I stood in the heart of the Nexus, light coiling around me like a storm held on the knife's edge of control. My jaw ached from how hard I clenched it, golden fire burning in my eyes. I stretched my will across the Twelve Realms, threading through rivers, mountains, skies, temples, seeking her. Demanding her. Nothing. She was gone.
The realization sank like venom, a bitter claw twisting inside my chest. Impossible. I am the Law. The embodiment of Order. Nothing escapes my sight. Nothing.
"How?" The word cut from me like a blade, but the void carried it as thunder. "You dare hide from me?"
The silence mocked me. My teeth ground together. Woman. Flaw. Stain. I gave her place among us, and she twisted it. Defied me. Stole from me. I raised my hand, and the web of my power blazed alive. Lines of ancient light etched beneath my skin, radiant, perfect. The Nexus answered me, its lattice of creation bowing to my will. "If I cannot find you," I whispered, "I will erase you."
The command rolled outward, a radiant firestorm spreading across the bones of reality. Memory itself bent beneath me. For gods, memory is not thought. It is stone and sky, river and blood. I ruled them all.
"Be forgotten," I decreed.
The Nexus shuddered. Resistance slammed back against me, a weight vast and unyielding. Pain lanced my arm, searing heat, biting deep. Gold bled from my palm, molten divinity dripping into the mist. My essence. My eternity. I forced it forward. Necessary. A cost worth paying. The light tore through memory, ripping her face from stone, her voice from the wind, her name from the very veins of the realms. Gone. My chest heaved, the power fading, my fingers trembling faintly from the strain. A drop of myself, spent. But worth it. Always worth it. "Erased," I breathed, and straightened my shoulders. "A cost worth paying."
But erasure was not enough.
One month later, my voice thundered across the heavens, woven into temples, shrines, reflections, dreams. Every soul bent to hear me.
"There is a threat," I declared, my tone steady, righteous, carved from stone. "A being of lies. A perversion of the natural order."
Her image flickered across realms, blurred and dark, shadow twisted by burning runes. Not her, but enough to bind the lie to truth.
"She calls herself the Epiphany," I said, my voice rising, rich with fury and sorrow. "A false prophet. A thief who clawed her way into our Pantheon, binding our light to her cursed flesh."
Temples blazed with light. Priests bent to their knees, repeating my words. The Epiphany is a curse. A liar. A thief. Maximus's revelries fell silent, whispers curling through drunken lips. Yara's tides recoiled, oceans whispering her name. Vitaria's fields dimmed, stalks trembling with unease. Navir's networks shuddered, code twisting into corrupted loops, searching, failing. Luxor's priests chanted for purification, light against shadow. Even the dead stilled in Calavera's hall, sensing something missing, a soul unraveled from their march. My words filled that void.
"You did not give her your power. She stole it. She bound you against your will. She is no god, but a parasite."
I let sorrow break through, soft and aching, a shepherd mourning his lost flock. "But fear not. I will find her. I will cleanse her stain. I will restore balance."
The Nexus pulsed in answer. The Realms trembled with fear, with fury. They believed. Now the world knew her name: The Epiphany. But they did not know her. They knew only the monster I had made.
The end of book one.