The Power to Change Fate
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Orán
The instant the god’s full, unfiltered power comes for us, I spin and curl my body over Eridessa, while at the same time pulling her into my arms. I create a barrier around us.
Though by the slowing of the rise and fall of her chest, and her feeble, hitched breaths, I believe I may have acted too late.
Her life. Her body. Her soul’s hold on this world is weakening.
The god’s essence burns hotter and brighter than any force on this plane. He rages against his fall from grace, his unmaking.
It tears through the night like a maelstrom of defiance, spilling itself into the world with no restraint, no mercy.
I feel him everywhere—threaded through the firestorm, embedded in the ground beneath my feet, screaming through the air itself.
This is not merely destruction. It is his temper and wrath made manifest.
And I recognize this power.
The Great Dagda.
As he was before his fall—a god of excess, of abundance and brutality, of unchecked dominion—he remains so in his unmaking.
The land becomes his final proclamation, his refusal to be forgotten.
Against the stripping of worship. Against the slow erosion of belief. Against the long centuries of irrelevance that reduced him from a god to a myth, then from myth to footnote. And now, finally, to this.
A star torn from the sky. Burning himself into the bones of the world rather than surrendering to the afterlife that waits for beings like him.
I have seen gods die before, and they do not all go this way.
Some dissolve. Some fracture. Some scatter themselves across time and space, becoming echoes and relics and half-remembered miracles. But Dagda. Dagda chooses annihilation over submission. He chooses to take everything with him.
The forest feeds his fall.
His essence spreads faster than I can track, racing through roots and stone and air, turning the land itself into a conduit for his dying light. I cannot confront him directly. I cannot bind him. No blade or word or rite can contain a god who has decided to burn the world rather than leave it.
And worse—
His death is unfinished.
That is the truth that twists cold and sharp inside my chest.
As long as his essence continues to rupture outward, it destabilizes everything around it. Me. Her. Reality itself. The stability of this plane, and thereby the delicate equilibrium of the scales.
He threatens more than he knows.
I can hold his power at bay for a time—but not indefinitely. Horsemen were never meant to absorb the death of old gods. We are instruments of balance, not vessels for divine collapse.
Balance.
The word settles into me like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples outward.
Balance has always been my purpose. To take life and give it new meaning, a new purpose.
My gaze drops to Eridessa in my arms, and something inside me tightens, then stills. Time takes a breath, a great heavy pause as my mind works. The faint aura that once clung to her is thinning, dimming. Her holy light is fading. She’s dying, cradled in my arms, and I refuse to let her.
We do not end here, love.
The vow settles deep in my heart, echoing with every beat. I bind her to me—not just in thought, but in devotion, in honor. A promise made in silence, yet declared with everything I am.
Eridessa fights to save what she loves.
Dagda fights to destroy what remains.
And I stand between them—not powerless, not helpless, not yet undone.
I look down at her, truly look—and I do not see the ruin of her body. I do not see the blackened burns, the scorched hair, the flesh marred where freckles once danced across sun-warmed skin.
I see her soul.
Unbroken. Brilliant. Forged by trial and sharpened by compassion.
I see the woman who challenged me when I thought myself beyond reproach.
The defiance in her spine when she believed me her enemy.
Her stubbornness to be independent to make it up that damn cliff face, injured or not.
The revelations of an innocence lost through no fault of her own.
The careful, hard-won trust she offered in pieces, never lightly given.
I see her wavering feelings for me while we were in the stable.
Her fierce faith and stalwart heart, believing in a future no god had promised.
The selfless sacrifice to save all but herself.
As if the world might yet be redeemed through her gentleness alone.
She is worth saving. Truly. If there were only one life I could spare in this world, it would be hers.
My Chosen.
I clutch her tighter and press a gentle kiss to her forehead, sealing our fates.
If she can give her life for those she loves, then I will give everything I am for her. Because I would rather join her in death than have her stolen from me. I will not spend eternity haunted by what might have been.
Another refusal. Another vow.
I won’t part from her. Nor let her from me.
I lower her gently to the ground, reverent, as though laying her upon a bed of spring flowers or an altar in the holiest of places.
I lift her hand and press a kiss to her burned knuckles, lingering there before placing both hands over her heart—over the place where her courage has always lived.
“Do not leave me, Eliora,” I murmur, though she cannot hear me. “Hold on to your light and stay in this world. It needs you… as do I. The afterlife can wait. I’m not yet finished showing you all the ways I can love you.”
My voice falters.
“Please, love,” I whisper. “I beg of you. Come back to me. Don’t leave me here to face this end without you by my side.”
Then I rise. Time rushes forward once again.
The fear that once clawed at my chest recedes, replaced by something steady. Focused. Certain.
Dagda surges again as I shield us. Then I reach down deep inside me and draw on everything, every divine drop, every inbred shred of magic, and all the knowledge of the world I’ve gained. All the remaining life that as a Horseman lives inside me, and I push against Dagda.
He retreats like before, gathering his strength only to unleash another wave—hotter and more violent.
This time, I do not resist.
I do not push.
I do not fight.
I open myself.
I drop my guard entirely and invoke the highest authority in the known universe—not as a plea, but as a right granted by covenant and purpose. My power has always been to pull and to push, to unmake and to return. To siphon life and send it where it must go.
And so I draw—pull on Dagda’s great power. I pull every bit of it into myself, funneling it through the architecture of my being, the way I have drawn from creation itself countless times before.
And it works.
I draw every divine drop, every dying ember of his rage, every fragment of power he has already spilled too freely to reclaim. By the time Dagda realizes what I am doing, it is too late.
He has given too much of himself away.
With his essence and my God-given design, I become something else entirely.
Something capable of ending a god.
And something—if I am right—capable of giving life back to where it was taken.
The light starts in my chest.
Not as an explosion, but as pressure—dense, impossible, alive. It pushes outward through bone and muscle, through veins that were never meant to hold this much divinity. I feel it bleed through me, feel my form begin to glow as my aura ignites and spills into the world.
The air bends.
The ground releases me.
I lift from the earth without effort, as though the land itself understands resistance is pointless.
My cloak disappears. My true form breaks free from its human confines.
My great wings unfurl and expand. Luminescent light spreads outward rapidly from me into the forest. Heat coils beneath my feet.
Embers spiral upward, caught in the pull of my rising power.
Wind answers me instinctively, wrapping around my body in hot, unruly currents that hum with recognition.
I am no longer just standing between destruction and salvation.
I am becoming the Fír itself.
Justice. Light. Truth. Natural order.
The answer comes to me as if spoken from God’s lips.
Not simple Fír—but Fírdor.
The gateway to such things. The threshold through which truth, justice, and order are known.
I draw one breath.
Just one.
And then I unleash myself upon the world around me.
The force tears apart and remakes in a blinding wave—holy, absolute, annihilating only to create. Light floods the valley, brighter than flame, louder than thunder, erasing sound as it crashes into Dagda’s unraveling essence.
His rage meets me head-on.
His refusal.
His fury.
And it breaks. He breaks.
Dagda does not simply fall—he collapses inward, like a great divine abyss has sucked him into the ether, his presence consumed from one thought to the next. There is no time for mercy. Only finality as his time in this world comes to an abrupt end.
And still, the power does not stop.
I turn it. Wield it to rise above desolation and serve a far greater purpose.
I open my hands and guide the force outward again, reshaping it, rethreading it through the land. Life surges from me in waves, rushing into the wounded earth like rain after centuries of drought.
Charred trees shudder as life fills them.
With this renewal, bark knits, branches extend, split, and bloom with dense clusters of healthy leaves.
Roots reweave and grow beneath my feet, drinking deeply as green erupts where ash still falls.
Grass unfurls in rippling sheets. Flowers tear through scorched soil in bursts of color and breath.
The forest inhales, and as it breathes out, expanding over more ground, as if to reclaim what was once taken.
The wind answers my call—and forms a tempest. It races outward, lifting debris, mending stone, rebuilding what fire took. Walls straighten. Roof beams slide back into place as if guided by unseen hands. Shattered glass reforms. The house pulls itself together around its heart.
Her sanctuary restores itself.
The garden answers last. It reawakens with fervor. Vines snap back onto trellises. Soil darkens, rich and fertile. Leaves uncurl, heavy with promise. Every seed she ever placed into the earth reaches for the power pouring from me.
Then my knees hit the ground.
The light recedes, narrows.
It funnels back to me and buries itself beneath my skin.
Eridessa lies motionless beside me, her body broken and burned, her life flickering so faintly it nearly escapes my grasp. Panic claws at my chest, sharp and sudden, but I force it down. I gather what remains of the power—what I can still control—and feed it into her slowly, deliberately.
Carefully.
Life flows from me into her. Moments pass like lifetimes. A desperate hope falls like a prayer from my lips.
“Come back, Eliora. Come back to me.”
I die a thousand deaths as I wait for a sign that she’ll stay.
“Please, love.”
Then, finally, her skin warms beneath my hands. Her breathing shifts and deepens. Color returns to her cheeks. The burned flesh recedes, as though time itself rewinds, drawn backward by will and devotion. A soft glow rises beneath her skin, mirroring my own.
The next prayer is one of gratitude to my maker. Because fate has been merciful and she still lives.
She is whole now. Remade. Alive.
The relief at the thought nearly crushes me.
I lift her gently and cautiously, as though the world itself might shatter if I move too fast. She weighs nothing in my arms. I press my lips to her forehead again, overwhelmed by the emotion her return has brought.
I carry her inside, promising as I do that harm like this will never come to her again. And if she ever leaves this world, I will demand that God take me with her.
After laying her on her bed with infinite care, I brush her pale hair away from her face.
Her presence fills the space with warmth and a quiet serenity. Though unconscious, she is radiant. Beautiful in a way that steals what breath I have in my immortal lungs.
A sleeping beauty in the flesh, and I am the one who waits.
So I sit beside her, patient and still, watching for the moment her mind catches up, for those white lashes to flutter and lift. When those light hazel eyes find me, I’ll be here to tell her that all she loves is not lost.
I want to see the determination return to her gaze. The hope. I want to watch the fight come back to life inside her.
And selfishly, I want her to wake—so she can give me another chance to see the world through her eyes.