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August 19 - September 17, 2025
This is the tale of how a fallen one ascends. Long ago, I told you a tale of a chosen girl who fell to the darkness. Now I will tell you the tale of a boy who was born within it.
Your father told me to come here and tell you that you could be king one day. Perhaps you will be, but more likely your father will kill you if you get too powerful, or your siblings will if he decides not to.
But the boy takes the man’s hand every time. Death, after all, is inevitable. This is the tale of how a fallen one ascends. He does it in countless cascading decisions, over years, over centuries. He does it with the desperation of a starving soul willing to sacrifice anything, everything, for a single chance at redemption. But in the end, he loses her every time.
Acolytes are obsessed with death—maybe because it is both the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate reward, the greatest thing we can offer our gods and the greatest thing they can offer us.
When I died, it did not feel like the peaceful end to a grand fight. It felt like the beginning of one.
Vincent—dead vampire king of the House of Night—held out a hand to me.
“The visions will fade. The things you see here change. More pleasant for some than others, I hear. Punishment or reward, depending on how your immortal soul was judged. Which is it for you?” I dragged my gaze up to Atroxus’s face, exactly as I remembered it in life—powerful, all-seeing, absolute. It all felt so real, just as I had begged to see it for decades. Yet the answer was so clear: Punishment.
“You killed Atroxus,” Vincent confirmed, though his tone seemed almost insulted he had to admit I’d done such a thing. “The sun fell as he did. Ushering in an endless night.”
Going on a mission to save the world with my friend’s dead father was not at all what I expected to be doing in death.
But then again, some people never did find peace in death. Some were not equipped to face the truth of themselves within it, and others still refused to believe that death was its own kind of eternal life.
Mische Iliae would be remembered by the bones of time itself, and I knew it because I would write her story there with my blood if I had to.
As if the gods had seen some beauty in mortality but failed to realize that the imperfection of it was what made it remarkable.
My gaze fell immediately to the top left one, just above her shoulder. A massive white broadsword, glowing with ethereal light. The Blade of Retribution. The sword that represented a rightful death granted in a rightful punishment. And, in a repulsive irony, the sword she had used to kill Mische.
Because demigods weren’t just rare curiosities. They were the deadliest weapons that existed against the White Pantheon. A piece of the power of a major god, without the restrictions that prevented them from killing each other.
“Fate and luck are twin sides to the same coin.”
“But in doing so,” Acaeja went on, “she did not fully complete her spell. A passage to the threads of fate was opened and never fully closed. She entangled herself with you to pull you free, but never severed that thread.”
“The two of you are now bound inextricably,” Acaeja said. “Yet, the threads fray under the pressure of this tension. As she did not successfully complete the ceremony, she still holds a piece of Alarus’s power—power that belongs to you and could distill your role as god. The underworld crumbles beneath the pressure of this tension.”
“You are telling me,” I said, “that I will need to ascend to divinity.” A faint smile twitched at her mouth. “Yes, Asar Voldari. You will need to become a god.”
It wasn’t even a choice. “Take me to her,” I said. Acaeja smiled as she straightened. Her wings went dark as fate shifted. “Billions of threads,” she murmured, “and not a single one where you say no.” And then she drew the threads tight, and the world rearranged.
“You did not survive. That’s why we’re here. And never address a king by their first name.” I caught my laugh in my teeth when I realized he was not joking. “What do you expect me to call you? Highness?” He stared at me. Oh, gods. He actually did. Sun fucking take me.
If I stared hard enough into it, I could see the veil above and the two massive forms lording over it—a serpent and a lioness, bearing golden skulls upon shadowy bodies, trying and failing to herd a glut of wayward souls.
He was coming for me. That stupid, reckless, foolish man was coming for me.
I had come to love the underworld. Even in the imperfection of the decay I couldn’t fight, I admired the beauty of its construction. A path to usher souls from one existence to the next, empathetic and kind in its orderly efficiency.
The lioness and the serpent, steadfast in their missions, attempted to rule over the chaos. But it was too much even for these great, ancient beasts to control.
She never knew how often I had watched her sleep during our travels in the Descent. How I had committed her features to memory.
“Hello, Warden,” she whispered. “Hello, Dawndrinker.” Still, neither of us moved. “You came for me,” she murmured. “I told you that I would.”
“Mische Iliae, Dawndrinker or Shadowborn, living or dead, I will never let you go.”
The blood of an almost-god. Blood that was a bridge between the living and the dead.
“Fitting, isn’t it, that the messy parts of mortality are the last to go.”
Even now, through the haze of my splitting headache and the residual burn of her touch, I still thought: Hell, might be worth it.
And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”
I beg your pardon........WIFE?!
Wife. Even spoken in my mind, the word sent a shiver up my spine. It was a useful lie—calling Mische my wife linked her inextricably to me, so that no matter her past crimes, no one would dare touch her if I managed to secure my own position.
People will do anything for hope.
“Was the wedding nice?” A twitch at the corner of his mouth. “It was elegant and tasteful.” My nose wrinkled. “Sounds like a nice way of saying boring.”
There is great power in transitions. The transition point between life and death. Between mortality and godhood. The moment a soul is created, and the moment it is destroyed.”
I gave him a bright smile. “I’m not worried at all.” I was definitely worried.
Septimus half shrugged. “Suit yourself, dove. I have never been afraid to bear the mantle of the villain.”
“Some tales don’t deserve a hero. I think your husband knows that, too.”
“For whatever of your mistakes, Mische Iliae,” he said, quietly, firmly, “for whatever of your faults, for whatever unintended pains you may bring this world, I will love you anyway.”
ASAR THE GOD OF DEATH
