The ferry was alive.
Qaritas could feel it—every pulse of the engines throbbed through the decks like a heart too large for its body. Metal and coral fused into one endless rhythm, humming with heat and motion. The air stank of steam and salt, and the walls seemed to exhale.
He stood at the railing, fingers pressed so tight to the edge his knuckles split. Cracks veined up his forearms—thin, glowing fissures that smoked at the edges.
Inside, something laughed.
"Don't flinch," Eon whispered, his tone almost tender. "I'm only seeing how far you bend."
Pain rippled through Qaritas's spine like a struck chord. His breath broke, a strangled sound half-swallowed by the wind. Every nerve felt reversed—inside out, raw and bright. Beneath his skin, he could feel Eon's hands, playful and cruel, running along the bones of his ribs from the inside.
"What are you doing?" Qaritas gritted.
Eon's laughter was soft, pleased. "Playing with my insides, of course. They're mine now. You're just borrowing them."
Qaritas staggered, eyes stinging. He saw flashes—Eon's face through his ribs, smiling from within the light that leaked from the cracks. Then the image shifted—Eon stabbing him from the inside, carving glowing wounds that sealed as fast as they opened. Steam hissed from his pores; he smelled burned ozone.
"Qaritas?"
Ayla's voice cut through, low and uncertain. She and Komus stood a few paces away, framed in the misty glow of the deck-lamps. Komus's usual smirk was gone.
"You look like hell," Komus muttered. "And not in your usual poetic way."
Qaritas straightened with effort, willing the light in his arms to fade. "Just seasick," he said, voice hoarse.
Ayla stepped closer. The ship's soft illumination caught the curve of her cheek, her hair whipped by wind. "You don't get seasick," she said quietly. "Not you."
He turned away, jaw tight. "It's nothing."
"Tell her," Eon cooed inside him. "Tell her what you are now. Let's see if she calls you brother after that."
He clenched his teeth hard enough to taste iron. Ayla touched his shoulder, and for a heartbeat the warmth steadied him. But then Eon's voice crawled up his throat again.
"Every god breaks differently," he whispered. "I'm just making sure you're ready for Taeterra. It'll break you better than I ever could."
The ship shuddered. A low moan echoed through the deck plates like something alive dreaming in pain.
Qaritas dragged in air that tasted of metal. "Get out of my head."
"Can't," Eon said cheerfully. "You're my favorite toy."
They descended deeper into the ship. The corridors were wide and arched, their ceilings ribbed with coral that glowed faintly blue. Mortals and lesser spirits moved in quiet lines, their whispers rising like prayer.
Qaritas caught fragments—rumors of Taeterra's storms, talk of a training deck flooded with light, something about the "Executor of Monsters."
He didn't ask. His stomach still felt full of knives.
Komus elbowed him lightly. "You're pale, Voidling. You sure you're not going to pass out before we even dock?"
Qaritas gave a weak smirk. "Wouldn't want to ruin your morning."
The sound of distant shouting drifted down the hall—laughter, the ring of steel, and a barked command that made even the air stiffen.
They emerged onto a wide training deck beneath an open skylight of enchanted glass. The sun above was fractured through layers of mist, turning every shadow silver-blue. Soldiers stood in loose ranks, some half-shifting into monstrous forms—scales, claws, feathers sprouting, then fading.
And at the center, half-reclined on a pile of coiled rope like a throne, was a man who didn't look like he should ever bother to stand.
He was enormous—eight feet, easily—his shoulders broad, posture lazy. Black scales rippled along his skin, breaking into tufts of iridescent fur and feathers at the collarbones. His eyes were ink-dark, bottomless. Even half-asleep, he radiated an authority that made the soldiers' movements precise and terrified.
"Again," he said lazily, not looking up. "If you swing that blade like that, I'll feed you to your own reflection."
The trainees stammered, corrected their stances. He smirked.
A murmur ran through the mortals nearby.
"Dheas," someone whispered. "The Ascendant of Monsters."
"One of the four Cosmic Executors."
"Knight of the Apocalypse."
Ayla froze. The title meant nothing to her yet—but the name struck somewhere deep, an echo she didn't understand.
Zcain and Rnarah were already on deck. Rnarah's veil shifted in the wind, her presence serene but sharp. Zcain's expression darkened as he caught sight of the lounging figure.
"Dheas," Zcain called, voice cutting across the noise.
Instantly, the monstrous man sat upright, movements fluid as smoke. "Uncle?" he said, almost boyish. Then he straightened fully, saluting with surprising discipline.
"Uncle," Komus mouthed to Qaritas. "Of course."
Zcain's tone softened just slightly. "Any news?"
Dheas's grin faltered. He looked away, rubbing at one horned ridge along his temple. "If there was, Tavren would've come himself," he said quietly. "Their condition hasn't changed. I'm keeping them stable. Cleaning the wounds, keeping their core from collapsing. I'll take over their care when I get back."
Zcain's jaw tightened. For all his ancient poise, the words cracked something in his voice. "Thank you," he said softly.
Rnarah's head dipped in acknowledgment, her veil hiding whatever grief lived beneath.
The name Tavren hung in the air like smoke—heavy, unspoken history.
Ayla stepped forward before she realized she was moving. "Tavren…" she repeated, the word trembling slightly. "Yours?"
Rnarah nodded once. "Our firstborn."
"And Dheas," Zcain said, "is Nyqomi's son. Ayla… you remember Nyqomi."
Ayla blinked hard. Her heart stuttered. Nyqomi—the cosmic horror she had once taken in, raised as though love could rewrite what the stars had written.
Her voice came small: "Then he's… my grandson."
Dheas looked at her, curious, one brow raised. "Grandson?" He laughed softly, not unkindly. "That's new. No one's ever called me that."
For a moment, his expression shifted—less mockery, more wonder. "You… remind me of someone," he said. "Can't place it, though."
Ayla's breath caught. Behind her calm mask, the world tilted—time folding, memories bleeding through. She saw Nyqomi as she had been: small, brilliant, unbroken. And she saw the horror she'd become.
Qaritas felt her emotion through the shared link—tight, trembling, dangerous. Are you all right? he asked silently.
Fine, she answered, the lie wrapped tight in discipline.
"So many interesting children," Eon murmured inside Qaritas, voice coiling with dark amusement. "I wonder who else we'll meet before the end. Maybe the Apocalypse child next. Zcain's spawn… I'd like to see what kind of creature kills its own gods."
Qaritas shut his eyes, steadying himself against the hum of the ship.
Ayla was still staring at Dheas—at her grandson—caught between pride and a grief she didn't yet understand.
And far below the deck, in the heart of the ship, something vast shifted—as if answering Eon's laughter.
A sound moved through the ship—deep, resonant, not a note so much as a pressure.
The soldiers felt it first. Their postures snapped rigid; scales shimmered, feathers rose. Dheas stopped mid-sentence, head turning toward the far bulkhead as if someone had spoken his name inside his skull.
The sea outside darkened. The air thickened with scent—ozone, wet iron, crushed coral.
Then came the whisper. Not from mouths, but from the hull itself.
A thousand small voices, chittering, chanting, reforming the same word until it ceased to be a word at all: Mother.
Dheas's black eyes widened. "She's here."
The deck shuddered as something vast touched the ferry's flank. Coral plates along the hull pulsed with color—red to violet to white—as though the ship's body tried to recognize the thing that grasped it.
Then the water rose.
It didn't crash or surge; it simply obeyed, lifting in long curtains of liquid glass. From the heart of the swell stepped a figure.
Nyqomi.
For a moment, no one breathed.
She was not made of color, yet the light fractured around her, bending away as if refusing to touch. Her skin—rainbow scales that shimmered like breathing prisms—reflected the world in a thousand impossible ways. She was beautiful the way an eclipse is beautiful: something that should not be looked at for long.
Her armor was alive with motion. The microscopic etchings crawled across its surface—millions of beasts, serpents, and horrors shifting in endless struggle. When she stepped onto the deck, they stilled, as if waiting for her next breath.
Ayla staggered back a pace. The lanternlight along the rail guttered out, drowned by Nyqomi's glow.
"Ecayrous," Ayla whispered. "Did he do this to you?"
Nyqomi's head tilted. Her smile was too wide, too full of grace and grief. "He tried," she said, voice layered—dozens of tones speaking at once. "But I killed him long ago."
The words made the air vibrate.
Ayla's anger rose like a tide. The deck's light dimmed; darkness poured from her fingertips, swallowing every gleam until only her outline remained. Her power responded to pain, not command—the raw, maternal ache that came from seeing a child disfigured by the universe.
"You were supposed to be safe," Ayla said, voice trembling. "I raised you to see the stars, not become one of their prisons."
Nyqomi's laughter was soft, almost kind. She stepped closer and reached out one scaled hand. When her palm touched Ayla's cheek, the darkness broke apart like smoke. In that touch, the monstrous and the divine met, and for an instant both seemed human.
"Hush," Nyqomi said. She lifted Ayla as if she weighed nothing, holding her the way one holds a child after a nightmare. "I am what I chose to become."
Ayla's tears burned against Nyqomi's armor. "They tortured you."
"They taught me," Nyqomi murmured. "And then I taught them what it costs to touch me."
Behind them, Dheas lowered his head, his usual smirk gone. "Mother," he said quietly. His tone carried both reverence and exhaustion. "You didn't have to come."
"I did," she said without looking at him. "They called me."
Nyqomi's eyes—those twin voids—found Qaritas. He felt them before she looked; the pressure of them pressed into his ribs, into the cracks Eon had left.
"You," she said, and every soldier in earshot took an involuntary step back. "You carry a pulse that doesn't belong to you."
Qaritas's mouth dried. "I—"
Eon's voice purred in his skull. "Careful. She sees me. Isn't she beautiful?"
"What are you?" Nyqomi asked, stepping closer. Her armor whispered—stone on bone, wind through teeth. "A fracture walking in flesh. The scent of my father's mistake. Tell me, voidling, do you know what you are worth?"
Qaritas's hands shook. "No."
"Then show me."
The deck shuddered again as her form began to unfold. Wings of impossible geometry tore from her shoulders—scales twisting into feathers into fins, light refracting through translucent membranes. Her jaw split wider, blooming into spirals of crystal teeth. What had been woman became storm, every limb bending in directions that defied creation.
Soldiers fled. The ship's coral ribs groaned.
Dheas stepped forward, voice sharp. "Mother, wait—"
She didn't. Her wings beat once, scattering droplets that hissed like acid when they struck the deck.
Qaritas lifted his head, the cracks along his skin glowing blue-white. Eon's laughter echoed behind his eyes. "Play nicely, little brother. She wants to see if you'll scream."
Ayla struggled in the wake of that power, shouting over the rising wind. "Stop! He's not your enemy!"
Nyqomi's voice rolled through the storm. "Everyone is the enemy until proven otherwise."
Qaritas drew a shaking breath, straightened, and met the abyss of her gaze. "Then let's find out."
Light and shadow collided—her voids against his fractures—and the deck erupted into brilliance.