But power coils around him like smoke. Hungry. Possessive. Twisting his handsome features into something grotesque.
In front of him, a woman kneels.
She glows—not with magic, butdivinity. Skin kissed with sunlight. Hair like soft golden threads. And eyes that hold the sorrow of Stars.
“Nyrielle, say your vows,” he commands, his voice a honeyed facade that I immediately detect as subterfuge.Nyrielle. Goddess of Light and Wonder.
She looks at Thalmyr with devotion and adoration in her eyes.
I gasp in recognition.She loves him.
Her voice trembles as she speaks, though it’s strong enough to shake the walls. “I give it freely—my blood, my vow, my heart. Let it bind us,” she says with purpose and intent.
She reaches for his hand, slicing her palm and offering it up. Her golden blood spills like liquid sunlight into his.
He smiles that sickening smile I’ve seen hundreds of times from the forgotten side of The Lightborne Barrier in Virellin.
And Iknow—deep in my gut—that it’s not love. For him,it’sstrategy.
He steps back, eyes dark with purpose. He looks behind him to a cloaked figure, gesturing for them to move forward, “Do it, Daphinia.” Her arms raise, and the ring of floating symbols ignites, glowing red. A circle of ancient runes carves itself into the stone floor, pulsing with forbidden power—chains of shadow coil around the air.
“No,” Nyrielle whispers, realization dawning too late. “No, Thalmyr—what are you doing?”
“You gave me your heart, goddess,” he says coldly. “And now I sever yours from the realm, along with all the other so-called gods I’ve never bowed to.”
She screams. Her form fractures—splintering into light and sound and agony. A shockwave blasts outward, and I see a vision—the gods, all of them, bound in place by the force of the ritual. Frozen mid-motion. Screaming in silence.
They’re torn from the skies. Ripped from the rivers. Wrenched from the forests.
Nine of the gods and goddesses are thrown to the floor of the stone chamber. Frozen, incapacitated by whatever spell Thalmyr has them under.
But in their final suspended moments—before their bodies are dragged into oblivion, before their voices are swallowed by the void—they act.
Not with words. Not with war. But with memory. With will.With magic.
Their essences, fractured and fading, pulse outward—ninedivine threads of light seeking sanctuary in the physical world. They reach for what they can: sacred places, sacred objects, sacred bloodlines. The oldest stones. The roots of ancient trees. The blades of fallen Stars.
The relics. They reach for the relics.
Beautiful golden light is cast around the chamber like a spider’s web of divine magic.
Thalmyr turns to the cloaked figure—Daphinia—again, urging her to act.
But the gods and goddesses of this world don’t relent. They continue weaving their magic, infusing it into the physical world—their final sacred rebellion.
They don’t leave weapons. They leave keys.
Keys to awakening.
Keys to reclaiming what was stolen.
Keys to what comes next.
Daphinia slices through Thalmyr’s palm, blood pooling in his hand.
He takes three long strides to the center of the circle of runes and allows a single drop of blood to fall from his hand.
The blood lands on the chamber floor, and within a single heartbeat, the gods are cast out—flung into a prison between realms.Trapped.
