew. And so did the unborn.
In her presence, Errin found stillness—not the absence of war, but the presence of something worth fighting for. She whispered the names of unborn stars into his dreams, and when his blood remembered the old pain, she offered him flesh to anchor, and spirit to sanctify.
She is not loud. But her silence thunders.
She is the mother of the god-child, and the keeper of the space between battles.
---
Lauren – The Thread-Woman
"I wove his arrival. I wove the forgetting. I wove the staying. And now I weave the awakening."
—Lauren, the unremembered
Long before Echo or Ka'il'a… there was Lauren.
The nameless weaver. The one who sat beneath the Fifth Tree, fingers always moving, binding Errin to the land he would forget. She gave him no blade, no child, no vow—only a chance to begin again.
Many forgot her name. Even Errin, for a time.
But when he stumbled into the valley, broken and hunted, it was Lauren who fed him. Lauren who cloaked him. Lauren who spun the spell that let the valley accept him.
She was not a warrior. She was not a lover. She was not a mother.
But without Lauren, there would be no Errin to love. No soul to awaken. No child to crown.
---
"I loved them all," Errin would one day say, "Not with equal weight, but with necessary gravity. Ka'il'a broke me open. Echo filled what was left. Lauren stitched the pieces and told the universe I was worthy of one more life."
This was no triangle.
It was a trinity.
---
Shall we now let these threads ripple into the next chapter—perhaps as Ka'il'a crosses paths with Echo, or as Errin dreams of Lauren's loom once more?
Or would you like to see this interlude placed right before the next divine transformation?