POV: Kael"The Council knows Korvain failed."Celestine's voice cut through the quiet of the farmhouse like a blade. She paced the length of the living room, her white dress catching the morning light that filtered through dusty windows. Three days had passed since the battle with his brother, and the tension in her shoulders had only grown worse with each passing hour."They'll send something worse next time," she continued, her ancient eyes scanning the horizon as if expecting attack at any moment. "Something that won't hesitate. Something that won't love you."Kael sat in a chair by the window, his body still healing. The wounds were closing faster than any human's would—but slower than a god's should. He existed somewhere in between now, neither fully mortal nor fully divine. The sensation was strange, like wearing clothes that didn't quite fit.Ava knelt beside him, changing the bandages on his arm where Korvain's blade had cut deepest. Her hands were gentle, steady, but he could

POV: KaelDeath wasn't what Kael expected.It wasn't darkness or light. It wasn't the nothing he'd sometimes imagined during his mortal years, lying awake at night and wondering what waited at the end of consciousness.It was transition. A space between spaces. A moment that stretched into eternity and compressed into an instant at the same time.He could feel Ava beside him—not her body, but her essence. The bond between them pulsed like a golden thread in the void, connecting them across the formlessness. As long as he could feel that thread, he knew she was still with him."Kael?"Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He turned toward it—though turning didn't quite work the same way here—and found her. Not her physical form, but something more true. Her soul, stripped of flesh and bone and mortality. She was beautiful in a way that went beyond beauty. Pure. Essential."I'm here," he said. "I've got you.""Where is this?""The space between." The knowledge came from somewhere

POV: AvaAva had seen what Kael couldn't see.During the confrontation with Sera, while father and daughter circled each other in patterns old as creation, Ava had watched. Not the attacks—the hesitations. Not the rage—the grief beneath it. She'd seen a child throwing tantrums at a parent who'd never quite shown up, desperate for attention even if that attention came through violence.She knew that desperation intimately.So she'd stepped between them. Spoken truths that cut deeper than any divine weapon. And watched Sera's defenses crumble in ways combat never could have achieved.Now they stood at the threshold of the Vault, light pouring around them like liquid gold, and Ava understood something fundamental: mercy wasn't just Kael's gift. It was becoming hers too."What do you see?" Kael asked.Ava looked into the Vault and saw... stories.Crystalline structures rose from a floor that wasn't quite solid, each one pulsing with contained existence. But to her perception—shaped by the

POV: KaelThe memories of her wouldn't stop surfacing.Even as they navigated Aethermoor's shifting landscape, fighting through hostile geometry and evading divine hunters, Kael found himself pulled back to the village. To the healer who had changed everything. To the love that had cost him his existence.Her name had been Seraphina. Not Sera—that was a mockery, a wound his daughter had carved into herself. But Seraphina. The name meant "burning ones." And she had burned through every certainty he'd ever held, leaving something softer in the ashes."You're distracted."Ava's voice pulled him back to the present. They stood at the edge of a chasm that hadn't existed a moment ago—Aethermoor rearranging itself to block their path."Sorry." Kael scanned for an alternative route. "The memories keep surfacing. It's hard to stay focused when millennia of existence are fighting for attention.""What are you remembering now?""Her. Seraphina." The name felt sacred on his tongue. "Everything we

POV: KaelKael addressed the faithful as the sun rose over the bunker's hidden entrance.They had gathered outside—those who couldn't fit in the underground space, those still arriving from distant places, those who simply wanted to see him in natural light. Thousands now, with more coming every hour."I don't want your prayers," he said again. "I want your help."He explained what was coming. The war with the Council. The corruption he'd discovered. The need for humans and gods to work together against powers that had controlled both for too long."No sacrifices," he declared. "No violence in my name. No forced conversion. Anyone who kills for me becomes my enemy. Anyone who harms innocents while claiming my blessing loses my blessing forever."Some in the crowd nodded with joy. This was the god they'd hoped for—one who asked for partnership instead of submission.Others looked confused. They'd grown up with religions that demanded blood, that promised salvation only through sufferin