The last city fell without a sound.
There were no invaders at its gates, no siege engines, no fires. Just stillness—then the vines.
They came not from the soil but from the cracks in the stone, from beneath beds, behind mirrors, through pages of forgotten prayers. Black, velvet-soft tendrils unfurled beneath windowpanes and curled into rooms like lovers' fingers. They crept gently. They did not strangle. They did not burn.
They bloomed.
Lotuses. Thousands. Each shaped with uncanny symmetry, petals like obsidian satin, breathing faint green vapor. Their scent was memory and mourning, sweet and cold and addictive. Those who breathed it stopped resisting. They sat down. Lay back. Closed their eyes. Listened.
And in that dark perfume, they heard a voice.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
But certain.
Zeyr Vol had become a god.
Not in title. Not in worship.
But in function.
A principle made flesh.
Decay that walked.
Ruin that spoke.
Love that could not forgive.
Far beneath the surface of the world, in a place with no name, Zeyr lay on a bed of breathing vines. His body was no longer his—his skin had become like bark carved in the shape of flesh, threaded with poison veins that pulsed rhythmically with the planet. His eyes no longer blinked. They watched inwards.
He was not alone.
Yasshal coiled around the chamber, now too vast to be seen in one gaze, its body composed of thrones swallowed by roots, bones bound in silk, the mouths of long-dead kings whispering in its joints. It had no true face—but it had presence.
The god did not speak in language anymore.
It spoke in sensations: rot sweetening, pressure behind the eye, the memory of drowning in hot syrup.
Zeyr responded in kind.
Their communion was pure.
Complete.
And yet.
And yet.
There was a shadow in the bloom.
A memory that would not die.
He saw her every time he closed his eyes.
Not as she was at the end—cracked and fading, wrapped in light and orders.
But as she had been beneath the rain.
Laughing once, near a ruined orchard, soaked and defiant, slipping in mud, then throwing a pear at his chest and daring him to pretend she wasn't beautiful.
He had never answered her.
He had kissed her instead.
That memory lived in him like a thorn he would not pull.
And the god—his god, his other self—knew it.
And so it tested him.
The roots drew back, revealing a corridor.
Zeyr stood.
His feet made no sound. The earth bent to hold him. Mushrooms curled upward in reverence, releasing spores in the shape of old songs.
He walked.
The corridor opened into a chamber he had not seen before.
A pool of water sat at its center, still as grief.
He approached it, expecting reflection.
But the surface held her.
Aeryn.
Whole.
Asleep beneath the surface.
Hands folded. Lips parted. Chest rising slowly.
He dropped to his knees.
She did not wake.
He touched the water.
It shimmered.
A voice rose behind him—his own, but not.
"She is a shape. Not the woman. Only the echo."
Zeyr did not turn.
"She remembers me."
"She remembers what you want her to."
"I don't care."
"She will never love what you are now."
"I don't need her to."
A pause.
Then:
"You lie."
He did.
And didn't.
He reached into the water.
Lifted her.
She was light. Weightless. A body made of memory and godlight, given breath for this one final cruelty.
He cradled her like he had that day in the plaza, when everything still might have changed.
Her eyes opened.
Silver. Soft. Empty.
Then full.
Recognition.
"Zeyr?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"You're… different."
He didn't answer.
She touched his face.
"I'm dead."
"Yes."
She smiled.
"I was hoping so."
He blinked.
"I didn't want to see what they'd do to you."
He swallowed.
"They failed," he said.
"Did they?"
She looked around.
Everything pulsed.
"Where are we?"
"Below."
"Below what?"
"Everything."
She closed her eyes again.
"You didn't follow me to heaven."
"No."
She smiled, sleepily.
"You dragged the world down to where you were."
"Yes."
She exhaled.
"It's beautiful."
He stiffened.
She opened her eyes again.
"But not mine."
He looked away.
"I don't want it anymore."
"Yes, you do."
She kissed his cheek.
And the illusion shattered.
Her body fell to dust in his hands.
He stared at his fingers.
Stained with memory.
Yasshal spoke.
"You are mine again."
Zeyr stood.
"No," he said.
"I never was."
He rose from the chamber.
Walked through miles of root.
And surfaced.
The world above had changed.
Cities gone.
Forests returned.
But twisted—black leaves, glowing veins, trees that sang.
The sky was dimmer now, as if refusing to interfere.
Zeyr stepped into the center of a field.
And sat.
Cross-legged.
Still.
He closed his eyes.
The god's roots pulsed beneath him.
He opened his mouth.
And breathed once.
The wind carried it.
The spores moved.
And all across the continent, black lotuses bloomed.
In unison.
Then stopped.
Time held its breath.
And the song began.
A single note.
Low.
Wordless.
Then another.
And another.
Voices—thousands, millions—joined.
The sound became a wave.
And the wave became silence.
Eternal.
Somewhere, far away, a child picked a lotus.
Held it to their ear.
Smiled.
The petals whispered:
"He broke the world for love."
"And in return, he made it bloom."
"And nothing grew again."
THE END