Oniya moved at a quick, steady pace. The night air hung thick and heavy with the weight of recent rain. Leather boots struck a rhythmic cadence against the wet asphalt, gleaming amber beneath the streetlights.
Somewhere in the distance — sobbing. Muffled pleas.
He drew in a slow breath, catching the faint trace of an ashen-grey haze. She's close, he thought, and quickened his step.
Please. Someone help me.
— Found you, — Oniya said quietly, stepping into the empty parking lot of a large supermarket.
Light fell across his face in sharp contrasts, tracing the hard line of his jaw. Chestnut waves had grown heavy with moisture. To human eyes, he was simply a dangerously beautiful man — imposing, unsettling in a way they couldn't name. None of them could have seen the ancient darkness that wore this perfect shell.
A quick turn of his thumb against one of his heavy rings. Space shuddered — the empty lot blurred at its edges — and in the next breath, Oniya was already seated in the passenger seat of an unremarkable car.
Behind the wheel sat a young woman clutching a crumpled piece of paper. Her eyes and nose were red raw, tears streaming in thick, warm rivulets down her cheeks.
Oniya exhaled loudly and draped his arm over the back of her seat, leaning closer. Silver chains chimed softly. He glanced from her trembling hands to her tear-streaked face and raised an eyebrow.
— Again.
He let go, settled back, and pulled a cigarette from inside his leather coat.
The girl stared at the wrinkled sheet in her lap, entirely unaware of the god beside her. The folded paper held a list — qualities of the ideal man she so desperately wanted to find.
Written in cramped, uneven handwriting:
"1. tall (added above — minimum 6'3"), 2. handsome (crossed out, replaced with "decent-looking"), 3. rich (crossed out, replaced with "financially stable"), 4. loves animals, 5. doesn't live with his parents. 6.…"
She kept crying.
Oniya turned to the window.
— In fifteen hundred years, — he muttered, — not one… Not a single man has ever prayed to me for something like this.
He lit the cigarette, exhaled a slow curl of smoke, closed his eyes and tilted his head back.
— You'll regret it, — he said quietly, — if I give you exactly what you're asking for.
He opened his eyes, turned to face her, and snapped his fingers. Her eyelids fluttered for a fraction of a second. In that sliver of time, years of life with the man of her dreams played out inside her head.
They met at a grocery store. She couldn't reach the top shelf — he stepped over without a word and handed it down. A conversation started. Smiles exchanged. Numbers swapped. He texted that same evening. A week of late-night messages under the covers. First date. Second. Holding hands. First kiss at her front door. Good morning texts, every day. He shows up with flowers. Stays all weekend. A month later, a gaming console and a cat move in. After work, she comes home to a towel on the floor, a dirty litter box, traces on the toilet seat. She smiles tiredly and goes to cook. A year passes. She leaves the apartment less and less. A pregnancy test, two lines. She is overjoyed. He is lost. Labour. A baby in her arms. Sleepless nights, a rattle. He is at work. At his parents'. With friends. On a work trip.
He had seen this a thousand times. A thousand and one.
Looking down, she can barely see her own feet. Sitting in the kitchen, a drop of coffee falls on a stretched-out t-shirt. She stares into the night window with glass-still eyes.
— Do you still want me to grant your wish? — Oniya asked, very quietly.
The girl went still for a few seconds. Then the pleading started again.
— God, please, please help me find someone…
Oniya exhaled. She couldn't see him.
He drew his right hand slowly from her stomach to her throat. An ashen-grey haze drifted from her mouth, her nose. He closed his fist, taking the despair into himself — his own body flickering for a moment with a dull, grey-ash light. The girl went calm. She slumped gently in her seat, the paper resting loose in her hands.
— You don't have enough light karma for me to grant your wish exactly as you've written it, — he said, brushing a tiny fleck of golden light from her left shoulder.
He leaned forward and blew softly across her eyes.
— Someone from your list will come. — A pause. — One item. Maybe two.
He lowered the window. Tossed out the cigarette.
The night was the same — wet asphalt, streetlights, the smell of rain. But something had shifted. The air had thickened. Gone quiet. The way it does in the second before impact — when the sound hasn't happened yet, but the body already knows.
The world held its breath.
In the ringing silence — a crack. A dense web of fractures shot across the windshield. Then it exploded inward. A powerful, sinewy arm drove through the laminate glass, seized Oniya by the throat with a dead man's grip, and wrenched him through the shattered window in one savage pull.
— Miss me? — Astar, God of Passion, rumbled.
Oniya was hurled through the air by sheer force. Through the blur of motion, he caught a glimpse of Astar raising his other hand — a surge of silver energy struck the car — and the windshield sealed itself instantly, without a single mark. The mortal girl inside didn't even stir.
Oniya landed hard several metres away, skidding across the wet asphalt, and stayed where he fell — one arm braced beneath him. Damp chestnut waves plastered to his face. Silver chains rang softly.
— Brother. Good to see you, — the Dark God said, smiling tightly.
— You are not my brother.
Astar dropped from the car. In the glow of the streetlights, his fair hair and the shadow of stubble along his jaw gave him the deceptive air of something angelic — but his eyes burned with a venomous, predatory green. Encased in dark leather armour with steel fittings, the God of Passion moved with the kind of certainty that made even an immortal's chest go tight.
From the darkness, snapping their jaws, two enormous spectral hounds came tearing out. They snarled and sank into Oniya's leather coat, pinning him in place. Astar closed the distance in an instant, grabbed him by the throat, and yanked him close.
He looked at Oniya — for just a second. Something flickered in those green eyes and vanished before it could take shape. Oniya saw it. Couldn't name it.
He didn't struggle. Instead, he caught Astar's wrist and drove his thumb hard against the heavy ring on his own index finger.
Space lurched. The parking lot stayed the same — but the sounds of the city dropped away, and the streetlights dimmed to nothing. They fell through into the Thin World.
Astar only smiled, crooked and unhurried, his grip unchanged.
— Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?
He produced a knife with a carved handle. The blade — the length of a palm — caught what little light remained.
— I know about the cursed seal on your chest. I imagine it'll hurt quite a lot if my blade finds its way in.
Oniya twisted free of the hold and sprang back, putting distance between them.
— Astar, you're so fixated on me it's almost flattering. You are, admittedly, a remarkably beautiful man — but I tend to prefer different company.
Astar's green eyes ignited with pure fury. One sharp motion — the blade cut through the air with a whistle and buried itself directly in the centre of the seal on Oniya's chest.
The breath left him. The pain was paralysing — not sharp, but deep, as though something inside had begun to tear along a seam. Heavy drops of grey blood soaked through his clothes, dripping onto the asphalt. Where the blood touched the ground, a neon net of magical webbing began to spread and pulse.
Oniya sank to his knees. His hand slid across the wet ground.
— Telem, — he breathed, his weakening fingers finding one of the amulets at his throat.
Space tore open. Beside Oniya, a lean man with cold, aristocratic composure materialised from the air. Without a word, Telem caught the wounded god — one arm beneath his shoulders, one beneath his knees — and struck his free palm hard against the ground.
The glowing net shuddered, pulsed in waves, and went dark. The air collapsed with a deafening crack.
When Oniya opened his eyes again, the smell of scorched asphalt was gone. Damp sand. The quiet sound of water. A vast lake stretched before them — dark, glassy, and absolutely still.
He was still in Telem's arms.
He realised it slowly. And when he did, he felt something entirely unbefitting a God of Despair who had survived fifteen hundred years. Something alarmingly close to disorientation. Or warmth. He couldn't find a name for it — and that helplessness infuriated him more than anything else.
— Let go, — he breathed. The words came out quieter and more fractured than he intended.
Telem ignored the order. Without a word, he stepped directly into the dark water, carrying Oniya with him. The lake yielded before him, receiving its keeper.
— Does it hurt? — Telem asked, low and measured, when the water reached their waists. He stopped, and began carefully unfastening Oniya's blood-soaked clothing. The heavy fabric slid beneath the surface. — How did he find you?
— Spectral hounds, — Oniya said, flinching against the searing cold. — They must have caught the trail.
The water around them was perfectly still. The dark surface held the full moon in its reflection.
— Your lake… — Oniya said quietly, trying to focus on anything but the pain in his chest. The water reached his neck, hiding the damage beneath. — Even here in the Thin World, it's extraordinary. — He paused. — Either way, Astar can't kill me. If I die — so does he.
Telem said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the carved handle of the knife, still embedded in the centre of the cursed seal.
— You need to take it out, — he said. Even. Absolute.
Oniya shut his eyes. His fingers closed around the handle. With a rough, ragged sound he pulled the blade free. Across the mirror-still surface of the lake, dense, ashen-grey tendrils began to bleed outward, poisoning the water.
Telem's brow drew together.
— I'll help, — he said. His voice had gone quieter still.
Beneath the water, Telem's large, warm hands came to rest directly on Oniya's bare chest, covering the wound. The contrast of it — the freezing lake and the burning hands of the Keeper — sent a treacherous shiver across Oniya's skin. Heat moved through his veins, betraying that hidden, unguarded part of himself he had kept buried beneath a man's body for centuries.
Oniya exhaled sharply. He couldn't pull away.
They stood still in the middle of the dark, moonlit lake. The silence was complete — only water, only the moon, only those warm hands pressing against his chest.
He couldn't remember the last time anyone had held him this way. As though he were something of value. Not merely something useful.
Fifteen hundred years. And here we are.