Page 40 of Lies Among Gods

Her breath hitched as instinct screamed at her to retreat. She recoiled, a desperate attempt to widen the space between them. But it was a futile effort. With a chilling, silent fluidity, he mirrored her every backward step, closing the distance with unnerving precision. She scanned the area. The priest’s footsteps echoed softly as he retreated. Her gaze, drawn by an unseen force, settled back on the man whose unnerving presence seemed to chill the very air around her.

"Alright, Mr. Creed,” Lyra said, forcing a calm tone she didn’t feel, slowly stepping back toward the temple. She desperately scanned for the priest, who had moved ahead, now oblivious to her. “I really need to leave now. The gods are waiting for me. May the gods ever be with you.” She took another step backward.

"I’ve had visions of this day for months now. I am the chosen hand to make you a goddess,” he said, his voice rising to a frantic pitch. “When I saw you on the tram those times, I knew it was true.”

Fear clawed at Lyra, sharp and cold, overriding her composure. “I need to leave,” she managed, turning her back on him, intending to bolt.

She went to run, but Tavian moved with shocking speed. He lunged, his right hand whipping out from his jacket, and in it, a glint of silver: a knife. It plunged into her chest; the point finding her heart with savage precision.

Pain, blinding and all-consuming, gripped her. It was a white-hot spear of agony that stole her breath and shattered her world into a thousand fragments. She felt the sickening, wet sensation of the blade tearing through skin and muscle. As she was stabbed in the heart, her body seized up, her knees buckled, and she fell backwards, bracing for the impact of the hard, cold pavement. The colossal temples around her began to spin and blur.

The fall felt like an agonizing eternity; the world around her smeared into a suffocating darkness. Suddenly, she hit the ground, but instead of stone, she felt the cold, immediate shock of water. She wasn’t just on the ground; she was submerged in water.

She was swimming, then sinking, then swimming again, fighting with every ounce of strength to get to the surface. Her lungs ached, burning with the desperate, raw need for air; her hands and legs were heavy and tired, failing her.I can’t swimanymore.She was drowning, darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision.

The world shifted. The suffocating pressure vanished, and she was falling—not through air, but out of the water to land in another pool, this one shallower and utterly still.

Lyra gasped, scrambling to push herself up, her vision clearing. She was in a vast, ethereal chamber; the water she sat in was crystal-clear, bordered by a soft, glowing light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

She looked up. Standing at the edge of the pool was an old man. He was ancient; his white beard flowed like a waterfall over simple, pale robes. He looked at her with eyes the lightest shade of blue that held the depth of millennia, and a gentle, knowing smile on his lips.

"Finally, she has arrived,” he stated, his voice a low, resonant chime. “And it is time for the trials to begin."

Chapter thirty-three

CHAPTER 27

As mortals aligned their lives with the favor of the gods, shadows grew long in the spaces between allegiance and ambition. It was there, in corners unseen and words unspoken, that Tenebris Vale descended. The God of Shadow taught that what is hidden carries power equal to that which is visible, and that loyalty and deception walk hand in hand under the watchful eyes of the divine.

Snippet from “The Book of Natural History” By Priestess Antonella Killoran

The high, polished doors of Elio’s temple were an agonizing frame to the boredom Alaios was about to face. He stood just inside the massive archway, an anchor of dark attire against the Sun God’s blazing gold and white marble. He wasn’t supposed to be there; the Council was assembling, and the God of Strife should be in his seat, preparing for the inevitable arguments. But she was coming, summoned by Elio’s decree, and Alaios found himself unable to wait in the cold formality of the Hall. He needed to see her, to make sure the previous days before were still real, that she was still his.

He spotted her the moment the black car pulled to a stop. She looked impossibly beautiful in the flowing white silk dress and soft green shawl, a luminous contrast to the gray, churning sky. A slow, rare smile, one he only ever seemed to offer her, spread across his face, easing the stern lines around his eyes. She pulled the thin shawl tighter around her shoulders and, for a fleeting moment, paused beneath the patio, tilting her head back to look at the rain, a gesture of quiet, contemplative grace that pulled at his heart.

Then, his smile vanished.

He saw the man emerge from the shadows; a disheveled figure Lyra instantly stiffened against. Alaios recognized the type—a fanatic, fueled by a delusion of divine purpose. He had seen thousands of them over the centuries. The warning was instant, cold, and absolute. He took a long, fast stride, reaching for the massive door, intending to cut off the fanatic.

Before his hand could touch the metal, he saw the glint.

The silver blade whipped out, and the next moment was a sickening, brutal stillness. The world froze, silent, for a split second. Then, with a sudden, deafening roar he didn’t realize came from him, it erupted into a blur of frenzied motion. The knife plunged into her chest, the force of the strike sending a profound, paralyzing shockwave through Alaios as if the knife had been stabbed into his chest.

Sadness, sharp and immediate, gripped him—a raw pain at the loss of her life, the crushing finality of her human existence. But it was instantly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of rage. The fear that the trials would claim her before he could truly prepare her, before he could truly claim her. The rage was pure, focused, and violent, a physical eruption aimed squarely at the miserable mortal who dared to lay hands on what was his.

He burst through the doors, a storm made manifest.

"NO!" His roar was a tearing sound, a wave of raw power that sent the meticulous priest fleeing backward.

Alaios didn’t run; he blurred, covering the distance in a single, devastating movement.

His gaze, burning with divine, consuming wrath, fell on the mortal. Tavian, who moments before had been a figure of maniacal conviction, was now a pathetic tableau of terror. The adrenaline of his fanatical act had instantly dissolved, replaced by the chilling, absolute certainty of divine consequence. His eyes, seconds ago blazing with delusional purpose, were now impossibly wide, shimmering pools of sheer, raw fear. The mouth that had just spoken to Lyra was contorted into a silent, perfect ‘O’ of horror, the sound stolen by the sheer, crushing pressure of Alaios’s presence. It was a mask of perfect, crystalline panic, a mortal soul realizing, too late, that he had not earned the favor of a god, but had summoned the Strife itself.

His fist hit Tavian Creed with the force of a collapsing building. He wasn’t sure if what hit him was rain, blood, or a mix of both as Tavian fell. The man didn’t stand a chance. Every ounce of the fury Alaios commanded—the necessary, world-shaping friction, the relentless, uncompromising force of Strife—was channeled into his fists. They were no longer flesh; they were charged stone, wrapped in crackling, blue-white lightning.

He didn’t see a human; he saw the thing that had stolen her last breath. He pounded the man’s head, the sound of bone and flesh giving way in a low, wet thud beneath the relentless assault. Rage consumed him, a blinding, white-hot ecstasy of destruction, until the mortal was nothing more than a ruined, unrecognizable corpse beneath his hands. A god’s rage is a world-bending force, and this mortal just learned what that meant.

It took the combined, terrified strength of Raios and Rhaziel, who had witnessed the eruption from the Hall, to drag him away. They pulled him, limbs straining, off the pulverized corpse.