The Vessel

She died asking to be seen and rose as what could not be ignored.

Aurelia never learned how to be careful. She learned how to burn through connection before it could hurt her. Chaos felt safer than closeness. When she encounters a distant god called Sleep, she mistakes his never-ending closeness for love. His presence does not demand and for the first time, something in her life does not fracture when she leans into it.

She does not fall in love so much as she gives herself over. Devotion becomes habit. Habit becomes an addiction. Believing closeness requires sacrifice, Aurelia offers the only currency she has ever had; Herself. What she wakes to is Arcadia, the realm of the gods, a world sustained by belief, repetition, and insistence.

Reborn as something no longer human, Aurelia is set against the gods who once pressed Sleep to the margins of existence. As divinity collapses through irrelevance and rebellion, Aurelia is forced to confront the truth of her devotion: it was never love alone that drove her, but a lifetime spent mistaking intensity for safety and suffering for proof.

Sleep does not rule openly. He does not demand allegiance. As Arcadia reshapes around his growing gravity, Aurelia must wrestle with what it means to serve a god who does not want to be challenged, only accommodated; and whether awe can survive the moment understanding sets in.