38th Day of Fall, Year 13,499
Doran drifted through the void, stars swirling around him like dust caught in a dying dream.
His flames sputtered behind him—unstable, uneven. Each breath came shallow, tugging at a chest that no longer remembered its own rhythm. Something pulsed inside him.
Twice. Then again.
Out of sync.
Out of harmony.
A flicker of pain crept down his spine. He winced.
It wasn't sharp—just a spark lodged behind the ribs—but it lingered. Deep. Constant. Like a bruise waiting to harden into a scar.
Behind him, Avon followed.
Wings fluttering.
Eyes locked on Doran with surgical focus, tracking every movement. Every deviation.
"You're flying wrong," Avon said.
Not mockery.
Not yet.
Just observation.
Doran didn't answer. He didn't have the breath to spare.
"Too rigid," Avon continued, his voice drifting through the vacuum like smoke. "You used to flow with the flame. Now you're forcing it."
Doran clenched his jaw.
The fire in his limbs stuttered again—first the shoulders, then the calves. Mismatched bursts. Asynchronous. Each flare shoved his body forward in jagged arcs, barely holding momentum.
His flame-wings fluttered—flickering like torn cloth in airless space. They couldn't hold form. Couldn't hold him.
And still, he pushed on.
Toward Furrow.
Each beat demanded more effort. Every time he flared his wings to stabilize, something inside him tore.
Not just pain.
A ripping.
As though something were trying to claw its way out—shredding, burning, forcing passage.
"Hey—kid." Avon's voice cut in again, sharper now. Strained. Human. "You alright? You're not lookin' too good."
Doran's hands trembled.
The flame dancing along his fingertips shifted—edges bleeding violet, streaks of indigo chasing the pulse in his veins. Fast. Hot. Wrong.
Then the fire surged.
Bright.
Wild.
Uncontrolled.
Avon halted mid-flight, recoiling, one wing snapping up to shield his eyes.
"Kid—dim it down! What the hell are you doing?!"
Doran didn't respond.
Didn't move.
Because the flame did.
"Damn it," Avon hissed, eyes narrowing at the limp figure ahead. "I'm gonna have to break the Soul Bind…"
The words were meant for no one but himself.
Then he moved.
Avon's wings folded inward. His glow dimmed, fire drawing back, compressing into something restrained. Controlled. The contrast was stark—his flame calm and deliberate against Doran's violent blaze, which grew brighter with every fractured breath.
"Mind. Body. Soul," Avon whispered. "Break the chains of the final sacrifice."
Then—
A pulse.
Not a shockwave.
The stars dimmed—just for an instant—as if the void itself had drawn a breath.
And held it.
Doran's flame froze mid-bloom.
It no longer grew—but it didn't dim either. Heat and light hung suspended, blinding and unmoving. The rhythm didn't slow.
It simply… stopped in place.
Avon's form began to glow.
Subtle at first. Then brighter—rising like a quiet sun beneath the skin of the void. His eyes snapped open, fire burning from within.
"I promised myself I'd never stoop to this," he said. "But you've given me no choice."
His voice dropped—lower now. Older. Laced with something that hadn't spoken in years.
"You can't control yourself. And if I let this continue, the flames will consume you."
He raised a hand. The glow in his palm sharpened.
"I'm taking over until we reach Furrow."
Then Avon ignited.
Not in rage.
In command.
His flame drew inward—tight, deliberate—before bursting outward in a sharp corona of blue and orange. He hovered only a heartbeat longer, gaze locked on Doran.
"I won't let you keep throwing your life away," he said, his voice resonating deeper than sound itself. "I will depose all who claim godhood."
Then he surged forward.
The collision wasn't force—
It was possession.
Avon's flame plunged into Doran's chest, threading through the spaces between ribs, down veins, into memory—into mind.
Doran's body spasmed.
The flames resisted.
Blue.
Orange.
Red.
Violet.
They clashed—not in harmony, not in rhythm, but in raw collision.
Each movement seared. Every breath tore open something buried deeper. Fire split along Doran's skin, bleeding through the seams of his body like molten glass under pressure. His bones pulsed. His lungs hitched. His vision fractured into colors that should not exist.
Avon clenched his beak, forcing more flame through.
Trying to wrap the soul.
Trying to stabilize.
Trying to anchor.
Trying anything.
"Is he fighting it," Avon growled, "or have I truly grown this weak—"
Then—
Stillness.
Not peace.
Just the absence of everything.
The flames froze mid-flicker.
The void folded—flat, breathless.
Avon's grip faltered.
Something entered the silence.
Not with sound.
Not with force.
But like a missing variable sliding into an ancient equation.
As if reality itself had always reserved a place for it, and someone had finally solved for Her.
She didn't step in.
She didn't appear.
She slotted into existence.
A single figure.
Watching.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly wrong.
A woman.
Short brown hair framed her face, not a strand out of place. Ember-colored eyes glowed faintly—not with warmth, but with precision. Like lanterns set into a symmetry too exact to be human.
Pale skin. Smooth as starlight.
Lips the color of old blood.
Her mouth parted.
"Was I too late?" she asked.
Her voice held no urgency.
Only faint mockery.
A dusting of disappointment crossed her expression—subtle, almost polite.
As if she had expected better.
Avon slowly turned. He didn't need to ask who she was, he already knew. His flame dimmed. His eyes locked onto hers.
And for the first time in centuries, Avon shuddered.
Not from cold.
Not from pain.
Not from doubt.
From recognition.
"…You," he breathed.
The word fractured on its way out.
His fire curled tighter around him.
Behind him, Doran's body twitched—flames still clashing, still flaring, still fighting for dominance. But neither of them—neither Avon nor Doran—were the brightest thing in the void anymore.
She was.
The woman drifted closer.
Arms loose at her sides.
Body perfectly still.
She didn't swim through space.
She commanded it.
The void bent.
Reality shifted its footing around her.
She didn't move so much as reposition existence to accommodate her presence.
Creation, embodied.
"Luciana," Avon whispered, his wings curling inward.
She tilted her head a fraction.
Her hair didn't stir.
Not even space dared touch her.
"I had to see it for myself," she said softly.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it filled the void like scripture—like something written at the beginning of time and only now spoken aloud.
"Oh, how far you've fallen," she continued, lips curving faintly. "Relying on a mortal."
A pause.
"And the best part?"
She smiled.
"You chose this."
Avon's wings tightened.
Not in reverence.
Not in defiance.
In containment.
Holding his flame together beneath her gaze.
Luciana's eyes flicked to Doran.
"If you're wondering how I found you," she said, her tone almost bored, "thank your little pet."
Avon's jaw clenched.
"I figured," he muttered. "I'm more curious why you're here."
The edge of his voice frayed, like wire pulled too tight.
Luciana blinked once.
Slow.
Deliberate.
"Isn't it obvious?" she said. "I came to see what you created."
She spread her hands—barely a motion, not quite a gesture.
"I am the Goddess of Creation, after all," she continued. "I can't have someone like you showing me up."
Avon's gaze snapped to Doran. Then back to her, "…What do you mean?"
Luciana's amusement drained away.
Her eyes narrowed—not in rage, but in irritation.
"You made a Soul Bind," she said flatly. "You granted a dead mortal a soul to make him whole again."
She drifted closer, "Then somehow—somehow—he gains another." Her gaze sharpened. "A soul not connected to you."
Her lips parted, and the temperature of the void seemed to drop.
"You have created something I never believed I would see."
A pause.
"A being with two souls."
She advanced again, slower now, each inch deliberate—movement turned into indictment.
"Tell me," she said. "What did you do?"
Her eyes bored into him.
"How did you split the Forbidden Flame?"
Avon didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His throat seized, fear clamping down too tight to breathe past.
Luciana's voice deepened—no longer merely sound, but command, etched into the fabric of time itself.
"Answer me."
The word rang through the void, reverberating against nothingness until it felt like it might fracture reality itself.
Avon's wings twitched.
His flame faltered.
"I—I didn't do it," he gasped. "He did!"
And just like that—the echo died.
The silence snapped back into place, too sudden, too complete.
Luciana went utterly still.
So still that even the void seemed to hesitate.
"…He did?"
No movement.
No blink.
No need.
Her voice cooled—measured now. Calculating.
Avon managed a tiny nod.
Luciana turned her attention to Doran.
Her eyes narrowed, ember-light compressing into thin slits as she studied him the way a master sculptor might examine a shattered statue—not with sympathy, but with professional offense.
"Impossible," she murmured. "Two souls cannot coexist in a single vessel without collapse. One must consume the other."
She raised a single finger.
"That is law."
Her hand drifted closer.
"That is balance."
Avon flared.
"Don't."
Luciana stopped, giving a faint smile. Not with amusement—amusement implied uncertainty.
"Protective," she said softly, withdrawing her hand. "You've changed." A pause. "Or is the Soul Bind truly that dire?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
Avon didn't give one. His fire stayed drawn tight, dim and coiled—a shield he couldn't afford to lower.
Luciana tilted her head again. That same unsettling symmetry. That precision that suggested nothing was accidental—not even curiosity.
"I wonder…" she mused. "What does he know of the Forbidden Flame?"
She didn't wait for a reply.
"Because if he didn't know before…"
Her eyes sharpened. Her voice thinned.
"…he will soon."
She began to drift, slow and deliberate, circling Doran like a sun tracing the edge of its own eclipse. Every flicker of his fractured flame reflected in her pupils—ancient equations caught and cataloged.
Measured.
Memorized.
"Tell me, Avon," she said, still circling, her gaze never leaving Doran.
"What happened—right before the second soul?"
She stopped behind Avon, just beyond his reach.
"Did it slip in like a whisper?"
A pause.
"Or did something else happen?"
Avon clenched his beak hard enough to creak.
Luciana's smile returned.
Not from joy.
From confirmation.
"You wouldn't be this quiet if it had simply slipped in," she said, her voice dropping. "You know more than you're admitting."
The silence between them answered for him.
"He's done something unimaginable," she continued, drifting forward once more. "Even by our standards."
Her tone softened—reverent, almost awed.
"I mean… destroying an entire timeline?"
The words were left to hang. To settle. To poison the space between gods.
"That's unheard of."
She leaned closer.
Too close.
Her face hovered inches from Doran's.
Then she extended her tongue and drew it through the flame bleeding from his body—slow, deliberate, intimate.
Divine fire hissed.
Her eyes fluttered.
"…Delicious."
She turned away from Doran, drifting toward Avon as if she had grown bored—as if divinity itself were an art gallery and she had already decided what she thought of this piece.
She reached out and placed a pale hand atop Avon's head.
Her fingers slipped through his flame without resistance. The fire parted for her, obedient, as though it recognized its maker.
"Like I said…" she murmured, stroking him as one might a favored creature. "I only wanted to see him in person."
Then she smiled again.
"But that's just me."
Her fingers shifted.
"I can't speak for the others."
Avon stiffened beneath her touch.
The fire along his shoulders hissed softly as her hand passed through—flesh meeting flame, divinity brushing divinity.
"…Others?" he rasped.
Luciana didn't answer with her mouth.
She leaned closer.
Her lips never moved.
But her voice entered him.
It filled his chest.
Coiled down his spine.
Settled into his bones like frost that would never melt.
If you thought you were hidden within that mortal…you were wrong.
We've been waiting.
Death wants this to unfold more than he wants you dead.
Avon's wings curled tighter.
Too tight.
Tighter than sinew should allow.
Tighter than flame could endure.
His fire stilled.
Then, from below—
Silent and absolute.
A ring of energy surged upward.
Glasslike.
Blue.
Perfect.
It refracted starlight into a hundred fractured colors as it rose—not a blast, not even fast—
inevitable.
When it brushed the debris, the impact was felt, not heard.
Reality rippled.
Avon barely had time to flinch.
The ring skimmed past him—harmless in contact, but wrong in every other way. Like a law applied where it didn't belong.
Luciana smiled.
"Have fun," she whispered.
And then she drifted back.
Not vanishing.
Just… withdrawing.
Her eyes never left him.
Avon's panic bloomed. His fire faltered. He searched the black for Doran—
and instead, he saw them.
Four figures.
No.
Four presences.
Then—
another ring rose.
"GAAHH—!"
The scream never echoed.
It didn't need to.
It stayed trapped inside him, ricocheting between bone and flame.
The second ring struck.
Not with force.
With memory.
A war he had never fought.
A girl he had never failed to save.
A betrayal he had never committed—until now.
False memories.
Real pain.
The Rings of Despair had begun.
First: Disillusion.
A glimpse of peace—just long enough to believe in it.
Second: False Memory.
The collapse of truth itself.
"You always did break first."
The voice drifted upward—ironic, gentle, unhurried.
Daegryn ascended from the black.
Elegance stretched over nightmare.
Translucent blue rings orbited his wrists like chained moons. His grin was wide beneath the shadow of his dipped hat. His coat shimmered with angles that should not exist.
Madness, dressed formal.
He landed atop a slab of Lily's shattered city-body, arms folding as if this were theater.
Avon gasped.
"Daegryn…"
Then—impact. A serpent slammed into him, fangs first, before hurling him through the void like debris.
Vask.
The name sparked through Avon's unraveling thoughts.
He hurtled through space until a barrier snapped into place.
Blue and yellow.
Starlight behind glass.
It twisted like a mechanism.
CLICK—CLICK—SNAP.
Avon was locked in place.
Frozen.
Limbs spread.
Flame dimming.
"Theryn…?" The name slipped from him—barely a thought. Barely real.
Then—from the dark—another figure approached.
Polearm in one hand, the morningstar head gleaming like a comet caught mid-fall.
Her voice cut through the void.
Soft.
Sharp.
Final.
"Lost Twinned Soul."
Energy poured from her body—white and translucent, flowing like water across the void. It gathered beside her.
Took shape.
Another her.
A mirror made of spirit, wielding twin blades.
Neyta.
The reflection raised its swords in perfect sync with the original.
Mirrored.
Exact.
The tips of their weapons began to glow.
Green.
"Twinned Soul: Staff and Sword."
They swung.
The weapons met mid-air—point to point.
Energy collapsed inward.
Condensed.
Then fired.
A single green arrow of absolute force.
Light warped.
Space screamed.
The arrow struck, impaling Avon.
His flames shattered outward. One wing disintegrated—gone in a storm of sparks and ash.
He writhed.
No sound escaped him.
Only the crackle of a dying fire.
The barrier held.
Broken.
Pinned.
Exposed.
The four Sepideus watched.
Daegryn clapped slowly.
"One wing down," he mused, spinning the blue rings around his arms like children's toys. "Four rings left."
His grin widened.
"But let's not rush."
Another ring descended.
The third.
It didn't slam.
It slid into Avon's chest.
Smooth.
Gentle.
Like it had always belonged there.
Third: Recognition.
Avon's mind shattered again.
Images fractured—spiraling inward—then locked.
He saw himself.
Kneeling.
A cold castle of ash-colored stone surrounded him, its walls swallowing sound, its ceiling lost to shadow. His younger self trembled before a throne so vast and silent it seemed to devour the room around it.
The air was heavy.
Not with noise.
With absence.
The braziers did not crackle.
The flames did not dare.
Both Avons felt the silence settle into their bones.
"Father…"
The word came twice—once from memory, once from the ghost that memory had become.
I remember this.
I had begged to survive.
The stone floor had been cold, but it was the stillness that hurt most.
He saw himself again—knees bruised, shoulders hunched, lip split and bleeding from a battle that hadn't merely scarred his body.
It had scarred his inheritance.
His fire flickered like a dying star.
"I'm not strong enough…" the younger Avon whispered.
And upon the throne sat the figure who loomed larger over his soul than Death ever had.
Prince.
God of Souls.
His father.
He did not move, not even his eyes to look down at him.
His skin like deep ocean stone. Hair like falling silk strands. A frame thin—almost hollow—yet radiating impossible pressure. Divine gravity made flesh.
"Please, Father," the younger Avon said. "I'm not asking you to kill them for me, I just—"
Prince cut him off.
Flat.
Emotionless.
"I don't want to hear your excuses for why you are so weak."
He did not raise his voice.
He did not need to.
"If you die," Prince continued, "it will be because it was meant to be. A stepping stone for the rest."
The younger Avon said nothing.
He bowed lower.
Forehead pressed to stone.
A child of fire reduced to something small.
And still—Prince never looked at him.
Not once.
Then—the room fractured.
The illusion split like mirror glass. Reality folded wrong, edges peeling back. Avon's body convulsed as he was thrown back into reality.
But he did not scream.
He couldn't.
The pain had changed.
It had cooled. Hardened. Become something quieter.
Something permanent.
Daegryn's voice slid in, smooth and gentle, "That one always hurts a little more, doesn't it?" he murmured.
"To be forgotten by the ones who made you."
Avon didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His head sagged forward.
His remaining wing hung slack in the barrier's hold, his light dimmed until it was barely an outline.
His flames—
They pulsed only in his chest now. A small, quiet flicker.
A dying heartbeat.
It didn't glow.
Avon blinked, and everyone was gone.
No Daegryn.
No Vask.
No Neyta.
No Theryn.
No Luciana.
No Doran.
Only black.
The Fourth Ring: Isolation.
And for the first time in centuries…
Avon was alone.
The restraint was gone.
No barrier.
No watchers.
No Sepideus.
Just drifting.
His body—or what remained of it—flickered weakly, flame reduced to a single stubborn ember. He floated in something that barely qualified as a place at all.
A space that refused to acknowledge he existed.
He opened his mouth—to speak, to scream, to curse the void itself.
Nothing came.
No sound.
No breath.
No echo.
Barely even him.
Then—a voice.
Not distant.
Not near.
Everywhere.
"If you want to escape…"
Mocking.
Smooth.
Like a grin wearing someone else's voice.
"…you'll have to find the door out."
Laughter followed.
Low.
Sinister.
Childish. Cruel.
And then—silence.
No weight.
No time.
Just… Avon.
Drifting.
A soul uncertain it still qualified as one.
If you want to escape…
The words surfaced again.
Not from outside.
From within.
A whisper coiling through the hollow where his soul had once burned—once roared.
…you'll have to find the door out.
The thought followed, uninvited.
But what if there is no door?
And that—that was when the venom began to take hold.
Elsewhere
Doran floated—unmoving.
The flames along his limbs were frozen mid-burst, strands of fire locked in place like glass caught in the act of shattering. Frost crept across his body—over ribs, shoulders, the edges of his eyes—slow and deliberate, as though cold itself were claiming him by right.
Even time hesitated.
Debris hovered in lazy spirals, shadows stretching long and thin beneath distant stars.
And around him—five figures stood in judgment.
Daegryn.
Theryn.
Neyta.
Vask.
And Luciana.
Together, they formed a silent crown around a broken flame.
"I never thought I'd see you like this," Daegryn said, drifting in a slow circle. His coat shimmered with angles that defied physics, his smile curved with fond recollection. "How pitiful you look now, Doran."
"You've met this mortal before?" Vask rasped, the serpent-arm coiling, tasting the stillness with a hungry twitch.
Luciana's gaze slid to Daegryn.
Amused.
Sharp.
"Interesting," she said lightly. "So that's why you were so eager to accompany me."
Daegryn twirled one of the six rings orbiting his fingers. "Yeah. Back when Avon lowered himself enough to work with this thing, I tried using my sixth ring to kill him." His grin never faltered. "Waste of a perfectly good torment."
Theryn crossed his arms, light flaring faintly in his eyes against the gold alloy of his jaw. "Then why were we even needed?" he asked. "Avon isn't that much of a problem."
"I'm with Theryn," Neyta added, idly flipping one of her blades. "Happy to help and all, but if we're not killing him… what was the point?"
Luciana did not answer at once.
She brought her hands together.
A pulse of divine heat bloomed between her palms—contained, precise.
When she separated them, a deck of cards drifted into view.
Elegant.
Dangerous.
Each card was etched into bone with fine threads of fate, shifting subtly as though deciding who they belonged to.
"Death has tasked me with a job," Luciana said, her voice settling into something formal—ritualistic. "To distribute these."
She gestured, and the deck fanned itself in the void.
"There are twenty-four left. Each of you will take six. Each mortal you choose will receive three."
Her hands folded behind her back.
"Then," she said, calmly, "we sit."
A pause.
"And we wait."
Both Vask and his serpent hissed, "Why must we wait? I have better uses for my time."
"Yeah," Theryn scoffed, folding his arms. "This feels like a waste of power. I thought this was going to be fun."
And then—
Snap.
Two rings of violet energy materialized instantly, coiling around Vask's and Theryn's necks. They crackled, sizzled, screaming softly against the stars.
Both froze.
Eyes wide.
Fangs still.
Defiance gone.
"I'm sorry, Luciana!" they blurted in unison.
Luciana's eyes burned with a cold, merciless flame.
"I know both of your lazy asses have nothing better to do," she said evenly. "You will wait. Because this one—" she gestured toward Doran's frozen form, suspended and helpless, "—will come to you."
Neyta's brow furrowed. Confusion edged into irritation, "So what if this mortal comes to us. Could easily kill him now."
Luciana didn't blink.
Didn't soften.
Her voice cut through the vacuum with absolute certainty.
"Because this mortal is special."
She turned slowly, each word placed with deliberate care.
"When the time comes… you will kill him…"
She paused.
Let the silence stretch—cold and heavy.
"…and whoever succeeds will ascend to Kamikura."
A smile touched her lips.
Just enough to show teeth.
"Death's words himself."