Era crossed the threshold and stepped into eternity.
Immediately, she felt the shift in the air-heavy, dense, as if the atmosphere had thickened to smoke. Each inhale scraped her lungs raw, and her eyes watered from the acrid scent of ash. Every particle vibrated with energy, like static before a lightning strike.
It was abundantly clear: 'this place was not designed for mortals.'
The chamber was vast and circular, open to a sky she could not see. Pillars of impossible height cocooned the space, pale as bone, veined with tendrils of wisping silver light. They reached so high they seemed to pierce the heavens.
It did not feel like a room.
It felt like the moment before a storm breaks, charged, electric, waiting.
And at the eye of that storm were thrones.
They ringed the chamber in perfect symmetry. Fourteen in all.
No two alike.
Some loomed like monuments carved from the bones of mountains. Others twisted like thorned vines or melted glass. One shimmered like frozen starlight. Another bled smoke, its surface pulsing faintly like a heartbeat beneath skin.
All of them radiated pressure. Power. Divinity.
Ten were empty.
Four were not.
Era stopped walking.
Her knees locked. Her mouth went dry.
She didn't need to be told who they were. No herald called their names. No inscription burned in the air.
She knew.
Her body knew.
Her breath abandoned her, fleeing as though it feared to offend them. Her heart stuttered, then pounded with such force it made her vision pulse. Her skin prickled, every nerve humming like live wire. The urge to kneel struck her with the weight of instinct—like a child before a tidal wave.
Gods.
The word rose unbidden, etched into her bones.
They sat like thunder wearing the shape of men and women—cosmic forces distilled into flesh, barely contained.
'They were here for her.'
The thought sent a cold current down her spine.
And then, one moved.
A tilt of the head. A slow shift of weight.
It was like a crack in the earth. The air vibrated in response, and Era's body seized. The silence fractured,not with sound, but with expectation.
She was seen.
One of the seated figures leaned forward.
His throne was a jagged display of charred wood and iron nails, its surface blackened and raw. Flames licked at his heels, crimson and hungry, purring like something alive. Though his shape was human, his presence was not. It was a force: like gravity, like war.
And then he spoke.
"Mortal," he called lazily, lifting a single finger in a beckoning gesture, casual as a man summoning a pet.
The word rang out like a bell over a battlefield. Not shouted. Not cruel. But it made Era's bones vibrate in their marrow.
"You've arrived at last. I had begun to lose interest in your fate."
His voice pressed against her ribs-an invisible weight that bent her spine and dragged her knees toward the floor.
Her throat clenched. Her breath faltered. Her name, her entire identity, felt brittle beneath his gaze.
He lounged with the arrogance of wildfire: one leg draped over the arm of his throne, his expression a mixture of boredom and disdain. Smoke curled from his shoulders in lazy tendrils. Sparks bled from his hair like threads of burning copper, flaring gently against skin the colour of brandished bronze. His obsidian eyes, bottomless and unblinking, reflected nothing—but her.
'This was a mistake.She wasn't going to survive this.She was going to die right here.'
The thoughts battered her mind like a storm surge.
A second voice broke the silence-sharp, cold, and regal.
"Compose yourself, mortal," said the figure beside him.
This one sat perfectly upright on a throne of pale stone, cracked with strikes of shimmering silver. Her features were carved from flawless ivory-beauty so precise it felt cruel. Her hair gleamed gold, though it radiated no warmth. Her eyes, pale as snowdrops, fixed on Era with the stillness and warmth of towering glaciers.
"We do not grant audiences lightly," she continued, her voice as cutting as arctic wind."Do not waste this moment with trembling and foolish thoughts."
Era tried to speak. Her lips moved, but her tongue was leaden. Her thoughts scattered like startled birds.
And beneath it all, the rising horror: 'Can they read my mind?'
"I wonder," said the fire-laced god, his smile curling into something cruel."When you wear your thoughts so openly, little on, is it reading...or simply looking?"
Before she could gather the pieces of her shattered composure, a deep, guttural snore echoed through the hall-loud and lumbering, like an avalanche.
Era's head jerked toward the sound.
She recoiled.
The third figure was vast, grotesque, slumped in a throne that shimmered like crystal left to rot. His flabby flesh hung in heavy folds, damp and glistening, his head lolling bonelessly to the side. A long, glistening trail of drool slid down his chins.
He snored again,loud, indifferent, utterly unbothered.
The sound snapped Era from her trance, and a sick thought slipped unbidden before she could stop it: 'Egh. So even gods can be ugly.'
She froze.
'Shit. Had they heard it?
She braced for fire. For lightning. For judgment. For death.
But instead-laughter.
A great, booming laugh burst across the chamber like thunder. The fire god was cackling so violently smoking tears fell from his eyes, sizzling as they hit his cheeks. With each roar, the flames at his feet flared higher, wild and delighted.
"Did you hear that?" he barked, "The mortal thinks Phoros ugly!"
He jabbed a thumb toward the slumbering beast with gleeful abandon."I must say, little one, you are not wrong."
The golden goddess's mouth drew into a sharp, frozen line.
"Careful, mortal," she bit, voice like jagged glass "The forms we wear are shadows. Nothing more. To judge a god by shape is to judge the ocean by a single drop."
"I-I didn't mean... offense," Era stammered.
"Of course you did," said the fire god, leaning forward, his eyes glowing with mischief, "Offense is the spice of life, little one. Say what you mean. Own what you feel-if you dare."
His voice slid over her like smoke.
And then-the fourth god stirred.
She perched at the edge of her throne, a spindly thing of twigs and reeds, delicate as a bird's nest. She wore black leather like shadow incarnate, her limbs lean and coiled, her presence unsettling in its quiet intensity. Midnight hair, streaked with violet, floated around her as if suspended in water. Her eyes, storm-wild, full of swirling colour pierced through Era like a spear.
"You have one more sentence left," she purred, her voice barely above a whisper but laced with venom.
"With one sentence, cast your fate. With one sentence, bare to us your soul,"
Her smile curled up like a blade unsheathing.
The silence that followed wasn't still, it was watching.
Era's heart slammed against her ribs. Her breath came shallow and sharp, like she was breathing through a throat too narrow. Her thoughts scattered, useless, one tumbling over the next, each more frantic than the last.
'One sentence? Bare her soul? What did that even mean?'
Her lips parted, but no words came.
Only fear.