Chapter 34
Nyssa
“Prove I’m necessary,” I repeat, staring down at the swirling purple mass below. The words almost get stuck, but I force them out anyway. “To who? The universe? The realm? Or just you?”
The Judge doesn’t blink. Her pale eyes remain fixed on me with the intensity of someone dissecting a particularly interesting specimen. “To existence itself.”
The transparent floor beneath my feet cracks.
Hair-thin fractures spread outward from where I stand, each one glowing with a familiar gold light.
It’s bleeding through the glass like molten metal poured into crystal.
The light pulses in rhythm with my heartbeat, growing brighter with each surge of adrenaline.
“The Pantheon maintained balance for aeons,” the Judge continues, her voice as flat and final as a death certificate being filed.
She doesn’t look up from her paperwork, as if my potential annihilation is just another item on her cosmic to-do list. She finally looks up, and her gaze is like ice water in my veins. “Then you arrived.”
“I didn’t ask to arrive,” I snap, my temper flaring despite the precariousness of my situation.
The cracks in the floor spread faster, responding to my emotional state.
“I was doing my job. Killing things that threatened people. That’s what slayers do—we protect humanity from the monsters that go bump in the night.
I never asked for any of this divine responsibility bullshit. ”
“Language,” Tabitha murmurs beside me, but there’s no real censure in her tone.
She’s as tense as a bowstring, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles are white.
I can feel the order magic radiating off her in controlled pulses, like a barely contained storm.
She wants to speak, to argue, to impose her will on this tribunal, but the Judge’s rules bind her to silence as effectively as chains.
“And yet,” the Judge continues, ignoring my outburst entirely, “you killed a goddess. Claimed her power. Bonded with not one but three Shadow gods. Became something neither mortal nor divine, but a chimaera of both.” She taps her pen against the desk with mechanical precision, each click echoing in the vast white chamber.
“You are an anomaly, Nyssa Vale. The First Law abhors anomalies. They must be corrected.”
The word ‘corrected’ hangs in the air like a guillotine blade, sharp and final. I can feel Tabitha flinch beside me, though she covers it well.
“Fine,” I say, forcing my voice to remain steady even as the floor continues its slow disintegration beneath us.
“You want proof I’m necessary? Look down there.
” I gesture to the Devourer rippling below us, and even at this distance, I can feel its attention like hungry eyes on my skin.
“That thing eats realms. It’s growing more intelligent. It’s not just mindless hunger anymore.”
“Yes,” the Judge agrees, and there’s something terrible in her tone. Something that makes my blood run cold. “It is learning. It is evolving. It is becoming something far more dangerous than it ever was before.” She sets down her pen and finally gives me her full attention. “Because of you.”
I glare at her. “What?”
“By killing Aethel and claiming her power, you created the perfect vessel,” the Judge explains with the detached clinical tone of a coroner explaining the cause of death.
“Immortal enough to contain the void without being destroyed by it. Mortal enough to walk among the living and interact with physical reality. Powerful enough to channel dominion over multiple realms simultaneously.”
She pulls out a thick file and reads from it. “Prior to your ascension, the Devourer was content to consume. To devour minor realms whole and move on to the next feeding ground. It was predictable. Containable. A force of nature, like a hurricane or an earthquake.”
My mouth goes dry. I can see where this is going, and I don’t like it one bit.
“But you changed that,” the Judge continues, turning a page with deliberate slowness. “When you claimed Aethel’s power and merged it with shadow magic, when you created this unprecedented fusion of light and dark, you inadvertently sent up a signal. You showed the Devourer what was possible.”
“I showed it what?”
“You showed it that power could be wielded rather than simply consumed. That realms could be ruled rather than destroyed. That with the right vessel it could achieve true dominion rather than mere annihilation.” The Judge closes the file with a snap that echoes like a gunshot.
“You made yourself into exactly what it needed to evolve from mindless hunger into something far more dangerous: intelligence with ambition.”
The floor gives an ominous groan beneath us, the cracks spreading wider.
Through the gaps, I can see the Devourer more clearly now, and my heart stops.
It’s not just a shapeless mass of the abyss anymore.
There are patterns in its movements, structure to its form.
It’s watching us with something that can only be called intelligence, and when it senses my attention, it pulses with what might be satisfaction.
“The universe was safer when you were just a slayer,” the Judge adds, lifting her stamp in preparation to pass judgement. “A simple human with a sharp blade and a calling to protect her own kind. Now you are the key to ultimate destruction, wrapped in the delusion of heroism.”
The truth tastes like bile in my mouth. Every choice I made, every power I claimed, every god I bonded with—it all led to this. I didn’t just stumble into divinity; I created my own nemesis. I made the monster I’m supposed to fight.
“Maybe,” I admit, my voice hoarse with the weight of revelation. “But you can’t unmake what’s already done. You can’t turn back time and make me choose differently.”
“Can’t I?” The Judge raises her stamp higher, and I can see power gathering around its edges like heat shimmer. “The First Law encompasses many authorities, including the correction of temporal anomalies.”
“Wait. Even if you could—even if you sent me back, made me choose differently—the Devourer would still exist. It would still be growing stronger. Maybe not as fast, maybe not as smart, but it would still be out there, eating realms one by one until there was nothing left.”
“Perhaps. But that would be a problem for another tribunal, another judge, another time. My concern is the anomaly you represent.”
“No.” I take a step forward, ignoring the way the floor groans under the movement. “The question isn’t whether I caused this—it’s whether I’m the solution. You said it yourself: I’m the perfect vessel. But that cuts both ways, doesn’t it?”
The Judge pauses, her stamp hovering in mid-air. “Elaborate.”
I take a shaky breath, my mind racing as pieces click into place.
“Before me, the Devourer was mindless hunger. Pure id, no ego, no superego. Yes, it’s smarter now because of what I inadvertently taught it, but that also means it can be outthought, outmanoeuvred.
It has desires beyond simple consumption.
That’s not just an evolution, it’s a weakness. ”
“How so?”
“It wants to rule, which means it wants to preserve some of what it would have destroyed. It wants me specifically as a vessel, which makes it predictable.”
The Judge considers this, her fingers drumming against the desk in a rhythm that reminds me uncomfortably of a funeral dirge. Below us, the Devourer pulses with increasing agitation, as if it can sense the discussion about its fate.
“And,” I continue, pressing my advantage, “I didn’t just make myself into the perfect vessel for the Devourer.
I made myself into the perfect bait. It wants me specifically, which means I can control where it goes, what it does, and how it acts.
I can lead it into traps. I can use its desire against it.
” I’m totally fucking winging it now, but I’m desperate.
Desperate not to be moved through time like a doll.
“And if you’re wrong?” the Judge asks. “If your plan fails? If the Devourer simply takes what it wants regardless of your strategies?”
I meet her gaze steadily, drawing on every ounce of courage I’ve ever possessed. “Then everyone dies anyway. But if I’m right and if I can turn my nature as an anomaly into an advantage rather than a liability, then I’m not just necessary. I’m the only chance we have.”
The Judge sets down her stamp without using it, and for the first time since this trial began, I see something other than cold judgement in her eyes. It might be interest.
“The First Law seeks balance above all else,” she says finally.
“You have upset that balance catastrophically. The scales tip toward chaos, toward entropy, toward the very dissolution of ordered reality.” She pauses, consulting her papers with the air of someone double-checking a particularly complex equation.
“But balance can be restored through two methods: correction or completion.”
“Completion?”
“You began this cascade when you killed Aethel. The scales will not settle until you finish what you started. One way or another.” She leans back in her chair, studying me with new intensity.
“Very well, Nyssa Vale. You have argued your case for necessity with adequate reasoning. But necessity alone is insufficient for the restoration of cosmic balance.”
The floor gives way entirely.
I plummet through space, my stomach lurching into my throat as the white chamber disappears above us.
Tabitha falls beside me, her coat billowing around her like the wings of some predatory bird.
The wind tears at my clothes and hair, and I can feel the Devourer’s attention like ice water in my veins.
It knows I’m coming. It’s been waiting for this moment, planning for it.
The purple mass rises to meet us, reaching with tendrils of pure negation.
I can smell it now. It’s the scent of endings, of last breaths, of candles guttering out in empty rooms. It feels like every nightmare I’ve ever had, every fear I’ve ever faced, every moment I’ve stared death in the face and wondered if this time would be the last.
My blade is in my hand, though I don’t remember drawing it. The familiar weight of steel and purpose grounds me even as we hurtle toward what might be our destruction. If this is how it ends, at least I’ll go down fighting.
Just before we hit the writhing mass of void, the world lurches to the side, with the nauseating sensation of reality folding in on itself.
We land hard on cracked obsidian that sends shockwaves up my legs, but I manage to roll with the impact and come up in a fighting crouch, blade already extended toward potential threats.
The stone beneath us is warm to the touch and slightly sticky, as if it’s slowly melting in some cosmic heat I can’t feel.
We’re back in the Pantheon realm, but it’s wrong.
Horribly, fundamentally wrong with spreading patches of absolute black that hurt to look at.
The void is here, seeping through the foundations, creeping up the walls in arterial patterns that glow with their own dark rhythm.
Where it touches, reality simply stops. Not crumbling into rubble or fading into mist, but just ceasing to exist as if it had never been there at all.
The sky above us bleeds purple at the edges, and through the tears in the veil, I can see the Devourer’s bulk pressing against the barriers, measuring the limits of their power with the unhurried certainty of an immortal.
Tabitha lands beside me with more grace than anyone has a right to possess after falling through dimensions. She straightens her coat and surveys the dissolution around us with the clinical detachment of a doctor examining a particularly virulent disease.
“Second test,” the Judge’s voice echoes from everywhere around us. “Sacrifice. What will you give up to save what remains?”
The word hangs in the air like a death sentence, and I know with cold certainty that this test will be far worse than the last.