Epilogue
KASAROS
The Trickster may throw the dice, but even he cannot choose where they fall.”
— FIRST RECORDED BY THE PHILOSOPHER NYTHROS IN REFLECTIONS ON CHAOS
The Trickster God waits until the blood moon sets before materializing in the chamber. His gold and ivory mask catches the silver light as he approaches the rose-covered door. The eternal smile carved into its surface seems to droop as he studies the blooms.
Their blue and red petals hold an inner fire that pulses like heartbeats, and their thorns gleam with an edge sharp enough to cut shadows. They’re beautiful and impossible—which, ordinarily, would delight him.
But he didn’t create them.
He reaches out with one elegant finger, barely brushing a petal. Power thrums through the touch—ancient and wild, tasting of summer storms and winter stars.
Not his power. Not any power that should exist in this realm of blood and shadow.
“Now isn’t that interesting,” he murmurs, his voice holding echoes of broken bells and bemused laughter. “Someone’s been playing without permission.”
The rose pulses beneath his touch, its light intensifying. For a moment, a heartbeat, he catches a glimpse of something through its glow—another Labyrinth, vast and strange, where different Gods play different games.
But there’s something else in that flickering vision too—a figure hunched over what appears to be a workbench strewn with strange devices. A human male with dark hair and attractive features.
The man looks up suddenly, as if sensing observation, his eyes meeting Kasaros’s gaze across the impossible distance between realms. Those eyes—intelligent, calculating, and holding knowledge no mortal should possess—widen in understanding.
The human smiles, a cold expression that sends an unfamiliar sensation prickling along the Trickster God’s spine. Understanding? Impossible. Yet the mortal raises a hand in what almost seems like a mocking greeting.
Then the vision collapses, the connection severed as the rose’s glow subsides.
“Curious,” Kasaros murmurs, unsettled. “Most curious.”
He examines the other roses, each one humming with that same foreign power, each one offering fleeting glimpses of possibilities he never imagined. In one, he sees mountains that reach beyond the stars. In another, a warm tavern. In a third, a redheaded woman with ink on her fingers.
But he doesn’t see the human again, though he searches each vision carefully.
Who was that mortal? How could he see across the barriers between worlds? And what connection did he have to the Raider and his bride?
“Well,” he says to the empty chamber. “It appears even Gods can be surprised.”
The roses continue to pulse, their light casting shadows that seem to dance with silent mocking.
He forces laughter which echoes through the maze as he fades away, leaving the roses to guard their secrets. But there’s an edge to his mirth now—a note of uncertainty that hasn’t existed since he first crafted this realm of choices and chances.
Someone else is moving pieces on his board, and for the first time in eons, the Trickster God doesn’t know all the rules of the game.
THE END…