Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
To Look Upon a God
Lyssena
After Lyssena asked the bed to become a place to hide, it did. At some point, she stopped gasping in awe each time the shadows obeyed her. She began to accept it, to expect it, to use it for her own need.
The chair had become a weapon, a bat heavy enough to steady her grip but not too heavy to wield. The bed had folded itself into a hollow haven. The desk had shifted, grown broad and curved, becoming a shield between her and the unknown.
The room no longer looked like the one Erevos had created.
“Songbird?”
Before she could register that it was Erevos speaking, she let out a scream.
As the sound tore from her throat, her crown tumbled from her head, falling onto the dark floor.
Her heart slammed against her ribs with such force she thought she might simply die right there beneath the bed that was not a bed anymore, surrounded by weapons of her own making.
But then the shadows deepened. The darkness around her grew darker, denser, as if it recognized him before she did. Slowly, she lifted her head by instinct, and then she remembered she wasn’t supposed to look directly at a god. Or at a male at that.
Her gaze dropped again, her body folding smaller in apology.
Erevos knelt before her, and she saw his knee—black as the void itself—press against the floor.
Everything seemed darker, as though his presence made the shadows real again.
When her crown had fallen, she’d heard it strike something hard, a sound that surprised her.
The floor had softened in his absence, like everything else.
But now that he was here, the room remembered what it was supposed to be.
A long minute passed in silence, and slowly, her heart settled back into rhythm. It no longer drowned out her thoughts.
Because her god had returned, and if Erevos was here, then surely, surely everything would be fine.
He picked up the crown from the floor, rubbed it gently between his fingers, and, without a word, placed it back on her head.
“Why were you so scared?” he asked.
His voice was very kind, and Lyssena, in that moment, wondered if this was a test—a test of faith, of truth. Because Erevos was a god, was he not? He must have already known the answer. Gods knew everything. They knew so much that humans would’ve never comprehended the vastness of their greatness.
Perhaps he was testing her honesty, or her loyalty. Either way, she saw no reason to lie.
She had never lied—not to anyone.
And she would never lie to her god.
She wanted to understand him, to learn her place in this strange and shifting place that no longer looked like the room it had once been.
She wanted to know what he expected of her, how she might serve him, how she might prove herself worthy of the power she had borrowed and the room she had been given.
“I was scared because someone was waiting outside,” Lyssena answered.
And it was the truth. She had been truly, deeply afraid.
Afraid that the strange presence beyond the walls would tear through the soft, living shadows and seize her by the throat, would drag her out and devour her while her god was still away, too far to stop it.
She had been afraid that Erevos wouldn’t return in time.
Afraid that she would die in a place she didn’t understand.
Afraid that she had accomplished nothing with the life she was given by the parents who betrayed her.
Lyssena had always been a simple girl with simple dreams and a simple life.
She had cooked, cleaned, and completed every chore that was handed to her without complaint.
She had shown kindness to others and even met a few people she could call friends.
Her world had been small, but it had been hers—until the moment it wasn’t.
Until the moment her family turned their backs on her.
And they had done it at the exact moment she’d felt her happiest. When she thought her life might finally be unfolding into something bright.
Maybe Lyssena hadn’t been so simple after all.
Because now she had a god.
“I hope I have not offended you with my staring . . .” She murmured, her voice quiet with shame, her gaze once more lowered to the floor. She hadn’t meant to—truly hadn’t—, but in her despair, she had forgotten herself. Forgotten the rules. Forgotten the fear of failing again.
She had failed to build the life she wanted, and now, perhaps, she was failing here too.
“What do you mean by offended?” Erevos asked, and Lyssena’s breath caught.
She didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t sure if he didn’t understand the word, or if he was testing her again, pushing her to confess her faults.
And so—quietly, with trembling hands—she did.
“I dared to lift my gaze to your greatness,” she whispered.
A slight tremor passed through her limbs as she spoke.
To lift one’s gaze toward the divine was a punishable sin; she had been taught that since she was old enough to walk.
From the earliest moments of her memory, she had been given rules.
Never go out after nightfall. Never lie.
Always listen to her parents. Never look up without permission.
Never question. Never want too much. And never this and never that.
And now, beneath the weight of her god’s presence, Lyssena no longer knew what to do.
Erevos stood, and as he did, Lyssena felt the warmth return.
It wasn’t the first time; it had happened before, once in her real room back in her own world, and again when she had first arrived in this place of living darkness.
The temperature here was never truly cold, but never warm either; it hovered somewhere between, a place that had no season.
But whenever Erevos drew near to her, something in the air changed, and the warmth blossomed in her chest.
“You may look at me,” Erevos said, and Lyssena’s heart began to pound so hard she thought it might tear through her ribs.
“How could I—?”
Had she misheard?
Had a god truly just invited her to raise her eyes?
“You could then,” Erevos continued, “and you can now.”
Her eyes widened so suddenly, so forcefully, that she thought, for a terrifying moment, this must be the end of her life. Surely no one was meant to survive such a sentence. Erevos had remembered. He had seen the moment she sinned when she first looked upon him.
And Lyssena broke.
Tears began to fall, one after another, slipping down her cheeks, past her chin, pooling at the base of her throat.
Her whole body trembled with the weight of shame, of panic, of holy dread.
She shook so violently that anyone watching might have thought her ill, or cursed, but she was not sick. She was terrified.
Terrified of punishment. Terrified of judgment. Terrified that she, a girl who had tried so hard to follow every rule she was ever given, had sinned in the one place she had longed to be safe.
She was sure that she was about to sink into the floor, fall into some pit, and burn.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, voice choked and desperate, “I beg you—please, please, do not take my life. I apologize—”
She cried and begged and shook in fear, her voice raw and her body going numb across her torso, and her fingertips ran cold. But still she didn’t stop.
She couldn’t stop.
Lyssena wept like the lost, pleaded like the condemned, and begged her god to spare her life.