Eryndor' POV
The next morning, if it could be called morning in a place with no sun, I left my temple.
The island of dead earth beneath my feet was small, maybe a hundred paces across. Beyond its edges was nothing but grey void. I walked to the edge and looked down. There was no bottom that I could see. Just grey fading into darker grey, endless and empty.
Other islands floated in the distance. Some were close enough that I could see details. Broken temples like mine. Ruined towers. Shattered monuments to gods whose names I did not know or could not remember. Some islands were so far away they looked like shadows.
I wondered how many forgotten gods were here. How many beings had been cast out and sealed away like me.
As I stood there, I heard a sound. A scraping noise, like something heavy being dragged across stone. I turned and saw a figure climbing up onto my island from below. It pulled itself over the edge with effort, its movements slow and tired.
It was a creature I did not recognize. It had the body of a man but the head of something else, something animal. Its skin was grey like everything else here, and it moved like every motion hurt.
When it saw me, it stopped. Its eyes went wide.
"You," it said. Its voice was rough, like it had not spoken in years. "You are new."
"I woke yesterday," I said. "Who are you?"
"I am Kael," it said. "Or I was Kael. I was the god of the hunt. Mortals prayed to me before they went into the forest. They left me offerings of meat and bone. But then they forgot. They stopped hunting. They stopped going into the wild places. And so I faded and fell here."
It sat down heavily at the edge of my island, its legs dangling over the void.
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"I do not know. Centuries, I think. Maybe longer. There is no time here. No day or night. Just grey and silence." It looked at me with something like hope in its eyes. "But you are different. You have power. I can feel it. You are not faded like the rest of us."
I looked down at my hands. Kael was right. I could feel power moving through me, faint but growing. The connection to the mortal world was feeding me strength, drop by drop.
"Someone called me," I said. "Mortals performed a ritual. They opened a crack in the seal."
Kael stood up suddenly. "A crack? Then you could leave. You could return to the world above."
"Maybe," I said. "But I am still weak. And I do not fully understand what happened to me. Why I was cast out."
"Does it matter?" Kael asked. His voice grew excited. "If there is a way out, if there is a chance to return, to be remembered again, does the reason matter?"
I thought about that. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I was wasting time trying to understand the past when I should be focused on the future.
"Can others leave through the crack?" I asked.
"I do not know," Kael said. "But if you grow strong enough, perhaps you could widen it. Perhaps you could bring others through."
The idea settled in my mind like a seed. I was not the only one who had been forgotten. This realm was full of beings who had been cast aside, left to fade in silence. If I could return to the world above, perhaps I could bring them with me.
"How many are here?" I asked. "How many forgotten ones?"
"Hundreds," Kael said. "Maybe thousands. They drift on the islands, sleeping or wandering. Most have given up hope. But if they knew there was a chance to return, they would wake. They would follow anyone who promised them purpose again."
I looked out at the floating islands, at all the ruins drifting in the grey void. An army of forgotten gods and lost souls. All of them desperate for meaning. All of them willing to follow someone who offered them hope.
"Find them," I said to Kael. "Tell them I am awake. Tell them I am growing stronger. Tell them I will find a way to return to the world above, and I will bring them with me."
Kael's eyes lit up. He nodded quickly and then jumped off the edge of my island, falling into the void. I watched him disappear into the grey, heading toward another floating ruin in the distance.
I turned back to my temple and walked inside. The power flowing through the crack in the seal was steady now. I could feel it more clearly. It was coming from specific sources. The mortals who had performed the ritual. They were still thinking about me, still speaking my name.
I sat down in the ruins of my main hall and closed my eyes. I focused on the connection, following it upward through the void, through the layers of reality, toward the world I had been cast out from.
And there, faint but present, I found them. Five mortals gathered in a dark room beneath a city. They were afraid and excited at the same time. They had performed the ritual hoping something would happen, but they had not truly believed it would work.
I reached out to them carefully. I could not speak to them directly, not yet. But I could send them feelings. Warmth. Presence. A sense that they had been heard.
One of them gasped. A woman with dark hair and tired eyes. She looked around the room as if searching for me.
"Did you feel that?" she whispered to the others.
They nodded, their faces pale.
"He is there," another said. "The forgotten god. He heard us."
I pulled back, satisfied. They would continue to think about me. They would continue to speak my name. And with every prayer, every thought, every mention, I would grow stronger.
Kael had been right. The reason I had been cast out did not matter. What mattered was that I had been wronged. My siblings had thrown me away and tried to erase me from history.
But I was awake now. And I would return.
And when I did, they would answer for what they had done to me.