"Let me out."
The voice rang in Lian Yue's mind, as if it had struck a gong that was submerged underwater—dampened, odd, and astonishingly loud.
Her knees buckled.
"Lian Yue!" Raihan got beneath her just before she crumpled, but she wouldn't look at him.
She was met by the eyes of Kaelen, the god slayer, whose hand yet floated in the air as if the conductor before choosing which braying notes of a horrendous symphony would befall.
But he hadn't attacked.
He was smiling.
"Hear her now, don't you?" he said quietly. "Celestine."
Lian Yue's breath caught.
"No. She's dead. I'm not her."
Kaelen tilted his head. "Oh, but you are. You're who she needed to be to be alive. And what she will have to turn into again …" — finally, a sharp intake of breath — "to die."
Raihan moved forward, blades drawn, taking a protective stance. "You'll have to go through me to get that."
Kaelen didn't flinch. "Gladly."
He flicked his wrist.
The world ruptured.
A wave of force blew Raihan off his feet, throwing him against a shattered column. "Ugh!" He bent over, and blood warming his side.
"Raihan!" Lian Yue wept, and ran to him—but Kaelen was there before her, no more than a whitish blur, and silver.
He gripped her throat.
"I have waited for centuries for this," he said, his voice too rational for the fury in his eyes. "Have you ever felt a god's soul shatter in your hands? It's beautiful."
The soulstone Lian Yue had flared when he touched it. He winced, but didn't let go.
And inside her…
The voice of god rumbled once more.
"You're weak. Let me protect us."
She gasped. "No. I won't be her."
Kaelen's smile widened. "But it's only her that I can die from."
That was the truth.
From the top of the ruins, Raihan plunged out with one of his blades, cutting Kaelen in the arm. The god-killer threw down Lian Yue and whipped around, fuming.
Raihan did not hesitate—he thrust his blade at Kaelen's heart.
Kaelen caught it.
With two fingers.
"No more distractions."
He jutted Raihan's own blade through his abdomen with a flick of his wrist.
Raihan stumbled, blood splattering as he coughed, dropping to his knees.
Lian Yue screamed, "NO!"
Her power exploded.
Kaelen was thrown back by a flash of blinding light.
She ran to Raihan, weeping, attempting to remove the blade from his chest.
"Don't," he rasped. "It'll bleed out faster."
"Please, Raihan. Don't you dare die on me."
He smiled weakly. "Told you I'd protect you. Even from yourself."
"No—no, you stay with me! You promised!"
She laid her hands on his wound. Her soulstone throbbed with fever's fireHardly incredulous, not Tanzerrat. "Please, please heal—"
But his light was fading.
And the voice of God grew louder within her.
"You can save him as Lian Yue. Let me do it."
Tears blurred her vision.
"I'll lose myself."
"Or lose him."
Kaelen rose up from the wreckage, his sleeve smeared with blood from his split lip. "Make your choice, goddess. "Morality matter more — your mortality … or your love?
She looked at Raihan.
His eyes found hers again, but they were no longer expressing pain, only peace.
"I've always loved you," he said softly. "Not Celestine. You. Even if you forget me."
She wept, pressing her face to his. "Don't say goodbye."
Then he stilled.
His hand slipped from hers.
And his soulstone went dark.
Lian Yue screamed.
Her being filled with the immensity of the God of all the universe.
White-hot fire lit her veins. Her back arched. Her eyes rolled.
And then…
She rose.
Not as Lian Yue.
Not fully.
But something between.
Hair whipped in windless air. Her eyes were starry. Her voice, when she talked, sounded thunder and bells.
"Through me flows the balance between dawn and dusk," she said, hovering above the air. "I'm light that recalls shadow. I am—Celestine."
Kaelen grinned. "That's more like it."
He launched forward.
Their powers clashed.
Light collided with shadow in a shock wave that rent the air.
They moved into a pace even thought could no longer follow — streaming beams of white-hot magic and slashes of void so shearing they could before their edges cleave through whatever met them within the decaying city. Columns collapsed. The ground split open. Ancient runes flashed and flickered out.
Celestine forms an X with her two blades, stopping Kaelen's sword with her hand.
"You can't break what was never whole," she hissed, and threw him back with a burst that slammed him into the palace wall.
He was on his feet, stunned, his lip opened, blood trickling down his jaw.
"You're stronger now than you were before."
"I remember more this time."
"But do you recall how it ends?" He lifted a hand—and wisps of darkness erupted from the broken ground, ensnaring Raihan as though on puppet strings.
Celestine froze.
Kaelen smiled. "Kill me, and he is lost. His death will be permanent. No reincarnation. No return."
Her heart stuttered.
I'll release him," Kaelen whispered, "if you give yourself. If you will but let me break the cycle now."
Lian Yue shrieked from the bottom of her heart—
"Don't do it!"
Celestine's hand shook.
The power of thunder crackled around her.
Raihan convulsed in the air, tendrils of shadow constricting him.
She crumpled on her knees, shaking.
"Please," she whispered. "Not him."
Kaelen came forward slowly she taking his proffered hand. "This is mercy, goddess. For him. For you. For the worlds within your storms."
She looked up.
And whispered a single word.
"No."
A blast of energy erupted from her chest—light and darkness coalescing. It knocked Kaelen to the ground and flattened the pillars of the ruins.
Raihan's body fell — yet was caught by a landing of light, descending gently to the floor.
The shape of Celestine blurred, the color strenuous—becoming Lian Yue once more, no longer the calm beauty she was too shabby, mouth gasping for air.
But the soulstone on her chest shone brighter than ever.
Raihan's soulstone…
It flickered.
Then blinked once.
Then again.
Her breath hitched.
His fingers twitched.
Then—
He gasped.
---
Raihan's eyes were now open, softly shining with a light.
But something was wrong.
His soulstone didn't just glow.
It was changing.
Fracturing.
Lian Yue tried to grab him —but he flinched back, his eyes aghast.
"What... what did you do to me?" he whispered.
And then, behind them, Kaelen started to laugh.
"You're not the goddess who saved him," he said.
"You turned him into something else."