The Dreamers’ Crossing
Two souls.
And when one awakens…
…the other remembers.
Across conversations among readers, reviewers, and writers, there’s a recurring sense of quiet disappointment with much of contemporary fantasy. The genre feels, in many corners, as if it’s lost some of the depth, strangeness, and spiritual resonance that first drew people. As fantasy has gone more mainstream and commercial, mystery and wonder are often traded for familiarity and brandability.
Many works lean heavily into bleakness: worlds defined by cruelty, cynicism, and the “inevitability” of corruption. Hope itself is seen as naïve.
We are nurtured within a culture that esteems humanity's reasoning powers above all else. But the modern world is too complex, convoluted, and ever-changing to be navigated by reason alone. We have to trust our inner guidance. And sacred experience is not something that can be grasped intellectually. It must be felt.
This is the artists’ way: We open a door for the dream reality, for the other side, to impinge upon the waking world. Every myth begins as a conversation between worlds—the seen and the unseen, the artist and the fire that speaks through them.
In “Ophia’s Sister-Soul,” two realities reflect one another across the Veil. Ophia remembers what Earth has forgotten; Earth embodies what Ophia still dreams. Each twin world completes the other’s song. Whether Ophia is real, or a creation of Colleen’s (my earthly protagonist’s) psyche, may not even be the most pertinent question. In mythic storytelling, truth is measured by vitality and resonance. If a world touches you, it is real. The mirror between these two worlds allows every reader to find their own reflection—the internal Ophia that waits behind their daily lives.
What if the pain we carry is actually a bridge? What if our aching is a compass? What if that echo, that whisper in our souls, isn’t just a memory, but a signpost?
If you’ve ever felt the ache for a life you haven’t lived, a door you’ve walked past your whole life, finally opening, know that homecoming is possible—and this story may be for you.
Books That Heal: Modern Fantasy and Spiritual Awakening
A new mythology for seekers of transformation, dream-guidance, and inner sovereignty.
If our world is to find new ways forward, it must learn to dream new dreams. This calls for fresh guiding myths, stories that limn the strange terrain that we must travel through in the course of our spiritual awakening.
The more convinced we become of what this world is or what we think it is, the more it shrinks and loses that numinous quality that we associate with the magic of existence.
Fantasy epics that illuminated the inner world, such as “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever” “The Once and Future King” and the Star Wars films, inspired my younger self to view spiritual awakening as an enthralling adventure encompassing broad, dramatic scope.
Modern fantasy, on the other hand, can often feel formulaic, bleak, and spiritually exhausted to me. I know I’m not alone in acknowledging that contemporary fantasy tends to trade mystery and soul for polish and tropes.
Older works by writers like J.R.R Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Stephen R. Donaldson were (and are) revered not just for their action and world-building, but for the way they reach toward mystery, imagination, fundamental ethical dilemmas, and contact with the larger entities of life.
Much of modern fantasy has “lost its soul,” reducing the sacred sense of life to (at best) mere metaphor or (at worst) the refuge of deluded minds.
Inner Awakening Demands New Myths
Spiritual awakening begins when our surroundings, and the stories we draw from to make sense of our world, don't nourish our souls and echo what we know inside to be true. Whatever it is that might fill those holes has to be sought. Lack and dissatisfaction activates us.
Sometimes, this impetus goes beyond mere dissatisfaction. It is rooted in core traumas and deep wounds. The wound compels spiritual seekers to connect with the unseen world to regain spiritual equilibrium. That’s why trauma and solitude recur in the stories of ancient shamans and medicine men. Something sets the person apart from the society they live in, whatever kind of society that may be, and that's where the initiation begins.
Sometimes it feels like such inner visions are as impossible to live with as without. They draw us away from the familiar, homey signposts where many other people find comfort, support, and companionship. Our vision has few champions and supporters because it does not yet exist in ways that others may see and touch. We’re manifesting it in the face of “what is.”
But few people are really satisfied and fulfilled by “what is” these days.
Many popular fantasies are characterized by brutal settings, “gray” heroes, systemic corruption, and even glorified cruelty. Grimdark fans argue that this is “necessary realism,” but the same argument is often used to silence anyone who wants to transform society and offer a new vision of how things could be.
“This is just the way of the world.”
Such thinking produces a kind of spiritual exhaustion. These books seem locked into an endless circle of nihilism where gestures toward hope and transcendence are framed as sentimental or naïve. Fantasy stories can acknowledge suffering without pretending it’s the only truth.
Brothers and sisters, fellow seekers, our inner selves manifested in this physical life to push the frontiers of consciousness. We wanted to embrace more than just a reflection of the world that surrounds us. We wanted to enter this civilization, in its advanced state of decay and dissolution, and offer new visions of what human society could be. New visions of how we can relate to ourselves, each other, and the life of the Earth,
Inner awakening may lead us away from the world at times because the answers we seek are not yet reflected here. But the point is—like in the classic hero’s journey—to return and express its wisdom here, in ways that spark that awakening in others. It’s a quest to reach critical mass. We’re called to enrich the world, not escape from it.
Epic Fantasy for a Time of Uncertainty: Ophia’s Sister-Soul and the Bridge Between Worlds
More people would probably devote themselves to the journey of self-discovery if they knew that there was a precious treasure waiting to be found on the other side. By and large, our cultural education insists that there is no inner world, or that it's a dangerous place to venture into. It doesn't tell us that this place that we bear within us is an inexhaustible source of wisdom, knowledge, and healing.
Fantasy Fiction vs. "Reality"
Speculative fiction has always engaged the issues of its time, but many modern books and films can feel heavy-handed, turning secondary worlds into thinly veiled allegories or propaganda []. What I miss is deeper mythic resonance—timeless, enduring stories that grapple with questions of purpose and the nature of the human soul.
Contemporary fantasy novels that strive for too much “reality” can feel inwardly hollow: impeccably constructed worlds orbiting characters whose journeys never quite pierce the surface, or whose brushes with the numinous are delivered with a sly wink towards readers. “We know this is ‘just fantasy’, right? So let’s just enjoy the ride and not scrutinize it too much.” It’s reminiscent of Tolkien’s criticism in his “On Fairy Stories” essay where he identified the kinds of stories he found particularly repugnant: tales intended for children written with one eye on the adults in the room.
Colleen Addison, my protagonist, explains why she journals her soul journey. “The words on the page always remind me that the contours of my mind will never fit into any neat package or label. This is me, Colleen Addison, Glorious Misfit. On the page, I can transform into a mythic version of myself. Though I'm still grounded in the world of ‘facts,’ I feel the dreamy sunburst of a reality that is too deep, wide, and unfathomable to be contained within any realm of fact.”
What a story inspires within us is a much more crucial issue than whether it is “true.” Few experiences are so empowering than the realization that one's life story can be completely rewritten. One could also apply this to a culture, even to the entire world.The power of a story lies in what it awakens, especially the realization that both personal and collective narratives can be rewritten.
Longing for Soul and the Sacred
The Ophian word Sorsajna, the fire of creation, names that very pulse.
To really fulfill ourselves, we need to experience our own capacity for heroism. If the social structure denies us opportunities to do this, and our popular myths gloss over the issue, a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness fills that vacuum. We must find the kind of existential dramas our souls crave. Where are the opportunities and challenges that call upon our gifts and hidden resources of strength? Do our struggles have value and meaning? Without a sense of purpose, without belief in individual significance, those struggles feel fruitless.
A threshold between worlds. On the edge of a broken bridge, Colleen must choose whether to follow the serpent of light into Ophia—or let fear hold her to a crumbling Earth.
Found family—and the powers that oppose them. Wanderers, healers, priests, and a serpent-speaker gather around Colleen and Esperidi as their vow draws allies and enemies across two worlds.
One vow coils around two souls. Their soul-bond could heal them both—or let two worlds fall into darkness.
Beyond death, beyond distance,
some bonds are written in the fabric of creation. ✨
I write and dream where myth and memory meet — where story is a river we can enter and join the eternal human conversation.
The Dreamers’ Crossing began as a whisper in that space: a sonic mythology of dusk and becoming, where two voices — Colleen and Esperidi — move through the unseen landscape of the soul.
Ophia’s Sister-Soul and The Authors of This Dream were the first echoes - in different idioms - of this longing: to map the hidden geographies of transformation; to speak from the borderland between the inner world and the living myth that embodies it.
This project is a continuation of that quest —groping towards humanity’s awakening.
— Seth Mullins ✴ The Dreamers’ Crossing
Sacred memory…
Even when wonder is forbidden, someone must remember the song…
She dreamed of another sky… a world her heart remembered, though her mind forgot.
Every dream, a whisper.
Every loss, a door.