At first, she thought the horizon itself had fractured, that the flat, endless dark of The Void had grown jagged and uneven, but as she stepped forward and narrowed her gaze, she realized the shapes were not landscape at all.
They were structures. Black stalls rose from the shadowed ground like carved obsidian, draped in fabrics so dark they seemed to swallow what little ambient light touched them. The awnings did not flutter but hung heavy, as though sculpted rather than sewn. Tables stretched beneath them, laden with objects she could not yet distinguish from this distance.
And between those stalls??—
Lyssena stopped walking.
Dozens of figures moved among them. All tall. All ink-black. All crowned with those endless purple eyes.
Her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
They were like Erevos.
Not identical, no, not quite, but surely of the same origin. Some stood with backs that sagged unnaturally forward, their elongated arms nearly brushing the ground as they drifted rather than walked. Others appeared fluid, their limbs tapering and reforming as though shaped from thick ink, edges blurring and pulling back into themselves with each slow step. One figure’s silhouette bristled with long, tapering spikes that rose from its shoulders and spine like thorns carved from night itself, while another looked too soft, rounder in shape, its form plush and heavy, like some enormous shadow-made beast draped in velvet darkness.
Yet all of them towered.
They moved, gliding between stalls, leaning toward one another, their bodies folding and unfolding in ways that made Lyssena’s human mind struggle to follow their anatomy.
She had not expected this. Not this scale.
Not this . . . multitude.
Her fingers curled slowly against the fabric of her suit as she swallowed hard, the sound loud in her own ears despite the distance that still separated her from them. A faint, unfamiliar tightness began to wind itself around her ribs.
This was Erevos’s world.
And she was suddenly aware of how small she was within it.
Excitement fluttered first because this was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? To see more, to understand more, to step beyond the cavern and into the vastness he belonged to.
But that excitement soured quickly . . . What had she been thinking?
The market did not resemble the lively human squares she knew, filled with fabric and laughter and the scent of bread. Thisplace felt immense and ancient and powerful. The ground itself seemed thicker here, the shadows pooling more densely between the stalls, as though they were drawn toward the gathered divinity like moths to flame.
Lyssena’s pulse began to quicken. If any one of them wished her harm??—
Her stomach dropped. She would not be able to shield herself.
Her suit was clever; it listened and adapted, but she was not Erevos. She did not dissolve into darkness. She did not tower.
She was a woman wrapped in borrowed protection, standing at the edge of a gathering of gods.
Her throat tightened.
For a fleeting, treacherous moment, she regretted leaving home at all. Regretted her confidence. Regretted believing that curiosity alone would carry her safely through a realm she did not yet understand.
She forced herself to inhale. She drew it in slowly through her nose, then let it out just as carefully, steadying the tremor threatening to take root in her hands.
Breathe.
She could not turn back now. Not when she had come this far.
Lyssena lifted her chin and tried very hard to appear as though her heart was not beating like something desperate to escape her chest.
From afar, the market of gods watched no one in particular. And yet she felt as though it already saw her.
“Do you think they will eat me?” she whispered to the cat, who wove lazily between her legs, its twin tails brushing against her calves like soft, living ribbons of shadow.
