Epilogue #2
Tabitha pauses at the edge of the path, eyes narrowing. “You’ve changed the threshold.”
“Yes,” I reply. “The Order can’t pull me through their nets anymore.”
“And the First Law?” she asks.
I tap my sternum lightly. “Satisfied.”
It’s a lie, technically. Cosmic balance is never “satisfied.” It’s just temporarily not angry.
But it’s satisfied enough for tonight.
Voren’s gaze lifts to the sky, as if listening for dead whispers. “They’re moving.”
“Who?” Dreven asks.
“The living who pretend they aren’t,” Voren replies.
We don’t go to the church. Not immediately.
We cut through wet grass, silent as sin.
Instead, we find tracks.
Not boot prints. Not animal marks.
Wards, laid like spider silk—thin, precise, Order magic trying to pretend it’s invisible.
Tabitha crouches, fingers hovering an inch above the line. “They’re here.”
“Under the church,” Dastian says, eyes bright. “I can feel the sanctimony from miles away.”
Voren’s mouth tightens. “They’re building a net.”
I look down at the ward line, and something hot rises in me. Not anger. Not yet.
Disgust.
Dreven’s voice is low at my shoulder. “Say the word.”
I close my eyes and breathe.
Light, restrained.
Shadow, locked.
Death, waiting.
Chaos, conducted.
I open my eyes. “We go in quietly.”
Dastian looks wounded. “Quietly?”
“Yes,” I repeat. “Quietly. We take proof. We take names. We take their ability to do it again.”
“And then?” Dreven asks.
My smile is cold. “And then we make an example.”
Tabitha stands. “You are not a slayer anymore, Nyssa. You cannot just kill and leave.”
I turn my head slowly. “No, I’m a god, and I answer to no one.”
Tabitha’s lips press into a line. “If you move openly against the Order, you will start a war.”
“I think they started it centuries ago.”
No one argues.
We move.
The church sits at the edge of the grounds, small and old, stone soaked dark by rain. A place mortals go to feel safe from things they can’t name.
The door is locked.
Dastian reaches for it, sparks ready.
I put a hand on his forearm. “Don’t.”
He pauses.
I touch the lock with two fingers and think: Open.
The metal clicks. The door swings inward without a sound.
Dastian lets out a low whistle. “Okay. That’s sexy.”
“Stop saying my power is sexy,” I mutter, stepping into the nave.
It smells like wax and old hymnals. Normal. Harmless.
But underneath, beneath the altar, there is a hum I recognise. A wrongness. A net being woven.
Voren’s cold gathers at my side. “Below.”
Dreven’s shadows slide ahead, not attacking—scouting.
Tabitha walks behind me, silent now.
We find the trapdoor behind the altar. The wood is old. The warding is new.
I kneel and press my palm to the ward.
It tries to resist. It tries to pretend it has authority here.
I let the Crown stir.
The ward line shivers like a nervous animal.
“Mine,” I whisper.
It snaps.
The ward dissolves into nothing, and the trapdoor opens.
Below is a staircase into stone. We descend.
The hum grows louder the deeper we go, until it’s in my bones.
At the bottom is a chamber cut into the earth, lit by lanterns that burn too clean.
And in the centre, etched into the floor in silver lines, is a net.
Not as big as the old one. Not yet.
But the pattern is unmistakable.
A syphon.
And standing over it, hands stained with holy oil and stolen power, is fucking Cormac.
He looks up like he’s been expecting me.
“Nyssa,” he says, voice smooth. “You’re alive.”
Behind him, Finnian steps out of the shadow, face hard with hate.
I feel Dreven tense.
Voren’s cold sharpens.
Dastian’s sparks go bright.
Tabitha inhales like she’s tasting inevitability.
Cormac smiles. “You’ve come to stop us.”
“I’ve come to end you,” I say pleasantly.
Finnian sneers. “You don’t have authority here.”
I tilt my head. “Funny. The locks disagree.”
I step forward, and the air in the chamber tightens as if the world is holding its breath.
Cormac’s gaze flicks to the gods around me. He has no idea who I am now. He probably assumed I was dead. I mean, I was. Long enough for Rynna to be called this time, anyway.
Finnian raises his hand, a pulse of stolen magic forming—thin, weak, but dangerous enough if it hits a mortal.
He aims it at Tabitha.
She doesn’t flinch.
Dastian moves faster than thought and slams his palm sideways.
The bolt doesn’t hit Tabitha. It bends and slams into the stone wall, leaving a scorched line.
“Sideways,” Dastian chirps. “I learned something.”
Finnian stares at him in disbelief.
Cormac’s voice goes low. “You can’t just destroy this, Nyssa. The slayer line belongs to Order.”
I laugh.
Not pretty. Not kind.
“It belongs to the people it protects,” I say. “And to the woman carrying it.”
I step to the edge of the net and look down at the silver lines. They hum with hunger.
I lift my foot.
Tabitha’s voice snaps. “If you break it wrong, it will backfire on Rynna.”
I glance back at her. “Then tell me how to break it right, Oracle.”
She freezes at the word. Then her jaw tightens. “Pull the master line. Same as before.”
I nod. “Show me.”
Tabitha points, crisp and exact.
I kneel, press two fingers to the line, and feel it—quiet, miserable, holding the lattice taut like a lie pretending to be law.
I grip it.
Cormac lunges.
Dreven’s shadow catches him by the throat and slams him into the stone.
Voren’s frost hits Finnian’s wrist and freezes his hand open.
Dastian steps forward with a grin that is all teeth. “Hi. Remember me? I’m the consequences.”
I pull.
The master line snaps with a sound like a scream swallowed.
The net convulses. Silver threads whip, trying to rebound.
I don’t let them.
Light defines the lines. Shadow locks them in place. Death cuts the connection clean.
The lattice collapses into ash at my feet.
The hum dies.
The chamber goes still.
Cormac wheezes under Dreven’s shadow grip. “You’re destroying balance.”
I stand and look down at him. “No. I’m restoring it.”
Finnian snarls, struggling against Voren’s frost. “You can’t kill us. We are The Order—”
“The Order is no more,” I say. I step closer, and my voice drops. “You two are done.”
Dastian’s sparks flare, hungry. Dreven’s shadows sharpen. Voren’s cold deepens.
I hold up a hand.
Not because I’m merciful.
Because I’m deliberate.
I look at Tabitha. “Oracle. Witness.”
Her eyes narrow, but she nods once. “Witnessed.”
I crouch in front of Cormac and press two fingers to his sternum, where a slayer bond would sit if he still had one worth anything.
I press.
Hard enough to kill.
A small thread of shadow and light settles into his skin like ink into paper.
He stiffens, and then he collapses, dead at my feet.
Finnian grunts and struggles to get away. “What did you do?” he rasped.
I don’t bother with a reply. I end him as well.
For the greater good.
Then I step back.
We emerge into the church again. Tabitha follows last, smoothing her sleeves.
I look at the churchyard beyond the door.
Dastian throws an arm around my shoulders. “So what now, Your Majesty?”
I glance at him, then at Voren, then at Dreven.
“Now we go back,” I say. “I have a realm to rule. You have a realm to guard. And Rynna…” My chest tightens. “Rynna has a life to live without the Order strangling her.”
Dreven’s hand finds mine. “We’ll keep her safe.”
“I know,” I say, and mean it.
With one step, we are back in the Pantheon realm, and the Chaos Throne waits where I left it—patient, unneedy, certain of itself.
I sit again, and the realm settles around me like a cloak that finally fits.
I close my eyes and reach with dominion.
Earth answers faintly at the edge of my senses: rain, salt air, my cottage, my sister’s stubborn heartbeat.
I don’t pull. I don’t interfere. I watch, because loving someone isn’t the same as owning them, and I’ve learned, the hard way, that the difference matters.
Tabitha clears her throat. “There is one more thing.”
I open my eyes. “Spit it out.”
“The Order will regroup,” she says. “Someday, somewhere.”
I tilt my head. “You will feel it?”
Tabitha studies me for a long moment, then nods.
I breathe out, slow.
The realm breathes with me.
“I’m not worried. Who knows? Maybe they will actually do good.”
“But if they don’t?” Dreven asks.
“Then we are here to judge them.”
I rest my hands on the armrests of the Chaos Throne.
I haven’t felt this at peace in forever. I let out a soft sigh and smile at my gods, at the heat and the hush and the shadow wrapped close, and the Pantheon settles around us, steady as a promise: not a cage, not a battlefield, but a home we chose and kept.
Together.