Page 1 of Revealing Fate

Prologue

“AS YOU HAVE KILLED YOUR love for me.”

Power exploded from the Goddess with the final words of her curse in a blinding burst of light and energy. Trees bowed their trunks, defying physical law. Mountains in the distance shrank back, diminishing their stature. The world on which they stood groaned. The Godking braced himself against the torrent.

It lasted but a moment. Yet it was a moment that would be forever seared into his very spirit.

When the Godking straightened, his Goddess was no longer standing before him in all her glorious rage. She was gone.

Gone.

The Godking scanned the horizon as the world righted itself. Then he turned.

He was the single most fearsome being in all the cosmos, yet what he saw nearly brought him to his knees. Their home was no more. His sanctuary, the place they had created together, for one another, was replaced with an aching void, the bare earth on the hill now stained with the remnants of the Goddess’s unmaking.

Gone.

He remembered now. What it felt like before her. The nothingness he had been in the midst of being everything. She was the light to his darkness and with mere words had ripped herself away from his existence, leaving a ragged, throbbing abyss within him.

The Godking roared. Spittle flew from his maw along with all of his fury and longing. He raked deep grooves into the earth with his claws, raging at what she’d done. What he’d done. That was the issue with loss. He remembered what it was like before, but he would never be there again. He had been marked by her presence, irrevocably changed by their connection, and there was no going back.

Only forward.

His cry ended on a battered, fractured note.

The Godking heaved a great breath, the worst of his anger releasing with the air that left his lungs in a whoosh. He ignored the twist of anguish as he surveyed the absence of the home they had built. He took a step, flattened blades of grass trembling under the pads of his clawed feet. The earth still sensed what he did: the mark of her destruction. It hung in the air like a lingering unease, thick, wrong, and worrisome.

The Godking hesitated, then retreated, but not before sinking a vein of his memory into the earth to honor what had been. He did not know if he would ever return. This place now felt too similar to the shame that coated his insides like viscous putrescence. He did this. And now his Goddess had gone, leaving him no way to make it right.

Leaving him altogether.

He would look for her. For an eternity, if that’s what it took. But not yet.

Something had changed with the words of her curse. Something profound in the world. As a creator, the Godking was intimately bound to his creation. He felt the plants as they manipulated sunlight, could sense the worms as they tunneled the earth, knew the pulling of the tides in the sea, heard the beat of life in the other beasts of the land, water, and air. He was the very lifeblood of the shurii.

And now, he felt a disconnect. It was subtle, deep within the fabric of creation. The Godking could not explain it, but it was there, and he needed to know if the people felt it too.

The Godking left the hill he’d called home and traveled far to a sleepy fishing village perched at what felt like the edge of the world. He had not been here for some time and was relieved to see it still stood, untouched by his love’s retaliation.

He crouched on the bluff, watching the fishers drag in their nets to inspect the day’s catch as the light waned on the horizon. The people would soon be readying for last meal, calling the children to their homes, and finishing the day’s work.

The Godking sat as still as his sculpture in the temple of Pheros, and watched the sun dip its first rays into the distant waves. He waited until it had fully submerged, twin moons taking its place in the night sky. He glanced up. The moons glowed as though lit from within, peering down like a celestial gaze. He’d made them for her when they had first woven this world.

“A gift for you, my love,” he’d said. “To shine on the world each night the way your eyes shine upon me.”

She’d laughed, delighted. “So, you made them for yourself then, my king.” Her hand had reached up to intwine her fingers in his hackled ridge. “So that when the day fades, if you are away, I will still be with you. A light in the dark.”

The Godking looked away. The village was quiet. He had waited long enough.

The front door of the modest sea cottage was unlocked and the Godking entered silent as the final sleep. He could still smell the faint scent of candle smoke, though the flames had been smothered hours ago. Even in the total dark, the Godking saw a small stove tucked against the far wall, its single hotstone still cooling. He inhaled. Sandtrout and seagreens. The dishes sat freshly washed and stacked neatly on the adjacent hutch. A small yet solidly made table had been pushed against the opposite wall, its chairs unoccupied and tucked under.

He maneuvered his bulk to avoid smashing the dinnerware, tucking his tail and crouching, hackles nearly brushing the rafters.

The Godking padded to the threshold of the only other room and peered inside. The cottage’s single resident slept soundly beneath a thick blanket, the narrow mattress occupying nearly the entire bedroom. The blanket rose and fell in rhythm with the shurii’s soft snoring.

“Alcior.”

The man twitched but continued sleeping.