37. Chapter 37 #2
“I know enough. This one is Varyn. One of the oldest gods of the fae pantheon, said to have been born from the first oath ever spoken in the realm, an unbreakable vow made between the primal forces of earth and sky to preserve harmony. The god of protection. Strength. Oaths.” She paused.
“Seems very unlike yourself, considering you seem to break all three.”
He looked at her again, more sharply this time. “I’d sooner risk my men for something that mattered. Not for humans already marked for execution. You burned a forest to rescue criminals bound for the butcher’s block.”
Ren stepped closer, her voice a low snarl.
“And yet you stand here, under the statue of a god who swore to protect. Tell me, does Varyn’s creed not apply to humans as well as your kind?
Varyn is who stands between others and ruin.
It is said that every time a shield is lifted in defense of another, Varyn’s spirit bears part of the weight.
You’re just another coward who only protects what’s convenient or what you deem worthy of living. ”
A tense beat passed. The wind stilled.
Ren’s fists clenched at her sides, heat coiling in her chest like a struck match.
“If words don’t get through that thick skull of yours, maybe a blade will.” She took a step forward, her voice trembling with restrained rage. “Draw your weapon, Sylven. Or are you only brave when your enemies can’t fight back?”
Sylven didn’t move. His expression shifted with something colder. He looked past her, to the looming statue of Varyn behind them. When he spoke, his voice had lost its bite. “This is sacred ground.”
The words hit like stone.
Ren hesitated, her breath seizing in her throat. Sylven’s gaze stayed fixed on the statue, on the god of strength, oaths, and honor.
“I don’t draw my blade beneath the gaze of the Guardian. Not in anger. Not for pride. Not even for you.”
“Corrin,” she spat, voice cracking. “And Joss. Gods, he was barely entering adulthood. They were both on that wagon. And you left them to be slaughtered by those ogres. ”
Sylven didn’t look at her.
“I hope you remember their names, Sylven.” She took a step closer, her voice low and shaking with fury. “And when the time comes for your gods to weigh what kind of fae you really are, I hope they give you exactly what you deserve.”
She walked away, the gravel crunching under her boots in sharp bursts, like the earth itself was flinching with every step. Her shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, fists balled at her sides as if keeping her fire from leaping out and torching something.
Behind her, the statue of Varyn stood tall, unmoving.
And Sylven Draeth remained at its feet.
Corrin. Joss.
Ren stumbled over a loose stone, barely catching herself before she hit the ground. She swore violently into the wind. Her rage was bleeding into her steps now, wild and uneven, like her body couldn’t contain it anymore.
The arrogance of the fae. The way they stood so tall while stomping others into the dirt, cloaking cruelty in tradition and pride. She’d met vile creatures with sharper teeth, but none who smiled while they drove the blade in like the fae did.
Her breath came in sharp bursts as she rounded a corner of the courtyard, head down, still muttering curses under her breath.
Before her loomed a statue she hadn’t noticed before. It stood twisted, between eight and ten feet tall, hunched slightly as if the weight of its own form was too much to bear. The figure looked wrong, as if reality had tried to shape it and failed.
Its body was made from a jarring mixture of materials – black obsidian, cracked glass, corroded bronze, and bone-white marble, as if several gods had fought over what it should look like and no one had won.
Three faces spiraled around its head like a crown:
One, smiling.
One, screaming.
One was completely smooth where eyes, nose, and mouth should’ve been.
Six arms jutted out in every direction. One reached for her. Another grasped at nothing. One bled obsidian ink from its palm. One pointed toward the stars. One was folded in an almost reverent prayer. The last was broken, twisted at the elbow like it had been snapped mid-movement.
And in the center of its chest was a gaping split where ribs should’ve been, hovered a glowing orb, pulsing with swirling void.
A heart made of stars and ink, moving as if alive, beating in an impossible rhythm.
At the statue’s base, serpents, moths, and shattered mirrors curled together in a chaotic mosaic that made Ren’s skin crawl to look at too long.
Then came the whispers.
Low. Murmuring. Slithering. Fluttering.
Dozens of voices humming in a broken choir, rising from beneath her feet, from the statue, from inside her own skull. She couldn’t understand them at first, as they were just fragments, sibilant and overlapping. Words half-formed, too fast, too slow, too wrong.
Her hands flew to her ears, but the sound wasn’t coming from outside.
It was in her. The voices merged, sharpening into one.
“Tear off your skin and wear your truth. Let the bones of the world rattle in your wake.”
Ren flinched, stumbling back a step.
The statue hadn’t moved.
Ren’s throat was dry. Her heart thundered from the sick, gnawing realization that some part of her understood.
She knew the God of Chaos when she saw him. The Many-Faced One. The Shattered Truth. Also known in some whispered circles as the God Who Unmade Himself. But nobody knew his true name.
This deity was not born like the other gods; he was unmade .
Legend claimed he had once been a god of foresight, balance. But he’d stared too deeply into the fabric of reality – into the threads that bound divinity, fate, and belief. And when he saw what truly held it all together, he split into mania and madness and laughed .
And in that laugh, he shattered.
His name was broken. His face, split. His essence unraveled into a storm of contradiction and ruin, a god no longer of balance, but of everything underneath it.
Now, he was the whisper behind madness, the crack in the mirror, the doubt that never leaves. His chaos was a tearing away of the beautiful lies to expose the raw, writhing truth that is attempted to be buried. According to legend, of course.
His influence didn’t always come with blood or fire. Sometimes it came in quiet solitude. In questions. In the slow, creeping undoing of the soul’s comfort.
He bred rebellion. Madness. Brilliance. Collapse. Those who followed him didn’t always want to set the world free.
Some merely wanted to watch the world burn.
Ren stepped closer to the statue again. The orb inside its split chest pulsed with slow, rhythmic light, like a heart beating not for life, but for unraveling.
And in that moment, Ren didn’t just see the God of Chaos. She felt him.
She took one final look at the statue, at the bleeding hand, the screaming face, the broken arm, and whispered to the chilled air, “I see you.”
The whispers didn’t return.
But the silence that followed felt like a breath held in the dark.
Waiting.