Chapter 4
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 something caught 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!”
Fists struck his shadows, which had hardened to stone.
“Lyssena, answer me!”
“Please, gods—Lyss, please!”
“Open this door!”
The noise was loud, their pleading sincere. But they could not reach her anymore. Erevos has already decided that she was his. She, however, had not yet decided what to think of him, and Erevos did not rush her to answer.
He had all the time in the world, as he had been living for so long already. A creature so ancient as he was would not care for screams and fear of mortals he did not care about. He never cared for anyone, really, but this human named Lyssena had caught his hungry soul.
“Who . . . who are you?” she asked, her voice hoarse, small, barely more than a breath shaped into sound.
“I am Erevos,” he answered, as shadows spilled from him like ink, coating every surface of the room—the floor, the walls, the bed, and desk—until all that remained was void. “I am the one you called.”
Erevos did not know why she would ask such a question, as he had already told her his name and had come when she called. But he was patient with her. He gave her time to think and reflect.
Lyssena turned her gaze to the blackened room, eyes wide, whispering, “You’re not . . . like the others.”
“No,” he said. Those absent gods, those hollow idols humans created for themselves to hang onto something when they needed. “I am not made of harvests or light, nor of coin or prayer. I am the dark beneath the altar. I am the echo that never fades.”
“I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t know if you were real.”
“And yet, you lit the flame,” he said, shadows flickering as he drew closer. “You begged for someone to listen. I did. You gave your devotion shape. You called, and I answered.”
She said nothing after that. Lyssena only sat there, draped in a white gown, one arm bracing her weight, the other resting on her thigh.
Her hair—light brown and unbound—cascaded in soft waves down her back and across her shoulders, reaching her thighs like a veil spun from dusk.
With those green eyes, wide and full of sorrow and fear, she looked like a herta, the kind once kept in homes back in his homeland.
He knew it looked like the cats humans had in this world.
Lyssena’s mind screamed.
He could feel the spiral of it, tearing at itself from within. Guilt, grief, and confusion rose beneath her silence.
Beyond the walls of shadow, her family still cried out. Voices loud, feet thudding against wood. One of her brothers shouted her name again and again. And when she flinched, Erevos added more shadows of his to the walls and the shadow-maid door.
She turned toward the sound. “My family . . . ”
“They sold you, Lyssena,” he said. “They set a price on your blood and handed you to the slaughterhouse with smiles on their lips. They called it love so you would kneel more willingly.”
“But they . . . they fed me, they cared for me . . . ”
“You think a cage is not a cage because the bars were kissed before they closed?”
She turned her face away, and tears slipped silently down her cheeks.
Erevos was not sure why she suddenly started defending those who wronged her. But he didn’t always understand human ways. And so he decided to finally tell her.
“You have a choice,” he said. “To stay, or to leave.”
Her eyes widened. Slowly, she turned her gaze toward the shadowed wall where once there had been a window.
“How can I leave them?” she whispered, her heart thundering so loudly that he wished to come closer and feel it himself.
“The family that betrayed you?” he asked. “The ones who watched you tremble and said nothing while he reached for your throat?”
She shook her head, slowly, as if the motion pained her. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Then believe me,” Erevos said. “Come with me, Lyssena. Leave this house of hollow love and poisoned mercy.”
He had watched her for a long time.
He had memorized the way her fingers lingered on the rim of a cup, the movement of her throat when she swallowed.
He had counted each bite she took, noted which foods made her eyes close in pleasure, which textures made her flinch.
He had learned what she needed to survive—bread, water, warmth—and he had committed to memory the names of every object her hands had ever cherished.
He had done so to rebuild them, to offer them back.
Human devotion was never the same from one soul to the next.
But hers, hers was woven with longing and light, fragile and searing. It was the most exquisite devotion he had ever hungered for.
She hesitated, and he waited, because he had all the time in the world.
“Come with me, Lyssena, and I shall become your god.”