Chapter 12 – Festival of Saints
Drums rolled through the valley like a second heartbeat. Bonfires bent the night into copper and smoke, painting every face in flicker and shadow. Elian had never seen the mountain village alive like this—garlands strung between black pines, petals crushed underfoot, dancers masked in bone and gold moving in slow, circling rhythm. The air was thick with pine sap, wine, and the powder of burnt flowers.
Beside him walked the man he could not name. The villagers thought him another pilgrim, wrapped in a traveler's cloak, the hood low enough to hide his impossible eyes. Even muted, the god's presence unsettled the crowd; people glanced, then forgot what they were looking at, as if their minds slid away from him. Elian felt it every time—the subtle distortion in the world, the way sound dulled around him.
"Strange," Elian murmured. "They say the Festival honors the Saints who carried Light into darkness. Yet everything here feels older than Light itself."
The god's voice was almost lost beneath the drums. "Because it is. Before they wore your saints' names, they danced for me."
Elian turned to him, startled. The god's lips curved faintly, not in pride but in memory. Firelight traced his cheekbones; ash drifted in his hair like falling stars.
They moved through the dancers. A girl pressed a cup of spiced wine into Elian's hands; he drank, and warmth flared behind his ribs. Music wound tighter, the rhythm faster now, more breath than melody. When he looked again, the god was watching him—watching the pulse in his throat, the tremor of his fingers on the cup.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" the god asked.
Elian almost laughed. "Enjoying may not be the right word."
"Then what would you call it?"
"Overwhelmed."
The god's hand brushed his wrist, a ghost of contact that sent the warmth higher. "Good."
They slipped from the circle of dancers, up the slope where torches lined a path to the ruins of an older shrine. The music thinned behind them, replaced by the rush of the stream and the hiss of sparks drifting on the wind. When they reached the clearing, only one torch remained, its light wavering across a fallen idol—half-buried, faceless.
The god stopped before it. "They once burned incense here for me. Now they burn it for my replacement."
Elian could not answer. He only stepped closer, drawn by the sorrow under the words. The god looked down at him then, and for a moment all the centuries between them collapsed.
"Do you hate them still?" Elian asked softly.
"I try not to feel at all," the god said. "But tonight… it's difficult."
Elian reached out, fingers grazing the edge of his sleeve. The god didn't move away. The torchlight trembled; shadows climbed their faces like smoke. When Elian spoke again, his voice was barely sound. "Then feel. Just tonight."
Something shifted—the air thickened, humming. The god's restraint cracked like thin ice. His hand caught Elian's, then his shoulder, and suddenly Elian was against him, breath lost, the world reduced to firelight and the scent of rain on stone. The nearness wasn't violent but inexorable, as if gravity itself had chosen a new center.
The mark at the god's throat—the faint sigil that had always looked like a scar—brightened. Gold bled through his skin, veins of light racing up his neck, over the curve of his jaw. It didn't hurt; it thrummed, a pulse that answered the drums far below. The glow threw their faces into sharp relief: mortal and divine, shadow and radiance trembling together.
Elian's thoughts blurred into the rhythm of it—his name on the god's breath, the rush of blood in his ears, the heat gathering where their hands met. For an instant he thought the whole forest breathed with them, branches leaning, flames bowing inward.
"Your mark—" he whispered.
The god's eyes opened, molten gold inside obsidian. "It answers you."
A shiver went through Elian, half fear, half reverence. The mark brightened again, then steadied, its light casting petals of gold over Elian's skin. The god cupped his face, expression caught between wonder and hunger.
"You should step back," he said, though neither moved.
"Why?"
"Because if I forget myself, I might never remember again."
Elian's pulse kicked. "Then forget."
For a heartbeat the night held its breath. The wind stopped; even the torches seemed to bow. The god's laughter came low, almost human. "You do not know what you ask."
"I think I do."
He leaned closer until Elian could see the faint reflection of the fire in his eyes, could feel the warmth radiating from the light beneath his skin. The world swam in gold and darkness, in the scent of ash and skin and pine. Every unspoken word between them hung there, trembling.
Then the god turned his head slightly, the barest motion, and pressed his brow to Elian's. The contact burned—not pain, but a heat that sank deep, threading through Elian's veins until he thought his heart would burst. The mark flared one last time, radiant and terrifyingly beautiful.
When it dimmed, the night returned: crickets, wind, the distant drums. Elian realized his knees had gone weak; the god's hands steadied him. No words were left between them. They stood in the aftermath of light, two shadows leaning together while the fires of the Festival burned below like fallen stars.