The ritual chamber—its walls made of neither stone nor light, but something older—sealed shut behind Dante and Anarissa as Life and Death took their places. The air thickened, not with pressure, but with significance, as though the very realm knew this was an act that would ripple across ages.
Myrielle stepped toward Anarissa first.
"Breathe," she murmured. "Let Life move through you without resistance."
Anarissa tried. The moment she did, golden threads of healing light spread from Myrielle's hands and wrapped around her divine soul like bandages made of sunrise. They probed gently… then shuddered.
Myrielle's expression tightened.
"Her core… the Oblivion in it burns too deeply."
Across the chamber, Kael'thos motioned Dante to stand before him. The God of Death rarely touched anyone, but now he lifted a single hand and brushed a shadow across Dante's chest. The darkness slid through him like mist and revealed everything.
Hairline fractures. Fractures within fractures. A soul carrying too many deaths, too many selves, too much Oblivion.
Kael'thos frowned slightly. That alone was alarming.
"Yours is no better," he said. "You are two souls merged, crushed, reforged, all while being devoured by the void. I am surprised you have not collapsed."
Dante exhaled shakily. "Great. That's comforting."
Despite the tension, Kael'thos allowed a faint amused breath to escape. "If it comforts you to know the impossible, then perhaps it is."
The gods convened at the center of the chamber—Life's golden light and Death's silver shadow swirling together without mixing.
"We begin," Kael'thos said.
Myrielle nodded softly.
The twins stood across from each other, the veil between their halves dissolving until Life's light and Death's hush became one shared circle. Their divinities pulsed—Dreaming Moon and Eternal Sun, Duality and Creation, Psionic Minds and Life, Oblivion in both cores.
A contradiction. A miracle. A danger.
Myrielle raised her hands. "Separation."
Kael'thos lifted his. "Extraction."
Light and shadow pierced the twins at the same instant.
Dante gasped as if cold iron had entered his veins. Anarissa staggered, clutching her chest as the golden threads tugged at something woven too tightly inside her.
Then it began.
Pieces of their souls—thin slivers of memory, old pains, tangled distortions from two worlds and two deaths—peeled away like shards of broken glass. They drifted upward, glowing with faint echoes:
The last moment in the car—
The terrified breath before impact—
A father's ritual tearing worlds apart—
A battlefield of dying light—
A collapsing moon—
A scream swallowed by Oblivion—
Two sets of childhoods—blurred, overlapping—
Two final deaths.
Two ascensions.
All of it fractured. All of it unstable.
Myrielle's voice trembled. "This much damage… even for gods…"
Kael'thos's tone remained level. "We expected no less."
Slowly, the fragments gathered into a sphere above the twins—swirling with moonlight, sunlight, dreamlight, and the cold shimmer of Oblivion.
"This is them?" Anarissa whispered.
"No," Myrielle answered. "This is what must be shed for you to survive."
The sphere pulsed. It was incomplete. It was flawed.
But it was alive.
Kael'thos flicked two fingers, and the sphere drifted toward the center of the ceiling. A small tear in reality—white, rotating, humming—opened like an eye.
The Reincarnation Whirlpool.
Dante's breath caught. "That's where they'll go…"
"Where you will go," Kael'thos corrected. "These fragments will become your mortal avatars."
Myrielle added, "They will be you—every part we removed is still yours. But safer. More stable. Able to grow without shattering."
"And able to die," Kael'thos said plainly. "Mortality is both a burden and a sharpening stone."
The whirlpool brightened, drawing the fragments closer.
Then Dante and Anarissa did something neither god expected.
They stepped forward and lifted their hands.
Myrielle's eyes widened. "Twins—stop—your souls are fragile—"
"We know," Dante said.
"But they're us," Anarissa whispered.
And with what little control they had left, the twins touched the sphere—just long enough to pour a blessing into their mortal avatars.
Not overwhelming divinity. Not raw power.
Just potential.
The sphere absorbed their touch, rippling with new colors.
The blessing settled:
For both avatars
• Saiyan-like transformational evolution
• Enhanced physical and spiritual frameworks
• Wolf-blood awakening potential
• High resistance to Oblivion
• The ability to sense and communicate with their divine selves across realms
Dante's avatar received additionally:
• Lunar energy receptivity
• Psionic mutation potential (unique to him)
Anarissa's avatar received:
• Solar energy receptivity
And then the sphere rose beyond their reach.
Kael'thos exhaled in quiet surprise. "You have given your avatars far more than most gods dare. Mortal forms with divine receptivity… rare."
Myrielle gave a warm but trembling smile. "They will be extraordinary."
The sphere reached the whirlpool.
Light twisted.
Shadow turned silent.
The fragments vanished.
Gone to be reborn.
The twins stood, breath uneven, bodies trembling from the soul-tearing.
Myrielle rushed to catch Anarissa as she wavered. "Easy. Your soul is stabilizing. The absence of the fractures will ache for a moment."
Kael'thos steadied Dante with a firm hand. "Suffering now prevents destruction later."
The chamber quieted.
Light faded to a soft hum.
Shadow curled into stillness.
Anarissa placed a hand over her heart. "They're… alive. I can feel them."
Dante nodded. "Mine too. Like distant echoes."
Kael'thos stepped back. "Your divine souls will finish knitting themselves over the next few moments. When the process completes, you will be whole."
Myrielle raised her hand, a gentle glow washing over both twins.
"Your mortal avatars will live their own lives," she said. "Yet they will forever know who they are. And through them—you will walk in the mortal realm without risking the collapse of your true forms."
Anarissa whispered, "So… this is our new beginning."
"No," Myrielle corrected softly. "This is two beginnings—gods restored, and mortals born."
Kael'thos bowed his head slightly.
"Your mortal selves have entered the cycle. Their journey has begun."
The twins stood in silence as the truth settled.
Two divine souls healing.
Two mortal souls descending.
One destiny split yet bound.