The seven stars curved low across the Graveyard, trailing fire and memory.
Qaritas stood at its front, cloaked in light with six others—Ayla, Cree, Hydeius, Komus, Niraí, Daviyi. The ones who had said yes when the others had trembled.
No one spoke. They didn't need to.
The Graveyard whispered for them.
"He's here," Niraí murmured, but the Graveyard had already told them. Qaritas had heard it, not in words, but in the silence between rib-bones and the wind that didn't breathe.
Their star split the sky as it landed atop a rib the size of a cathedral.
The light peeled back like a veil, and they stepped into the stillness it left behind.
That's when he saw it.
Inside the cavern of Hrolyn's skull—where constellations and sermons once bloomed—Ecayrous sat.
Not perched. Installed. As if the god's death had always been shaped to make room.
Qaritas stared, heart steady, but his skin remembered something older than thought. The throne was made from prophecy defeated—vines of dry nerves clinging to the bone like relics in revolt. Ecayrous lounged within the curvature of memory, legs crossed, chewing.
An arm. Adult-sized. Half-eaten.
Blue ichor dripped from his chin, smoldering where it struck bone.
He didn't rise.
He just watched. Chewed. Swallowed.
Qaritas let his gaze sharpen. Ecayrous's body was scripture and combustion—bones ghosting through parchment-thin skin, scorched at the edges like a prophecy set on fire before it could be read.
Runes twitched along the god's arms, rewriting themselves mid-glow. Not static, not settled. Correcting a future still unfurling.
Even with eyelids stitched shut in black thread, Ecayrous saw. Qaritas felt it—not the sight itself, but the shape of it. Cold. Knowing.
Hands rested on the bone-throne. Palms embedded with violet eyes that blinked and tracked a thousand futures.
When he smiled, it wasn't teeth. It was intention. A concept turned mouth.
And when he finally spoke—
"You came," Ecayrous said.
A child whispering bedtime. A prophet drowning in ink. A father remembering disappointment.
The words didn't echo. They inhabited.
And every bone in the Graveyard remembered why it once stood upright
The air trembled, not like fear—but like lungs that didn't want to breathe what he was exhaling.
The light bent wrong around him. Not shadow. Not shine. Something that judged your shape and decided it didn't match any known law.
Hrolyn's skull creaked beneath his weight. But it didn't break.
It accepted him. Like it had been waiting for its new master.
Ayla stiffened. Her fire dimming—not out of weakness, but because her soul remembered his lullabies from the Dreamscape.
Cree's flames hiss. "I've seen devils smile. They still looked away from fire. But you—"
"You feed on it," Niraí said—too quiet to be brave, too steady to be anything else.
Qaritas, silent, steps forward.
But Daviyi grabs his shoulder.
Not out of fear.
"He'll speak. And when he does, he'll undo someone. Wait."
He plucks a vein from the chewed arm, twirls it.
"This was an Ascendant once. She wept when I offered her mercy. I fed her to her brother. He sang afterward."
He gestures to the Graveyard like it's a nursery.
"You want strength? Then come to where gods scream before they're born."
His grin widened—too far. Like joy had torn something open.
"Mrajeareim remembers how to train you."
"Because it forgot how to spare you."
"And remember," Ecayrous said, gently placing the chewed limb beside him like a beloved pet,
"I don't want you to die. I want you to understand why you should have."
Before Ecayrous raised his hand, Komus moved—quietly, efficiently.
With a flick of two fingers and a ripple in space, a cube of silver-black light shimmered into existence beside him. It hovered at shoulder height, spinning slowly, pulsing with quiet gravitational hum.
Inside: his luggage. Contained, compressed, perfectly preserved. He didn't glance at it. Just snapped his fingers once—space bent. Another cube appeared.
One for Qaritas.
Then Ayla.
Cree.
Hydeius.
Niraí.
Daviyi.
Each container blinked into being like a folded piece of the cosmos deciding to serve instead of rule. The cubes weren't heavy—weren't even real. Just spatial pockets bound by Komus's will, sealed in perfect vacuum geometry.
Ayla raised a brow, almost smiling.
"Packing light?"
Komus didn't look up.
"Packing right."
Cree's flames flickered in amusement.
"Gods walk into hell and bring their toothbrushes. I've missed this kind of delusion."
Qaritas nodded his thanks silently, then added,
"Better deluded than unprepared."
The cubes spun once more, locked into silent orbit around each of them.
And then Ecayrous lifted his hand.
The air in the Graveyard tore itself open.
A portal bloomed—not like a door, but an eye. No—a thousand. No—millions. Each one watching. All of them knowing.
Layered across each other like scales stitched from vision, all staring in different directions, and yet… focused on you. Qaritas stared too long, and his breath stuttered.
Each eye blinked out of sync, stitched in starlight, their irises rotating with layered runes.
The center of the portal pulsed with bluish-black fire, coiling like smoke too heavy to rise. It didn't burn.
It waited.
And if you stared into it long enough—you forgot how to look away.
Ecayrous's voice came low and smooth, but cut like glass soaked in calm.
"Walk through this gate… and you are mine. Until the Path of Becoming begins."
He stepped closer.
Too close.
Qaritas didn't flinch.But stillness bloomed in his marrow. His breath held. Not in fear. In memory.
Ecayrous reached out—slowly—and dug his nails into the curse that still shimmered across Qaritas's skin. The skin tore—not from force, but from recognition, like the flesh knew who touched it and agreed to be marked.
Violet light bled upward, glowing hot across ancient glyphs that hadn't finished forming.
"You have twenty-six days left," Ecayrous whispered, smiling. "Every second you spend in Mrajeareim is borrowed from pain."
He withdrew his hand. The bone beneath Qaritas's skin pulsed once, like it had heard a command.
Qaritas's jaw clenched—but his voice stayed calm.
"I don't belong to you."
Ecayrous's grin widened. Not angry.
Pleased.
"You will."
Behind them, the others stirred.
Qaritas noticed it first—Niraí had gone pale, her stance tense, eyes fixed on the portal as if it had spoken directly into her spine.
Komus moved toward her, just a half step—quiet but protective.
Before he could speak, Ayla's voice pulsed softly in their minds.
The telepathic thread shimmered through their skulls like a flame that refused to flicker.
She didn't raise her voice, but it carried weight.
Qaritas turned toward Niraí.
Her reply was immediate. Shaken. Quiet.
A pause.
She didn't shiver. But everyone felt the tremor through the link.
No one argued.
Even Cree, flames curling silently around their hands, said nothing.
Because they all felt it now.
The dread. The ache. The certainty that whatever waited in Mrajeareim didn't want them dead.
It wanted them changed.
The Graveyard held its breath. The wind didn't move. Even Ecayrous tilted his head slightly, as if curious what Qaritas thought he could say that would matter.
Cree's flames crackled louder—not aloud, but in the thread between them.
Komus didn't speak—but his presence flared with silent certainty. A pulse. A message.
Niraí's voice was soft, but carried like a knife balanced on breath.
Ayla's voice came last, steady as orbit.
She paused.
Not to lead.
To answer.
Because somewhere inside that realm, Ecayrous had left something unfinished in him—and Qaritas had come to end it.
Even if it ended him first.
A hush fell. The Graveyard did not respond—but the silence bowed to their defiance.
Qaritas turned, facing the portal.
The eyes blinked—once. Slowly.
Each figure stepped forward, one after another.
Daviyi walked first—no hesitation, her knowledge trailing behind her like a cloak spun from unfinished histories.
She did not pause to prepare. Only cowards needed rituals before truth.
And whatever waited on the other side—she planned to name it.
Cree followed, flames wrapping tighter, their gaze sharp with defiant curiosity.
Hydeius next, soul-lights swirling around him like halos made from apology and promise.
Niraí gritted her teeth, clenched her fists, and took the step—her fear shaped into armor.
Komus walked with no words, just resolve that sang through their link like a closed wound still burning.
Ayla moved without looking back—because she already trusted they were behind her.
And finally—
Qaritas.
He didn't pause.
He just stepped into the gaze.
The portal closed around them, not like a doorway—but like a mouth remembering how to chew.
Behind them, the Graveyard trembled once—then fell still.
From the other side of the gate, Ecayrous's voice followed—
Soft. Intimate. Too close.
"Welcome to Mrajeareim," he whispered.
"The womb of endings. The temple of what you'll never unlearn."
Then silence.
But it wasn't empty.
It was listening.
And on the other side—
Mrajeareim
There was no ground.
There was only breath.
Hot, acidic, sentient breath, filling their lungs like grief thickened into air.
Shapes moved where geometry failed—cathedrals that pulsed like open wounds, stars hanging from hooked chains, rivers of ink that screamed names they hadn't spoken in centuries.
The sky wasn't sky.
It was memory stitched across a skull.
And from the very first step, the world whispered.
"You are not supposed to survive here."
Qaritas exhaled.
The words didn't come through the link. They stayed in his mind. Heavy.
"This is worse than I thought."
Beneath their feet, something ancient stirred—deep below the seen geometry.
Not a creature.
The realm itself.
It blinked—once. A slow pulse that reverberated in bone, as if Mrajeareim had just noticed their arrival.
And approved.
Not with welcome.
With hunger.
A bell rang. Not sound—pattern. A pulse in their marrow.
Like something older than gods was taking attendance.