Somewhere between a colosseum of screams and a dinner table heavy with withheld truths, the threads twisted—and Hela stepped through.
She tasted it still: the ghost of sugar and dusk citrus, clinging to the story like perfume. How sweet they thought they were, for a night. How soft. She smiled beneath her mask, because she knew sweetness always rotted quickest.
Not summoned. Not revealed. Simply present, the way a shadow is—already there, only waiting to be noticed.
She wore silence like a cloak and memory like perfume. The faint clink of bones echoed as she passed, half-mask gleaming beneath the weight of old roles. A stagehand of fate. A director of undoing. Her violet gaze, ageless and amused, swept over the realm like a critic waiting for the next act to crack.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she asked the dark. "This moment. Right before they change again."
Behind her, the story fluttered like an open script.
Mrajeareim had not broken them—but it had catalogued every bruise. Their griefs were no longer private; they were recorded, preserved in bone and echo. Ayla had torn through ghosts to reclaim a name. Komus had touched the bars of a cell that still existed in him. Cree's silence was now sacred. Daviyi whispered new names for cruelty. Hydeius bled light into a place that devoured it.
And Qaritas—he carried the scent of almost with every breath. The edge of godhood. The fear of consent he didn't remember giving.
They had not won.
But they had not fractured.
Yet.
Hela, curator of collapse, stepped delicately along the veil between chapters. She did not guide them. She did not interfere. But she watched—and watching, for her, was never passive.
"Now comes the climb," she murmured. "The reckoning. The breaking that thinks it's becoming."
Her voice didn't echo. It lingered. Like prophecy.
Taeterra waited—not a battlefield, but a vertical descent disguised as ascent. A ladder made of thresholds. A place where mercy had to be weaponized, or else perish.
Ecayrous thought he was still the author. That shaping pain was the same as writing destiny.
Hela smiled beneath her mask.
"Let him believe it."
She traced a finger through the air—writing nothing, recording everything. Zcain's heart, still beating in rhythm to a lullaby of ruin. Rnarah's orbit, too vast to anchor. Ayla's rage, too sacred to silence. Komus's steadiness, cracking. Niraí's grief, counting names no one else remembered. And Qaritas… already walking the knife's edge, unaware he was dancing.
The story breathed.
She tilted her head, as if listening.
Then vanished, stage-left, into the marrow of the plot—leaving behind a single word, scrawled between scenes like a warning or an invitation:
Becoming.
______________________________________________________
The bedroom was dim—womb-warm and breathing with shadows.
Qaritas slept curled like someone remembering how not to fight. The day had taken too much. Even gods had to rest.
They hissed when she spoke Ecayrous's name. They laughed when she mocked destiny. They whispered "anchor" like a curse, as if turning Rnarah's vow inside out. They crooned mercy as though it were a punchline.
Faint claws scraped across the rafters above her, dry and rhythmic, like insects worrying wood. The sound made their laughter feel less like play and more like hunger.
They were her choir. Her laugh-track. Her children who understood endings better than beginnings.
They were her choir. Her laugh-track. Her children who understood endings better than beginnings.
"Tomorrow," she cooed to them, her voice dark velvet, "they begin their training."
Tiny mouths gnashed in glee.
"Taeterra will peel the masks from their mercy. And you—my darlings—will watch them bleed beautifully."
She looked toward the bed. Toward Qaritas, whose dream had already begun.
It always began the same.
A field of glass beneath a sky too deep to name. Stars blinked like watching eyes—bored, judgmental. In the distance, a boy sat atop a throne of broken hourglasses, swinging his feet like he was waiting for recess to end.
Purple eyes. Too old to be innocent. Too familiar to ignore.
"You're taking too long," the boy said, balancing a shard of time on one finger. "I'm getting bored, little brother."
Qaritas felt the usual pull. A whisper beneath the bones. "Who are you really?" he asked, tired of riddles.
The boy laughed—a sound like breaking a clock open and finding blood inside.
"You already know," he grinned. "Everyone keeps talking about me. I'm Eon. It's nice to meet you, finally."
Qaritas flinched. "The First Evil."
Eon's smile widened, too full of teeth. "So you do remember me. I'm touched that my first victim remembers me."
Qaritas lunged—grabbing the boy's throat.
"What do you mean?"
But before the answer could come, his dream-body ruptured, shredded into stardust.
Limbs dissolved. Vision fractured. He was unraveling—and the boy walked forward without urgency, like he was strolling through an old story.
He reached out, gentle as a mother might be, and placed a hand on Qaritas's disembodied head.
"Let's take a walk."
The glass underfoot cracked like thunder, shards ringing into silence. A heat gust swept through, heavy with jasmine and smoke, as if the dream itself were exhaling someone else's memory.
Suddenly—Oisdara.
The air smelled of jasmine and fire.
Qaritas stood whole again—but small. A child in the echo of a memory that didn't belong to him.
There was a woman in the garden—pregnant, proud, eyes like bruised amethyst. Hex. Hrolyn's wife.
And beside her, the unborn child—the boy—shimmered within, glowing darkly.
"You were born as something neither dead nor alive," Eon whispered from beside him. "I poisoned our mother's tea. The steam smelled faintly of metal—like the cup already knew what it was carrying. I didn't want a sibling. So I made sure you never awakened."
He turned, smile soft and monstrous.
"But I was wrong."
The memory jumped, slamming forward.
Hex screaming.
Blood like ink pouring into the earth.
And from her body—not a child, but a rupture. Darkness exploding outward, swallowing the birth-song of Oisdara. A shape formed within the void: crying, gasping, not alive, not dead. A child of nothing.
"Father called you the void of creation," Eon said. "Said you were punishment for our arrogance. He banished you."
Qaritas stared at the black silhouette of his birth. "Then why did you say I was the son of all creation?"
Eon's eyes shimmered. "Because that's what Father was known as."
Another beat. A truth uncoiled.
"There are so many fragments of me now," Eon sighed, faces flickering through shadow—Ecayrous among them, snarling. "None are me. Ecayrous tries hardest. He still fails. They need Aun'darion. My heart. To eat it."
Qaritas clenched his jaw. "Why are you telling me this?"
Eon turned to him, smile fading. "Because you're the new bearer of Aun'darion. And I know you wonder why it hasn't destroyed the Fragments—or their worlds."
He leaned close, voice almost gentle. "Because I chose not to. Father believed I was using my full strength through Aun'darion. I used it to slip inside him—to steer his hands, his breath—until he fought me back. Again and again."
Qaritas's breath stilled. "That's a lie."
Eon's smile sharpened. "Oh, is it? Father failed you, little brother."
He stepped forward, forehead pressing gently to Qaritas's, breath cold as time.
"When the day comes that I'm reborn—you'll be the reason I am."
His voice dropped to a whisper, cruel and intimate.
"And you'll be the first one I break. And one day…"
A grin."You'll join me. We'll rule together. And then we'll unmake every universe he ever touched."
Eon put Qaritas's head gently on a stone. "But first you'll need to ascend. I'll give you five days to awaken."
He drew a knife—not hurried, not theatrical. Casual. Like someone preparing a meal. The blade kissed his wrist. Black blood welled, thick as oil, dripping in slow, obscene beats. Each drop struck the stone with a hollow patter, too loud for a child's body, echoing like time itself was bleeding out. The wound closed almost as soon as it opened, leaving only the taste behind.
Eon smiled, patient as gravity. "Drink." He pressed the wound to Qaritas's mouth, the darkness forcing its way in before he could resist.
"Do it, and you'll save them. Every one of them—their names, their faces, their fragile little anchors. Ascend, and you'll carry them past the fire that's coming."
For a moment, Qaritas almost believed him.
Almost.
Qaritas woke with a gasp—but not screaming.
Just silent. Still.
A tear tracked sideways across his cheek, cold and unfamiliar.
Outside, morning was bleeding into the world with quiet cruelty. The birds hadn't yet begun to sing.
But Hela's little nightmares watched from the corner of the room—silent and smiling.
They knew the show was just beginning.
From the shadows, the little nightmares began to chant in sing-song whispers, not their own words but his:
"Ascend, and you'll save them. Ascend, and you'll save them."
Over and over, until it stopped sounding like mercy and started sounding like hunger.