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August 5 - August 9, 2025
When I died, it did not feel like the peaceful end to a grand fight. It felt like the beginning of one.
Sun fucking take me.
And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”
“Ooh! Death magic!”
Goddess bless the daughters and the second sons. Imagine a kingdom built in our image. They always underestimate us, but they never understood. We are the ones who actually had to use our teeth.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You don’t use it. I’ve got—” I wiggled my fingers. Asar stared flatly at me. “What?” “Death touch! Magical death touch!”
“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.”
“You are not, never have been, and never will be an offering, Mische.”
I said, voice light, “What’s next?” “You play, Iliae.” “Play what?” Another brush of his mouth, this time over my throat. Almost a kiss. “Whatever is in your precious heart.”
“All my favorite notes. The easiest ones to play. You were the one who asked me to think about the future, Dawndrinker.”
I wanted to cling to it—this urgent, desperate sense of life. I wanted to believe it would last forever. 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.
Through all of it, I kept fighting.
“You are not merely here to lift up someone else’s fate. It is yours. So take it. Take it and 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.
We did not speak. We did not have to. Morthryn played the final notes of our song to the rhythm of our shared heartbeat.
My queen. My light. My darkness. My future. The answer to every question. The ending to every sentence.
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.
