The light still burned where Nyqomi's wings had struck—violet and white, writhing in the air like a living wound. Qaritas stood in the center of it, motionless, his outline flickering at the edges as if reality couldn't decide where his body began.
The fractures had deepened.
What had been faint, glowing lines were now rifts—ragged veins of purple searing across his arms, neck, and chest. The skin around them had roughened, darkened, turning to something like volcanic stone, brittle at first, then solid as it spread. Each crack crystallized along the edges, amethyst plates catching the stray light. They pulsed—not in time with each other, but in two different rhythms: his heart, and another. Eon's.
Heat radiated from him in uneven waves. His breath came dry and gritty, like smoke dragged through a furnace. Every joint ached beneath the new weight, grinding as if his own bones resisted what he was becoming.
"Look at you."
Eon's voice slithered through the cracks, warm and admiring. "The stone remembers before the flesh does. Keep going, little brother—let's see what hatches."
Qaritas shuddered. The air rippled around him—half light, half distortion. He tried to speak, but the words blistered on his tongue.
From beyond the haze, Ayla's voice cut through, raw and urgent:
"Qaritas! Anchor—look at me!"
Her outline was a streak of gold against the bleeding light, hand outstretched, the air trembling between them.
Qaritas turned, the motion slow, almost mechanical, and as he did, one of the amethyst plates along his collarbone cracked open with a sound like splintering glass.
Inside, something glowed.
And breathed.
The ferry groaned; the deck split beneath running feet, mortals stumbling as if the sea itself leaned the wrong way.
Nyqomi didn't move; The ship groaned as if the sea itself leaned the wrong way. Nyqomi didn't move; she tilted the world instead. The deck's gravity bent toward her—ropes slid across the floor, soldiers stumbled, and the coral ribs of the ferry cracked like ice. The horizon warped, folding into her silhouette.
She exhaled.
It wasn't breath—it was un-light, a cone of inverted color that devoured hue and line alike.
Where it passed, the world didn't burn—it dissolved into blueprints: veins turned to white sketches, bones etched with geometry, skin overlaid by diagrams of itself. Mortals caught in the edge of it screamed soundlessly, their shapes outlined like anatomy lessons written by a god gone mad.
Qaritas moved on instinct.
The stone plates along his arms locked together, jagged and luminous. He raised them before his chest, bracing as the un-light swept over him. For an instant, his form fractured into schematic, his veins mapped in violet grids—but then the heart inside him flared.
Aun'darion's pulse rippled outward—a violet-gold wave that erased the diagrams, reasserting flesh where geometry had tried to overwrite it.
Eon's voice purred from within the cracks.
"Mmm. Healed by theft. You're learning."
Ayla's voice, low, sharp, behind the shield of her power:
"He's changing."
Zcain's eyes narrowed.
"Not yet. Not fully."
The eyes along Nyqomi's spine blinked open wider, their pupils dilating until they became mirrors.
Then they turned toward Qaritas—every one of them.
Light lanced from those eyes, threading through him like needles of memory.
He saw visions burst behind his own eyes—
Himself strangling Ayla, her bracelet snapping;
Daviyi kneeling before him, chest torn open;
Zcain bound in his own threads, bleeding endless crimson light.
He staggered, knees buckling, the deck swaying under him.
The purple cracks raced higher up his neck, across his jaw. His voice, when it came, was rough stone grinding together.
"Stop—putting your ghosts in my head."
Nyqomi's many eyes blinked out of sync—half pained, half amused. When she smiled, it was with compassion sharpened into cruelty.
"Monsters don't need ghosts," Nyqomi said softly.
"They need proof."
The words struck him like a hammer, and something deep inside Qaritas—something older than his body—answered.
The purple light brightened.
The fractures spread.
And Eon began to laugh.
Nyqomi moved faster than sound—one breath, and Nyqomi was on him.
Her body hit like a collapsing star, ribs flexing open like a jaw, light refracting off every muscle strand. She struck chest-first, the sound a thunderclap of bone against stone.
Then came the bite.
Her teeth—those spiraled shards of crystal hunger—sank into Qaritas's shoulder. There was no blood, only violet steam and the brittle chime of amethyst shattering as her fangs scraped against the plates under his skin.
Qaritas didn't cry out. He seethed. The fractures pulsed white-hot, light spilling through the cracks of him. He caught her forelimb mid-swing, and stone spread from his hand like molten frost—racing up her arm, turning living muscle to fossil, color to ash.
The elbow locked. He wrenched it sideways—heard the break, the scream of crystal on crystal.
Nyqomi tore herself free, shards and dust raining from her arm. Her body repaired itself in glitches—muscle knitting at the wrong angles before correcting, bones realigning with the click of a thousand teeth.
From the rail, Ayla steadied herself against the wind; even her breath felt too loud in a world remade of gods.
Komus ducked beside her, muttering something between prayer and profanity as the deck pitched beneath them.
Eon purred through the cracks in Qaritas's ribs.
"Better. Break the world and apologize later."
Around them, soldiers had stopped pretending to be brave. They half-shifted—scales and claws rippling over human faces, eyes flashing different colors in terror and reverence.
They formed a ragged circle, trembling. Some whispered the only word their fear remembered.
"Mother. Mother. Mother."
Dheas stood apart, arms crossed, expression unreadable. His voice rolled lazily across the deck like thunder on the horizon.
"Back up," he drawled. "She'll make art with your insides if you don't."
The soldiers obeyed, stumbling backward as his tone curdled into command.
Dheas's black eyes followed Qaritas instead, narrowing—not with hate, but recognition.
A flicker of respect. A shadow of curiosity.
As if he saw something familiar—the same inheritance wearing a different skin.
Nyqomi rose. The air convulsed with her.
Her wings spread wide—wider than the deck should have allowed— The deck lurched ten degrees under the pressure, ropes sliding toward the starboard rail as gravity remembered itself too late. The motion pulled a shriek from the world. Droplets of iridescent liquid fell from the tips, hissing when they touched the coral boards, eating holes through the metal like acid chewing through prayer.
Nyqomi opened her mouth—not to speak, but to unmake.
The word that followed was not a word but a hunger: a note older than the first dawn, heavy enough to pull the world toward her.
The ship tilted in its orbit; the sea bent upward; even the wind forgot its direction.
Qaritas's awakening spiked.
The cracks on his body ignited in violet fire, spreading across his chest, climbing his throat until the stone reached his jaw. His voice deepened—two voices in one, his own tangled with something ancient that had been waiting inside him since before he had a name.
"You want a proof?"
His tone vibrated through the deck, through the blood of everyone listening.
"Then stand closer."
He swung.
The air buckled.
Impact rang like a temple bell turned inside out.
Nyqomi's chest imploded inward—not from force, but from absence, leaving behind a negative starburst that sucked in light. For a heartbeat, she was a silhouette filled with nothing. Then her form refilled itself, constellations crawling beneath her flesh, stars screaming silently as they realigned.
Nyqomi laughed—a sound that carried both pain and wonder.
"Good," she said. "Now I see what you are."
Eon's voice slid through Qaritas's veins like oil over glass—silken, dangerous, irresistible.
"Take me in," he whispered. "Use me properly. End her in a breath. She'll thank you for it."
Qaritas's pulse thundered in two tempos. His hand flexed—the stone plates grinding, hungering to move. He could feel power blooming behind his ribs, Eon's heart beating too fast, too eager.
Then—
Ayla's voice, sharp with fear and faith:
"Qaritas. Anchor."
The word cut through like a chord struck on glass.
He turned toward her—the ship's light flickering across her face, her outstretched hand trembling but steady. Their eyes met.
For one fleeting moment, something human answered inside him.
The stone along his jaw receded, just a fraction, enough to draw breath again. The double voice broke back into one.
The crew dropped where they stood; even the soldiers who had whispered "Mother" knelt, as if the word itself demanded tribute. None dared breathe until his voice broke back into one.
The sea quieted. The world hung on the edge of silence.
And Nyqomi—still smiling, still bleeding starlight—watched him with the calm of someone who had finally found a worthy storm.
Around them, the deck smoked and listed; the survivors watched in silence, unsure if they'd just witnessed mercy or the start of another god's hunger.
Zcain moved before the light faded.
The air split with the scent of iron as the veins in his forearms flared ruby-bright. He drew his hand across his palm, and blood spilled like silk, suspended midair before gravity could claim it.
It threaded itself, answering his command—thin, luminous lines weaving through the storm. They lashed the air like harp strings, singing, and in that song was pain, memory, and control. The threads wrapped Nyqomi's limbs—not cutting, not piercing—binding her with melody instead of force. The deck vibrated with the sound of it.
Zcain's voice carried over the chaos—sharp, scalding, absolute.
"Enough, Nyqomi."
"Think of your children. Think of those who lost their father to a Fragment."
"You are not the only one angry."
The threads tightened, glowing brighter with each word.
Nyqomi's wings spasmed; her many eyes flared, then dimmed.
Zcain stepped closer, the glow bleeding down his wrists. His voice cracked—not from weakness, but from something older and more dangerous than rage.
"And my child lies in a coma. Fifty years they been asleep."
"Do you think I forget? Do you think I forgive?"
The threads sang—a mournful, discordant chord that shuddered through the hull. The ship itself seemed to breathe with him, holding its silence.
Nyqomi strained once, then went still.
Her monstrous form quivered, the motion rippling through her like a tide fighting its own current. One by one, the eyes along her spine closed, lids folding over like petals sealing at dusk.
When Nyqomi spoke, her voice was quieter—colder, trembling not with fear but conviction.
"He could sell us to the Fragments again," she said.
Her words sliced through the air, every syllable dragging old wounds into the open.
"Just like he did."
Her gaze rose to Zcain, unflinching, filled with grief sharpened to steel.
"He could free me from my curse don't, But I need you to rest. Please he wouldn't want to see you like this."
The deck fell silent.
Even the engines hesitated, the hum breaking for a single, eternal heartbeat.
No one asked who "her" was. No one breathed the name.
The word her hung like a wound that had never stopped bleeding.
Nyqomi's form began to retract, the horror folding in on itself.
The skinless lattices drew inward; new armor rippled across her body like cooled glass reforming after a firestorm. When it was done, she was smaller, still terrible, but tired.
Then Nyqomi fell to her knees.
Dheas moved before anyone else.
He caught her under one arm—effortless, gentle, as if she weighed nothing at all. His voice dropped to something almost human.
"Come on, Mother," he murmured. "Enough theater."
Nyqomi's mouth twitched—half-smile, half-grimace. She didn't resist when Rnarah stepped to her other side, the veil brushing the scaled curve of her shoulder.
Rnarah's hand pressed against her back, radiating calm like a breath over open flame.
"Let's settle you, old friend," Rnarah said softly.
Together they moved toward the inner corridors. The blood threads unspooled, dissolving into faint, ruby mist as they passed. The ship exhaled—a long, weary sigh—as if relieved its gods had decided not to kill each other.
For a long time, no one spoke.
Komus was the first to break it, his tone dry as dust.
"We always pick the scenic routes to war."
Then louder, to the crew still frozen in place:
"Where are the others?"
The doors at the far end slammed open.
Cree, Hydeius, Niraí, and Daviyi spilled onto the deck, their faces drawn tight from the noise and the stench of burning coral. They stopped when they saw the scorched boards, the acid pits, the frost-smoke still curling off Qaritas's plates.
Daviyi's voice came flat, unimpressed.
"What did I miss?"
Hydeius tilted his head, eyes tracking the cracks still glowing across Qaritas's arms.
"You're changing."
Niraí's attention was elsewhere. She leaned toward Zcain, voice low and distant.
"Whose name did she leave in the dark?"
No answer came.
Zcain's jaw set, and Ayla—still standing close to Qaritas—wiped the heel of her hand across her face. No tears, just exhaustion that went deeper than blood.
"Did you hear me?" she whispered.
Qaritas's eyes flickered once, still faintly lit from within.
A beat late, he said it—voice rough, but real.
"Anchor."
Silence returned—but not peace.
It never did.
Eon's voice slipped through Qaritas's mind like a serpent curling under cool stone.
"Zcain bleeds pretty when he pretends he isn't breaking," he purred.
"And that mysterious child, hmm? The judge asleep."
"I wonder who will wake first—you… or her."
Qaritas turned away from the railing, jaw tight. The stone plates along his forearms dimmed, but they did not vanish.
The fractures stayed—sleeping, not gone.
Zcain drew a steadying breath, voice once again all command—
a leader hiding the tremor beneath the armor of tone.
"We dock within the hour," he said. "No more duels on my deck."
His eyes flicked to Ayla—something softer, almost an apology.
"We'll need you when we wake her."
He didn't say the name.
He didn't have to.
Rnarah returned alone for a brief moment.
She paused by the railing where Nyqomi had stood, her hand ghosting over the scorch mark left behind.
"She blames the right ghosts," Rnarah murmured to Zcain.
"We'll have to, too."
Then she was gone, her veil dissolving into shadow as the door closed behind her.
For a long while, nothing moved.
Then—softly—a single flake of amethyst broke from Qaritas's hand, fell to the deck, and rang like struck crystal when it hit.
Everyone heard it.
The sound lingered, bright and fragile, until even the sea went quiet.