Then the road.
Eridessa, as a small child, crouched low, watching an insect crawl and hop across an old dirt road, fascinated by the grasshopper's persistence in trying to fly. And she tries her best to mimic him.
And then?—
The portal opens.
We emerge not as four separate beings but a force of God-given divinity to end the world she’s a part of.
We watch it through her eyes. Feel her emotions as she relives it. Feel her terror, her certainty of death. How she hides from us, just a small girl witnessing the four of us tearing into her reality to end life as she knows it.
Our power never touched her.
Never marked her.
There has to be a reason for that.
For her survival. For her presence at that moment. For her rising afterward, untouched, to face the devastation we left behind.
Just a small child who hid from us, left behind, terrified and alone, until a priest called her name and took her to safety.
“There,” Orán says softly, tension coiling through him. “Who is that?”
Eridessa stills.
“Grand… Minister Judiah,” she whispers.
The name unlocks more memories. Too much.
“Show us who he was to you,” I murmur, guiding her mind deeper. I draw on more power than I should—careful, controlled—but even so, I feel the strain. I fear what she may become once this is done. Or what she may feel toward me.
The memories spill.
Nights of pleasure.
Private lessons.
The real lessons.
Forbidden texts.
Special studies conducted in shadow and silence.
Rewards.
Punishments.
And then the memory that chills me most, the night of the worst punishment. A caning for breaking into his room to read from a book he kept locked away.
“Wait. Do you see that, at the beginning?” Orán steps closer.
“Eri. Go back to before he came back.”
She fights me. Thrashes and refuses to comply, so I play those previous moments for us all.”
I was too focused on her to see it the first time.
Her Grand Minister walking not through a wall or doorway, but a portal.
