One endless shore, rife with infinite possibilities.
PART IIIThe FATE & THE RUIN
THEIR STORY BEGAN WITH Adream and ended in a nightmare.
In this world they loved best, where magic evolved with every phase of the moon and the eclipse unveiled yet more wonders to behold, they would not be known as the Tides of Fate and the Shadow of Ruin for some time yet. They were just two lonely deities at first, idealistic artists seeking connection through creation. They were each other’s muse, and their shared love of magic and desire for innovation inspired many, until they had a great following of devoted disciples eager to mold the world in their image.
There was none more faithful than the keen-eyed girl who followed them around like the little sister neither of them ever had. Two beauty marks on her cheek looked like a sun and moon in eclipse, denoting her love for both deities, her understanding of all magics, her curiosity about all things godly.
She was the first to see the cracks in the foundation of their relationship, the jealousy that set in like rot. The rupture that eventually occurred between them split the girl down the middle, her loyalties divided, yet neither deity seemed to want her by their side anymore. The Tides called for the expulsion of Tidecallers from the world, though they told the girl this separation would be for the best. The Shadow marched on the godsworld without her, claiming he’d cut her out of his plan to keep her safe.
All she heard from them was dismissal, and it broke her heart.
It was in this final hour that the girl was visited by a vision of what would ensue: the splintering of the Tides, theimprisonment of the Shadow, the shutting of doors between worlds with the blood of her own peers. There was no time to stop any of it, no way to warn anyone. The girl only had time to save herself.
She was alone now with the secret of a magic that the higher gods believed they had eradicated. A Tidecaller without Tides left to call on, nor Shadow to answer to. But they would one day return, this much she knew.
Fate and ruin, she had come to understand, were symbiotic. Intrinsically tied. Neither could ever truly be rid of the other, and this, she feared, would lead to their mutual demise.
43ROMIE
ATHEIA EMERGED FROM DECRESCENS HALLto find the world in shambles.
The skies over the quad bred a vicious sort of wonder, the kind that had anger churning in Atheia’s belly. Where before, the night had been dark with the new moon’s reign, now it was full of strange, dancing lights and veins of lightning, and ruling high above were a moon and sun in eclipse. The mark of a new, twisted era.
Bewildered looks followed Atheia as she wound her way to the fountain at the center of the quad, her faithful Tidal Council and Regulators trailing behind her with their captives. From here, Atheia couldn’t see the extent of the damage Clover had wrought, but she couldfeelwhat he’d done, how he had made himself into a god and blended all her perfect creations into one realm of pandemonium.
A sudden panic spiked through the crowd as the sound of wings drowned out all the chatter. Overhead had appeared creaturesAtheia had never seen in her lifetime, though she knew them from Tol’s memories.Corvus serpentes, eldritch beasts from the Heartland that were half raven and half snake. Monsters born of Sidraeus’s magic.
Fury burned within her as the creatures swooped toward the quad, eliciting screams as people ran to avoid their sharp beaks and talons and spiked tails. Atheia called blinding light to her hands to ward off the beasts. She fashioned the light into sharp blades imbued with the death magic of Quies and sent them arcing toward thecorvus serpentes.They fell in twos, threes, plummeting to their death, yet more of them remained.
These monsters weren’t attacking, Atheia realized. They were trying to flyawayfrom something.
Trying to escape the strange pocket of darkness that had opened up in the sky.
A deep, tenebrous bruise had appeared high above them, like a tear in a piece of fabric, a window opened onto an uncanny obscurity that could only belong to the sleeping realm. Faint, distant stars could be seen through it. And Atheia watched, as bewildered as everyone else, as it swallowed up a pair ofcorvus serpenteswho’d been too slow to avoid its spreading stain.
Panic intensified as a second pitch-black blot appeared in the corner of the quad where Pleniluna Hall met Decrescens Hall. Part of the cloisters there were sucked right into the blooming dark—along with a student who’d been cowering against the cloister wall, and who never stood a chance.
Atheia’s stomach dropped. She felt, for a second, like a leaf in a storm, doomed to be blown this way and that way by forces greater than her, unable to seize control. Stone crumbled all around as the pocket expanded, drawing more and more of the cloisters in its depths. People ran for their lives, running to the other side of the quad, heading inside buildings as the tear in the sky also grew,and the fewcorvus serpentesthat remained landed on the ground seeking safety.
Shaking out of her stupor, Atheia made the light in her hands amplify, desperate to stop the spreading dark.
But then, all at once, the nightmare stopped. The pockets of sleepscape remained where they were but ceased their spreading. Not because of anything Atheia did, but rather as if answering someone else’s whims, a conductor leading musicians to the abrupt end of a piece.
So this was what it had come to. The four realms of the living combined into one—and threatened into oblivion by the sleeping realm that was trying to tear its way through. As if the living and sleeping realms were now fighting for dominance, unable to survive in this space together. Devouring each other until, perhaps, everything was doomed to become dust.
Thiswas what Clover had done.
Had it been his intention, she wondered, to destroy her worlds this way? To lead them faster to oblivion?
People were still screaming, scared, not realizing that the dark had stopped its senseless destruction. Thecorvus serpentesnow in their midst were just as frenzied. And dangerous.
Atheia didn’t hesitate. Sharpening her anger, she let loose more of those whips of light and death, and in one fell swoop killed all the monsters that remained.
She caught sight of Sidraeus as he fell limply to his knees, all the color drained from his face, his eyes glazed over in pain. Interesting—he must have felt the creatures’ suffering the same way he felt the pain of Eclipse-born. At his side, Emory was looking at Atheia with an expression of incredulous horror. It stirred something in Atheia—Romie’s consciousness slipping through.
Atheia gently nudged her back. This was no time for sentimentality from her vessel.
