Epilogue Nin
I knew when I found the hill that something was hidden inside it.
My mother had not steered me wrong. Her magic fueled my makeshift compass: a fat, green beetle that was currently flying a few feet ahead in the dark wood.
My mother’s flying beetle and its buzzing wings had guided me and my two undead wolves for days, all the way from my temple on the shore, through secret paths in the Nightlands.
Paths hidden even to my father.
One of my wolves howled when the magic beetle hovered in front of the hill and dropped to the ground.
“This is it,” I told my lupine companions. “The Hermit’s book should be inside.”
The moment I’d left Molly in her world and landed at my father’s palace in the Nightlands, I’d tried to return to her. Every second counted, and I could tell from the collected grief of the dead that too much time was passing for her. Seconds for me, months for her.
But my injuries were too grave, and I didn’t have the strength to go back. Even if I had, I doubt my mother would have allowed it. She wove magic around me that was too strong to break, and I fell into a slumber for many days.
When I awoke, my wounds had healed.
But Molly was already dead in her world.
She had passed through the Nightlands while I was sleeping, never to be seen again in my world or hers. Not in this timeline.
But that would not stop me.
Nothing would.
I hiked to the place where the beetle had fallen and spotted its luminescent wings in the dewy grass there, desperately trying to flap as the magic faded from its body. It had served its purpose. It had led me to where I needed to go.
A curved wooden door was set into the rocky hill.
“This must be it,” I told the undead wolves at my side, who snuffled at the door we’d found. “Let us see what has been recorded.”
The door was not locked. Dirt and small rocks fell away as I pulled it open. When the dust settled, I peered into the doorway to find a small, dark cavern that had been occupied once, centuries ago, by a being known to me only as the Hermit.
The Hermit was something like a god, and one who’d been exiled from his lands, long before my mother was born on Earth.
Before many humans at all. His innate power had been the gift of foresight, and when he took refuge in the Nightlands, he wrote down prophecies for every god and demigod in existence, and some that yet had not come into being.
Like me.
The Hermit went away from the Nightlands many moons ago, but he left the records of his prophecies here in this cavern, written inside a large book.
A book that my mother knew about. How, I didn’t know. But she’d kept it secret from all of us, even my father.
Perhaps because she’d found some scrap of prophecy inside this cave that she didn’t want to know. She would not say.
I spotted the Hermit’s book sitting on a rock at the back of the cave. My wolves raced across the cavern to stop in front of it, sniffing. “Down,” I commanded, and when they obeyed, I stepped between them to stare down at the dreaded tome.
It was bound in some kind of animal skin—at least, I hoped it was animal. A few simple words had been embossed into the strange leather, written in a very old language that was easy to translate: Paths of the Gods.
It reminded me of some of the occult books back at Riverbend Manor, which filled me with a deep distrust. Nevertheless, I inhaled a calming breath and said a prayer to my mother. Then I did what she’d instructed me to do and set my hand atop the book.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then my hand was violently thrown from it as the cover exploded open, pages flipping wildly.
Until they slowed and stopped, falling open somewhere near the end of the book.
Here, the book seemed to say. This is for your eyes.
I sighed deeply, stomach churning with worry, and then dared to look at the open pages. Ink was scrawled across the crumbling paper in the same ancient language as the words on the cover:
Nin the Sorrowful, the Prince of Mourning
Son of Lord and Lady Death
That was most definitely me. Three short paragraphs followed, each labeled with symbols that I couldn’t interpret. But I understood the words well enough. They were predictions of my future.
Three futures.
The Path of Change. The Path of Stability. The Path of Transcendence.
I quickly read the first one, the Path of Change.
It spoke obliquely of a fracture in the Nightlands and me leaving my position and duties behind to travel to another land with my mother.
This sounded like what had already played out when my mother had become a goddess after the former Lady of Death had left my father and taken her son out of the Nightlands.
Maybe if it happened once, it could happen again.
The Path of Stability detailed another possibility, one of an Aeon of calm in the Nightlands, but a descent into loneliness and isolation for me, in which I eventually faded out of existence.
Not a great way to go.
Everything inside me hummed nervously when my gaze flicked to the final paragraph, the last potential path my life could take, the Path of Transcendence:
The prince shall wage war within the Nightlands in order to Timewalk and claim the hand of his human bride, the Grave Dancer, Lady of the Undead.
The royal family of Death shall splinter, and the prince will abdicate his throne.
He and his bride shall move on to the Unliving Lands, where they rule over Those Who Refuse Death’s Call.
My heart raced inside my chest. There it was, the path that included Molly.
But at the cost of my god duties. And my own family.
My mother must have seen some of this in her own pages of this book, yet she had told me of its existence. I didn’t know what to make of that, nor did I understand how any of this could happen. Prophecies are never a straight path.
All I had now was the barest hint of a direction, and it started with a war… and a meeting with one of the most elusive gods in all the lands—
Time.
I closed the Hermit’s book and whistled at my wolves to exit the cavern. We had a long road ahead of us to return to my father’s palace, where I could meet in private with my mother and figure out the how of it all.
But as I closed the outer door to the cave and glanced up at the night sky, I spied a twinkling star that shimmered and winked among the dark clouds. A sign, surely. My chest filled with a joyous determination.
I’m coming for you, Molly O’Rinn, daughter of Cat O’Rinn.
Lady of the Undead.
I’m coming to claim the hand of my bride, and nothing in either of our worlds will stop me.