The stairs down to the Ninth Floor were carved from black stone that drank torchlight. Every step groaned beneath them as if Taeterra itself had grown tired of carrying gods.
Komus ran anyway.
Qaritas ran beside him.
Not because they were late.
Because standing still lately felt like inviting the darkness to speak first.
The lift from the Valley waited at the landing—an iron throat set into the wall. Its chains were old enough to have names. When they stepped inside, it groaned like a heart under pressure and began its descent, slow and heavy, as if the world below was pulling it by the ribs.
Komus leaned his shoulder against the bars, watching the numbers fade past in the dim.
"You know," he said, trying for lightness, "if we die to a staircase, I'm haunting everyone. Loudly."
Qaritas's mouth twitched, a ghost of a smile that didn't fully make it out.
The lift shuddered once—then opened.
The Ninth Floor met them with a hum that seemed to live inside the bones. It wasn't a place meant for bodies to be large in. Everything here felt made for smaller lives: finer seams, thinner doors, a carefulness in the air that suggested the whole floor was a delicate contrivance that might break if struck too hard.
A squat basin waited just inside—a simple thing, all angles and polished stone, filled with liquid the color of deep glacier-light.
Blue.
Not bright.
Old.
Komus stared at it like it might whisper his secrets.
"So," he said, pointing. "We drink it."
Qaritas didn't answer at first. The smell rising from it wasn't sweet. It was sharp—like crushed mint and storm-air and the faint bite of lightning trapped inside glass.
His stomach tightened.
Not from fear of the drink.
From the strange truth that it felt familiar, like a ritual he'd performed in a life that had been scrubbed out of him.
Komus dipped a cup first.
The liquid steamed faintly, and the steam didn't rise— it curled, as if reluctant to leave.
Komus lifted it in a mock toast.
"To surviving today."
Qaritas lifted his own cup.
"To keeping our minds," he said, voice dry.
Komus's grin flashed. "Bold request."
They drank.
The liquid was colder than ice, yet it burned going down—like swallowing moonlight with teeth. For a heartbeat, Qaritas thought his throat might clamp shut the way it did around her name.
But nothing seized him.
No invisible collar.
Just the strange clean ache of magic doing its work.
The world lurched.
The floor did not tilt.
They did.
Qaritas's stomach rose into his ribs. His boots felt too heavy. His bones rang. His skin prickled as the air grew thicker, denser, until each breath felt like wading through silk.
Komus made a noise somewhere between a curse and a laugh.
"Oh," he wheezed, clutching the wall. "I hate this. I hate this so much."
Qaritas tried to speak, but the room had changed its distance from him. The basin that had been waist-high a breath ago now towered like a low altar. The seams in the stone looked like canyon cracks. Dust motes became drifting lanterns.
They were shrinking—pulled down toward the scale the Ninth Floor preferred, peeled smaller layer by layer until the world finally stopped expanding.
Komus sat down hard on the stone, blinking like he'd been slapped by a gentle god.
"Well," he muttered. "That's humiliating."
Qaritas looked at his own hands—small now, but not weak. The purple veins that had been pulsing under his forearms were quieter. Still there. Watching. But quieter.
Eon stirred in the back of his skull, amused.
"How charming. A floor that insists you become manageable."
Qaritas ignored him and stood.
They moved through corridors where the doors were no larger than a beetle's wing—each marked with flickering glyphs too fine for a large eye, but perfectly legible to them now.
Komus craned his neck, reading.
"Which one?" he asked.
Qaritas's throat tightened.
He hadn't meant to ask it out loud, but it came anyway.
"Which room is hers?"
Komus didn't tease him for it. Not this time.
He only glanced at Qaritas with that new kind of understanding—like he'd accepted that rage didn't cancel fear, it only hid it badly.
"Her door is numbered," Komus said. "One thousand."
Qaritas followed the number-trail until the glyphs became sharper, the air cooler, the silence heavier.
Door 1000.
Komus rapped his knuckles against it.
Once.
Twice.
The door opened.
Ayla stood inside, half-turned, her hair gathered back, travel robes laid across the small bed like a patient promise. The room smelled of herbs and ink and something faintly metallic—as if she carried old blood in her bones no matter how often she washed.
She looked up.
For a heartbeat, relief cracked through her face so nakedly that it hurt to see.
Qaritas hated how much it mattered.
"Qaritas," she said softly.
Komus stepped in first like a shield that had decided to speak.
"So," he said, eyeing the robe, the satchel, the way Ayla's hands moved with the steadiness of someone preparing to walk into a storm. "You're going."
Ayla didn't pretend otherwise.
"Yes."
Komus's jaw flexed. "And your thoughts are what? That you can stroll into his chambers and walk out again because you're clever?"
Ayla's eyes narrowed—not angry, not defensive, just tired.
"I know how he is, Komus," she said.
Komus barked a laugh without humor. "No. You knew how he was. In the Library of Knowledge, in Rgaratha, in lives that still claw at our bones when we sleep—yes. You know him."
He stepped closer. "Which is why this is madness."
Ayla met his gaze and didn't flinch.
"You think I am naïve," she said quietly. "I am not."
Eon purred, almost approving.
"She is not a fool. I have always respected that about her."
Qaritas's eyes flicked slightly, instinctively, as if to see Eon standing in a corner.
No one was there.
Only the weight of him.
Qaritas forced himself to speak. "What are you planning?"
Ayla's expression softened at the question like she'd been waiting for it—waiting for him to acknowledge her as something other than betrayer.
"I plan to live," she said simply.
Then she reached beneath the folded robe and drew out a dagger.
Not ornate.
Not ceremonial.
A plain, brutal thing—dark metal, the edge chipped in a way that suggested it had already tasted too much.
"Rivax gave me a weapon," Ayla said. "Not because he thinks steel will save me. But because he understands the comfort of having something honest in your hand."
Eon's voice slid like smoke through Qaritas's thoughts.
"In her mortal life, she was his wife."
The room went still.
Qaritas froze as if his blood had become glass.
Ayla's hand tightened around the dagger.
Komus's eyes sharpened instantly—he saw Qaritas's face change and knew something unseen had spoken.
"What did he say?" Komus asked low.
Qaritas swallowed. His throat hurt.
"He said…" Qaritas began, and the words tasted wrong, heavy with old poison. "…that in your mortal life— you were Ecayrous's wife."
Ayla didn't deny it.
She didn't look away.
She only closed her eyes once, like she was setting something down before it crushed her.
"Yes," she said.
Komus's voice cracked with anger. "Then don't go."
Ayla opened her eyes again, and what looked out from them wasn't fear. It was a blade that had learned patience.
"Unlike Consort Kriri," she said gently, "I am not mortal now."
Komus stepped forward, hands open, pleading without meaning to. "That doesn't make you untouchable."
Ayla's smile flickered—small, sad, real.
"No," she admitted. "It does not."
She sheathed the dagger and lifted her satchel.
"I need you both to leave," she said softly.
Komus's hands curled into fists. "Ayla—"
"Please," she cut in, and the single word sounded like it had cost her a great deal.
She glanced at Qaritas then—careful, searching.
"I know you are angry," she said. "You have every right."
Her voice softened further, as if she were afraid any sharpness would break him again.
"But you are not alone, Qaritas."
That sentence hit him somewhere he didn't have armor.
Qaritas couldn't find forgiveness.
Couldn't offer warmth.
But he could offer one thing, rough and honest.
"Be careful," he said.
Ayla's smile steadied.
Komus made a low sound of pure frustration, like an animal that wanted to bite fate in the throat.
But he turned.
Qaritas turned with him.
They left her room.
And the corridor outside felt colder than before, as if Taeterra itself had listened and disapproved.
The next day, the ferry waited.
Not a ship of wood—something older, carved from pale stone and dark bone, floating over a river of light that did not behave like water. Its oars were not oars but long, curved ribs that dipped into the shining current without splash.
Cree and Hydeius stood together near the gangway, their hands linked, their faces strained in a way that made them seem less like gods and more like parents trying not to beg.
Niraí stood with Daviyi, both of them wound-tight, both of them pretending they weren't afraid.
Komus paced like a caged storm.
Qaritas stood still, which somehow felt worse.
They all spoke.
They all offered protection.
Cree's voice was warm and desperate. Hydeius's was rough and dangerous.
Ayla refused them gently.
"We have today," she said. "And tomorrow. You will train. You will survive Hellbound."
She glanced across them like she was memorizing their faces.
"Do not waste your strength worrying over me," she said.
Eon murmured inside Qaritas's skull, with a lazy cruelty that still felt like a blade:
"Nobility may look like bravery. Or foolishness. I wonder which mask she wears today."
The ferry's lanterns flickered.
Ayla stepped onto the gangway.
Qaritas moved before he could stop himself.
"Ayla."
She turned.
He held her gaze, and the anger inside him tried to roar, but the fear strangled it.
"Be careful," he repeated, quieter now. Almost a prayer.
Ayla smiled—steady, luminous, the smile of someone walking into a monster's den and refusing to tremble.
"I will," she said again.
Then she lifted her hand in farewell.
"See you at supper."
The ferry pulled away.
It slid into the light-river and vanished toward Deepcrest—toward the long road that would end in Mrajeareim.
Toward Ecayrous.
Komus growled under his breath, teeth bared. "She's making a mistake."
Qaritas didn't disagree.
He closed his eyes and tried to pray anyway—to the father who had never answered him, to any mercy that might still exist.
Eon laughed softly.
"Pray if you wish. That fool will not hear you."
Qaritas's jaw tightened.
And as the day dragged on, his dread did not fade.
It grew.
It crawled under his skin like insects in rot.
Strangest of all—his Awakening pain was quieter. Not gone, but softened, as if someone had wrapped it in cloth.
He hated that.
Because it felt like Eon's hand.