Chapter 13 – The God's Desire
The morning after the festival bled through a veil of smoke. The valley below still trembled with last night's embers—torches guttering in the mud, ribbons of incense curling like ghosts over the roofs. The laughter that had carried through the dark was gone. Only the low chant of the river remained, and the soft pulse of wings in the trees.
Elian woke slowly. The cot beneath him still smelled of ash and wine. Every limb felt heavy, not with fatigue but with the weight of something unnamed. His throat ached where he had spoken the god's name again and again, whispering it like a prayer.
The god stood at the window. Dawn traced a pale rim around his silhouette, gilding the stray strands of his hair. For the first time since he had appeared in Elian's life, his light looked unsteady—like a flame catching its breath.
"You shouldn't stare at the sun so long," Elian murmured.
"It no longer burns me," the god replied. His voice was soft, almost human. "That should concern me, shouldn't it?"
Elian sat up. "You sound afraid."
"I don't fear," the god said, then paused. "Or I didn't. Last night, something changed. The light inside me dimmed. And when you touched me…"
He looked down at his hand. A faint shadow bloomed across his wrist, almost a bruise. "This," he said quietly, "should be impossible."
Elian rose and crossed to him. The air between them shimmered with warmth, the same warmth that had nearly undone him the night before. He reached out without thinking, brushing his fingers over the mark. It felt ordinary. Flesh, warm and trembling.
"You're healing," he said.
The god gave a small laugh, but it sounded hollow. "Or decaying. Mortality is both."
Elian studied his face—the half-lidded eyes, the subtle tremor at the corner of his mouth. There was beauty there still, but it had changed colour. It was no longer divine radiance; it was the fragility of someone trying not to fall apart.
"Maybe it's what happens when you let yourself feel," Elian said.
The god's gaze sharpened. "You think this is feeling?"
"I know it is," Elian whispered. "Because I feel it too."
A silence unfolded, heavy as the air before rain. The god's hand lifted to Elian's cheek. The touch wasn't the command of a creator; it was a question, tentative and trembling. Elian closed his eyes. The world seemed to slow—the creak of the wooden floor, the distant toll of morning bells, the soft hum that had always surrounded the god thinning to a mortal heartbeat.
When Elian opened his eyes again, the light around them had changed. The god's glow had dimmed to the colour of candle-wax. His pupils were no longer rings of gold but dark, endless circles. A single drop of light fell from his lashes and struck the floor like dew.
He stepped back, startled. "I bleed light," he said. "And now even that flickers."
Elian reached for him. "Maybe it's not loss. Maybe it's… becoming."
The god tilted his head, studying him with an intensity that made Elian's chest tighten. "You speak as if humanity is a gift."
"It is," Elian said. "Because it means you can choose."
The god's breath caught. For an instant his eyes softened, filled with something dangerously close to tenderness. But then the ground shivered under their feet.
It was subtle at first—a faint tremor, the rattle of dust from the rafters. Then, from far beyond the hills, came a low hum, deep as thunder but too measured, too deliberate. The god turned toward the sound, every line of his body drawn taut.
"They know," he said.
Elian frowned. "Who?"
"The ones who bound me. They can feel what I become. I've walked too close to your fire."
He moved to the doorway, his figure dark against the light. For a moment Elian thought he saw another glow far away, answering his—a thread of silver breaking through the clouds, cold and searching.
The god's voice dropped to a whisper. "Their light is moving."
He turned back to Elian, and for the first time there was something unmistakably human in his face: fear, fierce and fragile. "They will come for me," he said. "And if they find you, they'll take you too."
Elian swallowed. "Then we leave before they reach us."
The god hesitated, eyes lingering on him as if memorising the shape of him in this dim morning. "You speak as though you've already chosen."
"I have," Elian said. "I chose the truth. I chose you."
The god's expression fractured—part longing, part grief. "You shouldn't," he murmured. "Because the truth I carry ends worlds."
He brushed past Elian, the faint scent of rain and smoke trailing in his wake. Outside, the village bells tolled again, louder now, discordant. Dogs began to howl. The first rays of sun hit the hills, and in that light Elian saw something glinting far off—seven points of brightness, like mirrors turned toward the earth.
When he looked back, the god was gone.
Only the faintest shimmer of light remained on the floorboards where he had stood, slowly fading, until it looked almost like an ordinary patch of sun.
---
The world outside still smelled of burnt incense. Elian stepped into it, heart pounding. The air carried a strange vibration, half-song, half-warning. He felt suddenly as though every shadow watched him, every reflection waited to move.
Behind him, the room darkened. The god's mark—barely visible on his own wrist—flared once, brief as a heartbeat. A whisper touched his mind, distant and raw:
Do not follow the light.
Then it was gone, and he was alone in the morning, unsure whether the warmth on his skin was from the rising sun—or from the god's touch that refused to fade.