“Don’t go,” D’Argen whimpered in pain when his fingers slipped through Thar’s robes as if they did not exist.

Thar looked down at him but said nothing at all.

“Please,” D’Argen begged, trying to cling to the other even as Thar’s body started fading away. The cold hands on his cheeks were replaced by hot tears. The last of Thar to disappear was the black ring around his white irises. Then D’Argen was all alone surrounded by nothing at all.

The pain inside him was so immense that he could do nothing but claw at his chest and scream and cry.

It felt like years, decades, centuries, before he could open his eyes again as the pain… it did not fade or lessen. It was still there, and he knew exactly what it meant. But he just… started getting used to it. D’Argen never thought he had a high pain tolerance, but with every single beat of his heart, he felt the blood rushing through him turn colder and colder until he almost became numb to the tearing inside him.

And when he opened his eyes, he was surprised enough to sit up from where he had curled up around his chest.

There was nothing at all.

There was no sky, no ground. Nothing. He felt that he was sitting on something but could only see white. When he touched the ground with his hands it felt like dirt and grass and water and freshly fallen leaves. His fingers followed the cracks of worked stone and sank into wet mud. But his hand came away clean, and the white remained as it was.

There was no horizon, and the lack of depth and distance made his head hurt. The only movement he felt in the air was when he created it himself. No breeze, no light, no temperature even. It felt like he did not even exist.

“Hello?!” he called out and there was not even an echo to answer him back. His voice ran away as if he was in an open field, but at the same time faster. As if something ate it up. The thought had him panicking and he reached for his sword. It was not there. He had dropped it when the pain first arrived as he stared at Vrianna…

The sword was suddenly in his hand as if he had drawn it. It was pristine, not a speck of blood on it or a single scratch on its blade. It was also not the same sword he had been using the past few years since the demons rose. The blade reflected the white around him as if it was the source of all light and the reflections made the metal appear almost liquid.

Then D’Argen remembered why he drew the sword. He struck it against the nothing under him. He did not feel the impact reverberate up his arm even though his blade did not pass the same level as his feet. There was no sound to come from it either.

When D’Argen reached for his mahee, the numbness inside him faded just enough to remind him of the pain. He quickly pulled away before he could open it and feel it all. Sword in one hand, he started walking without a direction.

Every one of his calls was eaten up by the white around him, always taking the same amount of time and giving him no gauge at all. He could not tell the spot where he first awoke let alone if he had moved from it at all. There was no indication of anything at all and the thought of being here, alone, without a way out, made D’Argen run. He opened his mahee out of habit and the pain that assaulted him had him crumbling to his knees and screaming again. He closed it off just in time to see his dropped sword fall through the ground and get smaller and smaller. He touched the ground, and it was the same confused feeling as before, but there was a surface there. His sword disappeared into the white below him.

Taking deep breaths almost calmed him until he thought that he was definitely not breathing in air. He could not tell if his vision whited out because of the lack of everything around him, so he focused on his hands, spread out on the invisible ground.

Ten fingers.

He counted them over and over and tried to ignore the tickle of grass and the squelch of mud. One. Two. Three. He was touching a liquid thicker than water. It stuck to the cut leather where his glove covered his two draw fingers. Four. Five. Six. Seven. It dried out there and became as light as ash. Eight. Nine. Te— it turned cold.

D’Argen yanked his hands back to his body and the ice that had been creeping up to his wrists shattered.

Thar.

The white shade did not appear but D’Argen felt the frost inside his veins. Since he first saw Thar’s sword, he knew it was made of ice and gods’ blood, but it was only when he exhaled and saw the mist in front of him that he remembered what Thar’s powers truly were.

Was this his space?

Was this… Thar?

He called the man’s name, soft at first, and then yelling it at the top of his lungs until they were so cold that they burned.

There was no answer.

The nothing around him finally had something though. There was a chill surrounding him. It made the bare flesh on his fingers and cheeks tighten. And then he noticed a single crack in the white ground. He touched it carefully and it felt like the shattered ice he had torn his hands from earlier. As he touched it, the crack widened. Then splintered. Then started spreading so fast.

D’Argen shot to his feet and stepped away from the cracks, moving as fast as he could without the use of his mahee.

Shards from the ice ground suddenly shot up and then sank back down, disappearing completely and revealing something other than the white around him. Thousands of colours mixed together, swirling to the point of it being nauseating, but it was something.

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D’Argen ignored the cracks in the ground and ran to that spot even as it widened and cracked more. With every step, the splits under him widened and spread. By the time he reached the original hole, a dozen more marked his path.

Then a hand reached through the swirl of colours and D’Argen stumbled back in surprise. It touched the edge of the hole and then the figure the hand belonged to pulled itself out. As he watched, the colours drained away from Delcaus’s frame until he was nothing but a black outline against the white backdrop.

D’Argen could have sworn he saw the faint black markings of features until they spread, and the figure became a dark silhouette with no dimension or distinguishing features at all. The sound of cracking ice had him turning to watch as dozens of other figures rose from the holes in the ground. He caught a flash of colour or a black outline here and there, but most of them rose as the same silhouettes that Delcaus had become.

“Delcaus?” D’Argen tried to find the original figure but it blended in with the rest.

All of them just stood there once they rose. None of them paid him any attention at all. D’Argen touched one and felt a warm breeze run through his fingers right before he was struck by lightning. He pulled his hand back quickly. The next shade he tried to touch felt like sunlight on his fingers that turned into the cold ocean depths. He got his hand deep into what would have been someone’s chest before the mixed sensations made him nauseous and he pulled his hand back.

“It’s over,” D’Argen whispered to the shades around him. “Isn’t it?” he asked, and no one answered. If this was real, if these figures were appearing, if Delcaus was the first of them – the demon war must have been over. D’Argen suddenly remembered how it ended.

The shades did not move save to gently sway, like grass to a summer breeze. D’Argen did not feel what made them move. He walked around each of them, even as more and more rose from the cracks that continued to widen and spread.

A dozen. Two. Fifty. A hundred. Probably even more.

It got so crowded that D’Argen could not move without brushing up against or right through one of the shades. The sensations were horrible, so he tried to find where the shades were not. When he was no longer surrounded, he noticed that the ground under him was solid white. The cracks had not reached where he stood.

And finally, he heard something other than his own calls.

It was a garble and a hiss at once. It was words that were not whispered into his ear so he could not understand them. It came from the writhing mass of black silhouettes.

He circled around it, trying to find where the sound was coming from. Finally, he had a sense of distance as the hiss cleared up enough for him to hear a single word when he stepped closer to the mass.

“Blood,” it said.

D’Argen was wary but stepped closer, eyes constantly darting to his feet to make sure he was not stepping on any of the cracks still visible.

“Whose blood?” a clearer voice asked from the mess and D’Argen whipped around, trying to find the source. The voice was so familiar.

“The dead,” the garbled voice answered.

“And ashes?” the familiar voice asked again.

D’Argen ignored his discomfort and went deeper into the pit.

“Your bodies are—nothing more. Use them. Even—death.”

D’Argen could have sworn he saw a flash of gold in the black mass and walked in that direction, even as the garbled voice got clearer and cleared.

He knew that voice. He had heard it before. The first time he could not recall, but he remembered Darania glaring at him in anger as she spat out ugly words in a voice not her own.

“You just need to—the mahee in—together.”

D’Argen darted through two shades and ignored the deluge of ice rain that pelted his skin followed by the snap of young branches like whips.

“If the mahee needs to be together, then where?”

D’Argen knew that silhouette. The one that spoke with her chin always raised and unafraid of anyone ever standing up against her. When he had a thought on who it was, the black drained away to the edges of her form in wispy tendrils. When he recognized her voice finally, colour bled back into her figure until D’Argen was staring at Acela.

Whoever she spoke to answered, but whatever they said got lost in the thunder that was supposed to follow a lightning strike.

“And then?” Acela asked.

D’Argen froze on the spot and a shiver ran down his spine and all the way to the tips of his fingers.

“Blood and ash,” Vah’mor answered Acela’s question in that horrible voice.

One of the silhouettes in front of D’Argen swayed out of the way just enough for him to see the silver of Vah’mor’s eyes flash. They were dressed completely in black, blending in with the shades. They even wore a mask, covering most of their face, except for the pale skin around the silver glow of their eyes.

“I understand,” Acela said, as if deferring to someone above her. As D’Argen often said to her. As all the gods talked to her. Never Acela. She never obeyed others. She was the one to give the commands.

Without any movement at all, Vah’mor was suddenly facing D’Argen and staring right at him. Acela did not seem to notice at all.

“Go. Do it. You have all the information you need,” Vah’mor ordered without looking at her.

Acela raised her chin high in supplication, then her entire body seemed to melt away and disappear into one of the cracks. D’Argen stared into the swirling colours and felt his eyes water. Then he looked back as Vah’mor approached. The shades moved out of their way without actually moving. They parted like the space between them widened to make room for Vah’mor.

And Vah’mor did not walk. They approached like the space between them and D’Argen did not exist at all. They did not stalk forward as if to fight or walk with a confidence that gave them their title. They did not look at D’Argen with warmth and a smile on their face.

“You are not them,” D’Argen whispered the words as the memories assaulted him. He remembered when he first met Vah’mor. They had greeted him with a smile and a wave, sitting beside him and explaining how not all of the gods had to consume. Vah’mor was the one who figured out D’Argen could sustain himself off of sound alone. Vah’mor was the one to tell D’Argen of his aspect and teach him the importance of being a kinesiologist for the mahee. Vah’mor was the one who told him the mortals of the lands called them gods, but they preferred their true name: Never Born.

Not the Vah’mor in front of him and not the one that had looked at him with disdain and anger for the past three millennia.

D’Argen glanced around him, looking for an escape as the space between him and the thing in front of him became smaller and smaller. He was surrounded by the shades and when he brushed up against one, he did not pass through it. It was solid. It was hard and cold like metal. It turned into bars connected to a stone that drained everything away.

“I’m sorry,” Lilian had cried as they plunged the sword through D’Argen’s heart the last time he was in this space. He remembered it and the fall that followed.

Without thinking too much about it, D’Argen took a single step back and then stomped hard on a crack in the white under him. It shattered the same way his mahee did and he screamed as the pieces tore through him from both outside and within. But the white disappeared as he fell, and he was surrounded by every possible colour in existence swirling together. The colours sank into him and through him, tore him apart and tried to piece his mahee back together.

When D’Argen opened his eyes, it was to a drab grey ceiling and a grey fire burning on a single torch near a grey wooden door.