"Before the beginning was the night. And the night was without boundaries and the night was without end."
Mother Night is a ancient cosmic entity and the Mother of The Endless.
History[]
Mother Night, also called Night, is a primordial cosmic entity, the embodiment of the absolute Void that pre-existed all creation. She represents primordial space, while Father Time embodies time—together, they are the parents of the Endless (Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Destruction).
Dream goes to his parents, hoping to find answers after committing a terrible act: the death of his son, Orpheus. The exchange is brief, cold, and devoid of comfort. Mother Night makes it clear that she isn't seeking her children out of love, but out of loneliness: she wants them there "so she won't be alone."
Appearance[]
Night is a middle-aged black woman, she has long black hair tied in braids that falls over her left shoulder and ends in star-like sparkles near the tips, she wears a long black dress and has a black shawl with star lights embroidered on it like her hair.
Destiny, Death and Dream, in his new incarnation, all take after her physically in their typical forms.
Personality[]
Much like her former lover Time, Night is similarly detached from all things in creation and prefers to stay within the privacy of her own realm.
Like Time, Night is also similarly distant and prefers to not have much contact with her children. However unlike Time, Night does harbor some love, care and adoration for her children. This is shown when Dream visited her, where she showed fondness for her third eldest child and asked him about the rest of his siblings and complained about how most of them no longer visit her, implying that while she enjoys her privacy, she also enjoys visits from her children. Night's distant relationship to her children is further exemplified when she is only visited and talked to by Destiny and the occasionally by Delirium, who doesn't even speak to her and "sulks around" her realm instead.
However, while showcasing her fondness for her children, Night has also shown to be detached and even apathetic to them at the same time and has implied that she plays favorites with them. This is shown when she spoke about Delirium and Night was confused as to why she finds her creeping about her realm and is unsure of what she wants from her and was later uninterested when Dream stated how Delirium wanted their mother's attention, interest and love and how she was trying to get it by visiting her.
As implied by Time, Night considered Dream to be one of her favorite children and she was close to him once. When Dream came to her hoping she could help him against the Kindly Ones, Night offered to create an entire replica of the Dreaming for him, complete with replica's of its inhabitants and even a new lover, to make him happy and allow him to visit her more often. Showcasing her doting and affection for him.
However, Night has also shown herself to be narcissistic and easily slighted (not unlike many of her children). This was shown in her offer to help Dream, where her help was implied to have been more for the sake of satisfying her own desire to want have her son to herself than actually helping him. As her offer of help would have protected Dream from the Kindly Ones, it would also have had disastrous consequences for the Dreaming and the Waking world, as this would have left rest of the inhabitants of the Dreaming to suffer from the wrath of the Furies and Dream's absence would have had an adverse effects on the mortals of the waking world.
Furthermore, when Dream rejected her offer, Night took it as a personal insult to herself, thinking that he preferred to be hounded by the Kindly Ones rather than spend the rest of eternity with her. In anger and annoyance at her son, she would soon make the entire conversation about herself as she began to think that he blames her for how he turned out and talked about how it was okay for him to blame her, considering it as a parting gift for her soon to be deceased son. Admonishing Dream's "selfishness" while ignoring her own. Showcasing Night's tendency to make herself the center of any given conversation and topic.
Similar to her former lover and despite their estrangement, Night still harbors some affection for Time and was flattered when Dream told her that Time missed her.
Powers and Abilities[]
Little is known of Night's abilities, but it is said her physical form is beyond any level of the "event" concept. As shown from her son’s visit, Night’s power was implied to greatly surpass her children’s. As implied from her son’s visit, Night’s power is so immense, that not even the Furies would dare intrude upon her realm and exact vengeance upon him should he decide to remain with her.
- Darkness Personification: As described by her son, Night is the personification of the endless darkness before creation and of which it will return to when it ends. Night herself is the metaphysical manifestation of space and has divine omnipotent power and authority over darkness, space and existence and has absolute control over it and everything linked to it. With these powers, she is almost completely omnipotent.
- Omnipresence: As the very embodiment of the primordial night, Mother Night is present in every shadow, every silence, every corner of the universe. Her essence permeates the darkness between the stars, forgotten dreams, and unspoken fears. This omnipresence grants her an expansive awareness and a profound knowledge of hidden secrets. She can appear anywhere in the mortal world or in her own realm woven with darkness, ever silent, elusive, and shrouded in unfathomable mystery.
- Immortality: As the personification and manifestation of the endless darkness before and after creation, Night is older than creation itself and will be around long after its gone. Night’s immortality was implied to surpass that of her children and she will likely outlive them all.
- Umbrakinesis: As the ancient embodiment of primordial darkness and the Mother of the Endless, Mother Night possesses absolute dominion over all forms of darkness and shadow. Her control extends beyond mere absence of light—she weaves the fabric of night itself, shrouding reality, veiling truths, and cloaking even time and thought in impenetrable blackness. Her power is not only elemental but existential, for from her darkness, all beginnings stir and all endings dissolve.
- Reality Manipulation: As a cosmic being of one of the fundamental forces of creation, Night was implied to possess immense power over reality and could manipulate it freely to suite her own needs and wants. Like her former lover and children, Night possess her own realm where is the absolute sovereign and reality conforms to her will.
- Creation: As the manifestation of the infinite space of the endless darkness before and after creation, Night can freely create anything she desires within her realm. She could even make entire realms within her own, as shown when she offered to create a copied version of Dream’s realm within her own for him to live in to protect himself from the Kindly Ones and populate it with copies of the residents of his realm and even a new lover to keep him company and within her reach at any time.
- Law Manipulation: As the primordial entity that preceded all things, Mother Night can create laws that all creatures are bound to follow. Dream explains that it was Father Time and Mother Night who imposed the ancient rules on their children. As hypothetically implied by Night, should she and Time work together, it could be possible for them to rewrite the laws of the universe, albeit due to their estrangement, this is unlikely.