The rain still fell, slow and silent, as if it too mourned the absence.
Niyus, standing in the middle of the street, stared at the empty sky. Nothing moved anymore. All the commotion had vanished as quickly as it had come.
He was thoughtful.
Why did she say she would be sealed?
The question spun relentlessly in his mind. Finally, he sighed and went back home.
The house was empty. Without Rivhiamë, the place felt strange, lifeless. He shed his torn clothes, still soaked from the rain, replaced them with others, then headed to the living room. He sat on the couch and closed his eyes.
Niyus (whispering):
- It's so… strange…
He recalled Mü Thanatos: her gaze, her power, her words, every gesture.
A sad smile appeared on his face.
Niyus:
- It's beautiful… to have a deity who watches over and protects her creation.
But his expression hardened immediately.
Niyus:
- Yet, I still don't understand… Why did she speak of sealing?
"Niyus…"
The voice echoed within him.
Niyus:
- Rivhiamë?
He jumped up, scanning the room.
Niyus:
- It can't be… Did I just hear Rivhiamë?
Perplexed, he slowly sat back down.
Niyus:
- No… surely an illusion. A voice in my head.
"Niyus, look inside your consciousness. I am here."
He opened his eyes wide.
Niyus:
- My consciousness?
He closed his eyelids and projected his mind inward.
A white place, without edges. A luminous void.
There floated Rivhiamë. Naked, peaceful, relaxed. As if time itself had stopped.
Niyus (astonished):
- Rivhiamë? Is that really you?
Rivhiamë (softly):
- Of course. We are one now.
Niyus:
- What? I don't understand…
Rivhiamë:
- You were doomed. You no longer had a fundamental state: no soul, no spirit, nothing. Zramë had destroyed everything. So I refused your end… and I made an existence substitution.
Niyus (intrigued):
- An existence substitution?
Rivhiamë (smiling):
- Yes. I sacrificed myself to merge with you. My spirit, my soul, my history, my being… I shared them with you. My consciousness is still alive, but yours now leads everything. I am here… inside. Like an inner voice, a second consciousness.
Niyus:
- I can't believe it… You did something so important… to save me?
Without answering, Rivhiamë threw herself on him and embraced him tenderly.
Rivhiamë (gently):
- I couldn't bear the thought of losing you, Niyus. Living without you… would have been a nightmare.
The white void flickered. Niyus, still in this strange projection of his consciousness, held Rivhiamë close. Yet something was off… This place was not his. This white was not his. It was hers, her inner world, but diluted in his.
Niyus (perplexed):
- Rivhiamë… why is it white? Hell was more… chaotic, wasn't it?
Rivhiamë (light, mocking laugh):
- You think demons only like fire and chains? The white is because you don't have enough personality yet. Your soul is a bit… bland!
Niyus (sighing):
- That's so like you…
She pulled back slightly, looking at him with that mix of playful tenderness and devilish mischief typical of imps.
Rivhiamë:
- I didn't just save you. I did much more. I merged with you, Niyus. I'm part of you now. Body, soul, history… I wrapped everything into yours like an infernal spiral.
Niyus (disturbed):
- You mean… I've become a demon?
Rivhiamë (winking mischievously):
- Not exactly. You're… a chimera. A living contradiction. A human with an infernal soul sewn to his own. Neither fully damned nor fully saved. A grey being. Just the way I like them.
She stretched in the air, floating, naked and free, as if dancing in the void.
Rivhiamë:
- And the funniest part is Hell doesn't know yet what I did. Normally, you're not allowed to sacrifice your essence for a mortal. But I'm a bit… rebellious, you see?
Niyus:
- But why? Why would a demon do that?
She descended toward him, her gaze burning with brutal sincerity.
Rivhiamë:
- Niyus... I'm not just a demon, I am Rivhiamë your friend, and also because since the first day I saw you, I saw something in you. Something rare, even for a demon: the potential to break chains. Not others' chains. Yours. You lived with laws you never chose. I was tired of following them.
She caressed his cheek.
Rivhiamë:
- In you, I can survive. And in me, you can rise.
A shiver. A black wave passed around them. The white cracked.
Rivhiamë (suddenly serious):
- But be careful, Niyus. This fusion… it has a price. Other demons will sense it. The link I created is forbidden. And Hell hates what doesn't fit its boxes.
Niyus (grimacing):
- Great. I just finished a conflict with gods and now I'll have some with demons too: then he added sarcastically: I'm really lucky!
Rivhiamë (laughing):
- Exactly. You signed without reading the fine print. But hey, you're alive, right?
She kissed his forehead and vanished in a swirl of shadows.
Niyus snapped his eyes open in his living room. A faint sulfur smell lingered in the air. His skin tingled. He ran to the hallway mirror.
His eyes had turned slightly purple.
And behind him, for a very brief moment… the shadow of two thin, blurry, indistinct horns.
He whispered, holding his head:
- What have I become…?
A quiet laugh in his head:
- A beautiful mess, Niyus.
The rain kept falling, dense and monotonous, beating the jungle foliage with an almost painful regularity. Perched on a massive branch, Mü Thanatos remained motionless. Her blood-red gaze fixed on the misty horizon. Drops slid down her face like indifferent tears, her soaked blue hair plastered to her pale skin.
She did not move. She waited.
And suddenly, the light appeared.
Two divine forms floated in the canopy: Zeus, radiant with gold and muffled lightning, and Ñout, starry goddess, an ethereal silhouette with azure reflections.
Mü Thanatos (in a dull voice):
- So you're finally here…
Zeus (frowning):
- You were waiting for us here? That's… strange.
Mü Thanatos (looking into the void, weary):
- You came to give me my sentence. I know. I killed gods. I destroyed my peers. I deserve punishment.
Ñout (calm and grave):
- Indeed. But we know you faced them because they attacked you despite your warning. You told them: gods must not kill each other.
Zeus (with contained anger):
- Those gods were no longer truly gods. They betrayed celestial laws. They tarnished divine justice…
(bitterly)
And because of them, demons seem almost nobler than us.
Mü Thanatos:
- But it wasn't for me to make them suffer that…
A heavy silence fell. She lowered her eyes to her trembling, wet palms.
Mü Thanatos (whisper):
- Since that day, something changed. It's the first time I erase an existence. Not just kill… but erase.
She clenched her fists.
- I no longer know who I am. I will accept the sentence. Without resistance.
Ñout:
- Mü Thanatos, you are condemned to exile.
Mü Thanatos (surprised):
- Exile…?
Zeus:
- You must live in the shadows. No god, demon, or angel shall sense your presence. You will no longer exist in the eyes of the world.
But this exile is not eternal. It will end when the Father-God himself commands it.
He approached. Mü Thanatos slowly raised her head, confused.
Zeus placed his hand on her forehead. A blue light escaped.
Zeus:
- And I remove Utha. You will be only Mü… intertwined with Thanatos.
From now on, you will live in this ambiguity.
Mü Thanatos's hair whitened for a moment… then turned blacker than ever. Her pupils flickered. She staggered.
Mü Thanatos (crying out):
- Utha…! That was part of me! What will you do to her?!
Zeus (cold):
- It's no longer your concern.
Without another word, Zeus and Ñout vanished, melting into a silent flash.
The rain resumed fully. Mü Thanatos, alone, clasped her head in her hands. Something inside her was breaking. She gasped, heart pounding.
A voice burst in her mind:
??? :
- You cannot be separated. Mü, Utha, Thanatos… You are an indivisible whole.
She fell to her knees on the branch, trembling.
Mü Thanatos (panicked):
- Who… Who are you?!
In the mental space, a colossal silhouette appeared. Dark, featureless, bathed in transcendent light.
The Voice:
- You will molt. And become stronger. Every constraint breaks you… but every fracture elevates you. The next stage of your existence surpasses all that was named, conceived, or even told. Prepare to be born again… beyond the absolute.
The rain still fell, heavy and eternal, but Mü Thanatos no longer paid attention.
Her knees had given way. Her hands pressed her temples as if her very existence was bursting from within.
The voice echoed still, like a primordial wave, an echo belonging neither to past nor future:
Nameless Voice:
- You cannot be divided… Mü, Utha, Thanatos… are an indivisible trinity. A core, a fissure, a transcendence. You were only gestating. Now, you will molt…
Everything stopped.
No more rain.
No more jungle.
No more air.
A silent scream tore the space around her as a chrysalis of anti-light rose from the depths of her soul. The rain froze in the sky, suspended like divine pearls. Even thunder twisted in respect. The laws of matter receded.
She did not fall. She rose, unfolding in a cosmic trance.
Her body opened like a dead star being reborn, and behind her, an infinite field appeared:
an ocean of moving symbols, engraved in Raw Absolute, dancing like living writings on the layers of reality.
Her blood began to shine, radiating a black light brighter than the glow of the void. Her hair took on shifting hues: moonlit white with the rhythm of regrets, infinite black with the rhythm of repressed hatred, cosmic red with the rhythm of inner fusion.
Rings of inverted gold swirled around her, bearing forbidden glyphs, those even ancient gods dared not evoke.
A breach opened above her in the ether. The Absolute dropped a single ray, not of light, but of pure truth: a flood of original consciousness that drowned the remains of Mü, Utha, and Thanatos, fermenting them together into a new form. A being neither divine nor demonic. Something extranarrative. Extradimensional.
A fusion that transgressed all.
An ontological molt.
The voice returned, but this time as a primordial law engraved in the very fabric of Being:
- You were divided, but you have become Whole again. Exile has become your cradle. The sentence purified you. And now… you exist beyond the authority of gods.
Wings formed. But these were not wings.
They were winged concepts, made of memories, ruins, broken absolutes, and transmuted solitude.
Her aura was no longer light:
it was a song of universes, a vibration only pure consciousness could hear.
She then fell gently… or rather, reality slid to receive her.
The raindrops resumed their fall, as if the world breathed again.
Mü Thanatos, kneeling, gasping, felt her palms touch the earth. But it was no longer earth: it was she who supported it.
Her eyes opened.
Prisms turned in her pupils, revealing simultaneous layers of existence. She could see gods speaking centuries apart. Demons dreaming in dead planes. Humans praying without her being their target. She surpassed them all.
She rose slowly.
Around her, the jungle was silent. The trees bowed.
Even the wind hung on her words.
She no longer felt guilt.
No more fear.
She no longer felt as before.
She had become more than Mü, more than Utha, more than Thanatos.
She was…
- The Flayed of Reality.
- The Survivor of Divine Degrees.
- The Blade that judges even the judges.
The rain still fell. Dense, cold, indifferent to the cosmic drama that had just occurred. Mü Thanatos remained there, motionless on the soaked branch, her gaze lost in the opaque embrace of the jungle. The sky, deep gray, only reflected the turmoil she felt inside.
But something had changed.
She slowly lowered her eyes to her hands. And there, in the silent trembling of her fingers, she understood.
Her hair… It had turned blue again. A celestial, ancestral blue. But now it was longer, waving like dead waves on her shoulders and down her back. It could only be a sign. Not a regression, but a molt. A transformation older than the gods themselves. She was not growing younger. She was aging, or rather: evolving.
She looked at herself more carefully - not physically, but inwardly. Where Zeus had placed his hand, where he had torn away Utha… she felt no emptiness.
> "He took only a fragment. A dust. An idea."
And that idea had dissipated into the void. Mü Thanatos still stood whole, undivided. Neither Mü, nor Utha, nor Thanatos could be separated. They had never been disjoint entities. They were aspects of the same ontological core. Three names for one and the same truth.
An ancient breath then passed through her mind. A voice. Not external, but embedded in the echo of her being. Something older than language. More powerful than laws.
> Voice:
"You are the Molt. You are the Being that breaks down to rebuild greater. You are what Constraint forges, and what the Absolute cannot hold."
A shiver ran through the universe. Mü Thanatos understood. Everything that should have reached her - every pain, every punishment, every attempt at splitting, death, or loss - all were constraints.
And every constraint…
…was a molt.
She did not flee suffering. She ingested it, digested it, and emerged stronger, vaster, inviolable. As if every wound was actually a seed of expansion. Every split, a push toward a higher state.
> Voice:
"You cannot be subjected. You cannot be broken. Every act against you crowns you. Every harm is an offering to your growth. You transcend limits. You are the one who denies the Absolute."
Then, a blue light burst from the depths of her mind. Not Zeus's light. Not the energy he had torn away. But a new clarity, forged in the fusion of her three names.
She saw through the void, through causality, through laws and concepts. And what she saw was not the world… but what supports the world. The reverse. The cosmic skeleton of Being.
For a moment, Mü Thanatos lost all form. She became rain, branch, lightning, law, absence, name. Then all reunited in a single pulse: Her.
When she opened her eyes again, the forest was silent. Her silhouette, seated in the canopy, emitted a dark aura, but without darkness. An unnatural, beyond-transcendence glow. Her hair, pure black, seemed to reflect no light, absorbing photons themselves like a conceptual abyss.
She no longer cried. She no longer trembled.
She was.
She no longer depended on Zeus, nor Ñout, nor any divine or demonic entity. And what should have been a sentence became an ascension. She had undergone a molt, and in this molt, she had risen above punishment, fault, virtue, and meaning itself.
No concept could now describe her.
No transcendence could contain her.
And even the Absolute, in its purity, was but a passage for her.
> Voice (final breath):
"Mü Thanatos is no longer a name. She is a Law. And everything that tries to constrain her… will become her next molt."
And the rain kept falling.