The world tilted. The room blurred. I felt the drag of an ancient force, a pull not outward but inward—down into the clouded depths of her enchantment.
My breath caught as shadows folded over me, memory opening like a door I hadn’t meant to step through.
The ground vanished as gusts of a serene breeze swept by, the floor turning from stone to sky.
In place of the tavern was now a palace, guarded by crystal peaks that pierced the stars, its walls drenched in sunlight until they shimmered like opal flame.
Beyond the open dais, clouds unfurled in great tides, curling like mountains broken into mist through air so rare only the divine could swallow.
I was in Saintoria—the Isle of Angels.
But this place, this kingdom, did not exist. Not anymore.The realm had been destroyed, along with the beings created within it.
Yet, here it stood, alive in illusion or memory, and I was inside it, watching, behind eyes that weren’t my own.
The chamber was ivory and gold, endless and gleaming as the six gods of Selvarra entered, one by one—
Ophielle, beauty draped in motion, her copper hair tumbling like a river, her gown blossoming with each glide toward the chamber’s heart.
Zeki followed, wisdom cloaked in silence, a white owl perched on his shoulder. His pearl eyes were ancient and unblinking, aglow against his sable skin.
Callisto trailed after, the whisper of moons and seas. The blue of her eyes was calm against her caramel complexion, the whole of her glowing as a smile unfurled, gentle, endless.
Aelia, sun fire, and soil incarnate, accompanied her. Wheat-gold hair kissing her jaw, her amber gaze flickering with worry.
Then Orion stormed in. Death and war towering in midnight and ruin. Salt-and-pepper hair caught the light in sharpened steel, his presence striking the chamber colder.
And at the center—Vivianna. The Primus. Goddess of creation. Mother of Gods.
Her presence didn’t simply ask for reverence, it commanded it.
Hair made of burnished honey swept back from a face carved in sacred eternal flame.
Her eyes were the universe itself: every color born, colliding, becoming, as if the world had been painted into her gaze.
A crown, delicate as awakening light and formed from sovereignty, rested above her brow. But it wasn’t the crown that held them all, it was the stone in her hands—ivory and swirling with shifting color, an entire galaxy trapped beneath its surface.
The gods moved toward her, all at once and all together, gliding over a floor made from an ocean frozen mid-wave.
They settled around her in a wide circle, as if she were the axis their world turned on.
Vivianna’s voice weaved through the chamber, warm, fierce and entirely unshakable.“We have watched Selvarra heal and prosper after war nearly skinned us bare.” Her eyes swept across them, holding each in turn. “But a new war is rising. One even I cannot interfere with.”
Zeki rose, stepping forward. He did not kneel; she would never ask it. He was not lesser or below. But a breath born from her own existence.
For power did not bow to power. It stood beside it.
“Once again,” his voice was heavy with inevitability, “a curse has been bred, birthed in the depths of hel itself. A curse to end worlds—” He exhaled, before catching Vivianna’s stare.She nodded once.“Meant to devour the very continent we have strived to preserve.”
They gasped as one.Aelia’s eyes widened, her hand darting for Callisto’s. The two clung together, the sun and moon side by side.
Zeki’s voice broke in his throat before he forced it forward. “Fate has shown me its path. The curse will root itself in a vessel, bleeding their soul dry, driving them to unmake what we only just buried beneath the core.”
His stare cut from one god to the next, eyes flashing with the weight of it.
“This is worse than Deimos himself. Deimos can be destroyed. This cannot. There is no cure. No absolution. Only death. It will not stop, cannot be stopped, until we,” he lifted his hand, gesturing to them all, “and this continent itself, lie in defeat. The ending has already begun… I fear,” he shuddered, “this is only the beginning, only the warning.”
Grand doors opened and he straightened as a masked Angel strode into the room, his broad, white feathered wings following him across the floor. He glanced at each of them, his gilded eyes flaring for a split moment.
