Chapter 25: The Wind of the Underworld Howls Past
At the deepest, blackest layer of Kur, only cold stone covered the ground.
Clusters of eerie blue ghost fire floated in the dark, swaying in silent harmony. They were the last scraps of warmth wrung from the dead, the only light the Underworld allowed itself to keep.
Within that dim glow stood a desolate temple built from piled rock. Upon a throne of black stone sat Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld. Golden hair spilled over her shoulders like a thin river of light trapped underground, and beneath it her delicate face showed something she had not worn in ages.
Surprise.
She could not deny it. She had heard the voice clearly. Its origin, its meaning, and the way it had cut through the layers of death as if they were paper.
Someone on the surface had said they longed for her.
Not feared her. Not cursed her. Not begged her to spare them.
Longed.
And that voice, that aura, was painfully familiar to a goddess who had spent eternity listening to nothing but silence.
"Is it you…" she murmured softly, her ruby eyes trembling. "The one who let me see the light of day again?"
Ereshkigal closed her eyes.
You longed for me?
The word felt both familiar and alien.
Gods were longed for. Longing was a form of faith. Faith sustained divinity. That was the simple arithmetic of the Age of Gods.
But those were ordinary gods.
Ereshkigal was not ordinary in the way the pantheon meant it. Among gods she was a forgotten ruler of a realm no one wished to visit. Among humans she was death given a name and a crown. She did not walk in temples drenched in offerings. She did not stand beneath cheering prayers.
She had no faith.
She had never once been longed for.
Yet now someone said he longed for her.
And worse, or perhaps better, it was the same person who had shaken the borders of Heaven, Earth, and Kur, letting a sliver of the living world fall into her sight once more.
Who was he?
Had he torn open the gap between worlds for her sake?
She wanted to know.
She wanted to see him. To know his face, his shape, the way he looked when he spoke her name without fear.
She wanted to go to the human world.
A chill wind rolled through Kur in answer, as if the realm itself had inhaled.
Ereshkigal's shadow remained seated upon the throne, dignified and unmoving. But her soul had already slipped away, rising along the trembling boundary toward the world above.
Toward him.
…
"You… you bastard…"
Ishtar's voice resurfaced in the deep alley of Uruk after a long silence, sharp as a blade trying too hard to sound calm.
"Are you serious?"
Night had long drowned the last red edge of sunset. Stars spilled across the sky like scattered glass, and a thin slice of moonlight slid between the buildings to settle on Rowe's shoulders.
He looked at Ishtar. Her expression was tangled, caught between shock and annoyance, between pride and something she refused to name.
Rowe smiled, mild and infuriating.
"Do I have any reason to deceive you?"
He spread his hands, adopting the lazy confidence of a man who knew a trap had already sprung.
"Do not underestimate me, Goddess. I was once a priest of Uruk's temples."
Ishtar did not know about the rebellion Rowe had just staged against the high heavens. To her, he was still an assistant priest, a human who served the gods, even if he had a loud mouth and a suicidal hobby.
On matters like this, priests did not lie.
So if she wanted to act, she should act quickly.
Rowe made no attempt to hide the way he stood there, as if placing his life directly in her palm.
He had even set Enkidu aside for this.
Come on. If you are going to kill me, do it already.
Instead, Ishtar let out a quiet sigh.
The surprise and anger on her face drained away so smoothly that Rowe wondered if he had imagined them.
He blinked.
Did it fail after all?
He was not shocked. He had known Ishtar, with Tohsaka Rin's humanity bleeding into her, was unlikely to take his head on the spot.
Then Ishtar spoke, her voice low and strangely distant.
"She heard it."
Rowe froze.
Under the cool moonlight, Ishtar's figure wavered, like heat haze rising from stone. For a breath, it looked as though two silhouettes overlapped in the same place, similar yet not the same.
"She heard your words," Ishtar continued, eyes filled with a complexity she could not fully control. "And her heart wants to see you. But she is afraid."
Ishtar had always pitied her sister, trapped in Kur like a prisoner of duty. Yet sympathy had never erased fear. As Anu's daughter and Mistress of Heaven, Ishtar never stepped into the Underworld. She could not. The roles of heaven and death did not mix, and even she felt the chill of that rule.
And still, this was the first time anyone had spoken of Ereshkigal with longing.
Something Ishtar herself had never been able to say out loud.
Rowe had said it plainly, without hesitation, in public.
That reckless sincerity had brushed against a bond of shared origin between the sisters, a connection that had existed once and then broken across countless years as the Age of Gods faded.
She felt it reconnect.
She felt Ereshkigal hear him.
She felt her sister stir.
So Ishtar accepted a fragment of Ereshkigal's consciousness, just as she herself had manifested earlier, letting it rest as a superimposed shadow upon her body.
Now, that shadow trembled.
"She is here," Ishtar whispered, repeating as if she needed the words to be true. "She does not dare face you. She only wants to look at you."
Her voice softened further.
"To see you. The only one in the living world who longs for her."
"And then she will leave."
The overlapping presence sharpened for an instant before fading again. Rowe saw a goddess almost identical to Ishtar, but hazier, like an image behind mist. He caught the flow of gold hair, the same crimson eyes, and the weight of death that pressed against the air.
Ereshkigal.
No, the Goddess of the Underworld.
She had come, but not fully. She had only borrowed Ishtar's vessel long enough to steal a glance at her first admirer. She was terrified that if Rowe actually touched her, he would recoil in fear and that fragile longing would collapse into dust.
It was absurdly gentle.
And heartbreakingly extreme in a way that made Ishtar look simple by comparison.
At the same time, the wind in the alley turned razor cold. Darkness pooled as though a curtain had been drawn across the world. The air itself became a boundary.
The Underworld's wind.
The breath of Kur carried by a goddess who did not yet dare to step into light.
It blocked the path.
It was a wall no living thing should be able to touch.
But Rowe was not like living things should be.
Death was terrifying, to humans, to objects, even to gods.
Rowe was different.
He was starving for it.
How could he let this chance slip away?
Since he had come this far, how could he allow her to disappear behind fear?
He stepped forward.
His hand reached into the wind of the Underworld.
Excitement ignited in his chest, bright and reckless.
Tonight might be the closest he had ever come to dying since his transmigration.
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