The light from the duel still trembled along the deck—violet cracks burning through coral and metal, pulsing like open veins that refused to close. Smoke coiled off the floor in lazy ribbons. The air smelled of salt, ozone, and ash—like the sea after lightning strikes.
The gods had stopped.
The world hadn't realized it yet.
Cree was the first to move through the wreckage, boots crunching over shards of crystallized blood. Her hands glowed faintly at the edges, ready to heal—or to fight again if something twitched the wrong way.
"Qaritas—can you hear us?" she called, voice hoarse from smoke.
Niraí's silhouette appeared behind her, hair whipping in the wind. "I've never seen anything like this. Not even from the other Ascendants."
Ayla was already kneeling, fingers brushing scorched wood as she tried to reach him. "Qaritas, look at me," she said softly. "Anchor—remember?"
Qaritas stood amid the ruin, motionless. The glow beneath his skin had dimmed to a sickly gold, but the fractures along his arms still wept light. When he tried to answer, his voice fractured with him—a sound too sharp to be human.
Then came the convulsion.
He doubled forward, the cracks along his shoulders splitting wider—veins of violet light racing up his throat and jaw. His breath hitched, then vanished. The air around him thickened, shimmered, and for one terrible heartbeat, it looked as though something beneath his skin was trying to crawl out.
The light surged—then collapsed inward, sealing the wounds with a hiss of steam. The pain left as suddenly as it came, hollowing him out.
Qaritas dropped to one knee, trembling. "I'm—fine," he rasped.
Eon's voice purred through the fractures, velvet and patient.
It's starting.
Qaritas coughed—once, twice—and spat black blood onto the deck. It hissed where it landed, burning a perfect circle through the wood.
Ayla flinched. "That's not fine." She stepped closer, hand outstretched.
Before she could touch him, something silver flashed.
Three thin pins struck Qaritas's arm—each one humming, leaving threads of white light etched into his skin. His body went rigid. The violet in his veins flared, then dimmed.
He turned his head slowly. Rnarah stood a few steps away, veil trembling in the wind. Her fingers still glowed where she had released the spell.
Ayla spun toward her, voice sharp with disbelief. "What did you—"
Rnarah didn't raise her voice, but the words carried.
"He's not himself," she said. "And if I don't stop him now, none of us will be."
The light in the pins deepened to gold. Qaritas's pulse slowed. The air thickened around him like liquid glass.
He tried to speak—tried to tell them to run, or to listen, or to forgive him—but the sound drowned in the humming of the sigils.
Sleep hit like drowning.
The world bent sideways; the deck folded into shadow. Ayla shouted his name, a streak of gold against the fading light—
—and then the sea, the ship, and the sky fell away.
It did not swallow Qaritas so much as decide him. The air had no texture, no weight, no temperature—only the suggestion of space, a negative horizon that bent toward thought instead of light. Every sound was memory echoing against itself.
Then—
a pulse.
Not his own.
The void parted like cloth drawn aside, and from its seam stepped Hrolyn.
Hrolyn—the Father of Gods, long vanished into exile— appeared before him
Standing nearly eight feet tall, his frame stooped not from frailty but from endurance. The robe draped around him shimmered with the ghosts of constellations, once bright, now faded to a slow, pulsing ache. His skin was the color of star-ash—gold drained of its warmth, fissured with veins of soft teal light that pulsed in time with nothing mortal. When he breathed, the air seemed to remember creation.
Hrolyn looked at Qaritas as one might look at a reflection that refused to obey.
"You cannot lose to him," he said. His voice came like stone dragged through eternity—measured, heavy, and painfully sincere. The sound carried warmth, a dry heat like sun on old metal, as if creation itself remembered its forge.
Qaritas stared. "You shouldn't even be here."
"Then why am I?"
"To remind me what failure looks like?" Qaritas's voice shook—not with fear, but with the fury of recognition. "You made Eon. You made me. Then you threw us into the dark and pretended it was mercy."
Hrolyn's gaze dropped, the light in his veins flickering. "You were too much for the worlds I had left. I thought exile would preserve what little balance remained."
"Balance?" Qaritas took a step forward. The void rippled around his feet. "You failed two thousand dimensions. You left them screaming in the dark while you hid behind balance. Don't you dare call that preservation."
Hrolyn's hands—etched with blue runes—tightened at his sides. "I have carried those screams longer than you have lived."
"Then why come now?" Qaritas's voice rose, cracking. "Now you want to play father? After everything you burned down to build your silence?"
For a heartbeat, the void itself held its breath.
Then it began to move.
Eyes opened in the dark—one, then a dozen, then a thousand. They blinked without rhythm, spreading outward in a circle until light and shadow reversed places.
"Well said, little brother," a voice murmured, soft as silk and sharp as mercy denied. The air temperature fell with it—each syllable a cool pressure against the skin, the kind of chill that steals color from breath.
Eon stepped out of his own shadow
Hrolyn flinched—not from fear, but from memory. "Eon."
"Hello, Father," Eon said, smiling like a boy greeting his favorite disappointment. "You look smaller than I remember."
"This is not your place," Hrolyn said quietly.
Eon laughed. "Irrelevant. Like you. Gods without worship are just tired stories, and you've told yours too long."
The teal veins along Hrolyn's arms brightened. "You think yourself unbound, but every action has a cost. Every pulse of your stolen heart weighs against you."
Eon tilted his head, amusement flickering. "And who will collect the debt? You?" He stepped closer. "You can't even stop me from breathing through him."
Qaritas's hands clenched. The violet light beneath his skin responded to Eon's presence, pulsing faster, harder. He could feel both their heartbeats now—one too slow, one too fast—colliding in his ribs like twin stars on the verge of collapse.
Qaritas felt the space between them contract—his pulse beating against two gods' silence like a mortal heartbeat trying to drown thunder.
"Enough." Qaritas's voice cut through them, raw and human. "Both of you. You talk about debt and purpose like either of you ever paid for what you made me."
Neither answered.
He looked from one to the other—the father who caged him and the brother who haunted him—and understood, with cold clarity, what bound them: he was the bridge. The fracture that connected creation and corruption. The one thing that could erase them both.
The void began to close, edges folding inward like dying light. The sound of his own pulse grew louder—alien, doubled, indistinguishable.
The last thing he heard was Hrolyn's voice, breaking through the collapse:
"Remember, Qaritas—whatever he offers, it's not freedom."
And Eon's reply, almost gentle:
"Freedom's just the prettiest word for obedience."
Then—
silence.
The sound of his own pulse followed him back—
loud, alien—
—and the void snapped shut.
Gold light swam behind Qaritas's eyelids before the world resolved around him.
The scent came first—metal and incense, the sharp perfume of burned oil mingled with salt.
Then sound—the slow hum of the ferry's heart still turning beneath the deck, and somewhere beyond, the faint rhythm of waves striking coral hull.
He drew a breath. The air was thick, warm. When he exhaled, the room answered with a soft chime, as if the light itself reacted to motion.
The infirmary wasn't made for mortals. Its walls curved like the inside of a ribcage, the coral polished to a golden sheen that shifted between red and amber as the lanterns breathed. Banners hung between the arches—long strips of fabric painted with constellations and fragments of divine script. The beds were arranged in a circle around a single suspended brazier, its smoke trailing up through a vent in the ceiling like a prayer that had forgotten who it was meant for.
Qaritas lay on one of the lower cots, sheets stiff with salt and faintly glowing at the seams. His arm ached where Rnarah's pins had struck. The memory came slow—Nyqomi's voice, the fracture, the darkness—and then the weight of another heartbeat still pulsing beside his own.
"You passed out about an hour ago," Eon murmured from inside his chest, tone amused, lazy. "I would've let you sleep longer, but you make the ugliest faces when you dream."
Qaritas didn't answer. The muscles in his jaw tightened until the sound of his teeth grinding drowned the whisper out.
Footsteps broke the stillness—two sets, light and quick.
The door slid open with a sigh of pressure. Komus entered first, coat half-unbuttoned, hair wind-mussed. Niraí followed, her usual calm a little frayed at the edges. Both of them carried the look of gods who had been pretending not to worry.
"Well," Komus said, trying for levity, "look who finally decided to stop dying dramatically. Thought we'd have to build a shrine."
Qaritas pushed himself up on one elbow. The movement hurt more than he let on. "How long?"
"About an hour," Niraí said quietly. "Rnarah said your pulse stabilized, but—" She hesitated, glancing at the faint glow along his collarbone. "You were… changing. Flickering between forms."
Komus leaned against the frame, arms crossed. "Whole ship felt it. We figured if you exploded, at least it'd be interesting."
Despite himself, Qaritas almost smiled. "Where's everyone else?"
Komus's humor faded. "Hydeius, Cree, and Daviyi haven't talked much since we boarded. Whatever hit them before we left—memories, maybe—it's still untangling. Takes a lot out of them."
Niraí nodded, fingers tracing the sigils embroidered into her sleeve. "They drift in and out. Sometimes they remember who they are, sometimes they don't. It's like watching stars flicker."
Qaritas looked past them to the glowing curtains at the far wall, where light filtered in from the corridor. "And Ayla?"
"She's with her daughter," Komus said softly. "Zcain and Rnarah took her to Nyqomi's quarters. Figured they needed time… after what happened."
The name struck like a small blade in his chest. Nyqomi—mother, monster, survivor. He pictured Ayla's face, caught between love and ruin.
Niraí moved closer to the bed, voice careful. "You don't have to worry about anything right now. We're safe. The ferry's still holding course for Taeterra."
"Safe," Qaritas repeated. The word tasted false.
Komus caught the edge in his tone and shrugged, half-grin returning. "For whatever that's worth. 'Safe' just means nobody's screaming at the moment."
He started toward the door again, tossing over his shoulder, "Try not to break the walls if you get bored. Rnarah said they're grown, not built, and she'll be upset if you start cracking the architecture."
When they were gone, the silence settled again, warm and heavy.
Qaritas leaned back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling's slow pulse of light. He tried to listen for the ship's rhythm, anything that wasn't his own twin heartbeat.
Eon's voice slid through the quiet like smoke.
"They don't know yet, do they? About me. About us. You're doing so well, little brother—keeping their faith tidy, their fear small. Let's see how long before it spills."
Qaritas closed his eyes, jaw set. "Not another word."
The reply came soft, teasing, almost fond.
"You say that every time."
Outside, the ferry's engines changed tone—a low, distant rumble like thunder under water. The light in the infirmary flickered once, twice, then steadied.
He exhaled, slow and deliberate, willing his pulse back into one rhythm.
For the first time since waking, the silence didn't feel empty.
It felt like waiting.
The storm came without sound.
At first, it was only a shimmer on the horizon—silver lines tracing themselves across the sea like veins of living light. Then the ocean shivered, peeled back, and the air turned crystalline.
The ferry slowed, its engines dimming to a reverent hum. Every deckhand, every soldier, every god-blooded thing aboard felt it—the world holding its breath.
Then the sea opened.
Not with violence, but with grace—water folding inward, layer upon layer, until the waves shaped a spiral. Beneath them yawned a vast, star-filled throat, a corridor that glowed from within. Lightning flowed through it like breath, pulsing slow and alive.
The portal didn't ignite. It unfolded—petal by petal, each layer revealing constellations that turned like eyes following the ship's descent. The air tasted of metal and ozone, thick with power old enough to remember the birth of thought.
Someone whispered a prayer. Another made the sign of their first god. But most only stared—because reverence was all they had left to give.
Komus leaned on the railing, voice low and almost human. "Well," he murmured, "if we die here, at least it'll be scenic."
No one laughed.
The soldiers behind him knelt—not in ritual, but in instinct. Words formed on their lips, half-remembered oaths to gods who had long since gone silent.
The ferry drifted forward, pulled by gravity that wasn't gravity at all. The hull groaned as the ship crossed the threshold, entering the corridor of breathing lightning. Bolts of white-gold energy rippled across the glassy walls, shaping and reshaping themselves into faint figures—faces, wings, towers, memories of worlds that had already burned.
Above, a staircase of vapor spiraled through the air, each step translucent and inscribed with shifting constellations. Along its curve hung doors—thousands of them—each one formed from starlight. They opened and closed in slow rhythm, as if the sky itself were choosing which souls to remember.
The light deepened to indigo. Thunder sighed in the distance like something dreaming.
Qaritas stood at the bow, his reflection fractured in the star-water below. The violet glow beneath his skin responded to the portal's rhythm, pulsing in uneasy harmony.
Eon whispered once, soft and wary. "Do you feel it? The world remembers us."
Then—even that voice went silent.
The ferry drifted toward the open throat of heaven, and for the first time, even Eon was quiet.
Somewhere inside him, Aun'darion's pulse quickened—
as if it recognized the place before he did.