Chapter 61: Rune of Earth (Her POV)
I sat across from Malvor with my coffee, letting the warmth seep into my palms. My sessions with Ahyona were going well. I had seen her a few times a week for two weeks now. Morning light made everything look softer than it had any right to. His curls, his stupidly pretty mouth, the way he pretended not to be staring at mine every time I took a sip. He stirred his drink, the spoon tapping gently against the side of the cup. clink
Then—
clink.
I blinked. The second sound wasn't an echo. It was the same sound… heard from somewhere else. Closer. Inside. Like I'd heard it with my ears, and then again through his. I froze. Malvor didn't notice. He was too busy pretending he wasn't watching me watch him. I took a slow breath, trying to push the sensation away, to force the connection quiet again. I'd been holding the wall shut for weeks. Holding it during the day. Losing the battle at night. Barely sleeping. Just ignore it. Don't hyperfocus.
I forced my eyes to the table. But the more I tried not to think about the duplicate sound, the sharper it grew. The room went thin at the edges, like someone had scraped reality with a blade. A feeling. Wrong. A void. A sudden, hollow nothing. Like the entire world dropped out beneath me. I gasped, jerking back in my chair. The emptiness was gone as fast as it hit, but the shock of it rattled my ribs. Malvor leaned forward. "Asha?"
"I'm fine." I wasn't. That wasn't me. Whose nothing was that? Whose emptiness? I tried to pull away from the connection, to close it off like I always did. But the moment I tugged—
Screaming. A roar of pure, unfiltered rage exploded through my skull. Not mine. Not anywhere near me. Not in this room. A god's fury. I flinched so hard my coffee sloshed over the rim.
"Hey, hey!" Malvor reached toward me. "Asha, breathe."
I couldn't. Because the rage cut off abruptly. Heat slammed into me next. My body reacted before my mind understood it wasn't mine. Burning Lust. Fierce enough to flush my cheeks, tighten my stomach, heat pooling low and fast. "W-what—" My voice cracked. "That's not... that wasn't me..."
Another emotion shoved in. Panic. Not mine. His. Malvor's panic crashed into me so hard it stole the air from my lungs. My breath stuttered. My chest tightened. "No, no, I... I can't, I don't..." My fingers clawed at the table's edge. "Get out! get out of my head."
"Asha" Malvor's voice broke. "Darling, you're, you're hyperventilating."
I was. Sharp, shallow breaths that wouldn't pull enough air. My chest caved inward. My vision bleached at the edges. My heartbeat thundered and staggered. Emotions kept firing through me. A spike of excitement. A wave of disgust. A pulse of boredom A flare of irritation. All at once. None of them mine.
My breath came in a choking gasp. "I can't... I can't shut them out! Mal! I can't breathe—"
His chair scraped loudly against the floor, or maybe that was the sound of my sanity slipping. His panic slammed into me, sharp enough that for one horrifying moment I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. He knelt beside me, hands hovering, afraid to touch. "Asha. Asha, look at me, listen to my breathing."
But I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear me. Just noise. Emotion. Bursts of sensation. Too much. Too fast. Too loud. "I... I can't..." I pressed both hands to my chest like I could hold myself together. "I feel... trapped. I feel wrong. I feel... everything."
Malvor's eyes filled with helpless fear. "Asha," he whispered, voice shaking, "this isn't chaos. This is the connection. You're feeling ten gods at once. You're hearing through ten different sets of senses. You're drowning."
"MAKE IT STOP!" It ripped out of me raw, desperate.
He flinched, not from the shout, from the breaking underneath it. Then he cupped my face with trembling hands. "Asha, you need grounding. Silence. Earth. You need Tairochi."
"I can't... I can't open a portal. I can't. I can't breathe..."
"You don't have to," he said. "He'll feel you. Go."
Something in me cracked. Magic snapped. A portal tore open without my intent, like the earth itself reached for me because I couldn't reach back. His forehead touched mine, grounding me for half a heartbeat. "You can come back and yell at me later," he whispered, trying to cajole a smile. "Asha has opinions. I love you, come home when you can breathe again."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to claw at something. Instead, I nodded once, shaky. He let me go like he was setting down something precious. I fell through the portal, straight into stillness. Earth and loam rushed in. With that first breath…
…the gods went quiet.
The realm on the other side was a single, heavy heartbeat. No flashing lights. No laughter. Only the scent of rain on stone and moss, and the soft hiss of wind through ancient trees. Everything was muted. My own pulse thudded louder than the world. I stood on stone that was older than language. It hummed under my soles like a voice too deep to hear. For a second, I panicked again. Silence can be as terrifying as noise. Then I realized: the gods' voices were gone. The buzzing in my bones faded.
Tairochi appeared the way a mountain does when you turn around and it's just there. Tall, broad, carved of bark and boulder. Power radiated from him. It pressed down on me, not crushing but containing, until my own magic settled like sand after a wave. He said nothing. He didn't need to. The mountain's gaze moved across my shoulders. I could feel him tracing the runes carved there, the connection already tethering us quietly in my bones. A low awareness, like a thread pulled taut.
"In exchange," he rumbled, the words feeling more like tremors than sound, "you will stay with me on Thursdays. Dawn till dusk."
My brain caught up, He was speaking. I hadn't even heard it. I might've laughed if I'd had breath to spare. "Because you're lonely?"
"No." His deep brown eyes didn't blink. "Because you need a place where no one can reach you but yourself."
I looked back toward the portal. I could faintly feel Malvor's worry, muted now by the mountain's gravity. He'd be there when I returned. He'd be chaos and comfort and color. This… was something I'd never had, quiet. I swallowed and nodded. "Yes."
Tairochi nodded, as if he'd known my answer. He handed me a cloth to bind my chest and shoulders. Functional a way of exposing the skin where his runes would live. His hands, when they touched me, were warm from the oil he rubbed between his palms, and huge. I felt tiny beneath them. He muttered words that sounded like stone settling. Warmth pulsed beneath his fingers rooting itself around my shoulders. My magic resisted at first, then stilled. The runes woke. They didn't blaze. They glowed like embers being coaxed back to life and then settled into a steady, comforting burn. My knees buckled, not from pain but from… release.
Tairochi caught me effortlessly. He held me like he'd hold a boulder dislodged from a cliff, steadying it until it found new footing. There was no panic in his eyes, only understanding, and something like old sympathy. Something small inside me mourned, quietly, for the pieces of humanity I kept pretending were mine. They had been slipping away for ages.
"It is quieter here," I whispered against his shoulder, half laugh, half sob.
"It will always be quiet here. That is the gift and the price."
I sank against him, breathing in the scent of damp earth and crushed cedar. The world didn't spin. The gods didn't shout. My thoughts didn't scatter. My name didn't burn. It was just me. Asha. Breathing. I didn't know how long I rested against him. Seconds, minutes, lifetimes. Time felt different here. Less like a river and more like a stone being weathered smooth. When my breathing steadied, Tairochi shifted, setting me gently on my feet. He didn't let go until he was certain my legs wouldn't fold beneath me. "You are unbalanced."
"I know," I whispered.
"No." His deep gaze held mine. "You know the symptoms. Not the cause."
He stepped back and gestured for me to follow him deeper along a stone path. I obeyed without question; even thinking felt too loud. We stopped before a flat, low shelf of rock overlooking the forest. Moss blanketed the stone's surface like a cushion made by the world itself.
"Sit," he said. I sank onto the moss, legs crossed. My magic flickered along my skin, restless and trembling. Tairochi lowered himself opposite me. He placed his palms on the stone beneath us. "Your power is untethered. You are connected to eleven realms. Eleven minds. Eleven soon twelve rivers pulling at you."
"Too many," I breathed.
"Not too many," he corrected gently. "Simply… louder than you have learned to hold." He took one of my hands in his. His touch was constant. Like a pulse under stone. "Feel the ground."
"I don't—"
"Do not try, just feel."
I closed my eyes and breathed. Tairochi watched me breathe for a moment, really breathe. The rune under my skin had stopped burning, but the aftershocks still trembled through my ribs, tiny flickers of magic searching for an outlet. A shock of quiet rushed through my arm. Not silence, just… weight. Stillness. Tairochi placed his palm beside mine, not touching, but close enough that I felt the heat radiating from him. "Now listen."
"I don't hear anything."
"You're listening for noise. Listen for rhythm."
I tried. At first, all I felt was my own heartbeat tripping over itself. My breath shaking in my chest. The last frantic flicker of leftover panic. Then, slowly, I felt something else. A gentler beat under the stone. A pulse older than language. The realm's pulse. His pulse. Something grounding me simply by existing. Tairochi nodded once, a mountain's acknowledgment. "Good. When your magic spikes, do this. Hand on earth. Match the rhythm beneath you. Let it pull you back."
"That's it?" I whispered.
"That is enough, You do not need a fight. You need a place to land."
Something in my chest gave way, not breaking, just releasing. Like unclenching a fist I didn't know I'd been holding since childhood. "Thank you."
Tairochi's expression didn't soften, not exactly. But something in him warmed. "You are learning," he said simply. "When the world becomes too loud, you come here. Or you do this. And you remember: you do not have to hold everything at once."
I closed my eyes. At first, it was impossible. My thoughts were an ice storm, sharp and spiraling. My skin buzzed with leftover magic. My heartbeat was too fast. Then Tairochi spoke a single word in the First Language. A word as heavy as bedrock. "Root."
Something inside me dropped. Not like falling, but like settling. My magic sank, threading itself downward, pulled by the force of his voice. My breath left me in a shudder. I felt the stone beneath my palms, the quiet pulse of the realm's core, the slow rhythm of the mountain. My breath eased. My mind quieted. My magic aligned with something older and far more patient. Tairochi inhaled once. I matched it without thinking. "Good. Do you feel the difference?"
"Yes," I whispered. "It's… quiet."
"No, it is you. Without interruption."
Something warm pricked behind my eyes. He didn't look away. "You were never taught true stillness. Only endurance. Only survival. Noise became your armor. You do not know how to live without it."
A tear slid down my cheek, silent. He didn't reach to wipe it. He let it fall. Respected it. "Every Thursday, you will come. You will sit. You will breathe. And you will learn to hold your own mind without fear."
I swallowed, throat tight. "Every Thursday."
"More," he said quietly. "If you wish. My realm will always open for you."
I blinked up at him. "Always?"
"You seek peace, Peace recognizes you." And then, softer: "You may enter whenever you need stillness. Whether it is your day or not." My breath hitched. No expectations. No judgment. No cost. Just… welcome. Tairochi placed one calloused hand over my sternum, not touching skin, only hovering. "Here, this is the place that cracks first. I will teach you how to make it the last."
I took his hand. For the first time since divinity chose me, I believed I had to the tools to not break.