CHAPTER 1: THE LAST QUESTION
The clock had died screaming.
Betaal didn't remember when it stopped—sometime in the last century, perhaps, or the one before that. The centuries had a way of bleeding together, one indistinguishable from the next. But he remembered the sound. That delicate tick-tick-tick that meant something, once. That meant the universe was still breathing. Still moving forward. Still alive.Now there was only silence.For three hundred years, he'd grown accustomed to it. The silence had become a lullaby of sorts. A white noise that filled the spaces where thought used to live. A lie he'd learned to believe.He stood in the courtyard of Ashvan City, watching the woman breathe.Just that. In. Out. In. Out. Her chest rose and fell like a trapped bird learning the vocabulary of surrender. She wore grey—ash-grey, the colour of things that had already burned—and her feet were bare against the cold stone. The chalk circle around her had been drawn by hands that knew what they were doing. This was a ritual ground. This was a grave-to-be."You cannot give me the answer," she whispered.Not a question. A statement. The kind of thing someone says when they've already died inside and are just waiting for the body to catch up.Betaal's lips curved upward. Not quite a smile. Something that had forgotten how to be a smile. His eyes were grey—not the grey of wisdom, but the grey of a mirror with nothing left to reflect but its own hunger."Why would you say that?" he asked.She flinched. Actually flinched, as though he'd struck her. Her body went rigid like a tuning fork that had been struck and was still singing with the vibration.He'd said her name. She'd never told him her name."Because," she said, and her voice was steadier now, though her hands trembled, "if I answer your riddle wrong... I die."She paused. Gathered herself. "But if I answer it right, I have to become you. Another judge. Another god. Another warden watching people suffer forever."The wind moved through Ashvan City then, as if apologizing. Dust rose from the cracked streets in patterns that looked almost like urgent handwriting—messages from the earth itself, perhaps. Messages that no one was reading anymore. Above them, the sky had taken on that impossible shade of blue that only existed when something holy was dying. The broken clock tower cast a shadow that extended too far, touching buildings it had no right to reach, as though time itself had warped into a geometry that shouldn't be possible.Around them, the city held its breath.Merchants had shuttered their shops hours ago. Children had been pulled inside before nightfall. The only sounds were the wind and the distant clink of bells from the Temple of Forgotten Names—where people went to disappear, where names were taken and erased and given new shape. The place where the past came to be unmade.The woman—Priya, her name was Priya—stood barefoot on the stone, her dress hanging like the shadow of someone still living. She looked up at him, and something in her eyes had shifted. The fear was still there, yes, but underneath it was something else. Something that looked almost like refusal."I won't answer," she said. Her voice cracked like ancient clay finally breaking after centuries of pressure. "I refuse."Betaal's expression didn't shift. But something in the air did. The wind stopped moving. Shadows sharpened into something almost like intention. Even the dying light seemed to understand: this was the moment that mattered. This was where things changed."Everyone answers," he said. His voice was soft, but there was something absolute in it. "That's the only rule. The only law.""Then I refuse your law.""You can't refuse.""I can die."For a moment—so brief that perhaps even Betaal imagined it—something flickered across his face. Not doubt. Betaal didn't doubt anymore. Doubt was a human weakness, and he'd refined it away centuries ago until it was barely a whisper at the edges of what he was.But recognition.He had seen this before. This choice to die rather than live under his judgment. Each time it happened, it left a hairline fracture in something buried so deep he'd convinced himself it didn't exist anymore.Priya was staring at him now with eyes that had gone very still. Not afraid anymore. Sad. Sad for him. Sad for the god who had forgotten why he'd become a judge in the first place.Because I wanted to save people.The voice came from somewhere deep in his memory, so distant it was barely audible.Because I wanted to show them truth so they could choose better. Be better.When had that become punishment? When had mercy become cruelty? He didn't know. Couldn't remember. The centuries had blurred that line so completely that it no longer existed.He reached toward her. To catch her as she swayed. To comfort her.Then he stopped.Why did I stop?That tiny crack in his certainty—that single moment of questioning—was when everything broke.The sky opened.Not gradually. Not with warning. It simply tore, as though something vast had decided the boundary between worlds was no longer worth maintaining. Light poured through the wound—not gold, not purple, but every colour that existed and colours that shouldn't exist. The light was conscious. It was searching.It was searching for him.Priya screamed. Her hands flew up to shield her eyes, but the light wasn't meant to be blocked. It was meant to penetrate. To invade. To see everything that was hidden.The courtyard began to dissolve. Ashvan City became translucent. Through the buildings, through the earth, through the very bones of creation, Betaal could see threads. Countless threads of light connecting every universe to every other universe.Most of them were breaking.A voice cut through him—not from the air, but from inside his mind. From the core of his being. From the part that remembered being born into divinity.BETAAL. REGIONAL DEMIGOD OF KORATRI UNIVERSE. MASTER OF RIDDLES. KEEPER OF FATES. JUDGE OF THE FORGOTTEN. YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED. THE GRAND INTEGRATION IS UPON ALL WORLDS. RESISTANCE WILL RESULT IN DIMENSIONAL COLLAPSE.His molecules were beginning to separate. Beginning to drift toward something beyond comprehension.Priya was on her knees, her grey dress spreading around her like spilled ash. She looked up at him with eyes that had finally learned to cry."What happens to me?" she asked.Betaal looked down at her. The courtyard was dissolving into nothing. Soon there would be no Ashvan City. No trial ground. No broken clock. No him."You choose," he said. His voice sounded different now. Softer. Like a god remembering how to be human. "That's all I was ever trying to teach you.""Choose what?""To live. To die. To become a judge. To refuse. To be something more than what I've condemned you to be."The light pulled harder. His last moments were fragmenting.Priya stood up slowly. And in that final second before everything changed—in that space between one breath and the next—she did something neither of them expected.She smiled."I choose to remember you as someone who once cared."The light flashed.And Betaal vanished—the god who had judged thousands, who had held an entire universe in his hands, who had forgotten what it meant to feel anything at all.Behind him, Priya remained alone in a courtyard that was rapidly becoming a memory. The broken clock tower still stood. But now, impossibly, its hands had begun to move again.With every tick, the threads connecting her universe to others were beginning to break.And somewhere in the spaces between worlds, a judge was being called home to answer for what he'd done.