And now the ones who forged her were coming, to collect on their creation.
The last thing she saw before darkness swallowed the stars was a flare of white light —a woman's face, eerily like her own, twisted in fury.
Eiren.
Maris screamed as her body twisted on the floor like the gods were trying to tear it open from the inside.
Silence over came the chamber and she collapsed —a broken puppet. The glow faded from her veins and the echo of a terrible truth ringing behind her eyes.
And when she opened them at last, Kael clutched her tightly. Alarik knelt to her right, she realized that neither of them looked at her as they once had.
Something made to unmake.
-Alarik-
The throne room was in gutted silence. Maris lay motionless in Kael's arms, her skin pale, her body still catching breath like a half-drowned thing. But the silence wasn’t for her alone.
It was for what they’d heard.
What they’d all witnessed.
“She was never your chosen, Dreammaker. She is your undoing.”
The words still echoed, more than a voice, a verdict. A divine proclamation that had split the room.
The Dreammaker, the goddess of dreams and mercy, Eiren. She was not their savior.
She was the betrayal.
And Maris, the woman he’d come to worship was never chosen by a goddess at all. She had been forged by the others — those that the priests cursed. The ones the stories had cast in shadow.
A goddess in her own write, forged of the blood and power of four gods to bring Eiren to ruin.
He exhaled slowly, the sound shaking in his chest.
Around him, his court stood stricken. Zairon looked pale. Serenya hadn’t moved an inch, since dodging out to help catch Maris's fall. Even Kael, the king of darknesses cold-eyes looked haunted.
All of Achyron had built faith around a narrative spun by a god whose wrath had twisted history like a blade through silk. They had worshipped her. Pleaded to her as a final hope. And all the while, Eiren had been bound, for her crimes against them.
Imprisoned by the other four.
Not for mercy.
Not for dreams of peace.
But to contain her madness.
Alarik’s gaze dropped to Maris’s hand, still faintly glowing where the sigil burned beneath her skin.
It was the gods’ final answer.
They’d all been too blind to see it.
Too obsessed.
Too possessive.
Too caught up in wanting her for themselves to see what she was.
