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.