Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Erevos’s Human
Lyssena
Lyssena saw the market long before she even considered stepping out of the forest.
At first, she thought the horizon itself had fractured, that the flat, endless dark of The Void had grown jagged and uneven, but as she stepped forward and narrowed her gaze, she realized the shapes were not landscape at all.
They were structures. Black stalls rose from the shadowed ground like carved obsidian, draped in fabrics so dark they seemed to swallow what little ambient light touched them.
The awnings did not flutter but hung heavy, as though sculpted rather than sewn.
Tables stretched beneath them, laden with objects she could not yet distinguish from this distance.
And between those stalls—
Lyssena stopped walking.
Dozens of figures moved among them. All tall. All ink-black. All crowned with those endless purple eyes.
Her breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
They were like Erevos.
Not identical, no, not quite, but surely of the same origin.
Some stood with backs that sagged unnaturally forward, their elongated arms nearly brushing the ground as they drifted rather than walked.
Others appeared fluid, their limbs tapering and reforming as though shaped from thick ink, edges blurring and pulling back into themselves with each slow step.
One figure’s silhouette bristled with long, tapering spikes that rose from its shoulders and spine like thorns carved from night itself, while another looked too soft, rounder in shape, its form plush and heavy, like some enormous shadow-made beast draped in velvet darkness.
Yet all of them towered.
They moved, gliding between stalls, leaning toward one another, their bodies folding and unfolding in ways that made Lyssena’s human mind struggle to follow their anatomy.
She had not expected this. Not this scale.
Not this . . . multitude.
Her fingers curled slowly against the fabric of her suit as she swallowed hard, the sound loud in her own ears despite the distance that still separated her from them. A faint, unfamiliar tightness began to wind itself around her ribs.
This was Erevos’s world.
And she was suddenly aware of how small she was within it.
Excitement fluttered first because this was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? To see more, to understand more, to step beyond the cavern and into the vastness he belonged to.
But that excitement soured quickly . . . What had she been thinking?
The market did not resemble the lively human squares she knew, filled with fabric and laughter and the scent of bread.
This place felt immense and ancient and powerful.
The ground itself seemed thicker here, the shadows pooling more densely between the stalls, as though they were drawn toward the gathered divinity like moths to flame.
Lyssena’s pulse began to quicken. If any one of them wished her harm—
Her stomach dropped. She would not be able to shield herself.
Her suit was clever; it listened and adapted, but she was not Erevos. She did not dissolve into darkness. She did not tower.
She was a woman wrapped in borrowed protection, standing at the edge of a gathering of gods.
Her throat tightened.
For a fleeting, treacherous moment, she regretted leaving home at all. Regretted her confidence. Regretted believing that curiosity alone would carry her safely through a realm she did not yet understand.
She forced herself to inhale. She drew it in slowly through her nose, then let it out just as carefully, steadying the tremor threatening to take root in her hands.
Breathe.
She could not turn back now. Not when she had come this far.
Lyssena lifted her chin and tried very hard to appear as though her heart was not beating like something desperate to escape her chest.
From afar, the market of gods watched no one in particular. And yet she felt as though it already saw her.
“Do you think they will eat me?” she whispered to the cat, who wove lazily between her legs, its twin tails brushing against her calves like soft, living ribbons of shadow.
“Probably not.”
The voice was deep, smooth, and threaded with something darkly amused, and it did not belong to her.
Lyssena nearly screamed, the sound climbing upward from her chest before she strangled it down into silence, her entire body going rigid as goosebumps rippled violently beneath the living fabric of her suit, the fine hairs along her arms and the nape of her neck prickling.
Who said that?
It had not been the cat—of that she was entirely certain—and yet the voice had sounded close, as though it had been spoken directly into the hollow space just behind her ear.
Her gaze darted to the left, and then to the right, where the market stretched in endless ink-dark rows, but she saw no one standing near enough to have addressed her.
Then she heard a single step behind her.
She turned quickly, heart hammering so violently she felt it in her ears, only to find nothing there at all, nothing but open space and the dense, unmoving shadows of The Void.
“I am Rolam. Nice to meet you, human.”
Lyssena spun back around so fast the motion made her slightly dizzy, and this time the scream did not even manage to form because she forgot how to breathe altogether.
A god stood directly before her.
He had not approached—she would have seen him—and yet there he was, towering and way too close.
She stumbled backward without thinking, one step and then another as her pulse roared in her ears.
And still, the cat purred.
A low, vibrating sound rolled through the space between them as the creature pressed itself affectionately against the god’s leg, carding along him, as though greeting something known and entirely safe.
This demon-god almost looked like Erevos. The same ink-black height, the same endless violet eyes that appeared to stare through rather than at her, the same sculpted darkness that gave the impression of a body formed from concentrated night.
Even the air around him felt colder, and she could not shake the unnerving sensation that he had not walked toward her at all, but had simply decided to exist in that exact space.
Though one thing distinguished this one from her own god, at that was the big, gray scar all over his chest.
Lyssena realized she was staring. Her gaze dropped instinctively as she suddenly remembered all of the rules that took over her life.
“Even when you’re not in the village, you will not meet my gaze?” Rolam asked, his voice smooth and playful, as though he found her reluctance more amusing than offensive.
“How . . . how can I . . . ?” Lyssena’s entire body trembled, as every lesson she had ever learned about reverence and divinity came rushing back into her mind all at once. “You are a god—”
At that, Rolam laughed, and the sound startled her more than his sudden appearance had, because it was very human in its cadence, a laugh that might have belonged in a tavern or around a dinner table, not echoing from the chest of a giant ink-black being born of The Void.
“There are no gods, silly little human,” he replied. “We are demons, creatures of The Void. Nothing more, and certainly nothing like your kind invented.”
Lyssena could not dispel the dissonance curling through her thoughts, because everything about him felt wrong in a way she could not properly articulate.
Not wrong in the sense of danger, though danger was certainly there, but wrong in the way his voice carried such familiar inflection, such conversational ease, as though he had spent far too long listening to human speech and had learned to wear it comfortably.
“Come now,” he continued, tilting his head ever so slightly. “Leave those foolish rules behind. Tell me, do you like honey and cinnamon?”
The question struck her with such absurd normalcy that for a moment she simply stared at him. Why would he ask her that?
What possible place did honey and cinnamon have in a market of shadowed demons?
Her throat felt dry as she swallowed, and slowly she lifted her gaze to meet his, forcing herself to endure the intensity of those endless violet eyes that did not blink.
He did not sound overtly threatening, and yet there was something about him she could not quite name. Something too observant, too aware.
“I do,” she answered at last, her voice soft but steady despite the frantic pulse still fluttering beneath her ribs, and she barely had time to wonder what explanation could possibly follow such an oddly domestic question—
“So you are Erevos’s human,” Rolam said. “He came to me and purchased honey and spices.”
Lyssena blinked.
The market, the towering forms, the awareness of being surrounded by creatures far older and more powerful than herself—all of it seemed to shift slightly out of focus as her mind struggled to reconcile this new information.
A strange warmth unfurled in her chest despite herself, softening the tense line of her shoulders, and for reasons she could not fully explain, she felt more at ease than she had only moments before.
This demon—this Rolam—sold human food.
Why?
For what purpose would beings of The Void require honey or spice, substances born of sunlit fields and mortal kitchens?
She did not know.
And somehow, that unanswered question unsettled her far more deeply than his laughter had.