CHAPTER 2
When the Ocean and Earth joined the Sun, balance was achieved, and balance demanded gratitude expressed through devotion. It was then that Zephryn Vale descended, her unseen hands testing us with wind and time, teaching us to endure without breaking.
Snippet from “The Book of Natural History” By Priestess Antonella Killoran
Present Day
Lyra looked up from her bowl of cereal, her spoon filled with milk and crunchy bits.
Her mother’s face, a mirror image etched with years, loomed above her.
Diane’s chocolate-brown eyes were clouded with a heavy, silent disappointment, a palpable hopelessness settling in the air between them.
Lyra knew she was about to get the speech about hanging in there, and she would get approved.
She would no longer be the ‘unaligned one’, a title that had followed her since her first rejection at sixteen.
Then she could find an actual job and move out.
Her two brothers had already moved out and married, and here Lyra was, recently fired again for what seemed like the millionth time because she was not properly aligned with their core values, aka godless.
Lyra sighed, thinking about how she was applying for the last god on the list, the fifteenth god she would apply for the god of strife.
He denied no one, so she was a shoo-in for a life of misery and menial tasks.
“Honey, you just need to keep your chin up,” Diane Nymphaea finally said, her voice thin.
She placed her hands flat on the table, leaning slightly forward.
“There is still a god left. You haven’t tried the Goddess of Peace yet, have you?
They’re a quiet congregation, but they accept people.
There’s always the God of Shadows as well.
Or...” she hesitated, her gaze drifting to the window as if the solution lay somewhere outside, “Or you could try the God of Strife. Alaios. He accepts anyone, right? Even if the worship is... difficult. It’s still a place to belong. ”
Lyra pushed a piece of cereal around her bowl; the milk was almost gone.
“I tried the Goddess of Peace last year twice and last month, Mom. Remember? She said my aura lacked submission. And the God of Shadow said my light was too distracting. I’m applying to Alaios today.
He’s the very last one on the list. I have faced rejection from every god but him. Some multi-times.”
A long silence settled between them, broken only by the clinking of Lyra’s spoon against the ceramic bowl as swirled the last bit of cereal around.
“Maybe start by showing him proper respect and calling him by title,” Diane sighed. “You should call him God Alaios, not just use his first name.”
“Yes, Mom,” Lyra grumbled. Crimson, like a sudden sunset, crept up her neck and bloomed across her cheeks. She could feel the tightening in her chest, a familiar dread settling in.
“Your father and I just... we worry,” her mother continued, the hopelessness in her eyes deepening.
“Your brother, Orin, he’s a devoted follower of Mira now.
He has that wonderful job with the city council.
And even Cadence, he found his footing with the Earth God, Petro.
They’re both settled. Married. Happy. We just want that for you, Lyra.
A good life, a safe life, a happy life. It’s impossible without a god’s blessing. ”
Lyra knew the silent implication: And it’s an embarrassment to have a godless, jobless daughter living at home at twenty-eight.
“I know, Mom,” Lyra murmured, the familiar weight of disappointment pressing down on her.
“This morning, I will go to the temple to find out if they approved or denied me. I’ll get my denial from the God of Strife, too, then I guess I can officially crawl under a rock, and you won’t have to worry about looking disappointed at me.
” She didn’t mean it, not really. Alaios Tugadóir, the God of Strife, was the god of last resort, the deity who took the broken, the discarded, and the ones too ambitious or too desperate for anyone else.
He was universally accepted as a stepping stone to something better, a temporary badge of belonging.
Surely, even she, Lyra Nymphaea, was worthy of a life of sanctioned misery.
“Don’t talk like that,” her mother said, though the conviction in her voice was absent. “Just go, apply. Get it done. Maybe God Alaios will surprise you and show you his favor.”
Lyra doubted it highly. The only surprise she expected was finding a new, more tedious form of suffering to fill her days. She pushed her chair back, the scrape of the wood against the linoleum loud in the sudden quiet kitchen as she walked her bowl to the sink.
“Wish me luck,” Lyra said dryly, moving toward the door.
“May the gods ever be with you,” her mother replied automatically, the standard farewell ringing hollow between them.
Not yet, Mom. That’s the problem, Lyra thought as she grabbed her battered handbag, the denial letter from the previous god still inside, a bitter keepsake. The gods are never with me.
“And you,” Lyra mumbled back.
The stamp slammed down on the form with a dull thud.
Denied in big, bold letters blotted out the page.
She had worked so hard to fill out. She tried to hide the tears that pricked her eyes, as this was the fifteenth god who had denied her petition.
Fifteen out of fifteen gods had told her no, some multiple times.
Her stomach clenched, a tight knot of ice. Every fear, a shadowy specter, loomed in the dim light closing in on her. What is wrong with me?
She knew her parents would once again be disappointed in their only daughter. Her dad’s brow would furrow as he glared at her, and her mom would snort as she threw her hands up.
“I’m sure you know where the door is,” the pretty brunette priestess sneered before turning on her heel and walking away. The clicking of her heels echoed throughout the hallway as she left.
Lyra turned, a rustle of fabric marking her departure.
Her gaze dropped to her scuffed shoes, each step a soft thud on the polished floor, carrying her toward the promise of yet another dissection of her shortcomings.
Not wanting to go back to her house to explain once again how she had been denied.
She clutched this letter tight to her chest, just as she had twelve years ago with the first rejection letter.
Her eyes traced the stark interior of the temple, a space carved from cool, dark-grey marble.
The architecture spoke in a language of severe, minimalist lines, each edge clean and unadorned, and a brutal simplicity that eschewed all ornamentation.
Subdued light seeped in through narrow, vertical slits high on the walls, more like wounds than windows.
These openings offered only thin, hushed strips of daylight, struggling against the pervasive gloom that clung to the stone.
The air itself felt heavy, charged with a sense of immense, contained tension.
She didn’t know of anyone whom all the gods had denied before. There were some outcasts who chose not to worship, but no one would ever hire them. They lived on the outskirts of civilization, alone and isolated from society.
The letter crinkled in her hand. The last one.
She had applied to every single deity over the past twelve years, some multiple times, clinging to the desperate hope that one, anyone, would take her in.
The application was an exhausting ritual of hope and humiliation.
This was the deity of the truly desperate, the god no one willingly worshiped because who wants to spend their life in reverence of conflict and suffering?
Yet even the God of Strife had rejected me.
The crimson DENIED was a final, savage full stop on her life.
At twenty-eight, godless, jobless, and friendless, she had lost her job for the fifth time that year, just eight months into the year.
Who would hire a girl who brought no divine alignment to the workplace?
My dating life was a joke; men didn’t want a “charity case” who couldn’t even manage to pledge allegiance to even a minor deity.
She still lived in her childhood bedroom, unable to afford even a cheap apartment, constantly under the cold, judgmental scrutiny of her parents’ disappointment.
The brutal butt of every joke by her brothers.
The last bit of hope—the fragile, pathetic thread she’d spun around the God of Strife—had finally snapped when she watched that stamp slam down on the paper.
A wave of crushing despair washed over her.
She crumpled the form; the paper scraping her palm, and sank onto a bench in front of the temple, burying her face in her hands.
The crash course her life had become was now heading for a spectacular, solitary wreck, and no matter how hard she hit the brakes, it seemed they didn’t work.
Then, a shadow fell over her. Great, someone has come to gloat about my misery.
“I’m surprised to see you still sitting here,” a deep, resonant voice said, devoid of the sneering pity she had been expecting.
Lyra looked up, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.
Standing over her was a male, no, not a male—a God, she instantly knew, though he wasn’t dressed in the customary temple robes.
He wore a simple, dark tunic, and his presence felt like a sudden drop in temperature, cold and sharp.
His black hair lay slicked back, framing a face marred by a stark scar that sliced from above his right eye down to his left cheek.
It was a jagged line, a stark contrast against his skin, and it lent him an aura of perpetual danger.
His eyes, the color of rich chocolate, were dark and glossy, like polished mahogany, and they glinted with an icy disdain as they fixed on her.
A palpable chill seemed to radiate from their depths, a silent testament to the storm brewing within.
Alaios Tugadóir, the God of Strife, stood before her.
A shiver traced a path down her spine as her gaze lifted to him. A strange, almost magnetic pull held her captive, her eyes glued to his, unable to break the silent, intense connection.
He sat down beside her, not too close, just close enough she could feel the heat radiating from his body and smell him: dark leather and licorice.
“I know I shouldn’t be,” she whispered, her voice raw. “I was denied by you. By everyone for that matter. I’ll leave; I just needed a minute.”
He didn’t smirk or offer false platitudes. He just looked at her with a piercing gaze. “You’re right. You were. And the others have denied you before me and will continue to deny you.”
“Yes,” she sighed, her shoulders sagging. Even the god of making people’s lives miserable can’t wait to get rid of me.
“None of them will ever approve of you, so don’t try,” he grunted. “Stop applying and just go home.”
“Just…” she paused, searching for the words. “Give up?” Her breath hitched, a sharp, ragged sound in the sudden quiet, as his words confirmed her worst fear, a cold knot tightening in her stomach.
“Yes,” he nodded, a lock of dark hair falling onto his forehead.
“Do you understand what that means for me? For my family? For my life?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do you all want of me?” she asked bitterly. The hot tears blurred her vision. “To gloat? To tell me I’m worthless like everyone else does? What did I do that was so wrong that every god will deny me?”
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, powerful rumble. “They all rejected you for the same reason, Lyra Nymphaea. And they won’t tell you because they’re arrogant cowards who fear the truth of their own hierarchy and the unknown. But I will.”
He paused, the air growing thick and heavy, the weight of his piercing gaze pinning her to the bench, the silence amplifying the thrum of her own heartbeat.
“You’re being denied,” he rasped, his voice like dry leaves skittering across pavement. “Because when you die, you will be a goddess. You will be one of us.” Without another word, he turned and disappeared into the temple.