The carriage touched down upon the obsidian-streaked landing dais with the grace of a falling whisper. Starlight peeled away from its wheels, curling upward like incense, and the runes along its side dimmed one by one, as if the universe itself exhaled in reverence.
The door sprang open with a soft hiss.
Before the final curl of mist had dissipated, she was already there.
A woman-petite by Ascendant standards, though still a tower among mortals-strode forward with fire braided into every step. She stood just shy of six feet, her form wrapped in a cascading robe of deep night-indigo. Her hair, a rich navy blue, had been gathered into a side-ponytail that curved like a comet's arc over her shoulder. A single glass ornament-shaped like a blooming flower of emerald and cobalt-glinted where it bound the strands, catching the light like a memory refusing to dim.
Her eyes-oh, her eyes-held the impossible shimmer of Galaxy Purple marbled with Mercury Silver. Twin star-born storms, dancing with beauty and threat in equal measure.
"You vanish for a century, and not a whisper?" she cried before even crossing the threshold. Her voice cracked across the chamber like a jeweled whip-sharp, musical, and absolutely without apology. "Ayla, I will end you with etiquette."
Ayla turned, utterly unbothered. "Niraí," she drawled, the name wrapping around her tongue like velvet over steel. "You've grown even shorter since I last saw you."
"I am precisely the same height, you tyrant of moonlight," Niraí snapped, hands on her hips. "But you, apparently, are a flight risk. Again."
Komus, for his part, stood frozen near the window-shoulders high, posture taut. Color rose in his face like wine spilled in slow motion. He looked moments away from collapsing into the floor or combusting where he stood.
Niraí turned sharply, her galaxy-born eyes narrowing.
And then-like a blade shifting into a ribbon-her entire expression transformed. "Oh... Komus," she purred, with the gentle delight of someone discovering a long-lost pastry. "Still brooding so handsomely, are we? Stars above, I do enjoy watching you panic."
She took three steps forward-precise, floating, predatory-and brushed a finger just barely along the edge of his crimson-splotched cheek. "You've gotten taller. Or am I shrinking in all the right places?"
Komus made a sound that might have been a gasp or a prayer.
Qaritas, who had only moments before unmade horrors with a thought, blinked in quiet awe. So this was the Ascendant of Gates.
Niraí gave Komus one last look of devastating mischief before spinning with a flourish of her robe, addressing Ayla once more. "Well? Are you going to tell me where you went? Or shall I guess by reading the explosion you left behind in the dream-threads?"
Ayla only tilted her head toward Qaritas.
Niraí turned.
She stilled.
The room fell quiet-not with dread, but gravity.
Her gaze swept over Qaritas like a calculation being tallied against a thousand ancient prophecies.
"So," she said softly. "It's you."
He inclined his head. "I believe so."
"You don't look like a god."
"I wasn't meant to be."
Niraí gave a small, dangerous smile. "Neither was I. That never stopped me."
Ayla cleared her throat. "Is Hrolyn here?"
Niraí shook her head, expression dimming. "No. He's taken the Veil of Search again. Patrolling the outer edges. Searching for any trace."
A pause. Her voice grew quieter.
"Still hoping to find... him."
Ayla looked away. "It's been over a billion years."
Qaritas flinched.
He had heard many things since awakening-had unmade monsters, crossed dream-worlds, learned to speak-but this struck him like a silent blade through his center.
"One billion..." he whispered. "I have existed for that long?"
The words felt fragile in his mouth. A lifetime... stretched beyond time. He had no memory of its passing. Yet he had borne its weight.
"Why?" he asked. "Why would Eldawna hold me prisoner for so long?"
Ayla stepped toward him, voice like tempered starlight. "Eldawna is not merely a place, Qaritas. It is another dimension-within this universe, yet apart from it. A cradle of potentia, unshaped and feral. Time there... it does not answer to the same laws."
Niraí nodded. "This realm-Rygartha-rests within the 2000th universe. The last of the grand cycles. Eldawna lies beneath it, beyond its reach, folded inward upon itself."
She stepped closer, more serious now. "You were hidden where even Fate had to whisper. But something... or someone... chose to awaken you now."
Qaritas said nothing.
The silence around him deepened. Not hollow, but full.
As if the universe itself were listening.
He looked toward the vaulted ceiling of the chamber, where constellations swam in slow spirals above. For the first time, he began to feel the weight of his own beginning.
Not born.
Not made.
Chosen.
Niraí's gaze lingered on him. "You will be watched. Not all the Ascendants will welcome your coming."
"I do not ask for welcome," Qaritas murmured. "Only truth."
A flicker of approval lit her eyes. Komus, long paralyzed by Niraí's teasing, finally remembered how to breathe. He coughed once-lightly-clearing his throat with the grim dignity of a man recovering from a storm of charm and embarrassment.
"If you would permit me," he said stiffly, inclining toward Niraí, "I would be honored to escort you to the Hall."
Niraí turned to him with a flourish, eyes glittering. "Permit you? Komus, if I had any more patience, I'd be mistaken for a statue."
She slipped her arm around his without hesitation, fingers light but confident.
"Well then," she continued, glancing back at Qaritas with a smirk, "if the shadow-born truly is to be the twenty-eighth, I suppose it's time he met the rest of the stars he'll be expected to shepherd."
Komus gave a sharp nod. "Agreed. The sooner we know how the threads knot around him, the better."
Ayla turned to Qaritas. "You'll need to see them," she said gently. "The ones you were born to lead-if not now, then in time."
Qaritas said nothing, but followed. His footsteps made no sound, yet his presence stirred the very air.
The group stepped down from the floating carriage, descending a staircase that shimmered with living glyphs. Each step bloomed with ancient runes, reacting not to weight-but to intent.
As they crossed the starlit threshold of Rygartha's Grand Antechamber, a new presence approached.
The figure stood perhaps an inch taller than Niraí, yet carried the stillness of something far older. They moved like wind through tall grass-soft, unhurried, but certain. Their skin shimmered with the iridescence of Echo-Blue, luminous in the half-light. Long ash-gold hair cascaded like rainfall down their back, and their robes-a seamless weave of pearl-white and duskdust-flowed with each movement like light trying to remember how to become form.
Their eyes-Phoenix-Rose-gleamed with warmth and melancholy. They looked between man and woman, between sun and moon. Neither, both. Qaritas could not place them. Nor did he need to. They were.
"Welcome back, Ayla," they said, voice neither high nor low, but resonant-like a lullaby sung by a dying star.
Ayla smiled. "Cree," she said with familiar softness. "Where is Hydeius?"
Cree's features dimmed, and the echo of sorrow stirred their aura like ripples on stilled water.
"He is resting again," Cree murmured. "Another torrent of mortal souls poured through the Veins of Passing this dawn. Too many clung to their pain. Too many screamed on the way to peace."
They looked down, lashes casting silver shadows across their cheeks.
"He swallowed more than he should have. He always does. And so, I have taken his burden-just a little-to ease his ache. Some of those souls I... returned. Gently."
A pause. The grief in Cree's eyes pulsed, warm and strange.
"I gave them better beginnings."
Komus stepped forward, placing a hand over his chest in reverence. "Cree, this is Qaritas-the Awakened One. The one born from silence."
Cree turned, and when their gaze met Qaritas's, something within the god of nothingness stirred.
There was no fear in those Phoenix-Rose eyes.
Only knowing.
"You are... very old," Cree whispered, tilting their head. "And very new. You carry the ache of a people not yet born, and the silence of a war not yet finished."
They stepped closer, fingertips brushing the edge of Qaritas's form-not touching, merely sensing.
"You do not feel like death," they said softly. "You feel like the moment after."
Qaritas, for the first time, did not retreat. "You see me."
Cree smiled faintly. "I see what you might be."
Then, gently: "But I do not name it. That is your choice."
Ayla stepped beside them. "Cree is the Ascendant of Rebirth. And Hydeius-whom you'll meet when he's well-is the Ascendant of Souls."
Komus nodded. "They keep balance between departure and return. Between ash and breath."
"Hydeius would greet you himself," Cree added, "but he bleeds quietly. Too many souls whisper at once. It makes the body tremble."
Niraí sighed. "He always takes too much. He was warned, and yet..."
"He always was the gentlest of us," Cree said with a ghost of a laugh. "Even when the stars broke the first time."
They looked again to Qaritas.
"You'll meet him soon. He'll see you clearly. Soul always does."
Cree stepped aside and gestured toward the vast doors of the Council Atrium, where golden light pulsed like a heart behind bone-glass and dusk-crystal.
"Come," they said. "The others wait."
And so they went-down the echoing hall, beneath constellations caught in motion, toward the waiting stars that had dared call themselves Ascendant.
Qaritas followed, his form flickering-less like mist now, more like shadow learning to hold shape.
Each step forward was a page turned.
Each name he would learn... another line in the story he had not asked to write.
But still-
He walked.
Just as Cree moved aside, and the doors to the Atrium loomed open, a soft rustle stilled the air.
Not a footstep.
Not a sound.
But a shift-like the cosmos inhaling.
From behind a twisted arc of polished obsidian and ancient vineglass, a figure emerged. She wore a robe blacker than mourning, embroidered with constellations no longer remembered-some blinking faintly, others long dead. Her veil, translucent and draped like smoke across her brow, did not hide the chill gravity of her presence.
Her eyes-one black as collapsed time, the other silver like the spine of prophecy-met Qaritas's without hesitation.
"Fate walks lightly," Ayla murmured, her voice unreadable. "But never by accident."
Cree bowed slightly. "Xriana."
The woman inclined her head. "I came because I felt the thread snap. The one we never dared name." She looked past Ayla, past Niraí, past Komus and Cree.
To Qaritas.
"I thought you would be... louder," she said, not unkindly. "But then, fate often arrives whispering, not roaring."
Qaritas stood silent, the shadows of his form barely shifting.
"You know me?" he asked.
Xriana's expression did not change.
"No," she said softly. "But I remember you."
She stepped closer, her voice now only for him. "You were never written into the plan. And yet... here you are."
Qaritas stared at her, that ancient ache stirring once more in his chest.
"What am I to fate?"
Xriana's head tilted, veil swaying like an omen.
"A question."
She turned, walking past him with a grace like falling ash.
"Let's see what kind of answer you become."
And with that, she vanished through the Council doors-her silhouette dissolving into the golden light beyond.
Ayla exhaled quietly.
"Well," she said, "you've been acknowledged by Fate herself."
Qaritas stared at the door, then at his hands, which were no longer flickering-but still not whole.
"I didn't ask for this," he said.
Cree stood beside him, Phoenix-Rose eyes soft.
"No one does. But some of us... become it anyway."
And so, at last, Qaritas stepped through the threshold.
Toward the ones who remembered the Fall.
Toward the ones who still carried the light.
Toward the Council of Ascendants-
Where his name had never been written,
But perhaps...
Was meant to be spoken.