Begin Book 3

I finished engraving the last of the winter roses and feathers into the dark starmetal tube. It had taken months to reach this point - a solid ash staff, each end capped with starmetal ferrules, a dark leather wrap spiraling between them like a coiled memory.

The engravings were more than decoration. They were a eulogy carved in metal - a tribute to the friends I had lost - and beneath that, the foundation of something unprecedented. A magical matrix, not built from runes as every text insisted it must be, but from image and intent. Elise and I had scoured her library from end to end. Nothing like this existed.

But I made it work once.

And once was enough to try again.

I didn’t know why it worked. Maybe it was my Faith - as god of belief in the absence of proof, it’s possible that I believed it would work, so it did. Maybe it was a lingering gift from Kareth, god of iterative creation, who had helped me ascend before Nyssira consumed him in her climb toward narcissistic ambition. Or maybe I had simply stumbled onto something new - an undiscovered path in enchantment that no one had thought to walk.

Maybe it was all three.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Iolite studied the staff, her stony eyes shifting within the hollowed sockets of the larger stone that formed her head.

When I first met her, she had barely stood a foot tall - just a loose assembly of pebbles and small rocks, featureless and crude. No eyes, no mouth, no hands to speak of. She hadn’t needed them. In her home plane there was no light, no up or down - only endless stone, and she was a spirit that moved through it without resistance.

But the “above stone,” as she called our world, had changed her.

Now she stood just over five feet tall. Her form had grown deliberate, almost human. Her head bore shallow impressions—eye-stones set into place, a suggestion of a nose, a narrow crevice where a mouth might be. It never moved when she spoke, but it existed all the same. Her limbs had become more intricate - layered stones forming thighs and calves, joints articulated with smaller fragments at knees and ankles, even toes. Her arms mirrored that same careful complexity - something I had never seen in any other earth elemental.

She tilted her head, fingers hovering a hair’s breadth above the staff, never quite touching.

“A fitting tribute,” she said.

She had met Yveth once, long ago, while serving Dromaia - the Stone Womb, mother of earth elementals. She hadn’t known her well. But she knew what Yveth had meant to me. And how much I still felt her absence.

Yveth, too, had been taken by Nyssira.

Iolite had never truly known Adhaneth - not as she was. For most of our journey, Adhaneth had been nothing more than a staff of silver beauty. Only in the final weeks before her **** had she awakened and revealed herself.

She wasn’t a goddess. She was the first of her kind - the mother of the Myrddin - creatures that existed only as nightmares between worlds.

She told me they hadn’t always been that way. Once, they had been luminous - capable of joy, of creation, of love. But something had broken them. Twisted them. They had destroyed every other living thing before turning on each other, until all that remained was rage. Pure, infectious rage - something that could seep into others, hollow them out, and wear them like puppets.

Adhaneth gave her life to stop them.

She sealed a tear in the Interstitium - the space between worlds - a tear that Nyssira had opened in pursuit of her impossible goal. A goal that, in the end, had failed.

But not before it cost everything.

Gods fell. Their Faith devoured, their Will erased to feed her ascent. Ashira - the Hearth that Devours. Dromaia - the Stone Womb. Thalos - the Far Horizon. Elyndra - Truth Revealed. Lunythera - the Waning Watcher. Vathryx - the Gilded Chain. Vaelis - the Murmuring Court. Drazhkul - the Warlord of Subjugation.

Others died differently - their Faith spilling loose into the world like wildfire. Urzan-Brek. Zelmyra.

Some of my children had risen to claim Urzan-Brek’s mantle, to contain the endless **** he left behind.

But Zelmyra’s power still ran wild.

In her absence, some trees had changed. They twisted into things that should not exist - black-barked horrors that bent into the shapes of faces. Some called them Weeping Gallows. Others, Confessors or Woundroots. Their branches grew like arms, ending in scythe-like fingers or the suggestion of ribcages. Thick red sap bled from their trunks. Their wood hardened into something nearly indestructible.

And they whispered.

They called.

They promised.

They killed.

People found uses for them. Interrogation. Punishment. Trial. Used them for horrors that turned my stomach.

And one of them had taken root in the center of my bailey.

I had tried everything - blade, flame, poison, Faith, magic. It endured.

In the end, I built a stone wall around it. A barrier to keep the children away.

Sometimes I still found them standing at its edge, staring - silent, unmoving, caught in something unseen. A sharp noise, a hand on the shoulder, a broken line of sight - anything was enough to pull them back.

But not enough to ease my fear. Every hour of every day, I worried. That one of them would get too close. That one moment would be enough.

I thought about leaving. We could rebuild somewhere else. Start over.

But we had roots here now. Mirri served as shaman to the five villages. Grams had become part of all our lives. A town had grown up around us in the aftermath of the Myrddin battle - the second Silent War, some called it. The children had friends. A life.

And beneath the keep, locked away in chains of my own making, was Nyssira - while I tried to piece the world back together from what she had broken.

* * *

The door to my workshop swung open, and midmorning sunlight spilled across the floor in a warm, golden sheet. Issa skipped through it, her pale blue scales catching the light like polished river stones. Her blue-green hair had been carefully braided, threaded through with pink ribbons, and her sea-green eyes shone with an easy, irrepressible joy. Today she wore a soft green dress that flared at the waist, swaying with each step she took.

Autumn had settled in, though it hadn’t yet made up its mind. The days swung between the last breath of summer heat and the first bite of winter’s chill. This morning leaned cool, a crisp edge in the air that promised to soften into something gentle by midday.

“I’m headed out,” she said, practically vibrating with the kind of excitement only a seventeen-year-old on her way to meet friends could manage.

“Have fun,” I told her. “Be safe. And be back for dinner. It’s Tib’s birthday - Dur, Orrik, and Elarion are coming.”

“I know, thren, I’ll be here.”

Thren. Brel for father. Lilae had started it - she hadn’t spoken English, or Trade-tongue as it was called here, when we first found her. The others had picked it up over time.

It still made me smile every time I heard it.

I leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Say hi to Arriya for me.”

“Okay!” she called, already halfway out the door.

And then she was gone, trailing sunlight and laughter in her wake.

* * *

I entered the containment chamber with a whistle on my lips.

The room was perfectly round, its walls carved from stone so smooth it looked poured rather than shaped. Runes crawled across every surface in careful, deliberate patterns. Three concentric rings lay at the center—silver, starmetal, and necromium—each etched with sigils meant to dampen Faith, smother magic, and deny even the possibility of physical passage. It was half prison, half laboratory.

At the heart of it, six chains of orichalcum stretched inward, their links engraved and layered with every enchantment I could devise. They hung slack, motionless - like they had never been used.

I knew better.

The splintered remains of a simple wooden bed lay scattered within the rings.

“What’s the story, morning glory?” I asked the empty space at their center.

Nothing answered. No shift in the air. No sound. No ripple to betray that anything - or anyone - stood there at all.

“Still mad at me?” I went on, a smirk tugging at my mouth. “I guess I don’t blame you. But you’re acting like a child. Least you could do is say hello. Your illusion isn’t fooling anyone.”

My gaze settled just left of center.

With an irritated huff, Nyssira appeared - her invisibility dropping like a curtain as she fixed me with a venomous glare.

I chuckled.

“Why do you insist on this charade?” she hissed. “You won. Leave me to rot. There is no need to come here day after day to gloat.”

“Maybe I’m here for your charming personality,” I said lightly.

Her glare sharpened.

“First,” I continued, “I’m here to make sure you’re okay.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious. I don’t want you hurting yourself. And solitary confinement isn’t great for the soul. Doesn’t exactly encourage rehabilitation.”

“I am a god,” she spat. “I have no soul. And this ‘rehabilitation’ you prattle on about is nothing I want. If I were free, I would grind your Faith into nothing.”

“You wouldn’t absorb it?” I asked, feigning surprise. “That hurts. Truly. I don’t know how I’ll recover from the sorrow. Oh - wait. All better.”

She turned her back on me.

“Second,” I went on, as if we hadn’t just had that exchange, “I’m here to make sure you’re still secure. I can’t have you slipping out and going on another god-killing spree.”

No response.

“And third - I’m still working on returning what you stole. Safely. I could kill you, sure. But all that Faith roiling inside you would spill out and tear the world apart. And I’m rather fond of the world as it is. Even with Zelmyra’s mess still bleeding through it.”

I pulled out a simple chair, set it down, and sat facing her.

“So,” I said, folding my hands, “we’ll go in order. How are you feeling today?”

“Like you care,” she snapped.

“I do care. Like I said - priority one is that you’re okay. If the circles are harming you, I’ll find another way to keep you contained.”

“They are horrid!” she screamed. “I’m dying in here!”

“Don’t be dramatic,” I said. “You already tried that - along with faking injury, seduction, bribery, threats, flattery, ****, guilt, and whatever that last one was supposed to be. I know you want out. And I know exactly what you’ll do if I let you out.”

I leaned back slightly. “Your plan failed. Maybe it’s time for a new one. Imagine the good you could do if you tried.”

She stared at me - cold, measuring.

Then, suddenly, her expression shifted. Her face softened into a bright, radiant smile.

“You’re right,” she said warmly. “I could do so much good. I’ve been thinking about it. I was wrong. I just needed someone to show me the right path.” She stepped forward to the edge of the first circle, her voice almost gentle. “You’ve done that.”

She looked sincere.

I blinked, letting a note of surprise creep in. “Really?”

She nodded eagerly. “I’ve learned my lesson. Let me out, and I’ll make the world better.”

I frowned, considering. “Huh,” I said. “I guess all these talks really did work.” I stood, moving toward the rings. “Alright. Let me just disable-”

Hope lit her face, bright and eager.

I glanced down at the runes. Then back up at her.

My expression fell flat.

“Do you really think I’m that big of an idiot?” I asked, a smirk curling back into place.

I chuckled and turned away, heading back to my chair. “You’re really not good with people, are you?”

Her calm shattered. Rage twisted her features as she lunged. The chains snapped taut, dragging her to her knees mid-stride as she thrashed against them.

“I hate you!” she screamed.

“You’ve made that very clear,” I said.

I picked up the chair and moved it back against the wall, well out of reach.

“You’re secure,” I added, giving the bindings one last, casual glance. “That’s good.”

I turned toward the shelves lining the walls, already shifting gears.

“Now,” I said, gathering a few tools and instruments, “let’s see if we can make any progress untangling that mess of mismatched Faith you’ve got swirling around in there.”

And with that, I set to work.