Alora blinked at her. “How did you die?”
“By fire.”
She flinched. “I see.”
“But you, dear beauty,” Sunnëva’s voice softened, “I thought perhaps your end should be as it began. With sleep.”
At her gesture, frost formed a coffin of stone and ice, soft and waiting. Taking a breath, Alora lay on it, and the earth itself cradled her grief.
She would fine Rune again, even if she had to crawl into the depths of the Abyss.
Her tears fell onto the glass, and where they touched, small white blossoms and vines bloomed.
“This is the death of your mortality,” Sunnëva murmured, holding out the crimson spindle. Its sharp point glinted in the faint light. “And your ascension.”
Alora’s scarred fingertip throbbed as she reached out and pricked her finger.
Blood swelled and dripped to the ground.
The sound echoed in Alora’s ears as everything around her dulled. Light dimmed beneath her skin. Her chest cracked with it, golden light unraveling from her body as her life drift away.
Each breath she exhaled left her fainter, smaller, until her last breath left her lips as a note of song. It hummed through the cavern, echoing like a hymn, then faded into silence.
Her eyes fluttered closed. The last of her warmth slipped from her hands. And for a moment, weightless, she saw her soul, woven of pure starlight.
The Goddess of Death gently caught her and tenderly whispered, “Rest now, Alora. Your path lies beyond the Seven Gates.”
CHAPTER 71
Alora
Alora passed through fire and ice.
Through memory. Through every nightmare that had ever dared to call itself real. Until, at last, she stood before a hall carved of white stone, suspended in the void.
This was not the Heavens.
But the center of all things.
Alora found herself at the foot of wide steps that looked like glass, though they bore the weight of eternity. They led to an open courtyard held aloft by marble columns worn with age yet still impossibly beautiful, veined with light instead of dust.
A warm radiance spilled from above, though there was no sun. Only a vast aperture in the ceiling, a perfect circle opening into the void of the universe. Beyond stretched an endless cosmos, galaxies like jeweled wheels, stars scattering across a velvet sky.
It was a bewildering sight.
Yet her soul felt no fear here. Only peace.
Weightless, her body radiant with white light, though her crown still rested on her brow and her gown flowed black and red about her like smoke. She drifted up each step, floating toward inevitability.
She approached a glowing well at the courtyard’s heart. It held no water, but an ever-shifting vision of worlds. Urn was among them, and others beyond, too many to count. Each realm shimmered, resting on an unseen thread.
Something pulled her onward. She ascended another stairway, this one of glass and light, to a platform hovered upon a nebula itself. There she saw them: the Seven Gates, suspended in the cosmos like titanic monuments.
Each was unique, a reflection of its realm and ruler.
The Netherworld Gate was built of bone and black smoke, its arch hollow as a maw, glyphs burning faintly red along its surface.
The Death Gate gleamed like frozen marble, carved of smooth stone and ice, its surface glinting like frost under moonlight.
