Chapter 33 #2
The words hit deep. Because he’s right. I am angry.
Angry that she left me sleeping. Angry that she made that choice for the both of us.
Angry that she carried this alone. And I love her so much I can barely breathe with the weight of it.
My eyes burn and I look away before he can see the tears gathering there.
He doesn’t say anything more. He doesn’t need to.
He simply stays beside me in the silence, and somehow it hurts less than being alone.
Not long later, we’re walking in silence back to the upper halls, my heart not feeling as heavy thanks to Maelkar’s words as my footsteps drag along.
As we reach the landing, I feel a ripple of power rolling beneath my feet.
The air feels different. Charged. A mixture of bright magic and a dark void lingering.
I can feel Daisy and Korithax. Their energy a living thing.
I brace myself against the railing as another wave of their power spreads outwards.
Maelkar glances sideways at me. “He’s different,” he murmurs. “Korithax.”
I nod once. “It’s like he’s been touched by death in a way that’s changed him entirely.”
“It’s so raw,” Maelkar adds. “It’s like standing next to a thunderstorm that’s awaiting to destroy everything.”
“He’ll destroy the Six first,” I mutter.
Maelkar snorts. “Oh, absolutely. But after that? We’ll have to see.”
We continue walking onwards, but I can feel his shadows adjusting, coiling closer to him as if ready to defend him.
Part of me wonders if he’s struggling with what happened in Aurora’s Veil.
He’s seemed so different since we returned.
Almost like he’s sheltering himself. Even his shadows have seemed more attached to him than usual.
It hits me then. Everyone’s breaking. Everyone’s bleeding. Everyone’s holding themselves together with fraying thread because of those celestial assholes. And Daisy… gods. She’s standing at the centre of every fracture.
“I need to speak to Sariya and Elyistria,” I murmur. “I need to know exactly what Velentha did. If she suffered. If there’s anything left of her I can feel or find.”
“I’ll come with you,” Maelkar responds with his usual easy smile back on his face.
We descend to the war room in comfortable silence, Maelkar keeping pace beside me like a shadow that has chosen not to leave.
I already know they’ll still be there. None of them would have gone far after what happened.
Not tonight, anyway. Not when the world shifted on its axis and all of us are trying to find our footing again.
The heavy door groans softly as we step inside.
Warmth hits me first. Not heat, but the unmistakable pulse of divine magic saturating the air, thick and golden and alive.
It washes over my skin in waves, carrying with it the scent of old parchment, candlewax, and ozone.
The table in the centre of the chamber is covered in maps of every realm, their edges pinned beneath crystal weights and daggers marking strategic points.
Sariya stands near the far edge, her amber eyes molten with concentration, one hand hovering above the maps as streams of golden light spill from her fingertips, illuminating borders and leyline fractures in glowing lines.
Beside her, Elyistria’s pale radiance ripples softly over her skin as she turns the brittle pages of the ancient grimoire without touching it, her magic lifting each page like a sacred breath.
The moment Maelkar and I enter, both goddesses turn. Their magic vanishes almost instantly, causing the room to dim with it.
Sariya’s expression softens the second her gaze lands on me. “Aran.”
There’s something in the way she says my name that nearly undoes me on the spot.
Elyistria looks at me next, and the sorrow in her face is so deep, so unbearably gentle, that I have to look away for a moment to breathe through it.
Despite it only just happening, I do not think I will ever grow used to seeing grief reflected back at me like that.
“We felt her passing,” she says quietly.
The words strike harder than I expect. They slam into my chest like a physical blow, and for a moment, I can’t breathe at all. My throat tightens painfully as I force out the only question that truly matters.
“Did she suffer?”
Sariya crosses the room towards me without hesitation, her golden gown whispering softly over the stone floor. When she reaches me, her hands rise to cradle my jaw, her palms warm and steady against my skin.
“No,” she says gently. “She died with purpose, with peace.”
Elyistria steps closer too, her white light a dim soft halo around her body. “She burned bright enough to light the whole temple,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.
I don’t know how they know these things.
The goddesses have their own kind of sight—different from mine, different from Velentha’s.
Ours comes in visions, fractured and uncertain, glimpses of what may come or what once was.
Theirs feels older than that, deeper, as though they can reach into the fabric of magic itself and pull truth from it.
I have never understood exactly how it works. But now isn’t the time to ask.
“And her last thought…” Elyistria falters, eyes shimmering. “Was you.”
My knees nearly buckle at her words. If Sariya hadn’t already been there, I think I would have collapsed.
Instead, she gathers me into her arms, her honey and citrus scent invading my senses.
For centuries, I have held myself together.
I have endured loss after loss without letting it hollow me out in front of others.
I have stood tall because there was always no other choice.
Always another battle. Another duty. Another reason not to fall apart.
But this—this kindness, this warmth, this unbearable tenderness—it breaks something in me completely.
The sob that tears out of my chest is ragged and ugly, muffled against Sariya’s shoulder as the grief splits me wide open. My entire body shakes with it, the force of it violent enough to hurt.
Elyistria steps close behind me, her hand settling between my shoulder blades. Cool light seeps through the fabric of my shirt where she touches me, soothing and steadying, as though she is trying to keep my soul from splintering apart entirely.
“She loved you,” Sariya whispers into my hair. “Fiercely. Entirely. Do not ever doubt that.”
I nod against her shoulder. When I finally pull back, my entire being hurts so badly, it feels like I’m nothing more than a husk.
“She left me behind,” I choke out. The words taste bitter with betrayal. They’re childish and wounded.
“No,” Elyistria murmurs. “She left you alive. There is a difference.”
The words sit deep in my chest, painful, because I know it’s true. Painful because some part of me hates that it is. Sariya lifts her thumbs and gently wipes the tears from my cheeks, her touch impossibly tender.
“There is more you must know,” Sariya says quietly. “Korithax did not return unchanged.”
Maelkar scoffs under his breath. “Understatement of the century.”
She shoots him a look before continuing, her golden-amber eyes grave. “The Void touched him when he died. And the ritual Velentha used, pulled that corruption straight into his core.”
I frown, the word settling uneasily. “The Void?”
Maelkar shifts beside me, arms folding tighter across his chest, his shadows stirring faintly at his feet. “Sounds charming.”
Elyistria rounds the table and closes the grimoire with a soft thud. “The Void is older than realms,” she says. “Older than gods. It is the space between existence and unmaking. The hollow dark beyond death where souls are not meant to linger.”
Sariya nods, stepping beside Elyistria as golden light spills over the maps beneath her fingertips, illuminating nothing and everything all at once.
“It is not the afterlife, nor any realm that can be walked,” she explains. “It is emptiness beyond the veil. A place where souls unravel if they remain too long.”
A chill crawls up my spine. “And you know this how?” I ask quietly.
Elyistria’s expression grows distant, her gaze settling somewhere beyond the room, as though she’s reaching back into stories older than memory.
“It was once only a whispered theory among other gods from other realms entirely,” she says softly. “In the first ages, there were those arrogant enough to tamper with death itself—to cross beyond the veil and return, believing they could uncover what lay on the other side.”
Maelkar’s brow furrows. “And?”
“They came back changed,” Sariya says, her voice quieter now. “Not wounded. Not broken. But emptied.”
The word hangs cold in the air. Emptied. Is that what he is now?
“As though something essential had been hollowed out of them,” Elyistria continues. “Their emotions void of joy. Their souls… vacant. They could still speak, still move, still wield power—but whatever made them themselves had been stripped away.”
“Void of what they once were,” Sariya says. “That is where the name came from.”
I swallow hard. “So no one really knows what it is?”
“No,” Elyistria says. “Only that those who enter it are never meant to return unchanged. And Korithax…” her eyes darken with worry. “He was dead long enough for it to leave its mark. And strong enough for it to want to latch onto him.”
I swallow hard. “Is he dangerous?”
“Yes,” Elyistria says simply. “To the Six. To those who threaten Daisy. To anyone who harms what he loves.”
“And to himself,” Sariya adds. “He is unstable. His magic may lash out without warning.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Daisy is in no state to handle that.”