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For the quiet aftermath, when the battle ends and we must face what victory has made of us.
From their pride came the Aesymar, divine children who carried fragments of their makers’ power.
Thus came the Trials of Ascension, a crucible where the power-touched could prove themselves worthy. Those who endured joined the pantheon’s lowest tier, honored as Legends. Those who failed were cast aside, their names left to dust. And so, for millennia, the order has stood.
This was the secret that could destroy everything—the power I'd been born with, the reason we could never leave Saltcrest.
So they created the Trials of Ascension. Every decade, those with gifts were gathered, tested, broken down, and rebuilt in the gods' image. A few would ascend to join the pantheon. The rest would die, their power reclaimed by the Aesymar.
"Him. Olinthar." The name felt strange on my tongue. It was the first time I'd said his name aloud in years. The King of Gods himself, ruler of the Twelve Aesymar, master of light. The creature who had sired us.
For a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like to be the kind of woman someone could love without reservation. One who didn't carry secrets—who could give her heart freely instead of sharpening it like a weapon.
"Osythe lives with her lover in Draknavor now," Dorna finished. "Their son ascended in the last Trials—Xül, Warden of the Damned.
He was tall and lean, built like a weapon wrapped in divine flesh. Bronze skin stretched over sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. His hair was braided and woven with golden beads. But it was his eyes that stole my breath—one burned pure gold, bright and predatory as a hawk's. The other was completely black. And settling over his full lips, hung a golden ring pierced through his nose.
The god was gone. Completely, utterly gone, as if he had never existed at all. And my powerless brother had killed him.
The Aesymar thought they'd captured two terrified mortals. They had no idea what they'd actually unleashed.
I was Thais Morvaren, wielder of stars, and I had come here to learn how to kill a god.
Thatcher possessed Primordial power. And Xül knew.
"You think you could break me?" "Break you?" His laugh was cold. "Breaking would be such a waste. I'd much rather watch you bend."
"So, tell me, starling," he said slowly, savoring each word like fine wine. "Which one of your parents is divine?"
"It means, starling," he said slowly, the words crashing into the silent room, "that we make absolutely certain you don't die in the Trials. It means we make sure you not only survive—but that you ascend."
"Is that what we're doing? Getting along?" "Well, I haven't cursed you yet, and you haven't stabbed me with any stars. I'd call that friendship." "High bar." "The highest." She glanced at me sideways, a smirk curving her lips.
“That death is meaningless without life,” she replied simply. “That one defines the other.”
"This is..." he began, his voice dropping lower, "dangerous territory, starling. I'm not in the right state of mind to see you like this—with nothing but that flimsy excuse for clothing between you and the night."
"I have never," he said, each word deliberate, "felt like my life belonged to me." He looked up at the sky. "I was born a pawn in a game larger than myself."
"You look past all of that and see what's beneath. And then—" he took a step closer, “you have the audacity to give the truth right back to me, unvarnished and unafraid."
Xül had raised the dead.
"Only you," he said, shaking his head in wonderment. "Only you would face down a god of death at his most unhinged and complain about his emotional unavailability."
“And I’ll be damned for eternity if I’m not willing to do the same. I’d burn Voldaris to the ground for you.”
"Love makes fools of gods and mortals alike,
