She did not know what to do.
“Why would you die?” Erevos asked, and she felt the shift of his presence as he moved away from her, soundless but felt, a displacement in the air that made her want to look up, to follow him with her eyes, to know what he was doing, but she didn’t.
She mustn’t.
“You said you want to take me with you . . . ” she murmured, voice trembling.
“Does that mean you would die?”
How could she have asked that? How dare she question him? Foolish, foolish Lyssena. She had never spoken to a god before—at least she had never heard back—had never even dreamed of being in the presence of one. He could do as he pleased with her.
So she kept her eyes down, head bowed, because it felt right, because her body had unraveled into the shape of a prayer,and for once—just once—it wasn’t for someone who had never listened.
Theyhadn’t listened.
Not when she was a child, sick with fear, praying with tiny hands clenched over her heart that her mother’s cough would go away. Not when she asked for the goats to stop dying so they might have milk to sell. Not when she whispered into her pillow, night after night, asking for safety, or love, or a gentle husband.Theywere silent.
Theyhad always been silent.
Theygave nothing.
Buthecame.
And that truth was clear to her.
She could not understand it the way she would want to. But he had heard her. She had lit the flame and screamed inside, and he had torn through the veil between worlds to stand between her and the man who would have broken her. And he had not waited for gratitude, had not asked for ritual, before erasing the threat.
That was strength. That was a god.
She exhaled slowly and lowered herself further, pressing her forehead to the ground—though there was no true ground here, only shadow—but it felt like him, as if every surface now bore his name. The air, the floor, the weight in her chest—it was all Erevos. She folded forward, smaller and smaller, arms at her sides, palms open, spine bowed so low she felt the pull at the base of her skull, and still she did not raise her head.
She had never felt this small and never this safe.
Erevos. Erevos. Erevos.
There was no holy room. No elder’s voice telling her what she owed and how to say it. There were no temple rules, no rituals she needed to memorize. There was only this: her truth.
This god came when the others didn’t.
And for that alone, he deserved everything she had been taught to give and more. If devotion had weight, she would give all of hers to him. If faith had shape, she would mold it in his image.
Around her, the shadows pulsed. It was soft, like breath taken slowly. It felt warmer, with something deeper that wrapped itself around her gently, curling into the hollows behind her knees, the arch of her spine, like night falling softly over a weary world.
How could she ever express her gratitude?
So she offered more.
She whispered, “You’re the only one who ever came. Please, greatest Erevos . . . take me with you.”
And it was the holiest thing she had ever said.
Lyssena opened her eyes and felt well-rested. Though she could not remember the moment she had fallen asleep, and as she glanced down, she discovered herself wrapped in a thick black blanket, lying on a bed just as dark. Everything about it was unfamiliar and yet . . . gentle.
Is this my room?
Lyssena turned her head slowly, letting her gaze sweep across the space, and saw that everything around her existed in shades of black. One flat color, but within it layers, depths, textures that felt as though the dark had moods and temperatures and names she had never learned.
It felt like a cave, but nothing like the ones from the forest near her house. The walls here were strange, curling into fluidshapes that had no corners. There was no light except for something above her that glowed faintly.
