Chapter 22 Kieran
KIERAN
The first thing I noticed was the absence of everything.
The world around me stretched into a pale, liminal expanse—formless, silent, infinite. The horizon had vanished, and the ground with it. I was standing in the center of nothingness.
Had I died?
The question never left my lips, yet it echoed through the air as if it had slipped straight from my mind.
I’d never given much thought to what the afterlife might be like, but I hadn’t imagined this: a world stripped bare, empty of anything familiar.
The stillness was so complete it made sweat prickle at the back of my neck.
I tried to move, but my limbs were sluggish, refusing to obey as a slow panic unfurled under my skin.
In the eerie silence, I reached out for my mates through the bond. Realization struck hard and absolute—the drop of my stomach sent a wave of nausea through me, the crack of my heart almost audible in the soundless expanse.
I couldn’t feel them. Not Ronan’s steady strength. Not Steele’s relentless focus. Not Gabe’s quiet devotion. Not Bastian’s wild, untamed energy. Not Niz’s unwavering loyalty.
Nothing.
The bond that had once linked us heartbeat to heartbeat was gone, cut so clean it felt like a limb had been removed.
Panic seized my chest so hard it stole my breath.
I forced my limbs to obey, the stiffness breaking like glass as I tore free of the stillness and spun, searching for any sign that my mates hadn’t been erased with the rest of the world.
But there was only endless, unchanging nothingness.
Was this all that remained? Had the stars destroyed everything else?
Memory struck in jagged flashes, too sharp to hold onto. The descent of the stars. My name shouted through chaos and agony, a desperate plea for me to survive. Light tearing across a blood-soaked battlefield. My body burning from the inside out beneath a runic dagger.
I pressed a hand to my chest, half expecting to find a wound from the stars burning their way into me, or from Steele carving runes across my skin—but there was nothing. My body was smooth and whole. Even my leathers remained untouched, as if the battle had never happened at all.
There was something odd to my appearance, though. It was as if the edges of my body were blurred, faded like wisps of smoke. When I lifted my hand, the tips of my fingers flickered in and out of focus, as if I were on the verge of being erased.
Maybe this was death.
“I failed them,” I whispered, letting the truth settle as I shattered the silence of the white expanse. “They’re gone. All of them.”
I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t.
The thought of losing the war, our allies, my mates, the entire world because I hadn’t been able to stop the stars from falling was unbearable. Not just because of the scale of it, but because I would be the one who failed them all.
I hadn’t expected a response to my words, so when a low hum began to vibrate through the air, I snapped my head up, scanning the space in panic. The sound was too faint to define, but unmistakably there.
For what felt like minutes, I stood frozen, listening, trying to decide if it was real, or if my mind had created ghosts to fill the quiet.
“There you are.”
I turned sharply in the direction of the feminine voice, adrenaline surging through my veins, searching for the source. The nothingness around me trembled, rippling like disturbed water.
In the distance, a silhouette began to form, its edges traced in soft gold like sunlight diffused through sheer fabric. Slowly, the figure took shape—hair pale as starlight, a shimmering dress to match, and skin with a warm bronze undertone that glowed in the light.
There was something innately divine about her—not like the upper triads or the Archangels. No blinding majesty. No crushing weight of holiness. Just a peaceful kind of power, one that settled deep and quieted everything it touched.
Still, her presence hit harder than any battlefield. The sudden calm was jarring, almost unbearable. My body reacted before my mind could—every muscle tensed, waiting for her to strike, for the kind of hurt that went alongside power of that magnitude.
Instead, she smiled.
“Don’t fear me, child. I’m not here to hurt you,” she murmured, the sound so soft it barely disturbed the air. “You’ve been through enough of that.”
When she stepped closer, the space seemed to bend around her, every movement slow and deliberate.
With each step, the panic in my chest eased, drawn out of me as if she were pulling it away thread by thread.
I wanted to ask who she was and how she knew what I’d been through.
But the words were trapped in my throat.
My hands trembled. I didn’t realize it until she reached out and took one. Her palm was warm and solid, and the moment her skin met mine, the tightness in my chest broke apart. My breathing steadied. The storm of panic clawing at the edges of my mind finally began to quiet.
“You’re safe,” she promised me, before gently releasing my hand. “For now, you are beyond what can harm you.”
So I wasn’t dead...yet?
I stared at her, uncertain whether to believe it.
Her tone was too calm, too certain to be comfort.
Her eyes, which were the color of a sunset, gold streaked with rose and orange, were filled with a sincerity I’d rarely seen.
What she said felt like truth. Still, relief never came.
If I was still here, what of the others? What of Alfemir? Earth? My mates?
“You’re afraid,” she said—not as a question, but as a truth. “Not for yourself. For them.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The ache in my chest spoke for me—the hollow where five bonds used to be.
Her words of understanding cracked something open inside me though, and my knees nearly gave out.
The exhaustion I’d been holding back since the battle began surged through me all at once—the burns, the cuts, the raw pull of power that had torn me apart from the inside out.
I could still feel the echo of it, even here.
Grief touched her face, mirroring my own sorrow in a way that felt achingly human. “You love them,” she whispered. “They are your soul mates, yet they cannot follow you to the realm of gods.”
My breath caught. The realm of gods. The words felt impossible, absurd—and yet something deep inside me stirred in recognition. This felt huge and altogether overwhelming. What did it mean? If my mates couldn’t follow, then where did that leave me?
“They were fighting for me and our world until the end.” I whispered, thinking of their voices through our bond. “But I don’t want to be somewhere that they can’t follow.”
The pain crept through me, quiet but consuming, like something hollowing me from the inside out.
When she spoke again, her voice carried a kind of understanding that made the hurt sharper.
“The world below is not lost—it only sleeps, child. Time is paused until I figure out what’s happening and until you are ready to return. Rest easy.”
A long exhale escaped me, my body shuddering in quiet relief. Their faces flickered through my thoughts, anchoring me to something real—something that could steady me.
A low hum threaded through the space around us, steady and alive, the vibration of the air raising goosebumps along my skin.
She seemed to refocus as my breathing steadied, her gaze sharpening with curiosity—and a softness I’d only ever seen in people who cared about me, like Amelia or Noah—but beneath it lay a depth that made me feel completely seen.
She tilted her head slightly, and when she finally spoke, her voice carried both weight and quiet authority.
“Who are you,” she asked, “to hold the power of a small deity?”
I blinked, unsure how to answer, but she continued before I could speak.
“The power you consumed from the stars,” she said, “is what woke me from my sleep.”
Something in her tone made the space ripple once more, thin veins of gold spread from her feet and reached down into infinity until it seemed the emptiness itself had grown roots from her. The glowing lines lingered for a long second before fading.
“I… what?” The words caught rough in my throat as I tried to focus. “Your sleep? Who are you?”
My question wasn’t born of defiance or demand—only confusion and the sharp edge of disbelief. She didn’t appear offended. Instead, a small, wistful smile touched her lips, as if she’d been waiting centuries for someone to ask her that question.
“I am the one who dreamed this universe into being. Heaven. Hell. Earth. Everything that exists between and beyond them. I created it, and then I slept.”
Her words should have been impossible, yet the instant she spoke them, something inside me knew they were true. My eyes widened as shock and confusion collided inside me. A thousand questions burned to be asked, but none made it past my lips. All I could do was stare, caught between fear and awe.
My throat tightened. “You’re saying you—”
“Yes.” She didn’t let me finish. “I am the beginning of what you know. The Creator. And now, because of you, I am awake again.”
That part hit harder than the rest. Because of me. Whatever I had done—whatever power I’d pulled from the stars—had been enough to wake the Creator from her sleep. I didn’t know whether to be terrified or amazed.
I knew I needed to introduce myself, to explain everything. But how did you tell the one who built a world that it had torn itself apart?
“My name is Kieran,” I finally managed. “I’m from Alfemir—a city that exists above Earth but beneath the gates of Heaven. It’s a place that’s been swallowed by war.”
War. The word felt small, too mortal to contain what the angels and wyverns of Alfemir had lived through—the genocides, the upper triads’ control through the Archangels, the endless destruction. I held the Creator’s gaze, expecting some kind of reaction, but she only watched me, patient and steady.
“And who has waged this war?” she asked.