Epilogue #2
Vharok’s rage faltered as he caught sight of Mireille in my arms, the unyielding madness that had consumed him now shifting into something more akin to disbelief. I could see the moment the breath caught in his throat. His lips parted, a harsh rasp escaping as realization dawned.
“What have you done?” His voice cracked, shattering the tension like glass on stone. “Is she...?”
I smirked at his dramatics, resisting the urge to mock him further. “She isn’t dead,” I replied coolly, my tone laced with icy indifference to the turmoil he was feeling. My gaze returned to her serene face, fingertips drifting over her eyelids in the hope they would open.
“How is she not dead, Khael?” Vharok demanded, his tone rising, desperation threading through it. “I can’t feel her. She’s gone.”
“Gone?” I echoed incredulously, facing him fully. “Did you believe she was mortal?” A laugh escaped me, disbelief echoing through it.
“I’m not witless, brother,” he shot back, anger returning to his tone.
“I knew Aeldrin’s bastard daughter had divine blood—I bled enough in his search for her half-divine mother.
” He let out a growl, his divinity pushing against the runes on the manacle that held him.
“But she never ascended. She is merely a dormant demigoddess, practically a mortal.”
I stilled, my gaze sharpening on him. Did he not know who she was? His struggles continued, blood streamed steadily from where the manacle cut into his flesh, forming a small pool at his feet.
He didn’t. He really did not know.
Another sharp laugh spilled from my lips. “Oh, Vharok,” my voice dripped with scorn, “She is not ‘merely’ anything. She is everything.” I paused, letting him take in my words. “Did you truly not recognize her eyes? Who else has eyes that are reminiscent of stars, brother?”
Uncertainty, even dread, flickered across Vharok’s features.
His fight against the manacle slowed as he studied Mireille’s unconscious form in my arms, his black eyes narrowing as they traced the silver threading through her hair, the subtle luminescence beginning to emanate from her skin that marked her as fully divine.
“No,” he breathed, the word nearly inaudible. Then louder, with growing horror. “No. She cannot— It’s not possible—”
“No?” I questioned, watching as understanding dawned across his face like a plague. “The woman you have been torturing, breaking, claiming as your own,” I paused, letting the words settle between us like poison, “she will be just as powerful, or more, than even you.”
He bared his teeth in response, a challenge rather than a reply. The gesture was so mundane, so animal, that I couldn’t help but laugh again.
“I tire of this,” I grinned, shifting Mireille so that her head rested nearer to my chest. “There is so much to do—souls to judge, vengeance to plan, a little goddess to worship.” I mock-sighed.
“Enjoy this time alone, brother. Perhaps think about your choices as I clean up your messes, as I always do.”
I shot him a wink before turning away, shifting my focus to the structure around us. His roar emerged raw and wild as his struggles grew frantic, no longer fueled by blind rage but by something closer to panic.
Then, I released my power.
The dungeon’s heart dimmed, mortar crumbling between ancient stones. Support beams groaned as weight they had borne for centuries suddenly became unbearable.
And the souls. Oh, the souls. They came to me as much as I reached for them, all of them.
Every guard who had turned a blind eye to Mireille’s suffering.
Every servant who had whispered cruel words behind her back.
Every noble who had shunned her for her strangeness.
I could feel them scattered throughout the castle above us, tiny flames of consciousness that flickered in the growing darkness of my awareness.
They came to me in a rush of cold fire, screaming, shattering, dissolving into me like breath into wind.
Some understood what was happening in their final moments.
I could taste their terror, sharp and sweet on my tongue.
Others were snuffed out before comprehension dawned, their souls detaching from mortal forms with the delicate ease of petals falling from a dying flower.
Eris, the old guard, was the first to go.
I found him three corridors away, rushing toward the sounds of destruction with sword drawn.
His soul was weathered but untainted by true malice.
I consumed it gently, allowing him the dignity of a quick passage.
Finn, the young one, died in confused terror, his soul fragmenting as he tried to flee the collapsing palace.
Tavin’s passage was somewhere between the two, resignation mingled with relief, as if some part of him had long awaited this end.
Above us, Vareth itself began to fall. Not just the dungeon, not just the castle, but the entire kingdom that had been built on lies and divine imprisonment.
I could feel the land responding to my awakening, the very soil remembering who had shaped it from primordial chaos.
Buildings cracked and folded. Streets buckled.
The air itself seemed to thin as reality buckled beneath the weight of unleashed divinity.
But not Vharok. Not yet.
I looked upon my once-friend, my brother, my betrayer, and saw the unrestrained hatred dawning in his eyes. He had been so certain of his power, so confident in his conquest. He had forgotten one fundamental truth.
I was his God.
Unfortunately, I could not unmake him with a thought, considering he was born from the same embers I was. But I could make the rest of his existence unbearably uncomfortable.
The walls around us cracked, then folded, melting into mist as light from another realm bled through the dissolving barrier between worlds.
Silver and shadow intermingled, flowing like liquid night around the crumbling stones of our prison.
My realm. The domain I had ruled since before time had meaning, calling to me after decades of separation.
The rift unfurled behind me like wings I had long since forgotten how to use, a portal between realities that rippled with possibilities.
Through it, I could sense the landscape of my domain.
My cathedral of bone and shadow, vaulted ceilings stretching toward infinite darkness, a throne that bled midnight waiting for its master’s return.
Vharok’s eyes widened as he beheld the rift, horror replacing rage in his gaze. “You would take her there? To O’ssavayne?”
“Of course. Nothing in my realm would ever intentionally harm her,” I replied, my voice hardening further, wanting him to understand I would never allow him or anyone else to hurt her. “Nothing there would cage her, would demand her submission, would seek to make her less than what she is.”
I felt the rift stir at my attention, shadows coiling like eager serpents, bone archways gleaming with anticipation. Home. After so many years imprisoned in mortal stone, my domain called to me with a hunger that matched my own.
The castle groaned above us, stone and timber surrendering to inevitable collapse.
Guards shouted in distant corridors, their voices thin with terror as they witnessed the impossible, the shouts falling silent as I took their souls as well.
The very foundations of Vareth were unraveling, reality distorting around the epicenter of divine awakening.
“She will hate you for this,” Vharok insisted, his voice breaking on the words. “For taking her soul. For making her into something she never asked to be.”
A flicker of doubt, unwelcome and unfamiliar, stirred within me. Would she? Would those silver-flecked eyes that had looked at me with such trust now fill with loathing? Would the hand that had sought mine through prison bars now recoil from my touch?
I pushed the doubt aside. There was no place for it now, not when we stood on the precipice of such monumental change.
I had the rest of time to make it up to her.
“Perhaps,” I conceded, surprising even myself with the admission. “But she will be free. Free of you, free of this kingdom built on her suffering, free of the limitations of mortality.”
Vharok’s laugh was brittle, edged with genuine pain. “And bound to you instead. How is that freedom?”
I scoffed. He dared speak to me about her freedom?
“You ran her into my arms, brother,” I said, letting truth become blade, words cutting deeper than any physical wound could.
“You forged her for this with every moment of torture, every drop of blood spilled. I will let her take her revenge from you when she wakes, and you will then see what real freedom looks like on her.”
His expression fractured, fear and fury and something like grief warring across features still caught between mortal and divine. “Khael—” he began, but I had no interest in his pleas or threats.
I turned away from him, from the prison that had held me, from the mortal realm that had forgotten its creator. Mireille stirred slightly in my arms, her face turning into my chest as if, even in unconsciousness, she recognized who she belonged with.
I stepped through the rift, crossing the threshold between realms with Mireille cradled against me.
The sensation was familiar despite decades of absence, like moving from turbulent waters into still depths, from chaos into perfect order.
The air of my realm enveloped us both, cool and welcoming, laden with the scent of ancient power.
Behind us, Vareth crumbled. I could feel it even as the rift began to close.
Stones turning to dust, lives winking out like candles in a gale, a kingdom returning to the nothingness from which I had once shaped it.
And through it all, cutting across dimensions with the clarity of divine rage, Vharok’s fury followed us, his scream of loss and hatred the last sound from the mortal world before the rift sealed completely.
And when the stars bent to her name and the shadows learned to kneel, she would awaken to claim her fate.