Chapter 27 All’s Well That Ends
All’s Well That Ends
ZOLA
A
mun was always a peculiar sort. His fate seemed sealed from the start. He not only bore the weight of knowing he was the first sentient being to draw breath but also that death would never grant him peace.
I believe many things, but foremost that all is well, so long as it ends. His tale is the sorrow of one who knows no such mercy—no final peace, no happily ever after.
Amun never knew his age—let alone how many years he had seen when Eira left this life behind.
By then, he had seven lovely children, as well as sisters and brothers who still breathed.
Yet he kept no company with them. He lingered instead in the home he’d fashioned for the woman he lost, gazing long at her side of the bed, as though the sheets still held her warmth.
He studied her paintings as if they might breathe.
He walked her old paths, tracing her steps like a dancer relearning a waltz.
In his free time, Amun wrote. He fashioned himself a martyr for love, claiming in stories to have killed himself when Eira passed.
Most days, he wished he could. Perhaps if he did, he would find Eira in the ether.
Sadly, his will to live matched the endless nature of his soul.
Nevertheless, Amun spread his stories, though not many believed that the first man was dead.
His children found him, followed by his grandchildren, and soon thereafter, the world.
Everyone wanted to know the first man. In the crowds, he found glory, cultivating a following and rising to the heights of a king where one had yet to exist. It was not the kind of fulfillment to replace the touch of a woman, yet it was enough excitement to satiate his being. For a time.
Each night, when his followers abated, the world grew quiet. In that hush of loneliness, he chose to attempt the one thing no being ever should—a deed that defied all undoing.
Before her death, Amun made sure Eira would not putrefy; he convinced her to preserve her body through magic.
Eira, ever bewitched by the man, obeyed, unaware of what it would truly mean for her soul.
She wove light into her skin, sealed it beneath her ribs, and let the rays curl into her bones.
It was not resurrection, nor immortality—only preservation, stolen from time’s teeth.
Amun watched in silence. He should have stopped her. He should have let her go. But love makes cowards of the powerful, too.
Eira’s last breath drifted out like smoke, though her body never grew cold. Her fingers remained pink, her lips still curved with the faintest memory of a smile. She appeared asleep, and she would forevermore.
Amun held her body beneath his estate on Iris.
He built her a chamber of stone and gold.
There were no windows, nor clocks—nothing to remind the light inside Eira that time was passing.
He spoke to her each day, though she never answered.
But sometimes, in the quietest moments, he thought he saw her chest rise, occasionally an eye twitch.
He was mistaken.
During the days, he spoke to his adoring crowd. At night, he went to where Eira waited for him.
Amun began with flowers, tearing their roots from the world and watching them wither. He whispered prayers he no longer believed in to the god, Ayan, who brought him to life and left him there.
He went through five hundred and thirty-seven flowers before moving on to his next idea—something small and red. He’d held it for eons, unaware of the universal power within. It was meant to stay that way. No one being was ever supposed to possess a Soul Stone, to know the pulse of a planet.
Soul Stones are tethered to each world to keep them spinning, their own beating hearts.
The problem was not making them more powerful. More power—painful power—could have kept grubby hands to their sides. But now, in his trembling palms, it began to burn.
With the next flower, he channeled the red stone, and to his lovely surprise, the flower regrew. The gray returned to white, and the brown to red, like a clock reversing time. Perhaps that’s what he’d done, he thought. Perhaps he’d only reversed time, and not perversely betrayed his makers—