28. Finally.We Are Awake
Chapter twenty-eight
Finally...We Are Awake
Athanasius
As soon as the staff broke I felt my power return. Something had been missing for so long, a piece of me that I was looking for in everything and finally it has been returned.
They said I was gone. Forgotten. Buried beneath the layers of their fragile history, whispered about only in curses and nightmares. Fools. You do not kill death. You do not unmake darkness.
You only delay the inevitable.
The moment my power returned, it was not gentle—it was glorious.
A wildfire coursed through my bones, raw and roaring, like every star collapsing into my marrow.
My skin burned from the inside, a sacred torment, and I welcomed it.
My claws extended with a satisfying crack, black as the void between worlds.
My fangs surged down like they had missed the taste of blood.
The shadows sang for me. Not in words—no, their chorus was primal, a hissing choir of allegiance: Master… home… returned…
Yes.
My form twisted, expanded, rejoiced in its shedding of limitation.
A lion's tail lashed behind me, thick and powerful, a symbol of my wrath coiled and ready.
The tattoos that marked me—runes of a language older than stars—glowed silver as if moonlight itself bled through my skin.
And my eyes, once black as oblivion, now shimmered—pinpricks of starlight within the void.
The universe reflected in them. Let the gods tremble.
I have existed before them and would forever be.
I snarled. Not from rage. No. From joy.
Across from me, my twin groaned, ever the softer half, blooming with the weight of her return.
Luciara, bound to root and thorn, let the earth reclaim her.
Trees erupted like geysers, vines unfurling from her skin, moss dancing over stone.
Her antlers—once laughably small—now crowned her like a sovereign of the wild.
A veil slipped over her eyes, and a halo of blossoms and briars wreathed her brow.
She was beautiful in her own way, if you like that kind of thing. I preferred ruin.
Moireth exhaled, and fate answered. Six arms unfolded with eerie grace, strings of destiny stretching from wrist to wrist like a marionette made of time.
Her ears sharpened into elegant points, her legs thickened with shag, hooves striking the floor like drums. She shimmered—not like sunlight, no. Like truth unveiled.
And Chronomir—hah. Ever the tired clock.
His aged shell rippled. Hair cascaded down his back, his aged face tightening until he resembled a relic of seventy winters instead of a hundred.
Still ancient. Still dangerous. His four arms—two pale as starlight, two dark as mourning—rose in ritual as his cane twisted and grew into a staff of authority.
The room could not hold us.
Luciara grew first, vast as the forests she once slumbered beneath.
Her hands, wide as hills, cradled the wolves—her children, ever pitiful, ever precious.
Chronomir’s barrier curled like time slowed, sheltering that petal-hearted Rose.
Moireth—bless her obsession—cupped the boy Caspian like thread made flesh.
And then the fortress shattered.
Stone screamed. Glass burst like laughter. And there we stood, Primordials—whole, undeniable—facing one another for the first time in millennia.
My breath was a storm in my chest. My smile, a blade.
We lowered our Avatars. They could not be apart of the next moment.
One by one, we took each other’s hands. Our circles had never broken. Not truly. Not ever.
We rose. In rhythm. We chanted.
Moireth veiled her vision—sight turned inward to the threads.
Chronomir’s hands pressed to his chest—time beating beneath bone.
Luciara touched her womb—life incubating wrath.
And I… I placed my hand over my mouth.
For death, when it speaks, does not ask for permission.
From our bodies, power poured. Not like light. Not like fire. Like essence made visible.
Green and red mist from Luciara, wild and bleeding.
Black and silver from me—elegant, endless, final.
Gold and white from Moireth, radiant as forgotten truths.
White and silver from Chronomir, precise and patient.
The beams pierced the cosmos. The sky blackened for miles. The snow howled as it rose into a storm—and then, silence.
We descended, shrinking, collapsing into flesh once more. But not diminished. No—condensed. Potency refined.
My boots struck the earth.
The world will remember us now.
And I will make sure they never forget what it means…to betray a Primordial.