"The Chainmaker," Ayla whispered. Then paused. As if the name itself tasted like ash. "Eirisa."
Cree moved to strike—but Hydeius grabbed them.
"No," he growled. "We'll kill her. But not here. Not his way."
Komus stepped forward, face flat.
"We can't take your offer anyway."
He turned toward Qaritas.
"Even cursed, he still has to complete the Path of Becoming. Twenty-seven days."
Ecayrous smiled like someone hearing a song they composed centuries ago.
"Perfect."
He turned to the group.
"You all need training. The Rite made you gods, yes. But the Becoming… that's what makes you chosen."
He paused.
"But it won't happen in Rygartha. The Ascendant Sanctuary is closed to anything tainted by Eon."
He stepped back, hands folding.
"Those who walk the path with the Shadowborn will come to me."
His voice dropped—serpentine and soft.
"To Mrajeareim. My home."
Somewhere, far from the Graveyard, a place stirred—a place where stars hung from hooks of memory and time ran sideways through grief. Mrajeareim. The realm where fragments were born and gods were stripped bare before being rebuilt.
The air in Mrajeareim was thick with the acrid stench of burning flesh and the metallic tang of blood. The screams of the tormented echoed endlessly, mingling with the guttural growls of grotesque creatures.
Somewhere beyond the rivers of molten despair, a garden bloomed—violet leaves whispering truths no sane mind could survive. The flowers there grew from bones. And wept.
The ground was slick with a mixture of bile and tears, while an oppressive heat emanated from rivers of molten despair that flowed through this nightmarish landscape.
That place had taught him to be divine—and punished him every time he tried to be anything else.
Mrajeareim didn't teach gods to ascend. It taught them to surrender. And only those who survived that surrender came out stronger—or didn't come out at all.
Komus flinched. Quietly, but Ayla saw it.
He hadn't stepped foot in that realm since he'd left a child's name behind.
Mrajeareim wasn't just his father's realm—it was where Ascendants went to forget what made them human.
"That place... breaks gods slower than war does," Cree muttered. "And more thoroughly."
A pause.
"There, you will train. There, he will awaken fully. And from there…"
"You will kill Eirisa."
Cree's flames coiled tighter, flickering against their jaw.
"So we walk into the monster's den and call it a classroom?"
Orhaiah's golden scale trembled, still cracked.
"He's manipulating us."
Komus didn't look at them.
"Yes. But he's also right."
Ayla stared at Qaritas, still flickering.
"If we don't go… he dies unfinished."
Cree muttered, "Gods damn him."
A pause.
"Gods damn all of us, if this works."
Fog returned—scripted, sacred.
Ayla knelt beside Qaritas.
She should have moved. Should have tried to shield him.
But what could shield something from itself?
She wasn't sure she was still reaching for him—
or for the version of him she'd failed to save in the Dream.
And now, she was afraid.
Not of him.
But of what he might become if she let go.
His light flickered—weak, but defiant.
He reached for her hand. This time, she didn't pull away.
Cree's fire curled inward, like a vow forming.
Orhaiah's scales of law spun slowly above her head—one cracked.
Komus stared at Ecayrous without blinking.
The Graveyard didn't feel like a battlefield anymore.
It felt like an invitation.
Or a dare.
Ecayrous turned toward the dark between stars.
"Twenty-seven days," he said again.
And vanished.
No one spoke. There were no words left that hadn't already been screamed. Only breath. Only the echo of a god's name written in cursefire
The Graveyard groaned again.
Not from Ecayrous's exit.
Not from the curse still bleeding geometry into the air.
From arrival.
For a moment, they were alone with what remained of the curse. Qaritas's light pulsed once, then stilled. Even silence felt exhausted—like the Graveyard itself had run out of things to say.
Then... the sky cracked open again.
The stars above fractured like stained glass under breath. The constellations staggered. And from those breaks—comets came.
No—not comets.
Ascendants.
Twenty-one of them.
Each rode a burning line of personal truth—stars not summoned, but chosen, trailing the colors of their origin: obsidian flame, rose-gold aurora, thunder-veined green, blood-kissed blue. The cosmos howled to welcome them home.
They weren't late.
They were inevitable.
Ayla turned as the first streak of divine light slammed down.
The impact crater bloomed like a symbol: not destruction, but punctuation.
Then another.
Then ten more.
And suddenly—the Graveyard was crowded with gods.
She and Qaritas stood near the shattered core of the dead star, where the curse had bloomed and fractured their breath. He still knelt, flickering like a myth trying to decide which era to belong to.
To her right stood Komus, back straight, face unreadable. He was still watching where Ecayrous had vanished—like daring space to speak his name again.
Niraí hovered slightly above them, one foot on a broken spire of obsidian, eyes wide, tracking each new arrival like a gate trying to decide who was allowed to exist.
Cree stood a little off-center, arms crossed, flame curling down one leg like a wounded promise. They didn't look at anyone. But their heat said enough.
Hydeius was kneeling beside the edge of the battlefield, whispering to the soul-lights still circling his shoulders—reassurance, or apology, Ayla couldn't tell.
And Orhaiah stood to the left of Komus, her staff planted like a legal seal. The cracked golden scale above her spun slowly, weightlessly, but the break glowed with judgment.
Like a broken crown still fit for war.
The new arrivals surrounded them in a wide arc, the other 21, all blazing with history and suspicion.
Some dropped from their stars in silence, eyes calculating. Others laughed—shouts of reunion, or defiance, or simply the high of survival.
One wept.
One kissed the broken Graveyard.
One walked straight to Komus and said nothing, only clapped him once on the shoulder—then walked away.
A star hovered longer than the others before its rider descended.
Jrin.
Cloaked in duskfire, crown made of coalesced history, he landed hard, like a sentence landing at the end of an ancient paragraph.
His voice was tired—but iron.
"The Rite is over," he said.
He had bled for the Rite. Had sworn it could save them all. But now, watching the aftermath, he couldn't help but wonder: Had he only rewritten the chains?
His jaw tightened. Not from anger—but memory. He'd fought for this Rite. Called it the only way to birth gods without blood. And now it had birthed pain instead. He didn't speak again for a moment. Just stared at the fractured geometry on the ground. His silence said more than his decree.
"And so is this field."
He looked at the cracked sigils around Qaritas's feet.
Not with anger.
With something worse.
Doubt.
Jrin had written a gospel in stars.
And it had birthed something he no longer understood."
He didn't look at them when he said it—not Komus, not Ayla, not even Qaritas. Because to look would mean admitting the truth: that everything he had believed—the gospel written in starlines, the sanctity of the Rite—had failed. That gods could bleed before they ascended. That salvation might arrive screaming through geometry, not glory.
The words hit the ground like closing gates.
Ayla couldn't move. Not because of the scream—but because she recognized it. It wasn't terror. It wasn't rage. It was recognition. As if Qaritas was meeting every version of himself at once—and rejecting none of them. She felt the shape of his scream in her spine. And for a moment… she wasn't sure he'd come back.
And if he didn't return—if this thing wasn't Qaritas anymore—would she still hold his hand?
Would she let go? Or follow him into whatever god was being born?
Murmurs. Ripples. One of the newly arrived— Nysaeon, opening a protal—stepped forward, pointing toward the cursed sigils still shimmering in the scorched void.
"We felt the curse hit orbit. Felt a mind scream through memory. Is it true? Was that… him?"
Komus spoke without turning.
"Yes."
Ayla stood, finally letting go of Qaritas. He didn't fall. But he didn't rise, either.
She looked at Jrin. Her voice carried.
"He offered a deal. One Fragment of Eon for 1999 universes and their survivors."
Niraí added quietly, "And he cursed one of our own to Becoming. Qaritas has twenty-seven days."
Cree:
"He wants us to train. In Mrajeareim."
Orhaiah:
"He claims we'll be able to kill the chainmaker. Eirisa."
The crowd stilled.
One name—and twenty-one gods remembered fear.
Jrin raised one arm. The stars behind him dimmed.
"Then the Rite is closed," he said again.
"And the Ascendant Convocation reconvenes in Rygartha."
"There, we will vote on the path forward. All voices. All bloodlines. All truths."
"But until then..."
He turned to Qaritas. His voice cracked—but held.
"Protect the Becoming."
He vanished in a thunder of violet stars.
One by one, the others followed. No ceremony. No farewell. Only the burn of starlines and decisions left behind.
Soon, the Graveyard was empty again.
Except for seven.
And one flickering curse.
Ayla turned back to Qaritas.
His hand, faintly glowing, lifted once—reaching for her. She took it without hesitation.
The stars above no longer wept.
But they waited.
And above it all, in the sky that once welcomed gods, the stars blinked—not in approval. But in warning.