Join me in night painted with crimson and black.

When they came for him, he was already broken.

Two months had been enough for him to learn what had happened in Ain’asel during his absence. He had been feeding himself with loss and despair for so long, fueling a hatred so dull and heavy it was almost placating. And now he had been stripped of purpose so quickly, with such stinging precision, that he was shocked his limbs still moved and his lungs still drew breath.

Savior.

That was who he hated. That was who he wanted to stop.

His world had crumbled quickly and mercilessly.

He was a monster. That was what he had always told himself. Lorian Ain’Dal, the monster. But Lorian had done something that reduced Alnam’s hatred and pain to a small, irrelevant speck of pollen on the wind—insignificant beside the cosmic apocalypse that would have come, if not for him.

The small folk told him everything in minute detail. The pain Lorian had suffered for years—and Alnam realized that even then, when Corvel was killed, when his own voice was taken—the gods who could drain an entire fae land of life. The end of the world that had been stopped because Lorian had the courage to stand before the ancestor and tell them no.

His feelings were destroyed. His purpose taken from him. Death was the only sensible choice left—but even that had been denied.

He had to live and listen to the lesser folk chattering—of monuments raised, of temples being built.

They had found themselves a new god, one who could not answer their prayers. But weren’t all gods dead? And yet they still hungered for their blood. Maybe Lorian heard it all. Maybe he existed in a cosmic prism, somewhere between time and space. Maybe, as all the fae, he nourished a tree… looking with leafy eyes on the life he saved. Or maybe he couldn’t care less.

Alnam was left to himself—shackled in half-iron, half-silver binds that did not hurt but muted his powers completely.

He was a relic. And the purpose of relics is to crumble.

Was Lorian not the creature of shadow Alnam had believed him to be all this time? No. He had to be. His mind was collapsing under the weight of his pointless actions, loneliness and the lack of an anchor. To the other fae, he was a courtier who had stood against their savior, tried to destroy his plans, and attacked him.

Death was coming.

But when?

Those two months were like a limbo filled with stale, polluted water.

When. How. Where. The sentence never came, and Alnam eventually became too lost in his own world to care. They could come today. Tomorrow. Or in ten years.

It was irrelevant.

His life had ended when Corvel was killed. When his wife died.

When Lorian revealed himself as the herald of a new godless age.

When they came for him, he was beyond saving. They could be cruel enough to release him into the world, ordering him to live. To accept a realm in which Lorian Ain’Dal was a god and he was worth less than dust.

Perhaps that would be a fitting punishment for his blind belief in revenge and retribution. Ain’asel changed everything and everyone, even the fae who lived in it. It twisted purpose and pulsed through veins with the sweetest poisons. No one left it unchanged—humans, Seelie, Unseelie. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. All were faces of a land that liked to play with fate and life.

He didn’t know the fae who led the small procession accompanying him. She was one of Lorian’s Bean Sidhes, with wings as wide as the corridor and a beak instead of a face. It was black as obsidian; Alnam could see his reflection in it when she turned toward him.

But she did not speak—not at first. He so hoped to hear her voice.

Maybe human beliefs had been true all along. Bean Sidhes as heralds of death. She was leading him to his execution or to relocation—his death was already sealed.

She looked at him with an undecipherable, blank expression. Her eyes were pale—like Nymre’s. Alnam had heard that Nymre had taken the throne as regent. The king would soon be anointed—Lorian’s child.

Leira’s.

He wanted to feel hatred for her. But he simply couldn’t. She had enchanted him the same way Lorian enchanted lesser beings. The same way Lorian enchanted her. Wasn’t it ironic? The way Lorian’s hands had once landed on his spine, his mouth drinking his marrow, tongue deep in flesh.

He heard the Bean Sidhe’s voice at last.

“Open the door.”

A lesser faery from the palace guard leaned into the heavy silver doors, and slowly they began to open. The Bean Sidhe’s voice reminded him of Narlia. She was Higher Unseelie, yet her words were like a beautiful song made by Bean.

Torment yourself.

Open before all the memories.

Let them feast.

He stepped through the doorway.

The chamber was warm and dark, illuminated only by two lamps that cast faint light on the walls. The tiny shadows danced around him as if they knew him.

After all, they did.

In the center of the room…

…stood a fae-sized device.

Made of pure iron. He felt the radiation of the element even from here. The head and the body of iron, perfectly fit to his height and posture. Even he—an old Unseelie—knew it could not kill him, but it could injure and torment him. If prolonged…

The Bean Sidhe pushed him forward, not even hard. Almost delicately.

“The savior’s orders remain intact. He left instructions. As a traitor to the crown and the realm, you will be placed in the Iron Bed—for weeks. For years. Until you die. It will depend only on your body’s endurance.”

Alnam’s eyes met hers. There was no cruelty in them, even if he expected it. Only a sense of justice. A sense of duty he himself had awakened in faerie hearts many times. But those times were gone.

Maybe he deserved this. For letting Corvel down. For allowing Narlia to fall ill.

For letting himself believe it all had purpose.

But the real punishment wasn’t pain—and Alnam dreaded it most. He would be left alone, fed just enough to survive the Iron Bed.

Left to his thoughts, his shattered soul, and his memories. To his guilt, slowly fading in a prison meant not only for bodily suffering.

It was a prison for his mind.

When they dragged him inside, he felt nothing. No fear, just an emptiness in place of a heart, which bled blue, slowly releasing spores into the air around him.

He could numb himself to physical pain. He could make it almost bearable. But he could not numb himself to what had led him here.

Lorian …he had known it all along.

He would have offered him admiration for his foresight.

If he did not have a few lifetimes still ahead of him—an waterless mossy well full of wind and souvenirs of roads not taken…

Maybe in time he fill it with his unshed tears.

Nymre’s fingers curled around the balustrade. The same one. The one beside which he had embraced her so many times. Where they had stood together, looking into the night, while his shadows drained the living essence from the woods around them. She could still feel his breath on her neck—warm, hot, familiar.

She had cried for two months. Silently. Unseen, grieving loss. And then this day came. She felt hollow, like an old mossy well long emptied of water. But her tears had dried, and she understood she had to live. Her lips still needed his. Her body was cold, stripped of its flame. But this was the life she would live now. Until something inside her broke—and maybe, just maybe, spring would grow in her again.

Winter roots still clung deep within her, claiming her body and her heart. She would need to thaw. She didn’t want to—snow and ice reminded her of her love.

Flawed, cruel, painful. But real. Strong. A love that had given her wings stronger than her own. Now she had to rely only on the feathers and wings she was born with. Black and soft—but now made of shadows. Scattered beneath her feet like on the day of their first night together.

His cruel raven.

Her shadow king.

When she learned that Leira would bear Lorian’s child, she felt nothing. Her wet eyes, her hollow spirit—everything demanded she focus on her own pain. And when the day of the mossy well arrived, she saw the truth clearly. This child would be Lorian’s only heir. The only way to continue the Ain’Dal line. Nymre would never give him a child—an empty throne would pull the Unseelie into war. The court would fight and bleed itself dry until the Sacred Woods grew bored and chose the strongest… or the one it deemed most fitting to rule a new godless world.

So she did it for Lorian. To honor his line. As much as she had disliked Leira, the almost primal hatred had faded. Leira was only a human Lorian had taken, and she had been so certain he loved her. Perhaps he had, in his own twisted way. He had fooled them both—her and himself.

When Leira entered Lorian’s chambers—now Nymre’s—the raven faerie was sipping her herbs, her posture elegant yet not free of exhaustion. These months… these cursed months… had been hard, cruel, and had nearly destroyed her. But she felt his spirit beside her—Lorian’s spirit. Perhaps it still gathered shadows around her, because she could swear that at night she still felt their caress on her skin.

Warm. Hot.

Familiar.

Leira simply sat beside her. And Nymre smiled.

She had loved him too, foolish as she was. Perhaps a spark of him lived in her as well—just as it remained in Nymre.

Nymre disliked Leira. But she was the only other person who had felt his touch as an equal. The only one who understood how to love him—and how to be loved by him.

Now, Nymre’s fingers tightened around the balustrade.

“You are aware that my court demands your death.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Nymre scoffed.

“They do not want revenge. They want the throne.”

“They are terrified that his line may survive. They are scavengers feasting on a lion’s flesh—yet while he lived, they could only croak from afar.”

Nymre’s brow lifted.

“Lion?”

“A beast from the human lands, my lady.”

Nymre looked into the horizon. The snow ceased to fall, and the land bathed on faint sunlight. The woods around them seemed distant and alien, with a veil of mist surrounding them. She could hear the forest’s pulse. Dark—but at the same time, so full of hidden life.

“We live in dangerous times. The court knew they couldn’t act during the burial rites. But once the sanctuary rises, once they build enough obelisks and monuments for their savior, they may decide that my regency is an attempt to usurp his power.”

“My child is not enough to secure the throne?”

“Oh, they would love to reduce the matter to human offspring. I can almost hear them insisting that no king was ever born of a human.”

“But from what I know, many—”

“Of course!” Nymre laughed, bitterly. “But quietly, without ceremony. No king was anointed before his birth. No king took the throne years after the previous one’s demise.”

Leira’s smile twisted.

“No king killed the gods before.”

“That and only that holds them. He is a god to them now. A savior, a hero. These times are delicate… and I must handle them delicately. I hold no power over this palace. Dal’coler was mine only as long as Lorian lived. They despise the very idea of my regency… which is precisely why it is so satisfying.”

Leira’s eyes glimmered in the darkness with understanding.

“You truly mean to crown my son the moment he is born.”

“Yes. Snow will linger only as long as winter’s consort reigns. He will be able to choose his season. He will be able to choose…”

A shiver ran through her.

Again, she felt the brush of elusive shadows. Gentle, yet insistent. A kiss behind her ear, exactly where she liked it. And a surge of courage in her heart.

He would believe in her. Because even with all his cruel flaws—he knew she could do this.

And she would.

She would make this court bow.

“My lady… it is three months until—”

“Yes. You are safe. You are a petal of the old era falling onto new soil, a light from a dead star still echoing. I will not allow these power‑hungry fools to destroy everything.”

Leira’s smile widened.

She had feared that after the disappearance of her lover, protector, and enemy, she would be executed in the most terrible way. She had taken fae lives—not always with her own hands, but always standing where death arrived. She expected no one to defend her. Least of all Nymre, who she had once believed would peel the first patch of skin from her body.

Yet it was Nymre who came to help her. She knew it was to secure Lorian’s offspring… but she was grateful, surprised, and lost all the same.

The absence of Lorian in her mind was terrifying. For a month she couldn’t sleep or form a coherent thought. She was like a fish stranded on the shore, staring at the sea—so close, so unreachable. Her tears would not fall. Her heart was a wound.

She had hated him for so long—and loved him just as fiercely. He not only had been her lover and guardian, her tormentor. He had been her maker.

And that was reason enough to hate him even more—for going somewhere she could not follow.

A puppet abandoned by her sculptor.

An idea without purpose.

But then came the day when tears finally fell, wounds began to knit, and she felt like an empty moss‑lined well, dry but ready to open to the rain.

For him. For herself.

For the life she still wanted to live.

That was what bound them so tightly, wasn’t it?

That excruciating, ferocious will to live.

And then… amid all the ruin, amid all the despair—a single breath of wind carrying the faint scent of violets. A touch on her skin during nights when she choked on fear and loss. A whisper. A glimpse.

And she began to wonder.

Maybe Lorian had not become a god of flesh and blood. Maybe they would never love each other again. Maybe his presence would never stop her heart the way it once had.

But the forest remembered. And it carried him through Ain’asel, from the grove where he had rooted.

And…

… wasn’t that its own kind of immortality?

The chamber was quite. Too quiet. Like feathers of all ravens she gave life to surrounded her and hushed all sound.

Nymre’s limbs shivered like on strings. Her hair, blown out and dry like paper, fell on her face, taking also the sight from her eyes. She slowly, very slowly – like moving in honey – lifted a hand and started to brush them out.

The temple was half crumbled. The veins of roots buried in its walls marked the ruined stone. Natsel’lorl opened for the wind – there was no roof above her, the early morning was awakening among crisp frost.

She barely could stand up. She was like a human enchanted in a doll – remembering how to be a human, still, but unable to put that knowledge to use. Her mind was calm – but in a numb, stupefied way.

Her eyes saw a hand trying to crawl over the cracked stone. With dull shock, she saw it belong to Tiyan. His eyes were half lidded, his moves mechanical. He looked like a broken puppet, blood saliva hanging from his lower lip. But he was alive. She saw Lorian took his soul. How came he was alive?

She slowly stepped over the hand.

Lorian.

When she saw him last time, he was joyfully devouring the gods. The ancestors evaporated like the temple walls, dosclosing the beating flaming veins and under them – heart pumping molten iron. They screamed, so loud, until they disappeared in nothingness.

But where was Lorian?

She almost stumbled on a stone, that had to fall from the ceiling being destroyed. She only didn’t tripped her will was now stronger than her body – and the temple that was putting those stones under her feet.

“Lorian?”

She didn’t see him.

Did he left?

Left without her?

He wouldn’t, would he?

Half of her heart knew he would not. But another, tired and mangled part feared he is not her Lorian anymore.

“Lorian!”

A small gust of wind brought in something dark. A tiny shadow, so thin, that almost invisible. Nymre’s eyes widened, she would do everything now, to not lose that trail. She followed the shadow tendril, elusive like a mist. The day was so calm – like nothing happened. Her heart again started to beat, fast and dissonant, like a music she doesn’t know melody to, but her soul remembers.

But nothing prepared her for what she has found.

Lorian. He was there. He wasn’t surrounded by all powerful night anymore. He wasn’t beaming with shadows so dark that killed even the sun.

Blood trickled down his chin, golden and thick. He was naked and lay spread on the floor, small snow petals were falling on his bare body. Nymre could swear that his skin glistened with faint light, like he swallowed the star.

“Lorian…”

He seemed to not hear her. She fell on her knees and crawled to him. His limbs were bent in unnatural positions, his whole body was cold.

Yet… he opened his eyes. Black as night. A familiar void.

“Nym—re.”

Nymre’s throat clenched.

“Lorian… what… what happened…”

He tried to laugh. A not less familiar sensual laughter filled his throat, until it was caught out with a bloody spit.

“I. I took them all.”

“No.”

“I took them all, Nymre.”

“NO.”

This was not true. He soon stands up. And show in his usual grace, in his darkest of shadows. They will return to Dal’coler. They must.

Lorian coughed. Again with gold. He never coughed! He never—

“Nymre…”

“No!”

“Nymre… listen… ”

“Lorian…” her eyes filled with tears. Not unwanted even. She wanted them to pour.

Perhaps…

“I couldn’t—”

His black eyes were shining, still with this beautiful unnatural light. Nymre felt as her whole being falls apart. It was not real. IT. WAS. NOT. REAL.

“Nymre, I—-”

“Stay with me. Please.”

She would give her immortality to make him just stand up. To allow him for even a day of life. She would slit her wrists, only to feed him her blood, if that was to help him.

She would do everything…

“Please. Stay with me. I–”

His eyes stopped to shine.

An alone, single shadow was carried away by the wind.

And Nymre knew that they both won’t return.

Not anymore.

*

They say when a fairy dies, a tree loses its life too so the new one could be born, holding their soul. Maybe now, a whole burned forest crumbles into dust, somewhere at the end of the world. Maybe now, the wind carries the cinders over the mountains, to fertilize the barren land.

Tiyan crawls over the broken stone. His body just goes, unbothered by anyone. He doesn’t matter. He is no one. Another human, who can die or live. Without half of the soul, he will die either way.

Nymre, half bent, embraces the dead body of her lover. She will be sitting by his side for two days and two nights, even if her court tries to talk to her common sense.

Somewhere in  Dal’coler, Leira doesn’t feel a presence in her head, which she started to perceive as her own. Her eyes are dry. Her soul shatters.

And Ain’asel bathes in snow.

The Sacred Forest breathes life in.

And nothing is the same again…

His blood boiled in his veins—but the joy that grew within him was monstrous. He became something without a name, something no language knew description for. Night peeled itself from the sky and stepped into him; stars alight in his eyes, white and mercilessly hot. They had a scent, ancient scent of eternity, and it obscured the fae knowledge. His body twisted into a prayer to the void, a poem of blood and shadow, he had become a child of the timeless black. Delight and agony being carved in him until they were indistinguishable.

The gods tried to merge with him, to stop the metamorphosis, to keep him from swallowing their light, their flame, their souls. But he was stronger now—stronger than all of them together. He had drunk from them for too long, gnawed at their magic until it fused with him. Now he took in the spirit of their shared flame, the one they closed in Tiyan. At last, he was what they feared most: a perfect epitome of power.

He heard Nymre screaming—her hair writhing in the winds created during the birth of a new god. The world stopped itself, unmaking its past, bowing before the flesh of the newborn night.

Lorian felt nothing. No joy. No pain. No fear. At last, he was free from the burden of feeling—feelings that had always been shackled to suffering. The emptiness soothed him like a cold cloth pressed to a rotting wound. The gods devoured him slowly, tendrils of burning light piercing his darkness; but he devoured them faster. The flames around them dimmed, swallowed by a hunger that had no end.

“Poor, poor fae.”

“Your time will never come.”

“Spread beneath our feet for eternity.”

“Evaporating and merging forevermore…”

But beneath their words, he felt their terror. Panic. Hunger. Fear. A twisted joy at feeding—any feeding—but fear because the feast was turning against them. Lorian’s night buried deeper, shadows rearranging their divine organs, teasing the fire inside them, growing larger with every second, ready to burst through their divine flesh.

“Nymre.” He turned his smile toward her. Panic painted on her face. His voice rang through the collapsing chamber, cold and resonant, like a bell beating underwater. Tears trailed her cheeks…

He tried to recall what he had promised her.

Eternity.

Love.

Pleasure. Safety.

But what was love to a creature without a heart? What was safety beside a being who devoured gods? And eternity—was it not simply a longer road to abandonment?

She reached toward him with trembling fingers, as if unsure whether she wanted to touch him or flee.

His smile widened—an enchanted mask stretched too far, beautiful in a way that hurt to look at.

“RUN.”

That was all he said.

Run.

He would not let her be consumed by his hunger. This place would collapse soon—releasing his power into the night sky.

Pain slammed into him. The gods pressed closer, their flaming bodies forming a cocoon around him. They touched him, stroked him. A lover’s touch, a tormentor’s caress.

Lorian’s shadows struck back. Like a rowan blade in a puka’s flesh. Like an iron nail in a sprite’s heart. The gods felt pain too—but they grinned, and so did he, all of them baring their teeth in a silent, shared madness.

“You have no chance, little godling.”

“We are hungrier than you.”

“We are much older.”

“We own this land.”

“We own your kind.”

Lorian’s pain arose, worse than anything he had known in life. A molten crown pressed into his skull, iron splinters twisted in his gut… He heard Nymre scream—closer now. She had not run.

Foolish woman. She had not run.

*

The first trumpet rang. The first horse—white and wild—shook the rain from its pale mane.

Sarsha, moved by the power of the word Kosel had spoken moments before, pierced the shadowed talons into Rapis’ heart.

Golden mist rose above him. For one terrible second, time froze—feeding on life, draining the world—and then the mist vanished.

*

The gods howled as their connection to Rapis cut. The flaming ropes gnawing at Lorian’s tendons withdrew—for a moment. It was enough.

Lorian grasped the nearest god’s head.

His fingers—shadow blades sharp as diamonds, sharper than them—closed around it and squeezed. More tendrils sprang from his flesh, reaching for the others, holding them back while he fed.

They crashed onto the crumbling stone. The god writhed, but Lorian was stronger. The others still fed on him, tearing at the night around him, but as long as he devoured this one—one by one, he would consume them all.

For the first time in his life, Lorian lost composure.

He didn’t waste time on a kiss. He sank his shadowed teeth into the god’s throat.

*

The blinding light swallowed the unmaking temple. Nymre, still held where she stood, covered her eyes with her arm.

Run.

She wanted to. Her mind screamed for it. But her body refused.

If he died here, her purpose would disappear with him. So she waited—fear bubbling in her throat, thick and iron-like, ready to burst out as another ragged scream.

She didn’t dare to call his name, though her heart begged her to reach for him. Her limbs were numb, her skin cold, her pulse slowed. Her heart should have been racing—but it barely moved, as if she were watching her own undoing unfold before her.

She couldn’t help him.

She was nothing but a distraction.

Run.

She would. She truly would.

But her legs sagged beneath her, and her soul screamed in a voice her body could not obey.

*

The second trumpet rang. The black horse with a star on its forehead shook the dew from its moonlit mane.

Ona—vessel of something far different—buried her hand in Sindr’s tangled hair. His misty eyes brimmed with tears—pain, terror, and a twisted, delirious joy.

“Yes…”

The word shivered on his lips as her hand plunged into his face. Bone cracked. Flesh parted. Something vital snapped. She pulled, and the world seemed to stop and take a breath as she tore a trembling mass of his brain.

The place of shadows.

The gate to twilight.

Ona—animated by the god’s will—bit her teeth into the grey, quivering tissue…

*

Lorian tossed the god with a shattered throat onto the stone. His limbs froze for a heartbeat as he felt his hold over Sindr snap. A millisecond—yet enough. The others surged toward him, sinking their teeth into his night.

They latched onto him like starved parasites, burying deeper. Every bite burned through him as if he were still mortal. Their divine saliva seeped into his wounds, spreading, rooting, claiming.

Nymre.

She was there.

While they devoured him—deeply, greedily—his gaze locked with hers. Her eyes were wide, impossibly blue, half-hidden behind the raven mask. Terror shone in them, but something else too: a plea.

A plea for him not to let them. Not to let them take him. Not to let them take everything.

He stood in his chamber, with his eyes closed. Moon caressing his skin—he sensed its dim light spreading over him. Delicate, sensual touch of element that every winter lord loved. Its power, its beauty and its calling. But Lorian, somehow, stepped forth, before all kings of Ain’asel. He heard the moon song. Not only imagined it, while it gifted him with his magic. But he heard it, deep inside—resonating in his ribcage, pressing tangled notes onto his heart.

Only Nymre knew it. Now, she stood by his side, leaning over his shoulder, her hair on his arm. She smelled of light ocean breeze and it was a scent unforgettable. Something born in pure water dressing the spiderweb with its droplets. A morning song of a awakening day.

“What do you think about?” he heard her voice.

He wasn’t thinking of anything. He just took in the magic of the night. His pitch-black eyes opened. The moon was there, enormous, like in the day of New Lunar Year. Nymre wore the same black silky dress she was wearing when they loved violently after they left the court enjoying debauched feast. It was even torn in placed his passion reached it. Few feathers beneath her feet.

Remember? His trophies. She wanted him to tear them from her back.

But now, she looked like a serenity. Calm, soothing, beautiful. A healing medicine for his restless soul.

“I think of… how far we have led the lie.”

Her gaze held undecipherable mystery.

“Lie?”

He laughed, in a way that only he was able to. Deep, but silent. Sensual yet threatening.

“Why do I lie to you, Nymre? Why do I lie to myself? Why I still think our life is to save? This world is already destroyed. Not because of the gods. Because of my hunger. I am a dark hole that swallow light. Nephena had right and I adore she had—”

Nymre shook her head.

“Nephena was a fool. You were only fifty years old. This was not your fault.”

“But of course it was” his smile lightened his features, cold, cruel. “I was angry. And my anger always lead to catastrophe. Just as my passion. Just as my mere being. I am a ruin, and I always knew it. Since I have dragged my youngest brother to the crystal casket. Since my flame swallowed Inge. Her branches probably still call my name. I go, love and hate, admire and crave… and I leave debris behind.”

“You love pain. Own one, just as much as I do. But you are life just as you are death.”

“Why?”

His eyes bored into her like two obsidian blades.  He truly wanted the answer, as beautiful, as cruel as it was. If he is not the end of the world, the blood between the human’s fingers, the flesh open by his hunger… then who he is?

“You are Lorian Ain’Dal, the hundredth king of Ain’asel. And you are more than that. More than your needs, more than your lust. You are a true child of the sacred forest, deadly, rapid, but  beautiful and full of budding creation. You were the source of suffering – but also my salvation. And…”

Her face got closer, her lips brushed his, leaving a trace of salty water.

Salt.

Tears.

“… you must live. Now.”

NOW.

The gods almost brought him to his knees. Nymre looked at him, from afar. He still felt her salty kiss.

You are more than that.

More than your hunger.

And if I can’t live. I will take them with me.

His shadows amassed like a black cloud. His power burst around him, spreading its night-black wings. His back adorned with them, bigger than Nymre’s, bigger than half of the chamber – which would not hold them, if it was not falling apart. Black mist enveloped the temple, a proof of his godly ascend. It pulsed around them, a beat of millions hearts, trapped in the palace of Dal’coler and in this place—his own army of lost spirits, which he held on a leash. A millions of dark tendons led from Lorian to the walls of the temple… and further, leading a trail back to Dal’coler, spreading with the speed of light.

They all led to his victims, whose blood he trapped in the apples, whose souls he enchanted in the concrete of his fortress.

And they all were on his command. Unwilling soldiers of their tormentor, who held them just for this very moment.

He pulled.

Millions of soul, hundreds of ghastly, tormented and angry apparitions, clashed against the all-powerful strength of the ancestors. The gods tried to feed, as always—but they were too many, too furious, too wounded and too suffering. They not only clung to gods—they entered them, evaporating in their flames, but managing to fill them with fear and despair. With belief of inevitable end. With visions of demise. They were eating the gods with overpowering feel of failure.

Lorian only waited for that.

He felt pressure in his mind, like the moon was stolen from the sky and placed inside his head. His being was weakened from within, by the opposition of life the gods represented. It was not a feeling, alive void which he held inside his black eyes. It was void all life was fearing. Void of the nothingness—dry, hollow. A barren stone on the silent desert, what was left to look upon the empty world.

But moon was not a tool of harm. It was a hunter who blessed him with its light. Stolen from the sun, living only in the night.

His power entered gods. Slowly, he found them, among the flaming veins, magma bodies and fire muscles. He found them, even if burrowed deep, so deep his fae shadows wouldn’t be able to dig that far.

Yet… he wasn’t a fae anymore.

And he sucked their souls in.

His shadows twirled inside him like maddened dancers—impatient and eager.

The gods’ chamber had been prepared for him, and that alone had cost several ritualists their lives. The walls brimmed with dead flesh; the smell of decay was too sticky, too sweet. His lips stretched into a small, mocking smile. Light pulsed beneath the meat, and the eyes hanging from the ceiling turned toward him at once, shedding tears that burned small holes into the stone floor where they fell.

They were so close to awakening. Their open eyes, their grins—none of it was merely predatory. Everything about them was stained with furious, powerless fear. Their light reached toward Tiyan, who lay spread wide upon the wooden elevation—the wood taken from the sacred forest, which had offered itself with joy. He felt the forest now: begging, desperate, wounded. Only a few hundred heartbeats remained until he would end its suffering. Free it—and himself—from boundaries, from the pain that had drilled into him for far too long, from mortality. Such burdens would remain for lesser beings.

He felt the mind of Nymre walking beside him. She was afraid—but not of death. She feared losing him. Feared abandonment. Feared loneliness.

I do this for you as well, Nymre. But the thought was not enough. He wanted her to feel it. He would no longer be a fae if this ended as he desired—but even that could not carve her out of him.

Nymre moved as though she were flying. Her wings carried her more than her feet did, bare and barely touching the ground. Anyone who had never seen a fae would have mistaken her for an ancient goddess come to offer eternal pleasures.

The elevation trembled under the attempts of the awakening ancestors, desperate to steal Tiyan from his grasp. It was futile. Tiyan was full of shadows, and they shielded him from their greedy hands.

Lorian buried his fingers in the vessel’s hair—unsweated, dry like summer hay. Tiyan’s body was steady, almost collapsed, as though he had already reconciled himself to his fate. The final blow Lorian had given him—his mother’s betrayal—was the iron nail that burrowed deep and split his heart open.

He was willing to die.

And the gods knew it.

“My naive mortal,” he sighed, feeling Tiyan’s skin, tasting the nearness of his end. “You will end a very cruel era. An era of slavery and pain. The future will be much darker. But much more beautiful.”

Tiyan moaned; Nymre shifted by his side.

Lorian realized his voice had deepened, resonating through the chamber unnaturally. As if it was not him speaking, but the new blood inside him using his throat.

The ritualists had left long ago. Only three remained: the king, the storm, and the offering. And those who would give their lives to feed this new world.

“Lorian…” She caught him by the arm. He turned slowly toward her, his gaze pleased. That alone made Nymre halt. “Just…” The air caught in her throat. “Just… just live, Lorian. No matter how. Do not allow them to destroy you.”

It was not what she wanted to say. Her mind screamed at him to stop, to abandon all of this. But that was no longer an option. There was only death or this sacrifice. No good solution remained—not in these times, not today. No tomorrow.

“How do you…?”

She was asking how she would release and absorb the vessel’s power. She would not like the answer.

The gods’ fingers moved slowly through the mass of meat, crawling over roots and flesh like spiders—spindly legs eager to seize him and drain him dry. That was what gods did: drain every fae, then move on to devour all life.

But it did not matter. He was not doing this for them. Even if they would believed he was. Their assumption would make his new rules far more pleasant.

His hand sank deeper into Tiyan’s hair, pulling. Heat surged through his limbs; flames pressed against his skin, wanting to burst free, to rule the earth, to consume him. His hand traveled down Tiyan’s neck, closing around it for a heartbeat—Tiyan gasped for air—then continued its path across his chest, his stomach. The shadows joined the caress, spilling between Tiyan’s legs.

The vessel shivered, as if touched by the most exquisite delight.

“Lorian…”

Lorian, however, was already deep into the rite of flesh and blood—where power could be released only through… connection. And lust.

His lips met Tiyan’s. They were scorching, like a furnace. His own were no less hot. Lorian gripped the boy’s hair and kissed him.

Flame writhed inside Tiyan, desperate to enter the one violating their owner—their child, their prey. Lorian’s tongue tasted him as though he were a dish served to appease a ravenous desire. He sensed Nymre behind him; her breath came hard and fast.

The kiss deepened, grew violent. Lorian’s shadows pulsed between Tiyan’s legs, and the boy groaned—biting the long tongue invading his mouth. But Lorian only laughed into him and sucked harder. The gods’ fingers gathered the piles of flesh from the walls; some dripped to the floor, some hovered in the air, defying gravity.

They touched the true core of demise. Their bodies awakened—fast, faster than ever before—but their awakening was only the prelude to their death.

And they felt it. They knew it.

Tiyan moaned, his legs wrapping around Lorian’s waist, hungrily. Lorian only deepened the kiss, his tongue shifting into shadow and reaching into Tiyan’s depths.

Into his heart.

Into his core.

He was not kissing him. He was not even offering him.

He was devouring his soul.

And Tiyan allowed it. His mind was calm—like a stagnant pond, like a dead ocean. But his body was eager. His body was so willing.

A thin thread of flame latched onto Lorian’s shadowed tongue and traveled down the fae king’s throat. Lorian welcomed it with a hiss—straight into Tiyan’s mouth. Then more followed. Dozens. Hundreds.

Millions.

Tiyan’s soul, shattered into tiny particles, streamed toward the shadowed form of Lorian’s body. Heat burned around them, forcing Nymre to step back, her hair lifting in the warm wind rising from their joined bodies.

Lorian drank—hard, voracious—taking every drop of the gods’ son. His muscles tightened in a spasm that could have been a climax, if it had not seized his entire body. The gods screamed from within the walls, their hands reaching toward them, their eyes more alive than they had been even before their slumber.

Nymre screamed too, watching as Lorian was consumed by a black mist tangled with a flaming blaze of dancing, maddened fire.

And the world went silent.

And the world went white.

*

Nymre tried to lift herself from the ground, but she could only drag her body across the floor, unable to feel her limbs. Her eyes were blind, and panic welcomed her in the bright nothingness. Her ears felt like stuffed with dove feathers, shut on every sensation.

Lorian… She tried to call him, but no sound escaped her lips.

What happened? Lorian…?

The chamber was drowned in white. She realized she wasn’t blind—reality itself had become nothing. As if a star had died, cutting away all vision and sound.

How…

Was the rite not successful?

Where am I?

She crawled forward and suddenly touched something wet and sticky. Her fingers closed around it.

Meat.

Her sight tried to scream. Her voice tried to break through the bizarre mist. But it felt as though all life had been erased from the world, leaving only white silence.

Meat? From where?

She prayed it came from the walls, where the gods had been trapped.

She couldn’t bear the ringing emptiness. Her senses were not made for this bright void. She collapsed again.

*

When her senses returned, she heard the entire temple crumbling. The sound came through the mist—muted, buzzing in her skull rather than roaring. The walls were falling as if struck by a storm too wild for them to withstand.

“Lorian!” Her voice finally broke through the pandemonium. The temple was being stripped of its flesh. Meat evaporated slowly, peeling away in excruciating layers. The stone beneath corroded, as though time had decided this place had reached its end and accelerated its decay. It looked like creation in reverse—unbuilding itself.

And then… she saw him.

He was there.

Power oozed from him like he was made of it, like his core became darkness and now he spread it, to send life on its knees. His shadowed form, solidified and immense, emanated a night so deep it killed any light that dared approach.

Beautiful—cracking with flames so hot she felt them even from afar.

Tiyan lay at his feet. She couldn’t tell if he was alive, though she doubted he could survive this. The collapsing temple looked as if it were being devoured, scraped clean of its very essence.

And around Lorian—ten figures, each connected to him by a string of light, each one dissolving into the shadowed beauty that was Lorian.

Gods.

They were eating him, and he was eating them. A tournament of will. A true measure of power.

They smiled—grotesque, delighted. Lorian smiled too, dark and hungry smile of someone who reached the absolution. They devoured each other with joy painted across their faces while the world collapsed around them.

Nymre screamed, even if he scream wasn’t born in her throat—but in her heart.

She screamed.

Like an evening that knows the day will never come again.

“Kosel?”

Taniv lifted his head from his meager meal. Every dish in Glok’narasel was bathed in the solid essence of water—pure, distilled from snow. Without it, food would not pass their throats. The Unseelie often used this trait to torment the Saru. How many Seelie had died with throats clogged by food that any ordinary creature would swallow with ease? A small globe of meat, damp and easily digestible, landed on the plate with a muted smack.

The chamber in which he dined was lit only by water lilies—small, glowing flowers, drifting on the shallow water that surrounded his feet.

Saru need water. Saru are water. If they are not water, they are nothing.

“How is it possible? He was found. Dal’coler reached him.”

The messenger looked equally bewildered, but he carried more news.

“He… is not alone, sashel. Sarsha… Sarsha is with him.”

Taniv needed to see it with his own eyes. It was unnatural for the Unseelie to release prisoners—except as examples. Or perhaps…

“Is someone following him? Did the lakas detect any magical emanation—hostile or otherwise—in them, or along the path they traveled?”

“We did the tests, sashel.”

“And?” Taniv could swear the messenger was hiding something. But why? Their safety depended entirely on how well they could defend against Dal’coler.

“Nothing, sashel… but Sarsha was with him. It was only a matter of time until—”

Now Taniv understood. Sarsha was the aura collector. She could see auras, even hidden ones. Yet the very auras she perceived were slowly masked and shared in her presence. She was too young to truly comprehend the dark magic of the Unseelie. They would have to interrogate her.

Gods, how cruel it sounded. But they lived in circumstances where free will was already diminished.

“Bring Sarsha first, govavel. I want to ask her a few questions.” He hesitated. “Or… bring her here, feed her, and let me inform the nakar’logi.”

The messenger bowed and departed to carry out the order. Taniv looked down at the meat before him. He should eat it—the meat was rare, at least not rotten. The magical winter had brought nothing but suffering to the Seelie: not only Saru, but Taktah, Ronics, and Sharevals. It destroyed their crops, transformed animals into fungal colonies, and brought most Seelie cities to their knees.

The nakar’logi might know if Sarsha had swallowed Unseelie magic… but the gods in his head were a cruel burden. Their voices rang so often that Rapis had lost all common sense. Yet this was still a war—a war for independence, for becoming a nation of free fae again, not slaves to darkness.

Taniv pushed the bowl of meat aside and stepped across the water-soaked floor—ankles deep—toward Rapis’ prison.

Prison.

It was not a prison for Rapis, but for what he had become in the name of freedom. His rowan chains stripped him of all power—save the one that spoke through him. The gods. Through him, they promised to help the Saru break the Unseelie’s grip on Seelie lands. All they needed was to capture the lone human traveling to Dal’coler. Capture him, drain his blood, and fill him with light. But one of the Bean Sidhe had found Kosel—and so close! So close. Now Kosel was returning home, with his daughter they all believed dead.

Looking at Rapis’ ruined face and body, Taniv wondered if it was worth it. He had sent more Saru into the Shadowlands, but the shadow faeries had grown exceptionally cruel, as though something had enraged them.

“Nakar’logi…” He touched the parched skin of Rapis’ face. His leader seemed not to see him, yet shivered at his touch—as if he were drinking water from Taniv’s fingers, not merely feeling them.

Rapis looked like a walking corpse. Yet before his decay began, he had told them all they must allow it. Only this could save Seelie from the dark folk. Only his sacrifice could bring them down.

Staring at the rotting, trembling form of his leader, Taniv was no longer certain. If this sacrifice was necessary, what would come next? How many more sacrifices would Saru have to make to cut the ropes binding their freedom?

“Nakar’logi… Kosel has returned.”

Rapis’ single seeing eye turned toward him, rolling slowly in its socket.

“Is… Unseelie magic… following… him?”

His voice broke Taniv’s heart. Dry, barely audible. Two weeks ago, Rapis had been strong enough to sweep ten Saru from their feet—nearly killing them. Taniv’s thoughts drifted again to the price they all now paid.

“No. But Sarsha is with him. I… I fear she has swallowed some dark enchantment, without even knowing it. Shall I ask her if—”

“No!” Rapis’ voice tore through the chamber, sharp as a cold gust of wind. “Bring Kosel… bring him… and Sarsha… bind her magic with rowan… like… like me…”

Taniv knew immediately it was a bad idea. Kosel could be the true bearer of the dark spell. Sarsha needed questioning, not binding. He also noticed a strange glow on Rapis’ skin… as though light was devouring him from within. He was…

“I am not mad, Taniv,” groaned Rapis. His blind eye, the empty socket, looked drilled with darkness. “Bring Kosel. Bind Sarsha. I must see them. I… sense tragedy… better if it is me to—”

A violent tremor seized him, bending his body in half. He refused Taniv’s hand. A painful hiss escaped his mouth.

“Water!”

Taniv quickly filled a cup with fresh snow water. With trembling hands, he lifted Rapis’ head gently and poured the water into his gaping mouth. Rapis drank like a parched Saru—even though he had drunk water only an hour before.

“The flame…”

“What flame, nakar’logi?”

“THEIRS.”

Taniv longed to ease Rapis’ suffering. But they had already passed the point of no return. Too much had been sacrificed.

“They… they want to stop me… Bring Sarsha and Kosel… and… unbind me.”

“Nakar’logi! But that is the only way to keep your magic from turning against you!”

“No!” Rapis croaked—like an Unseelie crow. “This could end far worse than my death! We all… could… perish so easily…”

Taniv knew no one should argue with the nakar’logi. But Rapis was his old friend. Rapis had sacrificed the most for the Seelie. Yet…

… the Seelie were the priority. Above all else. If danger was near, Rapis’ offering would be lost.

Thorns of fear pierced Taniv’s heart. Wet. So wet…

Beaded with Seelie tears.

*

Kosel allowed them to bind Sarsha. She did not resist when they sealed her powers with rowan and brought her before the nakar’logi. They had returned from a long, harrowing journey, stained with blood and suffering. Kosel looked exhausted—yet the shadowed tendrils that once hovered above his head were gone. Dal’coler no longer held him in its possession. Relief should have come. But it did not. Something restless fluttered in her chest, like a trapped sparrow, beating harder when she stood before the nakar’logi.

She had never seen him since he had taken the gods into himself. She was not prepared for the sight.

The chamber was dim and silent, heavy with dull darkness. She heard Rapis before she saw him—the mute crack of something breaking. Not body. Not bones. Him.

Sarsha was too young to fully understand her own magic. Yet even bound with rowan, she could not help but see the vast ruin the gods had sculpted into their leader.

She had lived half a year in Dal’coler. Hardened by pain, she felt only hollow pity and empathy for the broken nakar’logi. Even she understood he had paid a high price.

Her rowan-limited skill still revealed the true damage. His skin was parched, as though he had gone without water for days. Rot consumed his face. She did not need her powers to see that his aura was decomposing, burning from within.

When he spoke, his voice was like the murmur of autumn leaves.

“Kosel.”

Her father bowed his head. Sarsha noticed his eyes gleaming, expectant.

“I was released from Dal’coler, nakar’logi.”

Taniv, the Hand, stood beside Rapis, his gaze piercing into her as though he sought to uncover hidden truths. Perhaps she suspected they were under the influence of the Unseelie king. Yet Sarsha’s thoughts were clear, unclouded by dark magic.

“They wanted me to carry a message,” Kosel continued. “That is why… that is why I lost my eye. A warning. To never cross the Shadowlands again.”

But Rapis did not watch Kosel. His gaze was fixed on her. Kosel spoke of his journey to and from Dal’coler, yet Rapis’ attention remained upon Sarsha.

“Sarsha, child. Do you feel anything?” It was his only response once Kosel finished. Her father stirred, ready to speak, but Taniv silenced him with a gesture.

Sarsha hesitated.

During their travels, Kosel had warned her: if the Saru discovered any trace of Unseelie magic within them, they would be imprisoned. Forever, if necessary. He likely did not know what she had seen—the dark shadows nesting in his mind. If that was true, then both of them were stained by Dal’coler. Both touched by its cruel enchantment. And if she revealed what she knew, they would be branded pariahs.

Sarsha did not find this alarming. The Unseelie had used magic upon her. If the Saru decided those dark spells engraved in her aura dangerous, they would act in the Seelie’s best interest. And she would not blame them. The stakes were too high.

But she wasn’t ready to lose her father again. He wasn’t ready either—who was she to condemn her own parent? They were not guilty of being Unseelie prisoners. She wasn’t a martyr, nor was she a creature like Leira.

She was Sarsha.

And she had lived through too many horrors to pay for them again.

“No, nakar’logi.” Her voice didn’t shake. She didn’t even lower it. She looked into Rapis’s broken face and articulated every word. Strong. Not a victim. Not a prey.

Kosel had pleaded with her when they reached Glok’narasel. Do not reveal anything you have seen. The Unseelie king tried to break me. He used dark enchantments and manipulation. I didn’t shatter, though. But who would believe me?

Sarsha had learned, in her short life, that family was everything. She would stand between Kosel—and any danger—every single time. Especially after she lost her mother in the Unseelie attack. The Bean Sidhe, who tore Saru membranes with whispers. Sprites, who ordered small creatures to burrow beneath Saru skin. Red Caps, who seemed to take pleasure in dismembering her folk and staining their hats red with their blood.

And the Higher Unseelie, who commanded them—offering no mercy, taking prisoners, turning them into slaves, servants, toys.

Saru… they couldn’t ask her for more sacrifices.

Rapis’s only eye looked blurred, veiled in white. But Sarsha could swear he saw straight through them. Rowan bound her magic, but not her will.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, elder.” Again, her voice was firm and strong. “They let us go so we could tell you what awaits you if you send anyone to Dal’coler again.”

“And what have they brewed in their minds, then?”

Kosel spoke this time. Sarsha felt heat radiating from him—perhaps from the poor care his eye had received. If not for the bandage stretched across his left eye, he would have looked like Rapis—a twin to the leader, at least in suffering. He would mirror the wound not caused by an enemy’s hand, but by a god who had promised protection.

“King Lorian Ain’Dal offers you relief.”

One of Taniv’s brows lifted.

“Lorian Ain’Dal can offer us relief only by removing himself from our lands.”

“He doesn’t want more bloodshed.”

Rapis laughed—dry, sharp, unpleasant.

“Lorian Ain’Dal? The fae who bathes in our blood? He said that? And you believed him? Oh, Kosel… Lorian is a beast in fae skin. He uses his power not to save, but to subjugate. He loves the sound of our screams.”

“He still offers you a… truce.”

Sarsha noticed Kosel sweating. His skin had taken on a faint reddish tone, and droplets gathered near his eyes and under his chin.

“A truce with slaves. Because that is what we are to him.”

“We are not in a position to throw that offer away. We are already broken, sashel.”

“And that is spoken by a fae who was mutilated by him. How did you lose your eye, Kosel?”

Heat pulsed from her father. It was faint, but Sarsha stood close enough to see more and more sweat beading on his face.

“Father…”

“I lost it because I was foolish enough to try to enter Dal’coler.”

“You were indeed a fool, Kosel. But not because you tried to fulfill your mission,” Rapis nearly choked on the words. “No Saru stands before Seelie or Unseelie except to expose the latter’s cruelty.”

“So why you agreed to meet me here, without guards?” Kosel’s tone was mocking. “Did they whisper this to you, just like they whispered to send all the Saru to Shadowlands?”

“You do not remember? You wanted to go, just like the others” Rapis didn’t reply his first question, Sarsha noticed. “You wanted freedom, just as the others. This couldn’t change without the Ain’Dal influence. I hoped…” his featured loosened, like he lost flesh under his skin. “I hoped you returned, Kosel. But you didn’t.”

Sarsha’s heart wanted to tear her chest and leave her bleeding.

“The gods are killing you!” Kosel finally burst. “They never wanted to share this world with us. We are nothing but fodder, so they can claim the strength of Dal’coler!”

“Father…”

“And who told you that? Lorian Ain’Dal?” Taniv’s smile twisted.

“No. I say that, seeing what this flame is doing to Rapis. We are water folk! We should not allow the dam to be built—even if that requires making a pact with an enemy!”

“Enough!”

“Father, please…”

“You are naive if you think the Unseelie will let you prance freely! We are more than food for lost gods! We are SARU! Saru! Sarsha—“

“ENOUGH!”

Kosel’s eye gleamed with a whitish light. She had never seen anything like it. The eye… almost translucent. Beautiful. Otherworldly. The world stopped for a small, tiny, minute second. Sarsha felt as heat spreads—but not the same heat that beamed from Rapis. It was heat of boiling water.

Water, which was only way to secure Saru from drying. Their mother. Their life and promise of eternity.

Her world dissolved.

The shadow tendrils, attached to his head, like strings for a marionette. His pleading to not talk what she had seen. And—the dream, which she wanted to forget, the dream of black mist, filling her pores and entering her body.

“Kars’nah-li.”

The words dominated her world. She didn’t know why but her power, he skill to absorb auras, tossed in her like a joyful animal, ready to play.

And then Sarsha felt it.

Something blooming inside her. A rose of countless petals. And each of them, while opening, revealed a thorn. Water danced, danced and swirled.

Not her power.

… the rowan binds fell from her like leaves torn by a strong wind…

Not anything she knew.

… she heard them: Kosel, laughing, rasp pained laughter. Rapis, shouting. Taniv, calling the guards…

Water evaporated beneath her feet.

The world went dark. Dark like a starless night.

Dark like her nightmares.

Dark—like shadows.

And Rapis glowed. With sharp light, hot one, which made the water boil. Taniv tried to escape the hot water. Kosel stood there, like he was embracing heat and death, alltogether. The last thoughts of Sarsha were who took over his body. Last thought before the shadows clouded her mind.