Auren listened with rapt attention as Asenya spoke. Some of her words slithered just beyond his grasp, slipping away no matter how hard he tried to piece them together. Still, he listened.
She spoke of the beginning of the Gods—how they had remembered themselves into existence. Then came the War of Defilement, the cataclysm that had swallowed the Gods whole.
Defilements. The word coiled in his mind like smoke. He had asked where they came from, how such abominations could exist if the Gods were creatures that literally willed themselves into being.
But even Asenya didn't know.
These were events older than time, ancient echoes from millions of years before her birth. The fragments she did know had been scavenged like scattered bones—whispers stolen from Aven's rare words, secrets pried from the hollow places she had followed him into.
