Slowly, I shake my head. “For us, death is an ending, nothing more. We have a lot of festivals. Offerings, for wealth and health and victory, but nothing like this.”
Nothing that ever felt asrealas this. “How do you think they came into being? The gods?”
“You don’t know?” Eres stops. Darian, too, both of them looking down at me.
It suddenly feels like a ridiculous omission in my education. “It’s never discussed in Solvandyr. Aedryn just…is.”
“There is an origin story,” Kaelen murmurs at my back. “We learn it in childhood. Would you like to hear it?”
To my surprise, it’s Darian that speaks. We keep walking, our footsteps slowing as his words trickle out into the air. “In the dawning age, when this earth was little more than stone and dirt and mortals eked out the barest scraps of survival, two brothers came to be. None knew where they came from, for it was not our place, though some believed they had been banished to this world from the sky above as a punishment.”
I let myself fall into the lilt of his voice. He tells the story as if he knows it as well as his own. “Aedryn was the elder. He rose from the ground first, his skin blazing with light so bright that few could bear to look at him. He cast the first shadow behind him, and from it, his brother, Erevan, emerged. They had gifts that none had ever seen, and they used it to shape the empty earth into their own preferences. Two cities rose up in their wake.”
Solvandyr. Umbraxis.Light, and dark. Enthralled, I keep my words sealed inside my mouth.
“Their bond was unbreakable. Two sides of the same coin, since one could not exist without the other. But as time moved on, mortals gravitated toward Aedryn’s warmth; they worshipped his brilliance, his fire, and he in turn basked inthe devotion they offered. Erevan, quiet and steady, withdrew to the small boundaries of Umbraxis, and devoted himself to the people who hadn’t been blinded by Aedryn’s arrogance. The distance between them grew wider, until a chasm emerged that they could not overcome.”
Darian’s eyes gleam in the dark. “The final rift came when Aedryn sought to gift those who followed him with their own power, with the instruction to spread it wherever they could. Erevan, concerned, warned him that a balance was needed. But the light grew, and grew, and those gifted mortals began to look to Umbraxis, at the darkness that ran alongside them, as a threat. And Aedryn, his head turned by those who praised him, began to listen.”
“In defence of the mortals he’d grown to care for, Erevan granted erevas to a chosen few—the ability to wield the shadows to defend Umbraxis, and to counter the light that crept upon them from every side. He created a mountainous territory of seven snow-filled peaks to hide Umbraxis from the bright gaze of Solvandyr. But the light continued to spread, and over time, the darkness grew smaller.”
“When Erevan finally withdrew from this world, called back to the sky above and believing his twin to be lost, Aedryn realized his mistake and grieved deeply. He followed his brother back to the place they came from, and abandoned his followers. Incensed, Aedryn’s lightbringers turned their anger to eradicating Erevan’s darkwielders, and a war grew from their confusion and their grief. Though Aedryn does not look, not wishing to be reminded of his hubris, Erevan still watches in the shadows. The Lightbringers may not remember, but the Darkwielders do not forget.”
His voice trails off.
I’ve stopped moving.
Nobody knows how the war began.
But they do. They remember.
Darian curls his fingers around mine. “We should go.”
The Gloam is as I remember, slow-moving and impossibly dark, showing the moon in a bright silver reflection. The banks slope gently down, stones slick with moisture. On the far side, only empty space stretches out.
Others are already here.
They stand in small clusters along the bank, dressed in similar clothing to us. Some hold baskets, others empty-handed.
The air is heavy. Peaceful.
Kaelen shifts, taking the space beside me as Darian walks directly ahead, and into the river. My breath catches. “What’s he doing?”
“A Dreamwalker always leads the ceremony,” Kaelen is watching him too, his eyes soft. “We couldn’t do this without him.”
The water reaches his calves, then his knees. He stops there, standing perfectly still, dark hair loose and his pale skin stark against the black current. The moonlight catches him, outlining his form in silver.
He closes his eyes, and as if a silent signal has been reached, the first person steps forward.
An older man, stooped but steady, carries a small woven basket. He stops at the water’s edge, bare feet sinking slightly into the mud, and looks at Darian.
“My sister,” he called. His voice does not break. “Maelin. She was fierce, and bright, and she laughed as easily as she cried.”
Darian inclines his head and holds out his hand. “Show me?”
The man takes it. And Darian’s eyes turn to voids, darkness sweeping through them as my breath catches. “He’s reading him?”
“Watch,” Eres breathes beside me. “You’ll see.”
