Chapter Five: The Death of the Sky Fathers

The temples began to crack.

It was not the hand of war that struck them down, nor the trembling of the earth. The stones fractured under the weight of something far more relentless: the absence of belief. Each pillar had been built upon the stories of the First Man and his Sky Fathers - gods who ruled from above, disembodied and eternal. But now, the eyes that once knelt before them had begun to rise.

And once a gaze is lifted, it does not lower again.

Word of Althea’s pilgrimage spread like fire through dry fields. It was not her name that the people whispered, but her question:

“If no man has ever borne a child, how could a man ever be first?”

The question was her weapon. It needed no army. The Sky Fathers - those brittle gods of thunder and decree - were unarmed before it. They were gods without mothers, rootless and hollow. And when the people saw this, they no longer trembled.

In the city of Göteborg, the high priests gathered to silence the question. They stood in the marble halls of their temple, their robes heavy with the weight of gold. The First Man’s story was etched into the great dome above them, his image eternal and unchallenged. But even as they spoke of divine birth and fatherly creation, the words soured.

The women of Göteborg no longer listened. They did not bow. They did not weep for forgiveness. They only stood - hands resting upon the swell of their own bellies, their eyes dark with knowing. The priests’ voices cracked. The temple air grew thick. And then, from somewhere beyond the gilded doors, a cry rang out.

A child’s cry.

No father-god had brought it forth. No divine patriarch’s hand had sculpted its breath. The sound was raw, wet, and undeniable. A midwife emerged from the shadows, her arms stained with the blood of birth. Behind her, the mother lay trembling, the echo of labour still shuddering through her body. And though she had borne life without the blessing of the Sky Fathers, she was not struck down.

She lived. The child lived.

And the temple walls did not tremble.

It was then that the people understood. The gods had never held the sky in place. The stars burned without their permission. The rivers flowed without their command. And the mothers bore life without their names.

The First Man’s story was not slain in battle. It simply unraveled.

Across the cities and villages, the statues of the Sky Fathers stood empty-eyed. They watched as the people no longer gathered in their shadows. The offerings ceased. The prayers fell silent. And soon, the temples became nothing more than hollow bones, their echoes swallowed by the wind.

But not all remnants of the old stories could be ignored. The priests, stripped of their power, clutched at what remained. They wailed of chaos and divine punishment. They warned that without the rule of the Sky Fathers, the world would crumble.

Yet the world did not crumble - it softened.

The people remembered what the priests had tried to bury - the songs of the mothers, the rhythm of the womb. The knowledge that had been cast as heresy now bloomed in the open. Midwives no longer hid their hands. Daughters traced the curves of their own bodies without shame. And the words that had once bound them now dissolved into dust.

Althea did not watch the temples fall. She was no longer in the cities, nor among the crowds. Her pilgrimage had led her far beyond the reach of the dying gods. She stood upon the cliffs of the Western Reach, the wind pulling at her hair. Beneath her, the ocean roared - vast and ancient, untamed by the names men had tried to give it.

And as the waves struck the rocks below, Althea felt it.

The Sky Fathers were dead.

But the Earth had never needed them.