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September 22 - September 30, 2025
When I died, it did not feel like the peaceful end to a grand fight. It felt like the beginning of one.
“I’m giving credit to its rightful owner. I did not kill Atroxus. Mische Iliae did, and she deserves to have her name painted in the stars for it.”
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.
“Billions of threads,” she murmured, “and not a single one where you say no.”
Strange, I thought, that none of the paintings or tapestries had ever depicted that her teeth were sharp as those of vampires.
“You chose this battle. You chose it when you took your first steps into Morthryn, and you choose it again now. You set out to change the world. You set out to create a god. So do it. This is the time for conquering, Mische Iliae. Go.”
She’d told me that once, in our travels through the Descent. That my past didn’t matter. She’d said it so simply. I didn’t think she understood that it had changed my entire world to hear that.
“Mische Iliae, Dawndrinker or Shadowborn, living or dead, I will never let you go.”
And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”
It’s not about revenge, Asar. Sometimes mercy can get you further if you give it at just the right time.
Tell me, what has you starving so?”
Gideon had told me my hunger would be my downfall. Perhaps he was right, because now, it was so devastatingly powerful that I could think of nothing else. And I had thought nothing could be more powerful, until now, when I felt her soul reaching toward mine, and I realized: She was just as hungry.
“Was that supposed to be compulsion, Iliae?” “What, it didn’t work?” Maybe it had. I wondered whether Mische had figured out yet that I would never—could never—say no to her. It was the kind of powerlessness I’d been taught to fear my entire life. And yet I was so eager to run headfirst toward it.
“They need to hear, ‘Even if it is your fault, I will love you anyway.’
“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.”
“Now stop arguing with me and drink, so I can keep watching you bring the world to its knees.”
“You are an event, Mische Iliae,” he murmured. “God slayer. Dawndrinker. Shadowborn queen. And I would die to taste your skin.”
The vampires spoke of their creation as a triumph. Here, it seemed more like a desperate attempt to fill the hole her loss had left.
“No matter what’s ahead, never sacrifice the messy parts of your mortality, Asar. I like those the best.”
But when my knees hit the ground now, it wasn’t for the eye. It was for her. I wanted to bury myself before her. I wanted to cut myself open for her, let her take whatever she wanted, and treasure the scars for the rest of my pathetic life.
I had once believed that there was no feeling more intense than being in the presence of gods. But kissing Mische, touching her skin again after all this time, dwarfed it.
“He makes me want a happy ending.”
“Grief has a way of sanding down all the complicated parts of a person in the eyes of the living. It freezes them to a single moment.”
But I couldn’t help the sense that perhaps we were like two celestial bodies in the sky. Him arcing from mortality to divinity. Me, from death to life. The two of us colliding for only a few ephemeral moments, magnificent in their impermanence.
But I was not a child. I was a man, covered in the marks of my mistakes, watching the world fall. I was a man who was in love with a woman, and I understood that love would never be beyond fear.
“Her daughter, our daughter, is up there still, at the mercy of this game of gods. I will not allow her to suffer the consequences of it. And I do not care if the goddess-damned underworld collapses around me, but I will not allow it to take her with it. I didn’t protect either of them in life. Not the way I should have. But I will be damned if I don’t protect them now. So get up.”
But Saescha had been seeking justice for me.
Im not crying u are
“You are the sacrifice I will not make,” I murmured. “And I will do this for you, Saescha. I will build you a home to rest. Your whole, beautiful soul.”
“You will make mistakes,” I murmured. “And I will love you anyway.”
“I will never promise you, Asar, that it won’t hurt, because it will. I will never promise you that we won’t fail, because we could. And that terrifies me, too. But it’s in that fear that we hold our greatest strength. We need yours, now.”
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, Asar Voldari, Warden of Morthryn, king of the underworld, heir of Alarus. I love you, and in this life or the next, worlds mortal or divine, I will never let you go.”
I had walked the path to divinity; I had walked the path to death. And yet, here, in her presence, I was overwhelmed. Here, in her presence, I knew worship.
My queen. My light. My darkness. My future. The answer to every question. The ending to every sentence.
“In some, your endings are pleasant. In others, painful. But how curious, that in every one, you change the world together.”
“She was no one,” Acaeja said dismissively. “But perhaps that is what makes her remarkable. Such is the glory of fate. It is forged, not born.”
“Be ruthless, Highness,”
“That’s the cost of a future, Warden,” she said. “It’s hard work, to make the choice to do better every single night for the rest of your life. Maybe that’s why acolytes are always so obsessed with dying in a fiery blaze of martyrdom.”
In the darkness, I found solace. In the underworld, I found hope. And here, in this twin soul, in this love we built together, I finally found it: Home.
