The first thing was pain.
Not sharp—dull and enormous, like someone had poured molten stone into his bones and let it cool wrong. Every breath scraped. Every joint ached as if it had been taken apart and put back together by someone who didn't care about instructions.
Then came the smell.
Honeyed herbs, metal, and something clean and bitter—like rain washing over old blood.
After that, sound: a low, constant hum under everything, too steady to be a machine, too precise to be natural. It beat in his teeth. In his ribs. In his skull.
Only then did light arrive.
It spilled over his eyelids in fractured color. When he opened his eyes, the world was broken into shards—gold, amethyst, rose, deep ocean blue—sliding across him as if he lay at the bottom of a slow, shifting kaleidoscope.
He stared up at a ceiling made of stories.
High above, clerestory windows circled the room. Each one was stained glass, tall and narrow, their tops arched like the bones of a cathedral. Figures moved across them in frozen poses—humanoid silhouettes, crowns, chains, blood, veils, swords, flowers, flames. The light filtering through them painted the stone in bands of color that shifted whenever something—sun, moon, whatever Taeterra used—passed outside.
He tried to sit up. His body vetoed the idea.
A hot, electric ache shot from his ribs to his throat. He choked on a groan and fell back onto the mattress. It wasn't a pod. It wasn't even metal. The bed beneath him felt… soft. Sheets. Actual fabric.
Where are we?
Eon's voice was rough, like he'd been screaming for hours and then decided to pretend he hadn't.
"Good question," Qaritas muttered aloud. His lips felt split. "You're the omniscient horror. You tell me."
Eon snorted. If I were omniscient, we wouldn't be dead, little vessel. All I know is: that hum feels like the Develdion, but it isn't. Different rhythm. Different teeth.
Qaritas forced himself to focus.
The room was huge. Rows of beds stretched out in either direction—white sheets, silver headboards, each with a soft blue sigil floating above it. Most were empty. The ones that weren't held sleeping bodies wrapped in pale light. He counted once, twice, gave up somewhere after a hundred.
The walls were smooth stone, shot through with veins of glowing silver. Between each section, a sigil burned in soft relief—thirteen in total, circling the ward like guardians. None of them were symbols he recognized.
The air was warm, heavy with incense and antiseptic. And beneath the humming of the room there was another pulse, softer, deeper. Like Taeterra's heart was somewhere below them, beating against the foundations.
Well, Eon mused. Either we're dead and this is the worst version of heaven, or we're in a hospital. Given your luck, I vote the second one.
He swallowed; his throat felt flayed. "Develdion?"
No pods. No glass. No screaming. A pause. Yet.
He turned his head, slowly, until the fractured light from the windows slid across his face.
The stained glass wasn't random.
One panel near the center showed a young man with silver hair and dark eyes, books piled at his feet, glyphs spiraling around his hands. In the next, that same figure stood beside a taller, terrible silhouette—Ecayrous, unmistakable even in colored glass, all jagged wings and radiant cruelty. In another, the silver-haired man knelt over bodies, hand outstretched, light pouring from his palm into the broken.
Further along, the tone changed.
A woman with a veil made of falling stars. Chains around her wrists. A crowd of faceless figures reaching for her. Shadows behind her that looked too much like a throne room.
Then the man again, wading through crimson, his hands stained, eyes alight with something fierce and soft all at once as he carried that veiled woman out of the darkness.
The final panes showed them together—hands clasped, foreheads pressed together, a ring of thirteen small stars burning above their heads.
Qaritas frowned. "Who…?"
Oh, Eon said softly, amused. You really don't see it?
"See what?"
Nothing, Eon lied immediately. Ignore the decor. You're not here for story time, you're here because you broke yourself trying to impress a god of Sin.
Before Qaritas could respond, the hum of the ward shifted. The air warmed.
Footsteps approached—barely sound at all, more like the memory of silk moving across stone.
Rnarah stepped into his vision.
Her veil was different now—thinner, softer, woven from threads of milky light and rose-gold. Loose curls of dark hair spilled from beneath it, framing a face so perfectly symmetrical it hurt to look at for too long. But it wasn't beauty that hit him first. It was relief.
She saw him awake and exhaled, shoulders dropping, the tension bleeding out of her aura like loosened string.
"Thank the stars," she murmured, crossing the distance in a breath. "You scared us."
A cool hand pressed to his forehead. Her touch chased the fever back an inch.
Eon made a low appreciative sound. If I'd known the this floor came with bedside service, I'd have arranged to get us maimed sooner.
Qaritas ignored him. "Where… are we?"
Rnarah smiled faintly. "Fourteenth floor. Healing ward of Taeterra. You made the Develdion very proud and your body very angry."
"So we're out," he said. Somehow, that felt wrong. "The training is over?"
"For today." Her gaze flicked over him—cataloguing burns, splits in his skin, the faint purple glow pulsing underneath. "You lasted longer than Zcain expected. That's good."
"That's what he said," Qaritas muttered. "Then he said 'Lunch' like he didn't just watch me get decapitated."
Rnarah's eyes softened. "He forgets how new mortality feels."
Something shifted under his skin.
At first, he thought it was a muscle twitch. Then the pain hit—sharp and bright, ripping across his chest in a jagged line.
He gasped.
Purple light cracked through the surface of his skin like lightning under dark glass. The glow pushed out, splitting flesh, hardening it, turning patches of his arms and ribs into something like obsidian shot through with amethyst veins.
It hurt. Not like wounds hurt. Like his own existence was wrong here.
He arched off the bed, a strangled sound ripping from his throat.
Rnarah didn't flinch. She slid an arm behind his shoulders and held him up, fingers digging in just enough to ground him. Her other hand went to a small shelf by the bed, grabbing a flask of thick liquid that shimmered deep blue.
"Drink."
He nearly bit the cup in half taking it. The liquid slid down his throat cold, then turned molten halfway to his stomach. The pain receded—not gone, but muffled, distant, like it had to move through layers of water to reach him. The cracks in his skin softened, the obsidian dulling to bruised flesh again, though the faint glow still pulsed underneath.
Eon whistled. I want a barrel of that.
Rnarah brushed sweaty hair off Qaritas's brow. "Awakening."
"Feels more like dismemberment," he croaked. "How long until it's done?"
Her smile turned sad. "You're too far in to slow it now. All I can do is treat the symptoms."
"Perfect," he muttered. "So I'm going to finish becoming whatever this is… in the Hellbound."
Her hand stilled on his chest. "That is the current plan."
Eon hummed thoughtfully. Exploding onstage is one way to make an entrance.
Qaritas tried to sit up again. She pushed him gently but firmly back down.
"How long was I out?" he asked.
"Three hours since the last cycle ended," she said. "Training is done for the day. Your job now is to sleep."
He glanced at the windows, at the swirling color and story above them. "Hard to sleep with that hovering over me."
She followed his gaze and smiled, small but real. "You noticed."
"I notice a man with silver hair and very bad taste in mentors," Qaritas said. "'Ecayrous but make it stained glass' isn't exactly subtle."
Eon chuckled. He's learning.
Rnarah's fingers traced an absent circle over his sternum—comforting, automatic. "Do you know whose story it tells?"
"I'm guessing yours," he said. "Or Taeterra's. Or the universe's. Or maybe it's just very depressed decoration."
Her laugh was soft and broken at the edges. "Ours," she confirmed. "Zcain and mine. And what came after."
He blinked up at the panels. "You just… have your life on the ceiling of your hospital?"
"Some patients need to remember that monsters can be made into something else," she said quietly. "Others need to remember what they're capable of becoming."
Eon clicked his tongue. Poetic. I see why Sin is obsessed with her.
Qaritas swallowed. "Tell me?"
Rnarah hesitated—just for a heartbeat—then nodded. She pulled a chair up beside his bed and sat, veil sliding in a soft whisper.
"Then listen, shadow-born," she said. "This isn't a pretty story. But it's ours."
The light from the stained glass shifted as she spoke, each panel catching her words and bending them through color.
"Zcain was born in the 100o st universe," she began. "A world of glass cities and star-metal rivers. He was brilliant from the moment he breathed—too brilliant. Ecayrous noticed."
In the window above them, young Zcain stood with books piled around him, glyphs swirling from his hands.
"He was meant to be a scholar," Rnarah said. "A builder of treaties, not weapons. But Ecayrous saw potential in Sin—potential to control. He taught Zcain every forbidden art. Every forgotten piece of blood magic. How to leave no trace. How to commit unspeakable acts and still be adored by the court."
Qaritas watched the panels shift—Zcain beside Ecayrous, cloaked in shadow and light both, eyes sharp, mouth set in a line that could become a smile or a threat at any second.
"He learned quickly," Rnarah went on. "Too quickly. But even then, even steeped in that court, he was kind. He never stopped helping the broken ones. The servants, the slaves, the discarded. He used the same skills Ecayrous trained into him to protect those Ecayrous would have devoured."
The next pane showed Zcain kneeling beside fallen figures, light pouring from his hands into their wounds.
"And you?" Qaritas asked quietly.
Her gaze shifted to another panel near the corner—a veiled woman bound in chains, surrounded by faceless figures reaching, grabbing.
"Our universe fell," she said simply. "The 1001st. Ecayrous came with his armies. My brother opened the gates for him."
Something ugly flickered behind her eyes, gone as fast as it came.
"He wanted power. Status. Ecayrous promised him both. So he handed our world over. Our family. Me." She inhaled once, steady but shallow. "I was sold in Mrajeareim. A brothel carved into the bones of an old god, deep in the lower universes."
Qaritas's stomach twisted. "Your own brother sold you?"
"Blood means nothing without love," Rnarah said, voice flat. "He thought madness would break me and make me obedient. He didn't account for stubbornness."
"I hid what I was for as long as I could," she said. "Suppressed my power until it tore at the edges of me. I survived a long time that way. Long enough to become… valuable."
The glass above showed her standing behind a window of red and gold, men's silhouettes lined up outside. Her shoulders were straight. Chin lifted. Veil intact.
"One night, a customer tried to take more than I was willing to give," she murmured. "He hurt one of the girls in the next room. I heard her screaming. Something in me snapped."
The panel darkened. The man's silhouette fell. Blood splashed.
"I killed him," she said calmly. "Used just enough of my power to make sure he stayed dead. Jumped out the window before the guards could get to me."
"You escaped," Qaritas said.
She shook her head. "Ecayrous doesn't like losing property. They caught me before I hit the street. Shackled me again. This time with his own chains. He decided to sell me into the flesh ring as punishment—a place where bodies go to be eaten while they're still alive. A spectacle for his bored monsters."
Qaritas clenched the sheet in his fists. "And Zcain?"
This time, the smile that touched her mouth was soft and lethal.
"Zcain had just… lost Ayla," she said. "Her mortal body, at least. He was drowning in guilt and rage. Sin, by then, was his domain in truth. He could feel it—where it gathered, where it festered. And in Mrajeareim, in that brothel, the Sin was… suffocating. Terror. Lust. Violence. Despair. It burned like a star gone wrong."
On the ceiling, Zcain's image tilted his head, as if listening.
"He followed the smell," Rnarah said. "Followed the screams. Killed a dozen guards on the way in. When he reached the main hall, he found me."
Her fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. The light from the window painted her knuckles rose-gold.
"They had me on the floor," she said. "Five of them. Laughing. Taking turns. He walked in. Stopped." She exhaled slowly. "And then he killed every man in that building."
Qaritas swallowed. He could almost see it—the hall painted red, Zcain moving through it like inevitability.
"He didn't touch me at first," she whispered. "He thought I'd be afraid. Of him. Of what he'd done. But I wasn't afraid of him. I was… tired. So tired. I asked him if he was going to kill me too."
"What did he say?"
"He said, 'Only if you want me to.'"
Eon made a low sound in Qaritas's ribs. Of course he did.
"He wrapped me in his cloak," Rnarah went on, "broke the shackles with his own blood, and carried me out. Right in front of Ecayrous's watching eyes. It was supposed to be another punishment for him—another way to twist the knife. Instead…" She laughed softly. "Instead, Ecayrous created his greatest enemy."
The final panes showed them together—Zcain and Rnarah, standing against Ecayrous's looming shadow. Thirteen small lights circling them like a constellation.
"He was twenty," Rnarah said. "I was nineteen. We've been together since. We built Taeterra as a place for the broken to rest. He hunts those who abuse Sin. I mend what's left."
"And he can't kill Ecayrous," Qaritas said slowly. "Because of the curse."
"Yes." Her jaw tightened. "When our universe fell, when my first body died, when Ayla's mortal shell burned… Zcain almost killed him. Ecayrous cursed him for it. Now, if Zcain raises a hand against him directly, the curse tears his mind apart. Forces his Sin to devour everything near."
Qaritas thought of Tavren's story in the Valley. Of Zcain almost killing his own siblings once.
"He's been plotting around it ever since," Rnarah said. "Using his place in Ecayrous's court to protect the children left behind. Training those Hrolyn abandoned. Preparing for the day someone else can do what he cannot."
"So he's been planning this war since before I existed," Qaritas said.
Her eyes met his, dark and bright and unbearably gentle. "Since before you were even a thought," she said. "You're not his only hope, Qaritas. But you are… a large part of it."
Eon hummed, amused. Congratulations. You're part of a centuries-long revenge plan. How does it feel?
"Like my skin's on fire and my bones want to leave," Qaritas muttered.
Rnarah rose, smoothing her veil. "Sleep," she said again. he rest of the story can wait."
"What about the thirteen symbols?" he asked, nodding toward the glowing sigils along the walls. "They're your children?"
Her face softened in a way he hadn't seen before—a light that was almost painful to look at.
"Yes," she said. "Each one. Tavren, our first. Covenant. Then Lust and Passion. Healing. Truth. Euphoria. Devotion. Affection and Wrath. Pride and Perfection. Bonded Souls. Desire and Despair. Compassion and Grief."
Her hand lifted to the final sigil—the thirteenth. A complex design of intersecting lines, half radiant, half charred.
"And our last," she whispered. " The Apocalypse."
The symbol flickered once, as if hearing its own name.
Qaritas's skin prickled. "Thirteen children," he said. "You must have had a very loud house."
She laughed. "You have no idea."
She tucked the sheet around him with a practiced hand, the way she must have done for them a thousand times. "Rest, Qaritas," she said. "You've earned it."
His eyelids were already heavy. The potion's warmth seeped through him, muting the worst of the awakening's rage.
Rnarah stepped away, her silhouette a soft smear of gold and rose in his fading vision.
The last thing he saw before sleep took him was the ceiling—a panel of glass where Zcain and Rnarah stood side by side, thirteen stars above them, and somewhere in that constellation, one light burned just a little brighter.
He wasn't sure how long he slept.
Minutes. Hours. An eternity.
What woke him wasn't pain this time. It was sound.
A scream.
Not a normal scream. Not fear, not surprise. This was raw, continuous, as if someone had been burning alive for so long that screaming was the only language they remembered.
Qaritas snapped awake, heart pounding, half expecting trees and rot and the Bzluagh's dangling hearts. Instead, the stained glass stared down at him. The beds around him were unchanged. The ward's glow remained soft.
But the scream didn't stop.
It was coming from somewhere behind the far wall.
Oh, Eon said, interested. That's new.
Qaritas pushed himself up slowly, careful not to rip his still-fragile skin. Purple light flickered under the surface, ready to crack through again at any wrong movement.
He swung his legs off the bed, the cold stone floor stinging his bare feet.
Another scream tore through the ward. Closer, now. Then another voice—hoarser, deeper, layered with something that might once have been divine.
They weren't cries for help. They were battle-screams. The sound of someone dying over and over and refusing to stay dead.
He staggered toward the far corner of the room. There—a seam in the wall, nearly invisible, shielded by a haze of sigils layered one over another. A door, hidden but not from him.
"Don't touch that," Eon said. Whatever's behind it, Zcain does not want visitors.
"That's why I want to see it," Qaritas muttered. He reached out.
Footsteps.
Qaritas flinched away from the hidden door on instinct, every muscle screaming. He stumbled back to his bed, nearly tearing his own skin open as the purple light flared under his flesh. He dropped onto the mattress and rolled onto his side, eyes half-lidded, breath rough but slowed—close enough to sleep to fool anyone who wanted to be fooled.
The ward doors hissed open.
"You're pushing them too hard."
Tavren. His voice was low but jagged, like it had been dragged over stone for hours.
"I'm not pushing," Zcain replied, calm as ever. "The curse is."
Qaritas kept his breathing steady. Eon coiled tight in his chest, listening.
Heavy steps crossed the floor, then stopped halfway into the ward—as if they'd hit an invisible line.
"It's getting worse," Tavren said. "You heard them. That wasn't just pain, that was—" His voice cracked, then sharpened. "They were begging in there, Father. Again."
Another set of footsteps entered, lighter, edged with metal.
Rivax.
"What did you expect?" Rivax said quietly. "They haven't slept in a thousand years. The curse doesn't stop. It just… changes its stage."
A softer tread followed—the sound of glass and bone in careful rhythm.
Dheas.
"It's not a coma," Dheas murmured. "Not exactly. It's collapse. Their nervous system finally shut down, but the curse rides their subconscious like a parasite. Awake, they burn. Asleep, they drown. Those screams are both."
The screaming from behind the hidden door hit a new pitch, then broke into hoarse sobbing. Qaritas's skin crawled.
Tavren swore under his breath. "Do you remember what they told me? Before they finally dropped?"
No one answered.
"They said," Tavren went on, voice shaking despite the effort to hold it steady, "that every time they close their eyes, they're not dreaming.
They're seeing someone else—being tortured, violated, torn apart. Not as a vision. As if it's them. They feel the skin melt. They feel every hand, every blow, every breath."
Qaritas's stomach turned. Eon went very quiet.
"They tried once to end it." Tavren's words came slower now, as if each cost him. "Did you know that?"
"Yes," Zcain said softly.
Qaritas could hear the memory in his tone.
"They begged me not to tell you," Dheas added, guilt lacing his voice. "They thought… if they broke the curse by breaking themselves, maybe the screaming would stop. It didn't. It just added another layer to the pain. And then the curse dragged them back and made them relive that too."
A long, shaking breath. Tavren again.
"They're cursed to suffer whether they're awake or asleep," he said. "They can't turn it off. They can't escape it. And we keep asking them to be patient. To hold on. For what, exactly?"
"Injustice," Rivax said. "That's what lit the curse in the first place. It's not random. It's anchored to what was done—to them, to others. You know that."
"Don't lecture me on what was done," Tavren snapped. "I was there when they woke screaming the first time. I was there when they decided it wasn't enough to hunt the ones who did those things—they had to feel every victim, too. Every time we track down someone who trafficked, tortured, broke people… they get the echoes. The vision. The pain. And if we're too late—"
He cut himself off.
Rivax finished for him, voice rough. "We were too late. More times than not."
The scream from the other room faltered, turned into a low, animal growl. The sound of a body trying to tear itself apart and failing.
"The only time it stops," Tavren said, barely more than a whisper now, "the only time they get any kind of relief… is when they eat the brain of the worst creatures we find."
Dheas sucked in a breath. "Tavren—"
"No. Say it," Tavren snarled. "We bring them the vilest beings in existence—slavers, abusers, butchers. They crack their skulls open and devour them like medicine. Take their intellect, their memories, their patterns. Stack those minds on top of the screaming so they can think straight for a while. And we call that relief."
Silence. It pressed heavier than the screams.
"How do you think they're going to act," Tavren asked, voice gone low and lethal, "when they wake up fifty years after Kyrian's death? After losing the first child they ever saved—their first child—and finding out the universe just… kept going without him?"
Qaritas remembered Tavren's story. A small elf with broken legs. A child hung from a gate like a warning.
"They loved that boy more than their own life," Tavren said. "Kyrian was the first proof they ever had that what they were doing mattered. And he died screaming on a wall while we were looking the other way."
Rivax's metal hand clenched; the faint grind of shifting plates rang in the quiet.
"We all failed him," Tavren said. "You, me, Dheas, the Apocalypse, the whole cursed line. You're not the only one who wakes up seeing his face."
"The difference," Dheas said softly, "is that when they wake, they'll feel everything he felt. Every second of it, like it's happening to their own body. That's what this curse does. It stitches empathy to agony and never lets go."
A long pause.
Then Zcain finally moved. Qaritas couldn't see him with his eyes half-closed, but he felt the shift in the air—the way Sin reoriented itself when its source chose a direction.
"Listen to me," Zcain said. No god-voice, no thunder—just a man who had been alive far too long. "You must never underestimate them. You both know what they are. We trained them. We watched them grow. We saw them stand against things that made gods run."
"They're exhausted," Tavren shot back. "They're broken."
"They are bent," Zcain corrected quietly. "Not broken. There is a difference. They are cursed, yes. Doomed to feel every atrocity they hunt. But they are also stubborn beyond reason. Do you truly believe they will wake and choose anything but the fight?"
Tavren didn't answer.
"Have you ever known them," Zcain continued, "to walk away from a promise? From their word?"
There was a name there—caught, half-spoken, swallowed by the hum of the ward. Qaritas couldn't make it out. It slid past his awareness like a blurred star.
Tavren let out a choked, humorless laugh. "No," he admitted. "Never. That's the problem."
"Good," Zcain said. "Then trust that. Trust them. Our job is to keep them alive until they can decide what to do with all that pain. Not to decide for them."
The ward lights dimmed slightly, responding to the weight in his tone.
"Go and rest," Zcain added. "All of you. I'll take the next watch."
Rivax shifted. "You've been taking the last five watches."
"Then I'll take the sixth," Zcain said simply.
"Tavren hasn't slept in his own bed in twenty years," Rivax pointed out. "If he doesn't come back to it soon, I'll knock him out and drag him there myself."
"Try it," Tavren muttered, but there was no real heat in it.
Dheas sighed. "We can't keep this up. None of us. If we fall before they wake, who's going to explain any of this to them?"
"That's why you're going," Zcain said. "You'll be here when they open their eyes. All three of you. Until then, sleep. Eat. Touch something that isn't a curse or a battlefield. That's an order."
He must have put power behind it. Qaritas could feel the air tighten, then release.
Rivax was the first to relent. Metal shuffled, then a hand clapped Tavren's shoulder.
"He's right," Rivax said. "For once. Come on. You promised me twenty years ago you'd actually lie down next to me again when this was 'over.' I'm cashing in early."
Dheas's voice picked up, lighter, trying to cut through the heaviness. "And if you two don't go, I'm sedating both of you and making you share a bed in the infirmary like misbehaving apprentices."
Tavren huffed. "Blasphemy."
"Goodnight, Tavren," Zcain said.
There was a long pause. Then, quietly: "Goodnight, Father."
Footsteps retreated. The ward doors whispered shut behind them.
For a few seconds, only the hum of the fourteenth floor remained, in sync with the ragged breathing from behind the secret door.
Then Zcain spoke again, softer, closer.
"I know you're awake, Qaritas."
Eon sighed. Busted.
Qaritas opened his eyes.
He froze.
They were light but decisive, echoing up the corridor outside. Qaritas moved on instinct, shoving himself away from the door and stumbling back toward his bed. By the time the main entrance opened, he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, pretending he wasn't two shakes from collapsing.
Rnarah entered first. Relief flashed over her face when she saw him upright. Behind her, someone else's presence pressed against the ward—heavy, familiar, threaded with crimson and guilt.
Zcain.
He didn't step in yet. Stayed just outside, as if the threshold were a line he was reluctant to cross.
"You shouldn't be walking," Rnarah said, crossing to Qaritas in three quick strides. "Your awakening is trying to split you in half."
"Your secret screaming door woke me up," Qaritas said bluntly. "Hard to nap through that."
Her expression flickered. "You heard?"
"Hard to miss," he said. "What is it?"
Eon chuckled. This is awkward. I'm almost enjoying it.
Before Rnarah could answer, pain surged again—sudden and brutal. His skin split along his forearms, purple light forcing its way out in jagged lines.
He hissed through his teeth, clenching his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms.
Rnarah cursed softly and reached for the flask again, tipping it to his lips. "Drink."
He swallowed. The world receded a fraction.
"This is one of the worst awakenings I've ever seen," she muttered. "Even for an Ascendant."
"I like to exceed expectations," he said hoarsely.
Show-off, Eon said.
Rnarah shot the doorway a look. "He shouldn't be talking this much."
Zcain finally stepped inside.
If Rnarah was warmth made flesh, Zcain was the shadow cast by it—long, sharp, and strangely gentle. His eyes were tired, the crimson threads in them dimmed. There were new lines at the corners of his mouth, carved there by worrying about too many people at once.
"Welcome back," he said.
"Define 'back,'" Qaritas replied. "We're not in the Develdion anymore."
"No," Zcain agreed. "You were pulled out when your awakening threatened to tear the simulation apart. The Develdion can handle a great many things. A half-born Apocalypse prison trying to rewrite the code is… not ideal for the others."
"So you parked me on the fourteenth floor," Qaritas said. "Where you keep your family portraits and your screaming secrets."
Rnarah pinched the bridge of her nose, but there was a ghost of a smile tugging at her mouth.
Zcain's gaze flicked to the far corner, where the hidden door sat under its heavy shielding. His jaw tightened. "You heard them," he said quietly.
"Yes," Qaritas said. "And I heard Tavren yelling about it too."
Zcain's eyes narrowed. "You were awake?"
"Half," Qaritas admitted. "Enough to hear him saying he was tired of watching 'them' suffer. Enough to hear Rivax and Dheas blaming themselves."
Rnarah's shoulders slumped. "Of course he was."
Zcain exhaled slowly. "You were supposed to rest."
"I did," Qaritas said. "Then your horror ward started howling."
Eon snickered. You can't be mad—this is what you trained him for.
For a long moment, Zcain said nothing. The hum of the ward filled the silence, matching Qaritas's heartbeat beat for beat.
Then, finally: "There is nothing you can do for them."
For a heartbeat, Zcain's hand—always steady, always precise—trembled.
Just once.
So slight Qaritas would've missed it if he weren't already watching him too closely.
Eon went silent in his mind, like even he understood what that meant.
"Who?" Qaritas asked. "Because 'them' suggests more than one."
Rnarah moved closer to Zcain, her hand brushing his wrist. He didn't look at her, but some of the tension eased from his stance.
"We told you," he said, "that you would meet all of my siblings. And… others. That remains true."
"Is that a yes or a very poetic no?" Qaritas pressed.
Zcain studied him—seriously, weighing something only he could see.
"You're still breaking," he said. "Your body is half-mortal, half-divine, and neither side is pleased. Your mind has walked through hell until it can't tell if it left."
"Same as yesterday," Qaritas said. "And the day before. And the last ten thousand deaths."
Eon hummed in agreement. He's adapting.
"That's my point," Zcain replied. "You adapt quickly—too quickly. Left alone, you'd invent worse horrors than the truth."
He turned toward the hidden corner. With a flick of his fingers, the layered wards shimmered, sigils unraveling one by one with the reluctant hiss of locks being opened after too long.
"Come," he said. "But remember: you can't save them. Not today."
Rnarah's hand tightened on his arm. He covered it briefly, then stepped away, leading Qaritas toward the door.
The closer they got, the colder the air became. Not the clean chill of metal or magic, but the cold of things left in the dark too long.
The door itself was thick, carved from some stone that drank light. Thirteen sigils glowed faintly along its edge—Zcain and Rnarah's children again, forming a circle. At the bottom, a fourteenth mark had been scorched into the frame, half melted, as if the door itself had tried to reject it.
Zcain placed his palm over that broken sigil. It flared once, protesting, then unlocked with a dull, heavy click.
The scream on the other side hit like a wall.
Qaritas flinched, teeth rattling. Eon went very still.
Then—
a sound.
Not from the scream.
Not from the room.
A wet, choking rasp.
The exact one he'd made when the Nythraen crushed his throat during the trial.
Qaritas staggered back, hand flying to his neck even though the skin was whole.
"That's… my death," he breathed.
Eon's voice was very quiet.
"Not all wounds stay where you left them.
That, the god whispered, is familiar.
The door swung inward.
The stench hit next—decay, blood, burned flesh, old magic that had been stretched past its limit and then forced to keep going. Qaritas gagged, one hand flying to his mouth.
The room beyond was smaller than the ward, but not by much. Two beds sat at its center, surrounded by a tangle of runes etched into the floor and walls. Glowing chains hung from the ceiling like spiderwebs. Insects buzzed in a constant cloud, scattering and reforming around the beds.
On the first bed lay a man bound in silvery restraints that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Two horns curled from his temples, their tips blackened. His features were sharply handsome even under the strain—strong jaw, familiar angular nose, the kind of beauty that shared bloodline with Rivax. But his skin was wrong—patchworked with scales and feathers, as if his body couldn't decide what species it wanted to be.
Golden hair clung to his sweat-slick brow. With every breath, his chest rose and fell in jerks, like he was drowning on dry land.
Occasionally, a burst of energy would rip through him, arching his back off the bed as if something inside were trying to claw its way out the wrong direction.
"Aarion Iyrian," Zcain said quietly. "Iyrian of Nephalem. Rivax's brother."
The man let out a hoarse, broken roar that dissolved into a sob and then back into a roar again.
Qaritas swallowed hard. "What's happening to him?"
"His bloodlines are at war," Zcain said. "Demon, angel, human, and more. He gave up pieces of himself in a fight that wasn't his. Now the fragments refuse to agree on what he is."
Eon muttered, He should've stayed away from First Dimensions, under his breath.
"And the other?" Qaritas asked, though part of him already knew—knew in the way his skin crawled, in the way the purple under his flesh thrummed in recognition.
The second bed was worse.
Eon didn't speak at first.
No quip. No whisper. Just… silence.
When he finally exhaled, it wasn't confidence.
"…this is not how they were supposed to look."
The figure on it barely looked human anymore. Their body was mummified in some places, blackened and shriveled, while in others, raw new flesh grew too fast, bubbling up and then collapsing. Bones melted and regrew in loops, ribs fusing and then cracking apart.
Blood leaked constantly, thick and dark, only to evaporate in the air and condense back onto their skin like a grotesque rain. Insects swarmed over them, not feeding, but acting like living sutures—dragging bits of tissue back into place, pulling bone fragments together before another wave of decay shattered them again.
At one point, their head simply slid off their shoulders and thudded onto the floor with a wet crack.
Qaritas recoiled.
Zcain moved with terrifying gentleness. He bent, picked up the head as if it were made of glass, and carried it back to the bed.
The body spasmed. The neck regrew enough to accept the head. The two halves stitched back together in a mess of sinew and light.
The person's eyes fluttered open for a heartbeat—black shot through with pale blue fire. Pain. Fury. And deep, unkillable stubbornness.
The scream that followed shifted pitch—just a hair—like her agony had recognized the echo inside him.
"They've been screaming like this for nearly five centuries," Zcain said softly. "This is a quiet day."
Zcain didn't look away from her face.
"This is only the surface of her curse."
Heat flared under Qaritas's skin—brief, sharp—like someone had pressed a brand to his ribs. The purple light under his flesh pulsed once in answer to her pain, unbidden, unwanted.
Her eyes rolled back. And the screaming began again.
Then they rolled back, and the scream returned.
Even Eon was silent now.
"Who are they?" Qaritas asked, voice barely more than breath.
Zcain stood at the bedside, his hand hovering an inch above the figure's forehead, as if afraid to touch and unable not to.
"This," he said softly, "is why Tavren doesn't sleep. Why Rivax and Dheas blame themselves. Why Rnarah comes here when she thinks I'm not watching."
He looked over his shoulder at Qaritas. Every line in his face was tired and endlessly, fiercely loving.
He pointed to the first bed. "Aarion, Iyrian of Nephalem," he repeated. Then his hand shifted to the second.
For a heartbeat, her gaze passed over him — not seeing, but knowing.
And something in his ribs lurched in answer, a pulse not his own.
"And this," he said, voice dropping to something reverent, something broken,
"is Xheavaend.
My only daughter.
Ascendant of the Apocalypse."
Qaritas's heart stuttered. The purple light under his skin flared, answering something in the ruined body on the bed.
Eon's whisper echoed through him, thin and shaken.
*Oh, little brother.
Now it gets interesting.*
He didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until the room allowed him to breathe again.
…I didn't want you to see this yet.