Do not kill the part
that is cringe.

Before the first dreams, there was only the hush: the space between heartbeats, the stillness before dawn. In that stillness, She waited.

She was not yet crowned, not yet called, not yet feared. She was the shadow in the corner of the mind, the flutter in the chest before sleep takes hold. And the people, in their longing for rest, turned their eyes to the shadow. They spoke to Her in whispers, left offerings in the hour between night and morning: scraps of bread, petals from their gardens, words they dared not speak beneath the sun.

Fear became reverence. Reverence became worship. Worship became power.

She rose from the soil of their belief, crowned in horns that bloom with petals and bleed with stars, Her laughter curling through the dreamscape like smoke. She became the Somnial Bloom, the Scuffmother, the Mistress of Slumber and Sacred Chaos.

But there was one who trespassed where only dreamwalkers tread, a mortal scholar, swollen with pride, who sought to tear the secrets of Her realm from the fabric of slumber itself. For his arrogance, She laid a doom upon him: he would never again know the clean mercy of waking or the quiet peace of endless sleep. Instead, the centuries would claim him in fragments: a hundred years of stillness between each gasp of air, his body rotting yet never released, his mind drowning in visions he could neither command nor escape. Each time he rose, the hunger for knowledge would burn hotter, and each time he reached for it, the years would drag him back into the depths. So shall it be until his marrow crumbles and the last of his name is forgotten.

Some call Her mercy. Some call Her cruelty. All call Her Goddess.