Eryndor' POV
Over the next few days, Kael returned with others.
They came slowly at first. One or two at a time, climbing onto my island with the same tired movements, the same faded grey skin. Each one was a god or spirit that mortals had forgotten. Each one had a story of how they had fallen here.
There was Nira, who had been the goddess of small streams. Mortals had prayed to her when they needed water for their crops. But then they built aqueducts and wells, and they stopped visiting the streams. They stopped saying her name. She faded and fell.
There was Orin, who had been the god of doorways. Mortals had left offerings at their thresholds to keep their homes safe. But cities grew, and people stopped believing in the old ways. Orin became a superstition, then a joke, then nothing at all.
There were dozens of others, each with similar stories. They had been small gods, local spirits, beings tied to specific places or practices. When those places were abandoned or those practices ended, they lost their power and fell into the Forgotten Realm.
They gathered in the ruins of my temple, sitting among the rubble, and they looked at me with desperate hope.
"Is it true?" Nira asked. "Can you really return to the world above?"
"Yes," I said. "I have a connection to mortals there. They called me, and the seal cracked. Every day I grow stronger."
"But will you take us with you?" Orin asked. His voice shook slightly. "Or will you leave us here like everyone else did?"
I looked at all of them, at their faded forms and tired eyes. They had been forgotten by mortals and abandoned by the other gods. They had nothing left except the hope I was offering them.
"I will take you," I said. "But you must help me grow stronger first. I need more mortals to speak my name. I need the crack in the seal to widen. And I need to understand what waits for us in the world above."
"What do you mean?" Kael asked.
"My siblings," I said. "The other gods. They sealed me here for a reason. When I return, they will try to stop me. I need to know what they have built in the thousand years I have been gone. I need to know their weaknesses."
The forgotten ones looked at each other nervously. Finally, an old spirit named Thorn spoke up. He had been the god of ancient forests before mortals cut them all down.
"I have been here longer than most," Thorn said. "I was forgotten three thousand years ago. But before I fell completely, I saw what your siblings were building. They wanted perfect order. Complete control. They believed mortals needed to be guided in everything, protected from their own mistakes."
"That is what we argued about," I said, the memory surfacing. "I wanted mortals to have freedom. To make their own choices, even if those choices led to mistakes. My siblings thought that was cruel."
"They won," Thorn said quietly. "In the world above, mortals live in perfect cities. They have no war, no disease, no suffering. But they also have no choice. Every life is planned from birth to death. The gods control everything."
Anger rose in my chest. "That is not life. That is imprisonment."
"Perhaps," Thorn said. "But it is stable. Nothing changes. Nothing breaks. Your siblings have created a world that will last forever because nothing in it can grow or fail."
I stood and walked to the window, looking out at the grey void. My siblings had built a cage and called it paradise. They had taken everything wild and free from the mortal world and replaced it with cold order.
And they had thrown me here because I had disagreed with them.
"Then we will break their perfect world," I said. "We will return and show mortals what freedom means. We will give them back their choices."
The forgotten ones murmured among themselves. Some looked excited. Others looked afraid. But all of them were listening.
"How?" Nira asked. "How do we break a world that the high gods have built?"
"Slowly," I said. "Carefully. We find the cracks. We find the mortals who are unhappy in their perfect prison. We give them doubt. We give them questions. We remind them that they are more than what they have been told they can be."
I turned back to face them. "And we start with the five mortals who called me. They are already searching for something different. They have already broken the rules by performing a forbidden ritual. They are our first followers."
Over the next hours, I taught the forgotten ones how to reach through the crack in the seal. It was difficult for them. They were so faded that they barely had any power left. But I shared what strength I had, and slowly, they began to feel the connection too.
We sent whispers through the crack. Small thoughts. Gentle suggestions. We found mortals who stood at crossroads, uncertain which path to take, and we whispered to them about choice. We found mortals who felt empty despite their comfortable lives, and we whispered to them about purpose.
It was slow work. Exhausting. But each time a mortal heard us and thought about what we had said, we grew slightly stronger.
The five who had performed the ritual felt us most clearly. They began meeting more often, gathering in their hidden room to speak about the forgotten god they had awakened. They did not know what I wanted yet. They did not know what I planned. But they knew I was there, listening, and that was enough.
One night, as I sat in my temple focusing on the connection, Mira appeared again. She materialized out of the shadows like a ghost, her transparent form barely visible in the grey light.
"You are building an army," she said.
"I am giving hope to the hopeless," I replied.
"Is that what you call it?" Her voice was sad. "Be careful, Eryndor. The path you are walking leads somewhere dark."
"My siblings threw me into darkness," I said. "They erased me from history. They built a world that does not need gods like me. Like us." I gestured to the forgotten ones sleeping in the ruins around us. "We have every right to return."
"Rights and wisdom are not the same thing," Mira said. She drifted closer, her eyes searching my face. "Do you really remember why they sealed you? Do you remember what you did?"
"I defended mortal freedom," I said. "I argued against their control."
"Is that all you remember?"
Her question hung in the air. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to believe that was the complete truth. But there was something in her eyes, some knowledge she held that I did not, and it made me uncertain.
"What are you not telling me?" I asked.
"I am telling you to remember carefully," she said. "Memory is kind to us. It shows us what we want to see. It hides the parts that hurt. Before you break the seal completely, before you return to the world above with your army of forgotten ones, make sure you know the whole truth about who you are."
Then she faded again, disappearing as suddenly as she had appeared.
I sat in the darkness, her words echoing in my mind. But I pushed them away. I had to. Because if I stopped now, if I doubted, then all the forgotten ones would lose their only hope of return.
And I could not do that to them.
I closed my eyes and reached for the crack in the seal again, pulling more power through, growing stronger with each passing moment.
Whatever I had done in the past, whatever my siblings had sealed me for, it did not change what I needed to do now.
I would return. I would bring the forgotten ones with me.
And I would tear down the perfect world my siblings had built.