Chapter Thirteen
I’ve often wondered what came before the kingdoms, before the gods shaped the world with their divine hands.
Was there anything at all? Or did they simply dwell in their celestial realms, suspended in eternity, untouched by time or purpose?
But more than that, I’ve always been haunted by a deeper question:
Was there something that came even before the gods themselves?
Tabitha Wysteria
Ash had spent the better part of the day seated within the crumbling remnants of an ancient witch temple, his thoughts drifting like smoke through the fractured corridors of memory.
His mind wandered to places he'd rather forget, chapters of his past etched with pain and regret.
Yet, as though carried by some distant wind, his thoughts shifted, drifting into a vision not of what had been, but of what might one day be.
He saw himself atop a sunlit hill, his hair streaked with silver, the years etched gently into his face. The sunlight danced in his eyes, forcing him to squint until he saw her.
She came running towards him, radiant with life.
Her beauty stole the breath from his lungs, as if the very sight of her was something sacred.
Gold-spun hair streamed behind her like a banner of light, arms outstretched as laughter curled at the corners of her lips.
That smile struck him like lightning to the chest. And her eyes…
those vivid, purple eyes mirrored her mother’s so closely it made his soul ache.
Ash stood rooted to the earth, watching in silent wonder as his daughter climbed the hill, then flung herself into his waiting arms.
Where were you? she signed with her slender hands, her face adorably scrunched in playful annoyance. He couldn’t quite tell her age, but she looked to be about fifteen, caught somewhere between girlhood and womanhood, full of fire and softness.
I just needed to walk a while, he signed back, to clear my thoughts.
She rolled her eyes, those unmistakable witch eyes, before smiling and slipping her arm through his. With a gentle tug, she led him forward, urging him homeward.
Ash glanced up at the castle that crowned the land. A drakonian stronghold once left to ruin, now risen again in majesty, proud and whole. And for a moment, just a moment, peace settled in his bones.
‘Ash.’
His name, spoken softly, tugged him back from the echoes of a future not yet written.
The vision dissolved like mist, and he found himself once more in the present, seated at the long stone table worn smooth by centuries of use.
Slowly, Ash looked up at the small gathering that had assembled around him, the haze of reverie still clinging to the edges of his mind.
His hands pressed against the cold surface of the table, an altar of knowledge and power, once used by witches and warlocks long lost to time.
Around them, the ruined temple breathed with quiet majesty.
A section of the ceiling had collapsed long ago, shattered by the wrath of dragons a hundred years before.
Vines now curled through the cracks, and light spilt in through the broken roof, painting silver streaks across the moss-covered floor.
Even in ruin, the place held a haunting beauty.
Witch architecture was like nothing else, always otherworldly, built not merely from stone but from intention and ancient memory.
The walls soared like cathedral spires, and in the distance, one of the old witch towers still pierced the sky, its once-glorious green fire long extinguished.
Adriana stepped into the silence, her boots echoing softly as she took the vacant seat to his right. Her expression was tight with concern, her gaze lingering on him with the weight of unspoken questions.
‘How l-long… was I sitting here?’ Ash asked, his voice hoarse, threading through the quiet like a fading song.
‘Two days,’ Adriana replied gently, a sigh escaping her as she settled in beside him.
He gave a slow nod, then ran a hand over his weary face.
It felt like only a morning had passed. But that was the danger of walking through memory, of slipping into glimpses of what might come.
Time bent and blurred when he visited the threads of fate, and it had grown harder and harder to return to the now.
Especially when the visions showed her.
His daughter.
The moment Mal had driven that dagger into his chest, everything had changed. For it was in death, or something close to it, that he had seen her first: radiant and alive, a future wrapped in golden light. And from that moment on, the world as it was held little meaning.
His war, his kingdom, his vengeance, all had faded in the wake of that singular truth: he would follow the path that led to her.
No matter the cost.
‘I know it’s difficult,’ Adriana said gently, her voice like the first wind before a storm. ‘But you must try to stop. If you keep slipping away like this, you might lose yourself in the folds of your own mind.’
‘I know,’ Ash murmured, nodding. ‘I’ll t-try.’
His eyes drifted past her, towards the rest of the group who had followed her into the old temple in search of him.
Keir stood close now, placing a quiet, grounding hand upon his wife’s shoulder.
He was a wyverian of lean build, tall and sinewy, a contrast to the usual bulk and brawn his kin were known for.
But what Keir lacked in weight, he made up for in speed. Quick as a blade’s flash, they said.
Adriana, by contrast, carried the fire of another kind.
Some whispered she resembled Haven Blackburn, though Ash had never quite seen it.
Yes, there was the dark hair, cropped to the jaw; the eyes like polished obsidian, fierce and unwavering.
But Haven had always been the calm within the storm.
Serene and composed. Adriana, on the other hand, was the tempest itself: defiant, unyielding, ready to rage against the heavens if she must.
‘How did you know?’ she asked at last, her voice low and careful. The question had been a long time coming. Weeks, perhaps more. Ash could hear the restraint in her tone, and he understood.
He couldn’t blame her for needing the truth.
Ash drew in a long breath, searching for that stillness within, the fragile thread of calm that might let him speak without his nerves tangling around his words.
Since the moment Mal had driven the blade into his heart, something within him had shifted.
He had become something… else. A creature not quite unfamiliar, yet no longer entirely his own.
The stammer remained, would always remain.
But he had made peace with it, at least most of it.
The fear of speaking had faded, softened like the last light before dusk.
And all because of her.
From the instant he met his daughter—silent, bright-eyed, unable to hear the world that surrounded her, his understanding of life had been irreversibly rewritten.
In those visions, he watched himself learning to sign, his hands shaping a new language just for her, a bridge between their worlds.
It was not better, nor lesser. Simply different.
And in that difference, something beautiful had taken root.
He had watched that other version of himself become a father, not just in name, but in spirit.
Day by day, that future Ash fell deeper in love with a child who knew no fear, who smiled with her whole being and laughed without sound, unburdened by the weight of judgement.
And though the fear of his stutter had long fallen away, what he cherished most was the quiet world they built together where voices were unnecessary, and hearts spoke through fingertips, through shared glances, through the language of unspoken understanding.
A world in which silence was not empty, but full.
‘I can see the threads of most p-paths,’ Ash said softly, his voice carrying that familiar stammer, though it no longer held shame.
‘Countless ro-roads stretch out before us, and with each choice, we f-follow one and leave another be-behind.’ He turned his attention to Adriana, his expression tinged with quiet apology.
‘But I ca-cannot see properly the paths of gods. Yours were hi-hidden f-from me.’ He nodded gently towards Adriana, Keir, and Cronan.
‘A hundred years ago, when Hecate cursed us, bound every creature to the land they stood upon, we happened to be here, in the mortal realm,’ Adriana explained. ‘At first, we didn’t understand what had happened. Not until it was too late, and we found ourselves unable to return home.’
Ash gestured towards their wyverian features, a question in his dark eyes. ‘Why wyverians?’
‘We’ve worn many faces over the past century,’ Adriana replied.
‘But when Mal Blackburn was born, we realised Hades was stirring something foul. We saw the signs. He was shaping a god-killer. So we shed our skins once more and took up these new guises, embedding ourselves within the wyverian court. We became Haven and Kai’s closest allies, always near enough to watch over Mal as she grew…
but never too near. We couldn't risk King Ozul suspecting the truth.’
‘So he knew,’ Ash murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
Adriana’s lips curled into a small smile. ‘And here I thought you saw everything.’
Ash gave a faint shrug, a rare trace of mischief in his tired eyes. ‘I like to m-maintain the illusion of b-being ordinary, now and then.’
‘King Ozul was visited by Thanatos himself,’ Adriana said, her voice soft, yet edged with gravity.
‘No god could tread upon mortal soil, not while Hecate's curse held.
But Thanatos is Death, and death knows no boundary.
He came as Hades' shadow, fulfilling his command. He planted the god's seed within Queen Senka’s womb, fully aware of the consequences once Hecate sensed what had been done. Afterward, he told them everything.’
She paused, resting her hand upon Keir’s with quiet reverence.
‘We chose the bodies of young wyverians, still soft in soul and bone, easier vessels for divinity. Children’s spirits are not yet fully formed, not yet hardened.
They yield more easily, and rarely do they break beneath the weight of a god.
Unlike adults, they survive the taking.’ Adriana gave a small, unbothered shrug.
‘But most gods won’t suffer the inconvenience of infancy.
They prefer a body ready to wield power.
They do not care if that mortal dies in the attempt. ’
‘We did,’ Keir said quietly. ‘We wanted it to feel… real. To learn what it meant to be alive. So we became these mortals. We let ourselves care for the kingdom, for its people, for those we called friends.’
‘But it isn’t real,’ Ash said, his voice heavy with the truth of it.
‘It is to us,’ Adriana snapped, her eyes flashing with something raw.
‘We’ve lived these lives. We’ve grown into these families, loved them as our own.
We’ve earned their trust, their hearts. Haven was my dearest friend, whether she knew me truly or not.
And we—’ she drew in a steadying breath, her fingers tightening around Keir’s, ‘we want to grow old in this life. In this borrowed skin, we’ve made something beautiful.
’ She held Ash’s gaze, her words a quiet plea wrapped in iron. ‘So we ask you to keep our secret.’
‘What of the other gods?’ Ash asked quietly, though the weight of the question hung heavy in the air.
‘There are…’ Adriana paused, her teeth catching her lower lip in thought. ‘There are two in particular who would stop at nothing to find me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I created the valkyrians,’ she said, her voice touched with quiet pride and old sorrow.
‘And they…well, they envied that creation. They demanded I share the power, that they too be etched into the fabric of what I made. So now, the valkyrians do not belong to me alone. They are part theirs as well. If I die…’ She hesitated, then met his glare.
‘If they succeed in killing me, the valkyrians will become theirs entirely. And they could mould them into a terrible weapon, one that might turn upon the rest of the kingdoms.’
‘Only the god-killer could do that,’ Ash said, hands curling into fists.
Adriana gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘And that is why we’ve watched over Mal her entire life.’
‘Mal has a good heart,’ Ash said, something fierce flaring in his eyes. ‘She wouldn’t hurt you.’
‘That depends,’ Adriana said softly. ‘Where is your wife, Ash?’
‘In the Underworld.’
‘With whom?’
Ash turned his face away, his jaw tensing. He didn’t answer.
‘If the other gods discover that you can see the threads of past, present, and future,’ Adriana warned, ‘they will come for you. They will use you.’
‘They can’t reach me he-here,’ Ash said with a scoff.
‘But Death can.’
‘He won’t come,’ Ash replied, waving a hand dismissively. ‘He’s far too occupied trying to s-seduce my wife.’
‘That doesn’t concern you?’
‘I trust her,’ he said, his voice firm and final. ‘I trust my wife.’
Adriana’s brow furrowed, the doubt plain in her features. ‘Let’s hope that trust is well placed.’ She rose, the scrape of her chair against stone echoing in the ruined temple. With a nod, she gestured for Keir and Cronan to follow. But before stepping away, she turned once more to Ash.
‘The god who wishes to see me dead is named Eris,’ she said, her voice low.
‘And her brother, Thanatos, is the one at your wife’s side right now.
He is the one whispering comfort, offering protection…
and perhaps, more.’ She sighed, her expression unreadable.
‘Don’t be so certain, Ash Acheron, that either of us is safe here.
Because if Eris and Thanatos lay claim to your wife, then both you and I are already as good as dead. ’