The planet had no name.
It spun quietly on the edge of a dim galaxy, caught in a constant twilight where the sun neither rose nor fully set. Shadows stretched long and slow over the lavender-tinted plains, and the air shimmered faintly with old magic—the kind no god had crafted, but which lingered like memory in the soil.
Caelum found her there.
She stood barefoot in a shallow stream, the water curling gently around her ankles. Her back was to him, her gaze lifted to the sky where stars pulsed dimly behind the ever-present dusk. She did not startle when he arrived. She did not speak. She simply acknowledged him with stillness.
He watched her for a long time.
She was not divine. Not made by the Null Realm. She belonged to none of the gods.
Yet she felt... real. More real than anything he had touched in ages.
"You don't belong here," he said eventually.
She turned, slow and calm. Her eyes met his—clear, steady, ancient in a way that made the void inside him shift.
"Neither do you," she replied.
That was the first thing she ever said to him.
Her name was Nori.
They met again the next dusk. And again after that. No arrangement. No plan. Just two beings who continued to arrive at the same quiet place.
Caelum did not speak much. He wasn't made for talking. But with her, words felt less heavy. Less dangerous. He spoke of the gods—of Vireon's stillness, Aelor's mischief, Seren's grace. He told her about the palace that floated between all things, and of how it felt to walk through a world you helped shape but did not belong to.
She listened.
That was all. And it was everything.
Her silence wasn't empty. It carried weight. Understanding.
In that twilight, something in Caelum began to soften.
He no longer drifted through the Null Realm with detachment. He returned from the planet slower, quieter, as if trying to carry that peace with him. Even his steps through the castle grew more grounded. When he passed beneath the high arches or stood at the edge of the great observatory, the magic didn't just react—it reached for him.
And others noticed.
Whispers followed him like smoke. Drazel's eyes lingered longer. Aelor's smirk held less humor, more edge.
"So," Seren asked one day, voice as soft as snowfall. "Who is she?"
"Someone," Caelum replied. "Someone not like us."
Seren said nothing more. But the silence that followed was not kind.
The gods were not made for love. Not in the way mortals were. They could admire. Desire. Obsess. But to care deeply—selflessly—that was something else. Something threatening.
In Nori, Caelum found the one thing none of the others ever gave him: space to be small.
And for that, they would never forgive her.
Even if they didn't know it yet, a line had been drawn.
Between what was divine.
And what mattered.