The sky was gray when they left the clearing.
Not with storm, but with ash.
Ashen looked up. "Something's burning."
Elowen's grip tightened on the star fragment in her cloak. It still pulsed faintly against her chest, like a heartbeat out of time.
"We're close," she said.
"To what?"
"To whatever the god is hiding."
They moved through low valleys where the trees no longer grew.
The earth here was scorched and cracked, as if a great fire had once crawled across it on hands and knees.
But not a fire made by mortals.
Something older.
They passed ruins of what looked like a temple—walls melted into glass, statues weeping tears of black stone. In the center stood a fountain that no longer flowed.
On its dry basin, carved in ancient script, were the words:
Here the god wept for what he had done.
Elowen paused. "He wept?"
Ashen stepped forward, brushing dust from the stone. "Gods don't weep."
She looked up at the silent statues.
"Maybe he wasn't always a god."
As they explored the ruins, a sound began to rise again—
like rain on stone, though the sky was still dry.
Elowen followed the sound to a hidden chamber beneath the floor.
Inside, the air was cold and strange.
A circle of mirrors stood in the center, each one cracked. Each one facing the other.
In the middle, a single child sat cross-legged on the ground.
A boy.
No more than ten.
His eyes were white.
His voice echoed when he spoke.
"You found my sadness," he said. "Do you want to wear it?"
Elowen stepped closer. "Who are you?"
The boy looked up.
"I was the god's last thought before he changed."
Ashen pulled her back. "Elowen, something's wrong."
The mirrors shimmered. In them, Elowen saw herself—bleeding, broken, bent.
In another, she saw her mother. Bound to a tree.
In another, Ashen. Dead in a field of silver grass.
"No," she whispered.
The boy smiled. "These are truths. Or futures. Or maybe just fears."
He reached out with a hand that was not a child's anymore—
but clawed, bone-thin, soaked in ink.
Elowen backed away. "You're not real."
"I was," said the boy. "I wept until I drowned. And when I did, he rose."
Suddenly, the mirrors exploded inward.
The room filled with silver mist. Elowen couldn't see. Could barely breathe.
Then she felt it—
a presence like gravity.
A sorrow so old it became a song.
And the voice again.
"He was only ever lonely."
"But loneliness gave him teeth."
She gasped and dropped to her knees. The star fragment in her cloak glowed fiercely now.
Ashen grabbed her arm. "We need to leave. Now."
The mist began to fold in on itself, forming a shape—a tall, robed figure with a crown of smoke and hollow eyes.
Not the god.
Not yet.
But the memory of him.
The echo of when he chose to become what he is.
It reached out a hand—not to strike, but to beg.
A whisper:
"End me."
Elowen stood.
"No."
The mist paused.
"I won't end you," she said. "But I will undo you."
The star fragment rose in her hand.
It pulsed once—twice—then exploded in light.
The chamber shattered.
When she woke, they were outside again, lying in the grass.
Ashen groaned. "Please tell me that was a dream."
Elowen sat up slowly. "It wasn't. And it's only the beginning."
Behind them, the ruined temple began to crumble.
Above them, the sky cracked.
Just a hairline fracture.
But enough to know:
The god was watching now.
And he remembered her name.