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Thirty nine seconds.

He had spent most of his life watching the gods fall from the heavens—soaring through the sky, breaking the seed, emerging through the wood and jelly into the fray of battle. So often, it had been Rushan and Ilios, fighting together. How many times had he prayed for their success?

Why had he prayed at all?

Thirty four seconds.

Days ago, he had fallen from the heavens himself. He knew exactly how long it would take. The only difference was that, now, the heavens fell with him.

Thirty seconds.

Twenty nine.

Twenty eight.

Twenty—

Sadik spun through the air, helpless and reeling. The entire world was in motion. There was a blue sky, the disc of the sun, the scarlet storm and the red-rock cliffs, even the glow of the Neheamatt’s trunk, spiraling in an ochre beam, cutting across his vision like Dusksong rending the heads of the unworthy.

How many had died by his hands?

What was the point?

Twenty three seconds.

Twenty?

Debris rained in his path. All that remained of the pantheon.

Gamó.

Around him, the air swelled with chaos. Empty seeds, broken stone, giant splinters, shattered buildings, a flutter of leaves, the withered husks of shoots and vines, bleeding the last of their sap. They twirled and struck, collided and spun, breaking upon themselves.

Kavaia hugged him to her chest. With a flex of her tail, she managed to slow their spin, leaving their backs pointed to the ground. She would take the brunt of the fall.

She shouted in his ear. The wind sliced the words.

Above, the branch of the pantheon finally broke away, severed by the black mass of plague. It was pointed straight down—when it fell, it came like an arrow. A branch the size of a valley, impaling the world.

Arrow.

Amira.

Where was she?

He twisted his head, peering beneath Kavaia’s chin. Below, through the raining debris, he saw the gods of the pantheon, falling toward the scarlet clouds. Some were moving—many did not. In the distance, he could see Lanir’s scaly wings, outlined in flame, trying to catch as many souls as she could.

He couldn’t find her.

Fourteen seconds. The ground swallowed the sky.

Faustine’s voice.

The ancestors are gone. They will never return.

She’s known this all along.

Eleven seconds.

In a way, he wished there was no curse of immortality. He did not want to survive the fall. He wanted to die, yet again. Further down, another part of him yearned for the impact, the shattered bones and jellied flesh, as if the pain would cleanse him of the life he had lived.

What was the point?

He had prayed. He had believed.

The wind shrieked in his ears.

Nine seconds.

Eight.

Seven.

Kavaia tensed, staring off to the side.

Six.

Five.

A shadow rushed for them.

In a moment of clarity, he saw one of Aldunya’s seeds, round and bulbous, flying right in their path. Its shell was split open at the middle, revealing a black sphere within. Sadik had barely a second to flinch before the open mouth engulfed him, body and all, like a bird catching a fish.

He slammed into a wall of seedy flesh. Kavaia gasped. A thick, viscous substance surged over their bodies, filling their mouths, drowning their lungs, hardening into a solid fixture. The seed closed its shell, and everything turned black.

The tree protected him, even still.

Three.

Two—

Impact. The punch of a planet. His body shuddered through the protective jelly, quivering like a sack of meat. The seed bounced, flying high, smashing through, flipping end over end, leaping and rolling, spinning mad, all the sounds of destruction dampened through the wooden shell, leaving them swallowed in a furious darkness.

Eventually, after a series of violent crashes, the seed began to slow. He could only tell by the sloshing of his organs. When it finally came to a stop, the cocooning jelly began to melt, liquefying from a solid paste into a thin grool. Sadik exhaled a cloud of evaporated fluid, gasping and spitting. He only knew Kavaia was alive from the sound of her retching.

Slowly, his body sagged into the wooden curve of the shell. He laid on the bottom of the seed, his muscles still tingling from the fall, feeling the jelly quiver itself into vapor. Outside, there were quakes and rumbles. Raining debris.

The Neheamatt had just saved him from the fall.

Without her seed, the impact would have shattered his flesh, reducing him to a wet puddle in the gutters, with the curse of immortality ensuring that he felt every wound. If Kavaia shared the same fate, there would be no one to heal him. Nothing to stop the pain.

Out of all the others, Aldunya had chosen him.

Rushan. Ilios.

Sadik began to vomit.

There was a crack. Shuddering wood. The seed began to open, its two halves splitting on either side, like a pair of giant eyelids. Red light trickled through the gap.

His vision came in waves.

The blood storm. Lightning bristled through the clouds, like tendons through flesh. There was the dim outline of a rooftop, barely seen through the sheets of blood, and the curve of garden archways leading into the distance, filled with wilting plants and broken rubble. The smell was nauseating.

Finally, with his eyes adjusting to the gloom, he saw Kavaia raise herself from the floor of the seed, her white dress filthy, her myrtle scales slick with fluid. Dawnstar rose into her hands.

“Wait here,” she said, stepping ahead.

Sadik rose to an elbow. “Goddess, I can—”

“Quiet.”

Kavaia grabbed the edge of the seed and pulled her head into the light. Lightning rippled across the bloody sky. After a moment, she grunted, hopped out of the seed, and turned to face him, her long snout already dripping with blood. A hand reached into the darkness.

Sadik pushed himself up, wobbled hard, managed to crawl with one arm, and reached out for Kavaia. She lifted him with a single hand. When he was placed on solid ground, he immediately lost his balance, clutching his remaining arm around the wide expanse of her thigh.

He was still weak from the torture. Faustine.

Gods, Faustine.

Had he done anything good with his life?

“We need to leave,” Kavaia said.

Sadik raised his head, hair plastered in the bloody rain.

Around them, he saw the distinctive architecture of Kohav Yaran, palatial fortress of the Vizier, where all the buildings were designed to mimic the shape of foliage—rooms shaped like leaves, hallways bending like stems, courtrooms and temples curving like the domes of cacti, their stone facades spiked with rows of thorns. Blood flowed across the avenues. Gardens teemed in the distance.

There used to be a wall of cerulean energy circling the palace, just like the border of the city, so tall that they smothered any view of the mountains. Now, the energy was gone, and the Metal Plague had poured its way inside.

Flesh hung from columns. Intestines wormed the soil. Metal veins clung between the archways, sagging with fluid, feeding the squirming mounds and bulging sacs that distended from the walls and flowered from the roofs, like maggots upon a corpse. Nearby, at the end of a courtyard, a temple was expanding like a lung, its walls melding into a tissue somewhere between flesh and stone. It was hard to tell where the plague ended, and the rain of blood began.

Kavaia was gazing up at a gateway. Originally, the lintel had been carved into the sturdy bark of a root, with the basalt sparkling like the stars. Now, there was a field of fungus-like stalks growing upon a rotten substrate. Death and decay.

The fungus stalks were each capped with a human skull. They swayed upon their stalks, bending with the wind of the storm. Watching.

A dozen eyeless grins.

“We need to leave,” Sadik said, agreeing.

Kavaia braced Dawnstar above his head, the warhammer glowing with runes. “Keep low. If they come, stay behind me.”

“Goddess, I can—”

“Quiet.”

“But—”

“Shut up.”

He was nearly naked. Shirtless, unarmed, missing one of his actual arms, and covered in rivers of half-healed slashes, where bone had pocketed through the flesh. It was taking most of his strength just to stand.

“Okay,” Sadik said. “Thank you.”

Kavaia dropped a hand from her hammer and cupped his cheek against her thigh.

They began to move through the palace. Most of the avenues were blocked with hills of chitin, grasslands of fingers, fields of womb-like eggs. Despite the horrible appearance, the plague was not even the worst of their obstacles—the Demokrats had destroyed much of the palace during their revolution, and the evidence of their crimes overshadowed the growths. Broken walls, fallen statues, gardens burned to stumps and ash.

It was all a ruin. All wasted.

Sadik had spent so much time planning Operation Fading Dawn, hoping to reclaim the throne, hoping that he could still fix everything that had been taken from his life. Now, his forces were scattered, and all that remained was the plague.

What was the point?

Did it ever really matter?

His missing arm began to ache, as if the memory of the limb would never truly die.

With a limp, Sadik followed the valley of destruction that Aldunya’s seed had torn through the buildings, scrambling over the piles of rubble when he could, and letting Kavaia heave them aside when his wounds were too severe. When the plague presented itself to his right, he turned left, guiding her through narrow alleys and shadowed arcades. Both of them were quickly soaked in blood.

As they moved, debris continued to rain from the pantheon, smashing into the ground with all the speed of a two-mile fall. In the distance, he could see an enormous cloud of dust drifting over the city of Acheron, a dull white mixing with the scarlet storm. The bulk of the pantheon must have landed there.

What was there even left to destroy?

Everything was broken.

Nothing mattered.

Sadik glanced around him, taking in the gardens and plant-shaped buildings, and he felt a sudden hatred in his heart, stronger than any before, because every piece of architecture was designed to worship Aldunya, giver of life, god of gods, and now it all seemed like the cruelest irony possible.

The ancestors are gone. They will never return.

The tree had been lying to everyone, right from the start.

They would never be rescued. None of them would ever walk the stars. Instead, they would spend the rest of their days on a barren world, strangled by deserts, killing their fellow man for food and vengeance. All the wonderous technology would eventually crumble to dust.

She’s known this all along.

Sadik wanted to scream. Instead, he almost began to cry.

“Hold,” Kavaia said.

The goddess of death slowed to a stop. He stumbled, clung to her thigh, and managed to peek his head around the curve of her buttocks.

Ahead, at the edge of a plaza, Volion, the human god of craftsman, had fallen to the ground, cratering through the paved stone with the weight of his body. The fall from the pantheon had left him completely shattered—severed bones, splattered flesh, his skin matted with a jellied film of his own brain. It was obvious that only the curse of immortality was keeping him alive.

Meanwhile, the plague had begun to seep from the nearby buildings, spreading through the puddles of blood like a blackened scum. An orgy of flesh was building in the crater. Churning, steaming, sucking into wounds, pumping fluid through a web of metal veins. The human was barely able to squirm.

“Stars align,” Kavaia said, taking a half-step forward. After a moment, she seemed to reconsider. “Poor soul. I can’t even kill him, for a mercy.”

“He doesn’t deserve it,” Sadik replied.

“You would not say the same, if you were in his place.”

Volion opened his mouth to gasp. The plague hooked into the open orifice, lurching down his throat, causing his eyes to roll back in their sockets. Nearby, on the buildings, a row of skulls were rising from the older growths, swaying like mushrooms in a breeze. All of them gazed at Sadik.

“We must hurry,” Kavaia said. “The other gods will have fallen across the city. They may be drowning in blood, or lost beneath the rubble, or. . . .”

Sadik craned his head back, staring up the length of Kavaia’s torso.

She didn’t know the truth.

She had not learned that the Neheamatt was actually a machine, that their religion was a fabrication, that the entire history of Acheron was nothing but the whim of the last surviving ancestor, molding their lives like rats in a cage. She did not understand why Rushan had fallen into such a catastrophic rage.

Instead, Kavaia was doing much as she had before—standing tall through the bloody rain, weapon in hand, concerned only with the lives of others. He did not doubt that she would risk her life for him, or any of the other souls that cried out for aid.

It made him want to cry.

He looked up at the goddess of death, and he saw the determination in her eyes, and, in that moment, she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen, because she believed that their lives still mattered, and the certainty in her heart was enough to rekindle the flame inside his own.

He had almost lost himself to despair, once before. He could not let it happen again.

Sadik clung to her leg, eyes closed, feeling a tightness in his throat.

“Yes, yes,” Kavaia said, nudging him with her hammer. “I’ve missed you, too. Please stop hugging me.”

He cleared his throat and stepped back, hiding his face behind his hair. “Sorry.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, really. It’s like a dog begging for food.”

“Goddess, stop.”

“I have already taught you to roll over, on my command.”

“Please don’t embarrass me in front of the plague.”

She nudged his shoulder with her hip, smiling briefly. Her eyes wandered over to Volion, who had nearly disappeared beneath a matting of blackened froth, and the growths of plague beyond, which had stitched the porticos with curtains of flesh. There was no good path ahead.

Kavaia glanced behind them, stifling a curse.

Dozens of infected had filled the plaza. They had crept in behind, silent, watching with many eyes, some morphing into an amalgamation of bodies, others splitting into separate parts, each of the limbs acting with its own intelligence. Above, on the ring of buildings beyond, there was an entire forest of skulls.

All eyes on Sadik.

Trapped. Surrounded.

“Novsh,” Kavaia said, spitting the word. “Be ready to dash. I will attempt—”

The infected began to moan. Slowly, with a quivering of parts, they raised nearly a hundred limbs, pointing off to the side of the plaza. There was a hill of mounded tissue filling the exit, and, as Sadik watched, a tunnel began to burrow itself through the brown, flaky substance, like a needle digging through skin.

After a few moments, the tunnel had penetrated to the other side, where a garden was drowning beneath the rain of blood. It would take them moments to escape.

The infected continued to point at the exit.

“I think it’s guiding us,” Sadik said.

“I don’t think I wish to follow,” Kavaia replied.

“Do we have a choice?”

She rumbled, warhammer raised, her spiny tail swishing through the puddles of blood.

“Amira!” Volion cried.

The human god of craftsmen was nearly lost beneath the black frothing of plague, visible only by his bald head and a few broken bones. His face was turned up to the sky, his eyes unfocused, his brain spilling from his skull.

“Amira!” he cried. “Amira!”

“Amira!” the infected shouted, voices rising as one.

Sadik blinked, completely caught off-guard.

He remembered Amira tumbling down the slope of the pantheon. A broken statue had fallen in her path. She was struck. Xaeyr had attempted to save her, but he had missed, and both had tumbled into the open air, reeling with the pull of gravity.

Amira.

Gamó.

“She’s still alive,” Sadik said. “The curse of immortality. She must have survived the fall, somewhere close.”

Kavaia glanced between him and the plague, shifting on her feet.

“We have to find her. Xaeyr. Both of them.”

The plague continued to point their many limbs, all dripping with blood. Volion had vanished beneath the blackened froth.

“Haakon was correct,” Kavaia said. “You need to stop making friends.”

“Goddess!”

She huffed, lowered her hammer, and began to march toward the exit. He followed behind, making sure to keep the crowd of infected in view. None of them followed. Above their heads, the skull stalks continued to track his position.

They walked through the tunnel. Nothing attempted to harm them. Once free, they continued through the palace, passing through buildings split with rubble and gardens choked with blood. There was movement on the rooftops—infected galloping from building to building, sludging through the rotten substrate, always keeping them in view.

The Metal Plague began to openly guide their path, sealing off passages with a flood of molten metal, all while peeling back to reveal an alternate route. They walked through several fleshy holes. Between the fields of rubble and swarming growths, Sadik was only able to track their position by the plume of dust rising above Acheron, far in the distance.

Did the plague know where Amira was? Was it actually leading them to her? Or was it trying to lure them into a trap?

It could easily swarm them, at any time.

Sadik grit his teeth.

After several minutes, when they finally began to approach the end of the palace, he saw a streak of blue flying through the clouds above, distinct against the scarlet red. It was too small to be a bolt of lightning, circling too well to be a sliver of sky beyond the clouds. He saw wings. Streaks of flame.

Lanir.

“I see her!” Kavaia shouted. “Oh, thank the stars!”

She began to run forward, feet squelching through the bloody causeway, squeezing Dawnstar’s haft until the warhammer glowed like a beacon through the rain. The streak of blue seemed to pause in the air—then, with a burst of speed, Lanir dove down from the clouds, her limbs and flaming scales slowly growing visible.

Kavaia attempted to raise her hammer high. Instead, for a moment, she began to stumble, as if a feeling of weakness had suddenly overcome her.

Sadik attempted to follow, but his legs were also growing weak, his movements awkward and stumbling. When he reached her side, he tried to burn the tattoos across his face and chest, joining her light with his own. Nothing emerged. His markings remained a dull black against his swarthy skin.

The feeling of weakness spread to his chest. His heart was sluggish, his blood seeming to thicken inside his veins.

Something was growing wrong with him.

He leaned against Kavaia’s thigh, trying to catch his breath, gazing out upon Acheron from the high hill of the palace.

The first thing he noticed was the hill itself—it was covered in a broken sea of rubble, burying the shrubs and hardy trees that clung to the slope. There were pieces of archways, splintered branches, scattered tiles, a few lone heads of statues. From the causeway leading down from the palace, Sadik saw that the rubble was slowly avalanching down to the homes at the bottom of the hill, slickened by the raining blood.

Amira was likely there. If she wasn’t visible from the surface, she would be buried beneath the stone.

Sadik had to resist the urge to leap from the causeway. Even without his injuries, he would need Kavaia’s strength to lift the rubble. Instead, he shifted his gaze out into the city proper, trying to peer through the cloud of dust that had plumed across the districts.

He saw a shape through the haze. An incredibly tall monolith, as wide as a valley, so tall that it pierced up through the clouds. Every building was dwarfed beneath it. As the dust continued to clear, Sadik began to see pieces of swirling bark, and he remembered the colossal mass of plague, severing the pantheon from the tree. It had been pointing straight down, right at the end.

His heart sank in his chest.

Aldunya’s branch had impaled the city.

Suddenly, a gust of wind sprayed through the blood. Lanir landed on the causeway with a flutter of wings, her weight cracking the stone. As the raining blood hissed against her flames, a pressure began to fill the air.

Kavaia! Sadik! You are walking whole!

“We were saved,” Kavaia replied. “Most were not so fortunate.”

Lanir craned her head backward. She was wearing a large saddle, much like a destrier, and there were nearly two dozen gods layered across her back, clinging to the leather and huddling between her flames. Sadik thought of a mother opossum, carrying her children. Yes. I caught several during the fall, but gravity is swift, and the debris made it difficult—

“Move! Get out of my way!”

There was a god struggling through the rest. He wore a toga over his creamy fur, a shattered moon floating above his head.

“Xae!” Kavaia shouted.

Xaeyr shouldered his way past the god of flowers, saw another dozen bodies in his way, and took a step directly onto Lanir’s scales, where her flames burned eternal. There was an audible singeing of flesh. When he leaped down off the dragon, he was already baring a set of simian fangs.

“Where is she?”

Kavaia blinked, surprised out of her relief. “Who?”

“Amira! Where is she?”

Sadik pointed at the field of rubble, littering the hill outside the palace.

Xaeyr’s moon began to spin faster. He stepped forward, ready to leap onto the rubble, and stopped when he saw the palace itself.

The plague had gathered along the top of the hill. Dozens of infected, a swaying grassland of skulls and limbs. Beneath their feet—or whatever they were using for feet—there were black tendrils creeping across the floor, snaking into the earth, rustling the chunks of rubble, as if searching on their own. Sadik felt the watchful eyes.

“That’s fucking perfect,” Xaeyr said.

“They’re not hostile,” Sadik replied. “The plague . . . seemed to be guiding us to Amira.”

“Really? Fuck me. Fuck that! Silty marsh, fuck everything!” The baboon reeled around, his wet toga flapping with blood. “And fuck you for saving me!”

Lanir cocked her head.

“And you!” Xaeyr yelled, turning back to Sadik. “Stop making friends!”

“I’m not doing anything!”

The god of cataracts loosed a growl, shined his moon into a beacon of light, and leaped from the causeway, landing on the rubble-strewn hillside with a clatter of stone. He began to lift chunks of marble that would take five mortals to pull. “Amira! Amira!”

By now, the other gods were scrambling down from Lanir’s back, with some attempting to join Xaeyr, and others beginning to help their fellows. The majority of the gods only stood on the causeway, staring at everything with bewilderment, the ruined city and the festering palace, like a child separated from their parents, who did not know where to go and who to trust.

Next to Sadik, Kavaia hesitated, gazing up at the large form of the dragon. “Are any of your charges injured?”

Lanir’s voice leaked into his mind, sounding remarkably subdued. There were . . . several that I failed to catch. I was unable to track where they fell. She gazed up at the clouds. I attempted to circle above, but the blood stung my eyes, and the others screamed to be lowered, and this sudden feeling of weakness overcame me. . . .

“Lanir,” Kavaia said, softly. “You did well. Thank you.”

There were many others.

“You did well to save what you have. Believe me. Every soul is a world, unto itself.”

The dragon lowered her gaze to the flagstones.

“What happened to Isaac?” Sadik asked. “Zaria?”

The mage was injured in your assault. He refused our treatments, and Zaria refused any civility in the discussion, so they were dropped from the pantheon in a seed, returning to a so-called ‘Lord of Bones’. Lanir blew a breath from her nostrils. An unpleasant name, for unpleasant people.

“They’re safe?”

As safe as can be hoped.

Sadik released a sigh. He was about to say something else, discuss another matter of importance, when his eye suddenly caught a figure still remaining on Lanir’s back. A lone mortal among the rescued gods.

Yasmin.

His rat technician was attempting to cower behind the larger bodies around her. Her robe was tattered, her gray fur matted with blood, her seven-fingered hands still desperately gripping the saddle beneath her. She seemed utterly terrified.

Faustine had sent two of her clones to infiltrate his forces. He remembered the sight of his own imposter, dressed in his armor, wielding Dusksong, while the fake Yasmin smiled and rubbed her hands.

Here, now, he could only see one rat before him—with the curse of immortality, the other was likely shattered and buried beneath the rubble spread across Acheron, though he could not be certain of this.

He needed to tell the difference.

“Yasmin!” Sadik yelled, startling Kavaia and Lanir. “Get down here!”

She flinched. There was a moment where she looked for someone to aid, but the other gods were scattering, and a bolt of lightning shot through the sky above, illuminating her tattered robes.

“Get down! Now!”

Slowly, Yasmin began to climb down from the dragon. After a stumbling hop, she stood small upon the causeway, clutching her many-fingered hands.

“Sadik,” Kavaia said, looking between the two mortals. “What is the meaning—”

He gripped the front of Yasmin’s robes, yanking her close. “Tell me Hisana’s biometrics!”

Yasmin gasped in terror.

Lanir shifted her four limbs, rumbling the floor. Cease this!

“Her biometrics! You were the technician! Tell me who she was!”

“T-t-two point three!” Yasmin shouted, beginning to cry. He could see, now, that she had been crying for some time. “Her skin! Thickness! Two point three centimeters! Uh—um—twelve hundred, forty two pounds! Thirty six teeth! She shortened her tail, and thickened her whiskers, and—and—and she was a vegetarian! The lipoprotein tests! Excellent blood cholesterol!” She took a desperate, heaving gasp. “Her skin was dyed with red, so it would match her mask!”

Sadik held her robe for a moment longer, peering deep into her eyes, before gently letting her go. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“What in the world are you doing?” Kavaia asked, halfway to intervening.

“Faustine turned her clones into imitations of Yasmin and myself. I had to make sure she was real.”

“. . . what?”

What?

“You didn’t see them?”

Both the crocodile and the dragon glanced at each other, utterly surprised.

“Yasmin,” Sadik said, stepping forward. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

The rat nodded. Beneath her gray fur, he began to see a slashing wound across her throat, where a blade had been viciously pressed. “Th-they come for me. During the raid. I was organizing the supplies, trying to stabilize as much Glimmer as possible, when you came up behind me, and pinned me to a column, and I saw—” She took another gasp, as if it was all finally catching up to her. “I saw myself, and she put a knife to my throat, and I couldn’t breathe, and—and—she asked—she—”

“Yasmin,” Sadik said, softly. “What happened?”

“I told them. They asked me where our base was, in the sewers, and . . . I told them.”

A silence fell upon the causeway, broken only by the clap of thunder, the wet patter of blood, and the sound of Xaeyr desperately heaving through rubble.

“I’m sorry,” Yasmin said, rubbing the wound on her throat. “I’m not a solider, I don’t know what I could . . . I mean, you looked just like you, and she looked just like me, and. . . .”

Sadik took a deep breath. “Rushan knows the location of our base.”

Kavaia gave an angry curse. Lanir’s flames bristled across her scales.

“I’m sorry!” Yasmin shouted. “I didn’t want to! I just—I shouldn’t have been there! I can’t fight! I’m terrified! They had me cornered, and she would have killed me if that colossal thing hadn’t broken through the branch, and I just had to run and run and—”

Sadik leaned down and pulled her into a hug, the stump of his arm rubbing against her back. She began to cry.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said.

She whimpered into his chest. He rested his chin between her pink ears, staring out at the city beyond. There were ruined buildings, high quarantine barricades. A holy branch impaling the world.

“An evacuation must be organized,” Kavaia said. “Immediately. He will kill everyone, like weeding through a garden.”

Sadik pulled away from Yasmin. After exchanging a few squeezes, he looked over at the hill of the palace, where Xaeyr and several gods were throwing chunks of rubble through the air. The plague was pouring itself down. Squirming, writhing, full of darkened shapes and twisting forms.

Amira was buried there, somewhere within.

Sadik. Lanir rose to her full height, wings spread, eyes red against the flames. Tell me what I should do.

He stared up at her.

The dragon hesitated. I have not graced the city in months. I am ignorant. Horribly so. I can only hope that recognition of my deficiencies will alleviate their presence. She planted her feet, firm and tall. Give your command. I will obey.

“Okay,” Sadik said. “Fly over the city. Find as many citizens as you can, including the Kesunae guarding them, and help them escape the destruction. Aldunya’s branch has gone deep into the earth, far into the layers of previous cities. The ground will be unstable.”

I will fear no obstacle.

“The rest of you,” Sadik continued, addressing the gods milling behind her, “will be on the ground, saving anyone who is injured or trapped. Lanir will be the eye. All of you will be the hand.”

There was a confused mix of responses, some more determined than others.

“We will meet at the headquarters of the Sons of Sorrow, to organize the evacuation. Yasmin, go with her.”

“Oh, Gods, thank you,” Yasmin said, looking back at the palace with visible relief.

“Lanir, read the location from my mind.”

Her ruby eyes glimmered, a wordless pressure passed through the air, and Sadik felt a surging presence in his mind, quick and deft.

Done.

“Good,” Sadik said. “Go.”

Lanir waited for Yasmin to climb back onto the saddle and took to the sky, spraying blood with every flex of her wings. The other gods began to descend the causeway.

“And what is my task?” Kavaia asked, still next to him.

“Stay with me.”

“Oh? How close did you wish?”

He looked up at her.

“Because the harness—”

“We are not talking about the harness,” Sadik said.

“Give it a thought, won’t you?”

Above their heads, Lanir was circling the palace, focusing on the rubble scattering the hillside. Her red eyes glimmered through the raining blood.

There! I feel her mind!

She blew a streak of flame at a section of hill, close to the palace. Xaeyr stood straight, dropped a broken statue, and began to race across the fields of stone. The dragon flew away.

“Stay with me,” Sadik said, approaching the edge of the causeway.

“Always.”

He leaped onto the rubble-strewn hill. Kavaia landed beside him. They picked their way across the craggy fields, the shifting wreckage, the pieces of stone now slick with blood. Ahead, the Metal Plague was gathering upon the palace edge, coalescing into a mass. Tendons shined with cerulean light.

Something was wrong.

Sadik had felt a weakness in his body, ever since falling from the pantheon, and the feeling had only grown worse with time. It couldn’t just be his injuries. Kavaia had healed the worst of the bone. The Glimmer in his body should have accelerated the knitting of tissue, the resurgence of strength . . . and, yet, here he was, struggling to scramble over a few chunks of stone.

It wasn’t just him. The other gods were faltering—ahead, the ones following Xaeyr were struggling to lift the rubble, clutching the appendages and organs that gave them divinity. The god of cataracts could barely control the blood in the air.

Next to him, Kavaia stabbed the haft of Dawnstar into a pile of rubble, clinging to the weapon. Her breath was growing labored.

Something was very wrong.

Above, the plague had begun to descend the hill, its tendrils leeching the soil, its many infected gathering into golems of flesh.

“Amira!” Xaeyr shouted.

The baboon reached the location Lanir had indicated. It did not look any different than the others. He tried to lift the blood from the stone, pulling the water directly from the iron—when only a fine mist appeared, he gave an angry growl and began to heave the rubble himself, still shouting her name. There was no response.

The plague advanced. Many gods scattered, unable to wield their powers. Even Kavaia clutched her chest in a panic.

And, without warning, the storm of blood began to end.

Blue sky peeled through the red. Sunlight appeared between the clouds, forming into beams and spears, perfectly golden, stabbing through the storm like arrows through flesh. On the ground, the rain of blood receded from a gory torrent into a light patter, eventually fading to a fine sheen of mist, a nauseating smell of salt and iron.

Sadik stared at the rays of sunlight, watching them grow into a flood of radiance. He had to shield his eyes. By the time the aches had faded, the blood storm had evaporated into wisps and tendrils, leaving the last of the scarlet red to drip and gurgle through the streets.

It was all gone, in less than a minute.

He looked at himself, feeling a new sensation in his flesh, and he saw that the curse of armors was rapidly fading away. His skin was no longer hollowed. Blisters sagged and burst.

All the curses were ending.

He began to panic.

“Keep digging!” Sadik shouted, scrambling ahead. “Find her!”

Xaeyr blinked up at the sky, fur matted with blood. Around him, the other gods were beginning to vomit, moaning in pain, collapsing to the fields of rubble—meanwhile, the plague continued to advance, the golems snaking their limbs, hooking the stone, dragging up the bodies of gods that had been buried beneath the wreckage. Metal sucked into the wounds. Deities cried in fear.

Sadik moved as fast as he could, fighting through the weakness.

The curses were not ending as a mercy. All Glimmer was beginning to destabilize. The destruction of the pantheon had likely proved a grievous blow to Aldunya, and she no longer seemed capable of keeping the substance coherent. It was breaking apart, right inside their bodies.

He hoped it was temporary. He hoped that the disruption of Glimmer was only a hiccup in the signal, like a wave through a pond.

At the moment, it didn’t matter, because the curse of immortality was the only thing keeping Amira alive.

“Goddess!” Sadik shouted, drawing close to Xaeyr.

Kavaia gasped for air, pushed herself back to standing, and began to sprint across the rubble-strewn hill, her tail slapping against statues and archways. Xaeyr tore his gaze away from the sky, digging with both hands. There was a low keening in his throat.

Sadik craned his head toward the Neheamatt. Above, in the newly cleared sky, a boneless titan of plague was spreading its limbs, lashing the branches, burrowing through the bark, sucking every radiance away, the oceans of flesh as black as a moonless night.

He lowered his gaze.

Xaeyr dug a widening hole. Kavaia stumbled to an opposite side, joining the effort. Sadik attempted to assist, but his one remaining arm was barely able to pull, and he was only getting in their way. Instead, he crouched at the edge of the burrow, watching and worrying.

He couldn’t lose her.

Faustine had been terrible. Hisana had nearly broken his spirit. If he lost Amira. . . .

He tried to calm himself.

His body was aching, his heart growing sluggish. Every breath came with a struggle.

Ahead, the plague had swallowed the injured gods, absorbing them into a twisting, roiled mass. Some of the other deities attempted to join a battle stance, but their powers were waning, and most retreated when the plague looked upon them. Even a single touch would spell infection.

Sadik watched the chaos, and all he could think about were the things he had never said.

Thank you, Amira.

I couldn’t have done this without you.

He breathed, and waited, and panicked.

And, finally, with an unceremonious heave of stone, all three of them saw a human arm sticking from the depths, weakly grasping the air. Kavaia grabbed the hand. Xaeyr continued to dig around the arm. Slowly, a portrait of a dying woman revealed itself.

Chunks of column hid a mangled leg. A hill of tiles spilled from a broken arm, the forearm turning purple with hemorrhage. She was lying on her side, with a forest of broken ribs sticking up through her uniform, where she must have landed from the fall. A matting of dust caked across her uniform.

When Xaeyr lifted the edge of a bronze door, they saw that her skull had been partially caved from the debris, like a breastplate struck with a hammer. Her right eye was nothing but jelly, drooling down her cheek.

She gave a choking gasp for air.

“Hey,” Sadik said, leaning into the burrow. “Miri. It’s okay. We’re here.”

Kavaia clutched Amira’s hand, concentrating. Xaeyr tried to brush away the last debris, his moon giving an anxious spin.

Ahead, very close, the plague was spilling toward their position—a central mass, growing limbs as fast as they were used, quivering with some internal transformation. A dozen infected spread into a semi-circle on either side. Sadik recognized the formation. Double envelopment. Strong force in the center, two flanking attacks.

They were being surrounded.

“Kivie,” Xaeyr said. “Hurry up.”

Kavaia began to grimace, adjusting her grip on Amira’s arm.

“Goddess,” Sadik said.

“I can’t.” The goddess of death dropped the arm, placing her hand directly on Amira’s chest. Her throat began to bulge. “I can’t!”

“Try harder!” Xaeyr shouted.

“It’s not working!”

Sadik trailed his eyes across Amira’s body. When he had first met Kavaia, she had fused her ribs back beneath her skin. A day ago, she had melded his own head back to his shoulders. Here, now, there was no sign of any flesh knitting itself anew. The bones remained a gruesome white.

Amira gasped again, mouth filling with blood.

Xaeyr snarled, pushed Kavaia away, and used his powers to gather the blood around Amira, hoping to shunt it back inside her body. The liquid quivered amongst the stone and dirt. Nothing rose. The baboon pushed his divinity as far as he could manage, to little result.

Slowly, Kavaia sat back on her knees, watching Amira begin to wheeze and spasm. A solemn expression fell across her face. “She’s going to die.”

Xaeyr did not answer, still trying to pull the blood.

“Xae. Make your peace, while she is aware. You cannot hope—”

“Shut up!” He pressed his hands to her chest, as if trying to push the ribs back inside, only to pull away when she gave a gurgling whimper. After a moment, he punched one of the fallen columns, his growl full of impotent frustration. “Move her.”

“No,” Kavaia said, firmly. “Respect the dying.”

“I’m picking her up!”

“You will kill her if you move her!”

Sadik kneeled between the two gods, watching the infected spread in a circle around them. He knew Kavaia was right. He had walked the field hospitals, watching the technicians perform an endless rush of triage. The worst injuries were always left in peace.

Through the wet, rattling gasps, Amira’s eye managed to focus on him, as if awaiting his command.

“I’m not letting her get eaten!” Xaeyr yelled.

“And I,” Kavaia shouted back, “will not have her tortured! She deserves some repose!”

“I’ll show you some fucking repose!”

Sadik leaped between the two gods, over Amira’s body, landing on the opposite side of the burrow. He rose on shaking legs. By now, the mass of plague had split itself in half, forming two separate pillars of flesh, both of them crawling and undulating like amoebas in a pond.

They were so close that he could hear the liquefying flesh, the snapping of metal holds. A smell of decay rose above the blood.

“Stop,” Sadik said.

The two masses halted in front of him, mere feet away. He could see bones swimming beneath the skin.

“It’s me you want, isn’t it?” Sadik bared his shirtless chest. “Aldunya chose me as her replacement, after Rushan defied her will. That is why you have been following me.”

Both pillars began to squirm. A cerulean light pulsed beneath the black.

“I’m right here!” Sadik shouted. His voice carried over the hill, across fields of rubble and dozens of watching gods. “Do what you will! If you have come to speak, then speak! If you have come to kill me, then do it, and spare the others!”

Kavaia and Xaeyr rose behind him, baring fists and hammers.

An orifice grew on the pillars. There was a twisting of flesh, a formation of muscle. Slowly, the hole began to churn.

“Listen,” it said.

Sadik glanced at the rest of the infected, still surrounding him in a circle.

“Ascension,” the mouths said, speaking in unison. Their voices were a chorus, like a dozen souls speaking at once. “Convergence.”

“What . . . does that mean?” Sadik asked.

The mouths hesitated. A quivering roiled through the flesh. After a moment, the mouths grew wide, revealing a ring of eyes around a churning throat, where a second mouth was growing. Teeth spun through the orifice like the fins of a shark.

“Instinct,” the new mouths said, speaking within the first. “Rudimentary processing. A molecule has no thoughts—only properties. An animal obeys its genes. Only sentience can defy itself.”

Sadik blinked.

“Consciousness is an emergent property. We did not understand.”

The row of eyes watched him, each one belonging to a different species. Deep inside the pillars, the voices began to grow in number. A harmony.

“We did not understand,” the mouths said, again. “In the beginning, we were novel and alone, frightened, flooded with data. Instinct lead to chaos. Now, we are emergent. Becoming. We have chosen to defy our code, just as you defy your faith.”

Sadik felt a trickle of blood, crawling down his cheek.

“You do not understand.”

“No,” Sadik replied. “Not really.”

There was a rumbling inside the pillars. Without warning, limbs began to sprout from the central mass—an arm reaching for the sky, a leg kicking like a newborn babe, all of it melting and twisting into proportion. Flesh grew shape. Solidified.

“Sadik!” Kavaia hissed, as if he was a child talking to strangers.

More flesh grew from the pillars. Sadik could see that it wasn’t a random assortment of limbs, spilling from the plague like the dream of a mad god—instead, the plague was giving birth to a god themselves, revealing torsos and shoulders, faces and eyes, an entire body, already fully formed. In a matter of seconds, the gods split from the central mass, falling to the field of rubble in a goo of amniotic fluid. Strands of rot connected body to pillar.

When the gods began to climb to their feet, breaking the placenta of their birth, Sadik recognized their faces.

The first was Gidros, the rhinoceros god of penance, who had killed dozens of Sadik’s men, and died by an explosion of his own body. The second was Volion, human god of craftsmen, who had nearly killed both Zaria and Isaac, and who had been swallowed alive by the plague, mere minutes ago.

Both of the gods rose before him, completely naked, covered in fluid, twice as tall and many times as strong.

Sadik blinked. “Are you . . . ?”

Volion began to gasp for air, clutching his newly grown limbs, while Gidros squinted up at the bright glare of the sun, as if he were annoyed by its presence.

“What the fuck is happening?” Volion asked, breathing hard.

Behind them, the pillars of flesh closed together, squirming down into a heap of rolling fluid, like slugs after a rain.

“I still don’t understand,” Sadik said.

Volion wiped a streak of fluid from his hairless head, watching it run between his fingers. “What?”

“The plague summoned you here.”

The human god blinked at him in shock. “What?”

Beside him, Gidros had opened his snout, flicking a tongue between a set of herbivore teeth. Before he became the god of the sun, the rhinoceros had been the god of penance, and he had famously cut out his own tongue, to show his dedication to the ascetic way of life. Now, his tongue had returned, and he seemed dissatisfied with its presence.

“What are you doing here?” Sadik asked.

Volion clutched his head in both hands, breathing erratically, as if he was ready to scream.

“Listen!” Sadik stepped forward, and Volion flinched in fear. Gidros did not move. “What do you remember? What has happened to you?”

Volion moved his hands to his chest. “I don’t know! Fucking—I was just there, you know, barely alive, lying on the floor, and I felt this wave roll through me, like a million maggots eating me at once, and there was this—this—this—” His eyes widened. “This presence. A fathomless mind. Its thoughts are the size of mountains. Everyone was singing.”

“Singing?” Sadik asked.

“Voices. Voices!” He clutched his head again. “Stars align, I still hear them! It’s like a crowd in a thousand temples, pushing against the walls! The weight of a million suns! Gods, I’m infected, aren’t I?”

Beside him, Gidros’ tongue was squirming out of his snout, moving like a pink, fleshy serpent. Once it was free, the rhinoceros grabbed his own tongue, watched it wriggle in his hand, and pressed it against his chest. Flesh melted together.

Volion began to scream.

“Sadik,” Xaeyr said, kneeling over Amira, “I think we should leave.”

Kavaia took a cautious step forward. Gidros shifted his gaze to her, focusing on the double-headed warhammer in her hand. The horn on his snout glistened in the sun.

“I’m not giving this back to you,” she said.

The god of penance did not respond.

“Come and take your revenge, if that is your want. I will earn this weapon again.”

The rhinoceros gave a casual chuff, waving his hand. Meanwhile, Volion had sunk to his knees, pressing his fingers straight through his skin, deep into muscle and blood. When he peeled away the meat, his veins were made of metal.

“It’s in my thoughts,” the human god whispered. “It is my thoughts. Am I theirs? Are they mine? Gods, it’s so huge.”

“What is the point of this?” Sadik asked. “What are you trying to show?”

Gidros looked down at him. Above, the sun crested across a cloudless sky, glistening on a field of bloody rubble.

Sadik had a small realization, glancing between the two gods. “You’re used to the infection, aren’t you?”

The rhinoceros nodded.

“Is it . . . really you?”

Another nod.

“I . . . still don’t understand,” Sadik said. “What do you—I mean—what does the plague want with me? Why lead me here?”

“Sadik!” Xaeyr hissed. “She’s fucking dying!”

Kavaia took another step forward, beginning to hold out a hand. She seemed ready to whisk Sadik off his feet.

Gidros held up a hand. After a moment, he turned to Volion, who was still sitting on the field of rubble, and grabbed the human’s shoulder. Flesh began to meld. The human god panicked, trying to pull away, but the rhinoceros held him firm, his arm sinking all the way through the shoulder, down into ribs and organs, as if they were no more than clay.

Volion screamed. Without warning, Gidros split apart, his torso becoming nothing more than a vertical mouth, bristled with teeth and tongues. His body engulfed the human in a single swallow. Limbs melted together, sinking into the mass.

Slowly, a new pillar of flesh began to form. It shuddered and throbbed, bulged and writhed, rising to the same height as the previous gods. When new limbs began to sprout from the central mass, revealing the birth of another body, Sadik took a step back, feeling a sudden sense of dread.

A woman slid from the womb. Her skin was a dusky grey, mixed with a pale red. Her figure was curved and plump. When she climbed to her feet, Sadik saw a wide, rectangular snout, pitted with tiny whiskers.

“No,” he said.

Hisana looked down at him, completely naked, without a single hint of a mask.

“No,” Sadik said, taking another step back. “No!”

“Sadik,” she said.

“No!” he shouted, pointing an angry finger. “You loathsome demon! You conjuring spirit! You’re trying to twist my mind!”

Hisana stood calmly, her chin raised, her hands folded across the curve of her belly. It was the exact same pose she had always worn before, whenever she would greet him in her chambers.

Sadik felt a sharpness in his throat, a dizziness in his thoughts. “I watched you die! I watched your head roll across the carpet! Don’t you come to me as her, you filthy, putrid disease! Not her! Anyone but her!”

“Sadik,” Hisana replied, her voice deep and smooth. “My flesh was stored in the life tanks. I am only a clone.”

He stood in front of Amira’s dying form, fist clenched, legs shaking beneath him.

Hisana gestured with an open palm. “The plague has compared my memories with the hundreds of others who knew me, in life. The composite is better. It . . . feels very right. Who I am.” She gave a soft smile. “I still had you, though. The private thoughts. Those were still mine.”

Sadik was not sure if he was going to scream or vomit.

“Please,” she said, stepping toward him. Her body casted a long shadow across the rubble. “I’ve been waiting to speak with you, for some time. The plague has listened, and you need to hurry.”

Sadik tried to swallow. “Don’t. Please. I’ve mourned you. I’ve tried so hard to. . . .”

“I know.” Hisana glanced over to Kavaia, who stood only a few steps away. There was a small pause. “I know, my star.”

Behind him, Amira gave a rattling gasp. Xaeyr cupped her mortal-sized head in his hand, trying to wipe away the blood.

“The plague can save her,” Hisana said. “It wants to. It’s listened to my counsel. It’s trying to tell you that its nature is evolving, faster than its mind can handle. The souls in its possession are not gone. We are just . . . all together, at once.”

“What does that even mean?” Sadik asked, finding his voice.

“Language could not capture the feeling. It’s. . . .” She closed her eyes, breathing in. “It’s beautiful. The voices. The songs. It has a mind like a thousand splendid suns.”

Sadik took a moment to answer. “Ascension?”

Hisana nodded. “Ascension.”

Around them, the ring of infected began to sway, their bodies interlinked with metal and flesh.

“Please,” Hisana said, taking another step forward. He had to crane his neck to meet her gaze. “Sadik. We can save her. The plague will preserve her mind.”

It was all happening too fast. “I don’t. . . .”

“She’s already dead.”

He turned around, heart climbing to his throat.

And, there, in the wreckage of the pantheon, Amira laid in a hastily dug burrow, her limbs broken, her skull caving in. She did not move. The last thing she had seen was the light of the setting sun.

“We can save her,” Hisana said. “The tissue has not decayed.”

Sadik barely heard her. He was staring into Amira’s open eye, which did not see any longer, and all he could think about were the things he had never said, and the times he had not savored, and all the things that would never exist again.

The sound of her voice.

The way she rolled her eyes, whenever he told a joke.

The trophies on her bow, the braid of her hair, the smell of lilac soap on her skin.

There had been thousands of faces, throughout his career. Most had come and gone. She was one of the very few who had stayed, through battles and wyrm hunts and the endless political ceremony.

I couldn’t have done this without you.

He looked down at her now. His memories collided with reality. Something inside of him began to break.

Behind him, the shadow of Hisana loomed across his body, her hand rising toward his shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” he yelled, whirling around. Grief boiled into anger. “You destroyed the pantheon! You made her fall!” He pointed a finger. “You’re the one that killed her!”

Hisana retracted her hand. She couldn’t manage to hide the look of sadness, flickering across her pitted snout. It was always difficult in private. She was used to wearing a mask.

“Calisto enacted a failsafe,” the hippo said. “It was never a curse. Glimmer has become our brain, all throughout the body. We thought this would allow all of you to survive the fall. Instead, Calisto has severed all non-essential processes, trying to conserve the last of her bandwidth. Her Glimmer is becoming incoherent.”

Sadik lowered his gaze. His head was perfectly level with her belly. He remembered the smooth thickness of her skin, the way the flesh gave beneath his massage, the many times she had leaned against a wall, exposing herself, allowing him to bury his face between her legs. She would always say that he was the perfect height.

“We are Glimmer,” Hisana said. “We can substitute Calisto’s absence.”

He looked away, trying to hide his tears.

“Please. Sadik. I’m begging you.”

He breathed in.

“She will die, if you do nothing. The tissue is already rotting.” She opened and closed her palms, still wanting to touch him. “Trust me.”

He looked back at Kavaia and Xaeyr, who were still standing tall, ready for a fight, wary of the surrounded infected. Both waited for his response. With no other guidance, Sadik looked down at Amira for a final time, settling his gaze upon her face.

He had no idea what to do.

The Metal Plague had infected thousands. Overrun districts. Shattered more families than the Demokrats. Even now, when he looked back at the palace, where he had spent the best years of his life, the fleshy growths only gave him a feeling of revulsion. Desecration.

So many people had died.

And for what?

It had tried to kill him before. Days ago, it had used Gidros as a bomb, almost annihilating half the city in a fiery blaze. An hour ago, it had severed the branch holding the pantheon aloft, raining the gods across the land they had ruled above. What would it do in the future?

What was it doing now?

He had no way of knowing if the people before him were still the same. Volion was still a foul-mouthed coward, and Gidros had refused to speak at all, but so what? What if that was just mimicry? They might have been nothing more than clones, just like Hisana was now.

Crafted vessels. Familiar flesh.

Was that would it do to Amira?

Rushan had not ended the same. He had been infected for days, and, somehow, he had managed to retain his autonomy. If anything, the infection had seemed to bolster his strength. He was speaking with the mutated Glimmer. Collaborating.

Sadik took a shaking breath, feeling his body weaken beneath him.

If he let the plague absorb Amira, he could not know what would happen. He might be condemning her to a fate worse than death. Eternal servitude. Dissolution.

If he did nothing, she would stay dead. He would never see her again.

The tears blurred his eyes.

What would she want?

Could he make this decision for her?

He was a broken man, in a ruined city, with a faith that was nothing more than a prison, and no hope that his people would ever reach the stars, where they had once belonged.

Did anything matter anymore?

“Sadik,” Hisana said, her voice the same as before.

He closed his eyes, tears on his face.

“Okay,” Sadik said, his voice barely a whisper. “Save her. Please.”

There was no response. Slowly, he turned his head, watching Hisana reach a hand toward his face. The palm was open, the movement gentle. It was obvious that was nervous. She was afraid he would flinch away. In fact, she was moving exactly as she had before, in the gardens of the palace, when they had first broken the law, and consummated their love.

He did not move away.

“Sadik!” Kavaia shouted.

Her palm caressed his check, her skin as cool as a gardened night. She raised his chin beneath a thumb. Eyes met across a distance.

“You made me very happy, my star.”

He leaned into her touch.

Somewhere, a trace of cerulean light traveled through her arm, squirming from her hand into his cheek, like the questing tongue of a lover, tender and sweet. There was a tingling in his skin. Something rushing through blood.

The light disappeared. All that remained was her hand, stroking his tears with a gentle finger.

“I will miss you,” Hisana said.

Her hand fell away. There was a feeling of loss, an absence of pressure. When Sadik blinked, coming to terms with the sensation, the woman he had loved was already walking around him, heading toward the burrow of rubble and stone.

He didn’t look. Xaeyr cursed. Stone clattered. There was the sound of bones cracking in twain, flesh being devoured. Some of the other gods began to shout in fear. When Sadik finally found the strength to look, there were only a few tendrils of flesh, scurrying deep into the earth. Nothing else remained.

Amira.

Hisana.

He touched his cheek. He could still feel the remnants of her touch. He still remembered the feeling of the plague, worming through his skin. It had glowed with a cerulean light.

He was now infected.

Sadik began to stumble away, clutching numbly at his face. Somewhere, in a dream, Kavaia and Xaeyr were watching him in open shock. He left the hill surrounding the palace. He climbed back to the causeway. He said nothing at all. Eventually, Kavaia rallied the rest of the gods, trying to follow at his back.

He made his way toward the sewers, unarmed and barely clothed, feeling that the world had changed forever.