It was time to let go—time to let Lightsdeath charge with full force against him.
A cold, silver light began to radiate from beneath my skin. Subtle at first—a shimmer that glinted in the darkness—but then it grew, spreading in intricate, webbed patterns up my arms, filling my veins with liquid starlight. I shuddered, feeling the icy brilliance threading through me like a second heartbeat.
Lightsdeath filled my lungs, my thoughts, my bones with an energy so vast and cold. Somewhere, in the hollow echo of my mind, I heard my own voice—small, distant, and fading fast. It was a plea swallowed by a sky full of stars, a whisper lost to an endless, starlit night.
Every piece of the dark power I’d taken into my body exploded from the light that I became. Nightsdeath gripped me tighter, as if torn between wanting to keep me and push me away. He kissed me back with so much anguish and heartbreak, like he knew it was over as we became starlight and darkness and everything that exists between. As we exploded into a cosmic catastrophe where everything began and all things ended.
When I pulled back, Nightsdeath had never looked so vulnerable. Tears of gold fell like the liquid metal of his irises they spilled over. He was the most beautiful tragedy.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, caressing a hand over his cheek, which didn’t feel so firm. “You don’t have to hurt any longer.”
He only stared back with misery cleaving his eyes. The black vines crawled around his skin as frighteningly as ever, the shadows he was made of primed angry still, but those eyes… they understood. His form started to catch on the wind, slowly slipping from my touch, leaving my body.
I broke. Watching his acceptance, maybe even his reprieve, as he glanced down at his hands, which dissipated too.
With one last farewell in our shared look of sorrow, he was gone.
And then so was I, into a dark, beckoning oblivion.
19Astraea
I fell to my knees, but instead of the wet snow of my realm, I was met with the cracked dry land of the veil between life and death. I couldn’t move, weighed down by anchors of grief, heartache, and exhaustion.
“What have I done?” I whispered.
“Exactly what destiny foretold.” Death’s echo was a haunting chill through my bones.
Glancing sideways, I saw him approach in mortal size. Depthless hood, fully cloaked, scythe in hand. It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered about the chip in his weapon.
“When falls night,” I recited. “Nightsdeath?”
Death nodded once. “The world will drown in starlight. It is your time, my child.”
But what wasn’t clear… was whether my starlight would drown in a wrath of destruction or purge the land of evil darkness.
“Is Nyte… is he still alive?”
Death did not answer.
“Come,” he said instead.
I had nothing to lose by walking by Death’s side through his endless landscape.
“You said I would be the end of Dusk and Dawn… how can one mortal kill gods?” I asked.
“You are not just one mortal. You never have been. Nor will you be able to do this alone.”
“I can’t lose any of them. My friends,” I said like a plea.
“You can never truly lose what is always carried in your heart.”
My lip wobbled when he didn’t assure me they would be safe.
“You made me Lightsdeath and want me to kill my creators. Why? I don’t know if you’re any better than them.”
“I am a primordial. The beginning of time and all creation. I am not good nor evil. I am not kind nor cruel. I simply… am. People don’t fear me; they fear the unknown. But death is just as uncertain as life. A person is born and there is no telling what will become of it. A person dies and there is no foreseeing where they will go next. Life holds just as much to be fearful of and time is the link between us both. Dusk and Dawn have been meddling with a divine order. They have long been stealing from me, for I need souls for my realm to survive. All things must die.”
I surveyed the desolation around us, a bleak, endless stretch of cracked earth and twisted, lifeless trees reaching up like skeletal hands clawing at a gloomy gray sky. The ground was parched and fractured, the deep fissures spiderwebbing across the landscape as if the earth itself had once screamed and split open in agony. Dust drifted across the barren plains, stirred only by faint, unfeeling winds that offered no relief from the heavy stillness.
