The Judge pauses, her stamp hovering in mid-air. “Elaborate.”
I take a shaky breath, my mind racing as pieces click into place. “Before me, the Devourer was mindless hunger. Pure id, no ego, no superego. Yes, it’s smarter now because of what I inadvertently taught it, but that also means it can be outthought, outmanoeuvred. It has desires beyond simple consumption. That’s not just an evolution, it’s a weakness.”
“How so?”
“It wants to rule, which means it wants to preserve some of what it would have destroyed. It wants me specifically as a vessel, which makes it predictable.”
The Judge considers this, her fingers drumming against the desk in a rhythm that reminds me uncomfortably of a funeral dirge. Below us, the Devourer pulses with increasing agitation, as if it can sense the discussion about its fate.
“And,” I continue, pressing my advantage, “I didn’t just make myself into the perfect vessel for the Devourer. I made myself into the perfect bait. It wants me specifically, which means I can control where it goes, what it does, and how it acts. I can lead it into traps. I can use its desire against it.” I’m totally fucking winging it now, but I’m desperate. Desperate not to be moved through time like a doll.
“And if you’re wrong?” the Judge asks. “If your plan fails? If the Devourer simply takes what it wants regardless of your strategies?”
I meet her gaze steadily, drawing on every ounce of courage I’ve ever possessed. “Then everyone dies anyway. But if I’m right and if I can turn my nature as an anomaly into an advantage rather than a liability, then I’m not just necessary. I’m the only chance we have.”
The Judge sets down her stamp without using it, and for the first time since this trial began, I see something other than cold judgement in her eyes. It might be interest.
“The First Law seeks balance above all else,” she says finally. “You have upset that balance catastrophically. The scales tip toward chaos, toward entropy, toward the very dissolution of ordered reality.” She pauses, consulting her papers with the air of someone double-checking a particularly complex equation. “But balance can be restored through two methods: correction or completion.”
“Completion?”
“You began this cascade when you killed Aethel. The scales will not settle until you finish what you started. One way or another.” She leans back in her chair, studying me with new intensity. “Very well, Nyssa Vale. You have argued your case for necessity with adequate reasoning. But necessity alone is insufficient for the restoration of cosmic balance.”
The floor gives way entirely.
I plummet through space, my stomach lurching into my throat as the white chamber disappears above us. Tabitha falls beside me, her coat billowing around her like the wings of some predatory bird. The wind tears at my clothes and hair, and I can feel the Devourer’s attention like ice water in my veins. It knows I’m coming. It’s been waiting for this moment, planning for it.
The purple mass rises to meet us, reaching with tendrils of pure negation. I can smell it now. It’s the scent of endings, of last breaths, of candles guttering out in empty rooms. It feels like every nightmare I’ve ever had, every fear I’ve ever faced, every moment I’ve stared death in the face and wondered if this time would be the last.
My blade is in my hand, though I don’t remember drawing it. The familiar weight of steel and purpose grounds me even aswe hurtle toward what might be our destruction. If this is how it ends, at least I’ll go down fighting.
Just before we hit the writhing mass of void, the world lurches to the side, with the nauseating sensation of reality folding in on itself.
We land hard on cracked obsidian that sends shockwaves up my legs, but I manage to roll with the impact and come up in a fighting crouch, blade already extended toward potential threats. The stone beneath us is warm to the touch and slightly sticky, as if it’s slowly melting in some cosmic heat I can’t feel.
We’re back in the Pantheon realm, but it’s wrong. Horribly, fundamentally wrong with spreading patches of absolute black that hurt to look at. The void is here, seeping through the foundations, creeping up the walls in arterial patterns that glow with their own dark rhythm. Where it touches, reality simply stops. Not crumbling into rubble or fading into mist, but just ceasing to exist as if it had never been there at all.
The sky above us bleeds purple at the edges, and through the tears in the veil, I can see the Devourer’s bulk pressing against the barriers, measuring the limits of their power with the unhurried certainty of an immortal.
Tabitha lands beside me with more grace than anyone has a right to possess after falling through dimensions. She straightens her coat and surveys the dissolution around us with the clinical detachment of a doctor examining a particularly virulent disease.
“Second test,” the Judge’s voice echoes from everywhere around us. “Sacrifice. What will you give up to save what remains?”
The word hangs in the air like a death sentence, and I know with cold certainty that this test will be far worse than the last.
Chapter 35
Nyssa
The word ‘sacrifice’ hangs in the air like a death sentence, reverberating off the crumbling pillars around us with an echo that seems to go on far too long. I can feel the weight of it settling into my bones, heavier than the crown, heavier than the responsibility I’ve carried since the moment I first claimed divine power.
“What will you give up to save what remains?” the Judge asks, her voice seeming to come from the stones, from the foundations of this realm.
All around us, the Pantheon is quietly falling apart. It’s not some epic clash of cosmic forces; it’s more like everything’s just fading away, like rain washing out a watercolour painting. Ancient pillars get tiny cracks that spread over time. Marble statues go blurry at the edges until they’re just vague shapes, then shadows, then nothing.
Darkness is creeping forward, spreading over the white stone like an ink stain. Whenever it touches something, I can almost hear soft whispers—not real words, just distant voices that sound lonely and hungry.
Then someone steps out from the shadows between the broken pillars. My heart stops.
