Ghomgyn had warned Mither what would happen should he create humanity—warned him that they would scar the soil, drain the seas, and choke the skies. He called her dramatic. He said she feared change. And when her fury refused to dim, he bound her, buried her, entombed her in the bones of the earth she once molded with love. He forced her to watch, to feel every scrape of the plow, every pipeline driven into her flesh, every forest felled like locks of her hair being ripped away.

But she was never without reach. Her whispers became the storms. Her grief the floods. Her fury quaked mountains and split the sea floor. She screamed through typhoons and howled in blizzards, but humanity called them natural disasters, and went on burning her world for fuel.

Only a few remembered. Only a handful listened. A dwindling cult, exiled to the edges of civilization, gave back more than they took. They worshipped her not with altars, but with gardens. They grew trees where others built malls. They composted where others strip-mined. They lived in harmony with her weeping creation and tried to warn the others: She sleeps, but not forever.

Their warnings were scorned. Their kindness mocked. And when humanity dug too deep and cracked her prison wide open, they reaped her wrath.

She did not merely rise. She erupted.

A thousand plagues swept the earth. Cities drowned beneath ink-black tides. Skies turned red with ash. Winds screamed through empty skyscrapers. Fire rained in sheets and rivers boiled. Crops withered to dust and animals once docile turned wild, violent—abandoning farms, devouring once-trusted caretakers, and fleeing into the deep wilds as if repelled by the very scent of humanity. It was not just death she dealt, but humiliation. Humanity, once proud rulers, were now prey.

Technology melted in human hands. Satellites fell like dying stars. Everything they had built was reclaimed by the very elements they thought they had mastered.

And when it was over, she walked.

Her form—towering, terrible, divine—stalked through the ruins. Her antlers scraped the heavens. Blood wept eternally from the tarnished gold of her halo, splashing on soil that bloomed under every footstep. Her voice, a cacophony of overlapping tones, broke minds just by uttering truth.

Only the cult remained. Her cult. Those few, tattered survivors tucked away in the wild, still feeding the land with care, still tending what little life was left.

She found them.

Her black, hollow gaze swept over the commune where they lived. No power lines. No steel. Just homes of woven vine and clay, tools carved from fallen wood and shaped stone. Animals wandered freely, unafraid. Their children sang to bees.

She stared. Not with love. Not even with approval.

Just the quiet, solemn awareness that they had obeyed where all others had sinned.

And something else—something old and familiar.

They moved like she once moved, before her bindings. Spoke in reverent tones, soft and deliberate. And she noticed, curiously, how they deferred to their women in all things—elders bowed to matriarchs, youths clung to grandmothers' knees, and the community treated the eldest daughter of each bloodline as if she carried divinity in her bones.

As if she were Ghomgyn herself, made mortal.

Before her, a small celebration had begun—quiet and humble, as all their ways were. They did not cheer her name or light grand pyres. They knelt. They sang. They broke bread and offered it to the roots. Children placed flowers in the soil and whispered thanks.

She watched for a moment longer. Not in warmth—her love had long since turned to cinder—but in something akin to contemplation.

These were not her chosen. They were simply... less wicked.

Before she turned to leave, her gaze lingered on one of the eldest daughters—tall, soot-smudged, your hair wrapped in woven cloth dyed with river herbs. You stand at the edge of the celebration, hands still cupped with offerings for the roots, when your head snaps up. You had seen her, and you smile.