“I . . . I didn’t . . . ”
They stared at each other, both of them confused.
My name is Erevos.
Chapter Four
Born From a Broken Prayer
Erevos
She had begged for a god, so he became one.
When the little human whispered into the dark, her voice thin with grief and breaking at the edges, he felt the moment her faith splintered, and because he had always been drawn to broken things, he listened.
The others had turned their faces away, content with their temples and songs and the prayers of the living, satisfied with incense and sacrifice and the rhythm of breath unbroken. But he, Erevos, heard what they refused to; he fed on what they would not touch.
He had felt her despair before she ever lit the flame, and when she did, he tasted it. It was divine, raw, and oh-so-delicious.
The instant her soul cracked, the moment her knees struck the floor and her breath hitched in her throat like somethingcaught between sob and scream, he knew she had called him. Not by name, not aloud, but in the oldest language: devotion.
And so he came.
The male’s hand stretched toward her, fingers filthy and greedy, curled as if to drag her by the hair. But Erevos had already arrived.
He sent his shadows along the splintered wood and the cracked stone, a dark tide slithering across the walls until it reached the man whose mouth still moved—still speaking, still vulgar—until his jaw jerked open with a strangled gasp as tendrils of smoke coiled around his throat like something alive. He tried to scream, or maybe even tried to pray.
But it was too late.
He was not hers. He did not matter.
Behind the man, Erevos rose, shadows building and writhing, slithering into grotesque formations and half-shapes, flickering between forms no living mind was meant to witness, let alone name—and then, he devoured.
His mass spilled outward, over the floor, into the beams, like ink coursing through veins too thin to hold, and when he constricted, the man’s spine cracked with a sound that almost became a song. Erevos loved the sound of dying prey: when the body flailed, flesh split, and bone shattered.
And Lyssena watched.
Her eyes were wide, wet, and wild with terror. Though he had no eyes now, only presence, only weight and shadow and a strong hunger that might have just devoured her too, he felt her gaze, felt her silence curl around the edges of what he was.
She tasted of belief and agony, of milk and honey.
Lyssena scrambled back, even where there was nowhere to crawl. Crawling in place, trembling, her gown wrinkled and her cheeks streaked with tears.
“I heard you,” he said, voice low and everywhere at once. “And I came.”
While the small, shivering woman before him wrestled with the impossible, still deciding whether he was real or not, he gathered the pieces of the broken door. His shadows slid across the floor, dragging splinters on uneven wood. The door groaned as it returned to place, fitted by unseen hands and sealed.
He sensed her family before they spoke. Their stuttered heartbeats, the sharp breaths, the tang of fear flooding their bloodstreams. He could map their limbs by the rhythm of it.
“Lyssena? Lyssena!”
The voice was her father’s. Foolish, not brave, calling her name as if she still belonged to him.
Erevos might not have understood why her family would show that they cared after what they had done. But he knew it didn’t matter.
What mattered to him was the small human named Lyssena, staring at him with wide eyes and trembling fingers.
“What’s going on in there? Open the door!”
