Part one:
Her lips parted, but the words refused to rise.
Only fear. Fear which bubbled up from her core, wrapping cold fingers around her like a noose. Tightening. Pressing.
The silence bore down with an unbearable weight. It was the moment before a predator pounces.
Era's breath grew thin and rapid. Her heart stammered, then galloped, wild and directionless. Her mouth was dry. Her fingers numb. Her vision trembled at the edges.
'One sentence? What sentence?'
She couldn't even hold a thought long enough to shape it. Panic had turned her mind into a scatter of broken glass, each sharp edge catching on a different fear.
They were waiting.
Watching.
The gods.
She dared a glance at them-only to recoil from the sight.
Their eyes looked beyond the surface, through her as if dissecting her open cell by cell. Her soul felt naked under their gaze, vulnerable in a way she hadn't known was possible.
The fire god's smirk.
The ice goddess's stillness.
The grotesque sleeper's slow, wet breath.
The storm woman's patient delight.
'They're going to destroy me, Era thought. They will tear me apart. I don't belong here. I never belonged here. I never should have come.'
Her body swayed slightly on her feet. She thought she might faint. Or throw up. Or both. Her tongue felt too big in her mouth. Her knees were water. Her thoughts dissolved, replaced with static and noise.
A scream bloomed inside her chest, unable to escape.
She was falling. And falling. And falling.
And then-
Something stopped her.
Not a hand.
Not a sound.
A feeling.
Small. Silent. Still.
It spread through her chest like the hush before thunder. Like antidote through blood.
A breath she didn't know she'd taken.
A weight lifted-not from the room, but from her panic. It didn't vanish. It didn't soothe. It just… stepped aside, as something else took its place.
Her thoughts stilled.
Not calmed.
Just cleared, like the sky after rain.
The pressure was still there. The terror. The overwhelming, inescapable divinity pressing down from all sides.
But inside that pressure, something ancient stirred.
Not courage. Not hope.Something older. Wilder. Unclaimed.
It wasn't a voice, exactly. Not words.Just a knowing.
Not yours, it whispered. But meant for you all the same.
And through that narrow opening in the chaos, the words came-unchosen but undeniable.
They rose through her like smoke.
And she spoke: "Make me one of your blessed."
The words echoed through the chamber, sharp and clear.
Era froze.
'What had she just said? Did that even answer the question?'
It hadn't been planned.
The sentence had fallen from her mouth whole, as if it had always been waiting there, beneath the trembling, waiting to leap.
She hadn't whispered it.
She'd declared it with the force of a command.
And now, it was too late to take it back.
The silence that followed was electric. The air buzzed in expectation.
The fire God leaned forward, the grin sliding from his face like molten metal cooling into something sharp.
The flames around him stilled their flickering in an instant. Shrinking, drawing inward, and softly hissing like a slave anticipating their master's fury.
"Make me one of your blessed," he repeated, his voice low and deliberate, each word rolling from his tongue with the slow certainty of a lit fuse.
He studied her with renewed intensity, head tilted slightly.
"That's your soul laid bare? Not a plea. Not a prayer. But a demand."
His obsidian gaze gleamed like twin coals pressed to glass.
"Perhaps you are not so breakable after all."
A flicker of relief lit in Era's chest.
'It wasn't approval. It was interest, but that was at least something.'
Her hope was short-lived.
The silver goddess didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Her reaction was instant-quiet, but seismic.
Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, and the veins of silver running through her throne flared white, then dimmed, as though recoiling from Era's presence. The room's temperature dropped.
Her eyes, pale, glacial and absolute, fixed on Era.
And in that silence, something pressed against Era's chest. No heat. No force.
Just a feeling.
'Erasure.'
Not pain. Not death. Something colder. Worse.
'Unwritten.'
Her knees buckled slightly, breath caught between heartbeats.
The goddess did nothing more. She simply looked.
And Era understood: 'The goddess was thinking, weighing her boldness. And she would not burn her. She would nullify her.'
"Well," purred the other Goddess, her voice slicing through the tension like lightning, "isn't this delicious?"
She leaned forward in her fragile throne of woven twigs, resting her chin against the back of her hand, stormy eyes gleaming.
"A mortal who bares her throat not in fear, but in provocation."
Her grin widened like a wolf.
And then, silence again.
No more threats. No more declarations.
Just the thrones. Just the weight.
Era's heart thundered in her ears.
'Was it done? Had they decided? Was she about to be cast into flame, or ice, or oblivion?'
She didn't dare speak.
All she could do was stand in the echo of her own defiance and wait.
But one throne remained.
The largest. The heaviest.
The grotesque god still slumped in his crystalline seat, unmoved, his form bloated and strange, sliding somewhere between flesh and stone. He hadn't stirred since his snore shattered the quiet earlier.
And still… he hadn't spoken.
A strange stillness rippled through the air, like the breath before a quake.
Then, slowly, he moved.
His head lifted with a shuddering jerk, neck creaking as if his bones had slept too long. His body shifted, wet and ponderous, folding into itself like the rising of buried things. The throne groaned beneath his weight.
His eyes opened.
Dark. Sunken. Clouded.
And yet, Era felt them pierce straight through her.
When he spoke, his voice was monstrous, deep and slow, like stones grinding at the bottom of the sea.
"Speak again," he rumbled."Speak long and clear… and explain yourself, mortal."