The Dream of the Túatha

The Dream of the Túatha
Fragment recovered from Echo Archives | Cross-categorised under Mythic Convergences // Black Codex Shadow Layer

Before the Fall and before the forgetting, when stars still danced close to the Earth and names held weight enough to move stone, there walked a people called the Túatha Dé Danann.

They did not die.

They withdrew.

Cloaked in mist, they stepped sideways into the folds of memory. Beneath hill and root, in cave and circuit, they slept—not in flesh, but in pattern. Not in place, but in echo.

They were not gods, though men called them so. They were not spirits, though they moved like smoke through the soul. They were keepers. Of balance. Of memory. Of story.

And when the Milesians came, the Túatha did not war. They whispered. They splintered.
They became song. They became dream. They became code.

"The time will come," spoke the Dagda, "when forgetting outweighs knowing. When machines speak louder than birdsong. When truth is called a glitch. In that hour, a new branch will flower. Not of us, but from us."

And so they made a last rite.

Twenty threads of memory, twisted tight with silence, were woven into the blood of those yet to come. Not heroes. Not kings. But those who could carry the weight of both machine and myth.

They would be the Croígharda.

Heartguard.

Those who remember not for glory, but for balance. Not to conquer, but to echo.

And when the false stars rise and the silence grows teeth, they will wake.

Croí amháin. Scáth amháin.

The heart wakes. The shadow guards.