CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
An onyx raven lay claim on her shoulder, its beak sharp enough to slice throats, talons digging into the sapphire folds of her cloak. One jeweled eye glowed, a bruised fire threaded in umber.
The sailor’s song strangled mid-verse as silence flowed through the Den. The crowd parted for her, hands reaching, too curious and foolish.
She didn’t even glance their way, only lifted a single gloved hand, dismissive as a queen swatting flies. The raven moved with her, wings unfurling like a blade leaving its sheath. The men stumbled back, their hands raised in surrender.
When her eyes caught mine across the room, the corners of her lips lifted with purpose.
If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn she floated toward me. I couldn’t tell; I was too transfixed from her.
She stopped before me, leaning down, a gloved hand slipping beneath my chin as mine hovered at the hilt of my dagger, nails already edged.
Her eyes weren’t made from the grey of the ocean as I’d thought, but moonlit waves. Soft enough to make you believe drowning might feel like flying.
Her guide lifted me to my feet, Callum surging up beside me, his hand latching onto my arm, body wedged between us.
“Let go of her, Nezra.” His voice strained with restraint, every syllable fraying.
She didn’t so much as glance at him. Her stare stayed on mine, unwavering, fingers still resting against my chin, a trap disguised as tenderness.
Then I felt it, the faint prickle where her thumb pressed, again and again, in a measured rhythm. A pattern. A rune.
Once. Twice. Three times.
The world tilted. The room blurred. I felt the drag of an ancient force, a pull not outward but inward—down into the clouded depths of her enchantment.
My breath caught as shadows folded over me, memory opening like a door I hadn’t meant to step through.
The ground vanished as gusts of a serene breeze swept by, the floor turning from stone to sky.
In place of the tavern was now a palace, guarded by crystal peaks that pierced the stars, its walls drenched in sunlight until they shimmered like opal flame.
Beyond the open dais, clouds unfurled in great tides, curling like mountains broken into mist through air so rare only the divine could swallow.
I was in Saintoria—the Isle of Angels.
But this place, this kingdom, did not exist. Not anymore. The realm had been destroyed, along with the beings created within it.
Yet, here it stood, alive in illusion or memory, and I was inside it, watching, behind eyes that weren’t my own.
The chamber was ivory and gold, endless and gleaming as the six gods of Selvarra entered, one by one—
Ophielle, beauty draped in motion, her copper hair tumbling like a river, her gown blossoming with each glide toward the chamber’s heart.
Zeki followed, wisdom cloaked in silence, a white owl perched on his shoulder. His pearl eyes were ancient and unblinking, aglow against his sable skin.
Callisto trailed after, the whisper of moons and seas. The blue of her eyes was calm against her caramel complexion, the whole of her glowing as a smile unfurled, gentle, endless.
Aelia, sun fire, and soil incarnate, accompanied her. Wheat-gold hair kissing her jaw, her amber gaze flickering with worry.
Then Orion stormed in. Death and war towering in midnight and ruin. Salt-and-pepper hair caught the light in sharpened steel, his presence striking the chamber colder.
And at the center—Vivianna. The Primus. Goddess of creation. Mother of Gods.
Her presence didn’t simply ask for reverence, it commanded it.
Hair made of burnished honey swept back from a face carved in sacred eternal flame.
Her eyes were the universe itself: every color born, colliding, becoming, as if the world had been painted into her gaze.
A crown, delicate as awakening light and formed from sovereignty, rested above her brow. But it wasn’t the crown that held them all, it was the stone in her hands—ivory and swirling with shifting color, an entire galaxy trapped beneath its surface.
The gods moved toward her, all at once and all together, gliding over a floor made from an ocean frozen mid-wave.
They settled around her in a wide circle, as if she were the axis their world turned on.
Vivianna’s voice weaved through the chamber, warm, fierce and entirely unshakable. “We have watched Selvarra heal and prosper after war nearly skinned us bare.” Her eyes swept across them, holding each in turn. “But a new war is rising. One even I cannot interfere with.”
Zeki rose, stepping forward. He did not kneel; she would never ask it. He was not lesser or below. But a breath born from her own existence.
For power did not bow to power. It stood beside it.
“Once again,” his voice was heavy with inevitability, “a curse has been bred, birthed in the depths of hel itself. A curse to end worlds—” He exhaled, before catching Vivianna’s stare. She nodded once. “Meant to devour the very continent we have strived to preserve.”
They gasped as one. Aelia’s eyes widened, her hand darting for Callisto’s. The two clung together, the sun and moon side by side.
Zeki’s voice broke in his throat before he forced it forward. “Fate has shown me its path. The curse will root itself in a vessel, bleeding their soul dry, driving them to unmake what we only just buried beneath the core.”
His stare cut from one god to the next, eyes flashing with the weight of it.
“This is worse than Deimos himself. Deimos can be destroyed. This cannot. There is no cure. No absolution. Only death. It will not stop, cannot be stopped, until we,” he lifted his hand, gesturing to them all, “and this continent itself, lie in defeat. The ending has already begun… I fear,” he shuddered, “this is only the beginning, only the warning.”
Grand doors opened and he straightened as a masked Angel strode into the room, his broad, white feathered wings following him across the floor. He glanced at each of them, his gilded eyes flaring for a split moment.
Then a handful of them entered, all masked like he was, floating down into the space, holding trays and various glasses of liquid, distributing them amongst each god, before exiting as quickly as they arrived.
The doors sealed behind them with a hollow boom.
Vivianna turned back to Zeki. “What can we do?”
His eyes swirled, mist curling, collapsing, fate itself already unraveling in his sockets.
“The mark may already have chosen its vessel,” he whispered.
“They may walk among us. Perhaps unaware. Perhaps already unraveling. We will not see them until they strike.” A pause. “By then it will be too late.”
Vivianna’s eyes didn’t revolve at that but evolved. Sage bled to ember, then to frost, shifting with every pull she drew. “Who created it?”
“You mean it wasn’t you?” Orion’s jab landed with bite.
Her gaze dimmed, turning the dusk-blue of a dying horizon.
“Deimos,” Zeki answered.
Orion scoffed, rising to his full, ruinous height.
“Deimos can’t be so bored in his pit that he’s nothing better to do than fashion new torments.
” He prowled to the edge of the dais, boots echoing like thunder.
The chamber opened wide behind him, vast and unreal.
He let out a sharp whistle as a winged horse swept past the arching void, white mane aflame in the light.
“On second thought,” he chuckled. “This view? Can’t really blame him. ”
“What else would he want?” Callisto’s fingers still tangled with Aelia’s, knuckles whitening. Starlight glittered in the indigo folds of her gown, galaxies woven into its seams.
Vivianna answered before the question could settle. “To end me, I would assume.”
She hadn’t looked at me, not once. Was I a disregarded shadow? A misplaced soul? A forgotten guard? I couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Could only stare ahead and watch.
“To finish what the first war could not,” Zeki added. “To drag us all into the dark and leave no solace behind.”
“We need to leave, Primus,” Aelia pleaded. “If we stay, surely we will all perish if the claim lies true.”
Vivianna lifted her hand, just a gesture, yet Aelia’s breath faltered. “We cannot abandon those we protect.”
“They are not in danger,” Aelia snapped, surging to her feet. Golden silks tangled at her ankles as Callisto caught her arm, dragging her back.
“They will be,” Zeki whispered, stroking the owl’s head with a finger.
Aelia broke from Callisto’s grip, storming forward, fury in her steps and desperation in her eyes. “Deimos wants to destroy us. If we leave, maybe he will terminate the curse. There would be no point in it any longer.”
The doors banged open again when a woman roamed through, onyx-feathered wings flaring wide behind her. Armor gleamed, iridescent in the chamber’s light, a Pegasus crest stamped across her breastplate.
A Valkara. The legendary elite women of Angelic war.
Her eyes burned as they locked on Vivianna, the hue of gold rimmed with an even deeper fire.
Orion straightened, shoulders broad. “We are Gods,” he rumbled. “We do not flee from a lick of danger.”
She didn’t spare him so much as a glance as she passed.
“Thank you for coming,” Vivianna lifted her chin. The Valkara returned the gesture, something unspoken stirring in her gaze, fierce, foreign, like fire tasting salt.
Ophielle shifted uneasily as her hands folded, clutched together. “Selvarra cannot endure another war, Primus. If we stay and fight again, it will be catastrophic.”
Vivianna gestured outward with her hand. “That is why I have asked her to join us.”
The Gods murmured, voices like a hive in disarray. The Valkara only smiled, lips curling.
“First, I will create kingdoms,” Vivianna declared. “To rule in unison. As we have.”
The Valkara’s skin began to glow, faintly at first, like light striking steel.
Zeki surged upright, eyes burning with what fate hadn’t shown him. “You didn’t—”
But Vivianna was already moving, her hand pressing to the warrior’s shoulder, her lips forming words I couldn’t hear.