Finally—the word pressed against me, an imposing force that I felt deep in my soul. For a brief moment, I expected to be cowed by it. Instead, the god’s presence enveloped me in a foreign sense of calm and comfort and love and acceptance that tightened my chest.

The feeling constricted against my lungs. I hunched over as a soothing breeze passed over me and wrapped me in a warm embrace. Reminding me of the happy times I’d spent with Mother in the countryside. Offering me the impression of safety and protection. Projecting a tender love that’d bring healing and peace and hope.

“Sak’hed,” Helas said, her voice breathy with surprise beside me.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me, you know,” the god said, voice feather-light like a daydream. For a moment, I could’ve sworn she was flirting with Helas. “I’ll always come when you call, Helas.”

She was flirting with Helas.

I forced myself to look up. The god of kindness, gracefulness, and love walked toward us, transforming into a beautiful woman who looked like she was in her early thirties. The swirling metallic colors of her form blurred, settling as warm golden brown skin glistening beneath a regal dress of rose-gold mesh.

A part of me recognized that I should bask in the compassion and comfort that radiated from her in soft and relentless waves. A few moments to remember what Mother’s love felt like? A few moments to forget I’d witnessed her death again not even an hour ago? A few moments to pretend the only person I called a friend hadn’t died meaninglessly?

But all I wanted to do was retch and activate [Cold-Blooded Nature] because those sentiments felt wrong, incongruous to some small essential part of my existence. Yet at the very same time that they felt right and necessary, and so I endured with gritted teeth as the god approached us.

Contrasting her brown skin, Sak’hed’s long wavy hair was soft beige-pink. Bangs and braids framed her face, and three teardrops of the same rose-gold color of her eyes gleamed across her cheeks. Gods were said to change their appearance at will, but I didn’t imagine Sak’hed ever looked any less breathtakingly beautiful.

Her steps rippled across the pool of water, its surface shimmering as it lapped and danced against the stones at its edges until the water crept too high to contain. Instead of spilling over, the water continued to rise, gentle and smooth and weightless, to form a dome around us.

The clerics had gone quiet—no, everything had gone quiet. I couldn’t even hear the clerics breathing, couldn’t hear their heartbeats, as if they’d disappeared along with every other person within the range of my perception. Once the dome was complete, it was like we’d been separated from the rest of the world.

“You’ll always come, hm?” Helas gave a mellow chuckle. After that speech about how patron gods didn’t like to cross over, why did she seem so familiar with hers? Was she flirting back with her patron god? “Is Ket’ha really not coming? Even after all this—is it really only you?”

The water rippled at the edges of the pool as if it’d started to rain inside the dome. Pillars of sparkling droplets coalesced to form a circular room with walls covered in a mosaic of shimmering rose-gold tiles in teardrop shapes. Steam rose from the water as a sunken bath formed in front of us, and the sweet scent of jasmine afforded a tranquil and relaxing atmosphere.

“Yes,” she said. The god’s head tilted delicately, and her pace slowed. ”Just me.”

Why is it just you? I wanted to say, but I couldn’t force the words out of my throat past that same small essential part of my existence that screamed at me about how wrong it was for me to be here.

Maybe because I didn’t deserve to let this warmth sink into me. Or because I didn’t know what to do with that feeling except to simply feel it. What else was I supposed to do—run? I hadn’t seen her make a door.

“I’m glad you came,” Helas said, tone affectionate but with an edge that was familiar to me. “But something is very wrong if you were the only one who answered a summon from two slayers.”

Sak’hed descended into the bath and waded through the water toward us. She pressed her hands together beneath its surface and parted them slowly as she brought her arms back up to reveal a raven cupped in her palms. Although it was smaller than the one Helas had used earlier, she muttered the spell to transfer her consciousness to the bird.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” the god said. She hugged the edge of the bath in front of Helas and rested her chin on her arm, looking up at us through her thick lashes.

Everything, I wanted to say, but my mouth failed me again. I took a deep breath, tried to loosen what felt like a knot in my chest. Warmth sank into me but, at the same time, I called up that screaming within me.

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Helas opened her deep metallic purple eyes to signal that the spell had worked. The raven flapped over to her shoulder to face the god.

“You saw,” Helas said, folding her arms over her chest. “We did the whole song and dance. We have a cleric for every god. Two for you. Two for Ket’ha. You answered the summon. Why didn’t Ket’ha show up?”

The god blinked, her eyelids sparkling with a dust of rose-gold. “I saw, yes, and you know that I cannot respond for other gods. I am who I am, and they are who they are.” Her shoulders gave a subtle slump. “Ket’ha has also always been like that.”

What was wrong here was that Ket’ha wasn’t here. That was what I was feeling, and I hated it.

“Why?” I asked. It came out like a growl, but I went with it. “This isn’t the time to be like that. Something is very, very wrong. The system didn’t give me a notice when I encountered a demon right after unlocking the slayer class. There were four other people who encountered the same demon, and only—” I swallowed. “—one of them even recognized that it was a demon because they’d seen one before.”

“I haven’t been getting those types of notices for a while,” Helas said, expression loose. The raven jumped from her shoulder and onto my knee. “I haven’t needed them for hundreds of years, so I didn’t think much of it until now.”

“There was a little girl, too,” I said. “She was too young to have graduated from the Tutorial Stage. She needed that warning.”

Sak’hed’s expression softened. “You saved her,” she said, her gaze opening to me in a way that felt like she was asking permission to see deeper.

“Tell her,” Helas said. “Tell her how your mother died—how Adna the Endless Slayer died.”

“My father killed her,” I said and met her stare with my own. I wanted her to see through to my soul and understand what happened to my mother and why I needed to get stronger. “Ezrenad has possessed him.”

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Sak’hed said. There was a slight tremble to her lips.

“He killed me, too, so I can confirm,” I said. “The system awarded me the Hidden Slayer class because I’ve been killed by demons twice. But for some reason I haven’t received my first slayer quest. Something is very, very wrong.”

Sak’hed moved in front of me and lifted herself out of the water to sit on the edge. She was so close to me that I couldn’t take in her features together, but I didn’t feel any need to pull away. She was a stunning otherworldly beauty.

“There’s a piece of your mother’s memory in you,” the god said with a gentle smile. The Infinite Chain responded with a soft pulse of power against my skin. “Maybe you should consider calling on a different god, Hidden Slayer.”

She turned away from me before I could ask what she meant and slipped back into the water as the jagged mirror from the temple’s pool reappeared. With her back turned to us, she continued, “Yes, there may be something wrong with your World System, but that is all that I can say.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Helas said as the raven Sak’hed made for her took to the air and dived into the water, vanishing. “What do you mean that’s all you can say?”

“Good luck to both of you, and please call on me again soon.”

What I needed wasn’t luck.

Sak’hed stepped through the mirror as though it were an open door, and the dome around us shattered into shards that disintegrated in the air. The clerics were still standing, arms raised.

Yalgor lowered his, and the humming stopped.

“Was it successful?” Yalgor asked, and he sounded hopeful.

“No.” Helas had never been one to mince words.

His face fell, but he squared his shoulders. “Then we’d like to offer you something else in exchange for the demon cores. Something that may make communing with the gods easier should you need to do so again in the future. We call them planar pops.”

“Planar what?” Helas asked.

“Planar pops… because we made them into wildberry-flavored lollipops…” Yalgor’s face reddened and he cleared his throat. “If you’ll wait here a moment…”

“Sure.” Eyes closed again, Helas waved him off. Once Yalgor had left with the other clerics, she squared her shoulders toward me. “Well, what d’you think, kid?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Who the fuck am I supposed to call instead when Ket’ha’s my patron god? And I don’t see how that could be connected with the obvious problems with the World System.”

Helas tilted her head. “Why’s that?”

Great, she wanted to turn this into a Systems Theory teaching moment. Helas had published a manuscript long ago that argued the World System was a network of all Soul Systems, and each Souled Being had access to their own Soul System that exerted influence on the World System—that was how Souled Beings got stronger although we couldn’t improve the quality of their soul.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Two things. The World System is one thing. The gods are another. The problem with the World System is clearly demonic influence. I have a core, but the World System doesn’t register me as a danger to Souled Beings. So a demon with a soul probably also wouldn’t register as a danger to Souled Beings.”

“Good.” Helas folded her hands behind her back. “Demons who possess Souled Beings gain access to their system and exert equal influence upon the World System. Sak’hed basically confirmed this for us.”

So what the god couldn’t say more about was… why Ket’ha didn’t give a fuck? We didn’t have any more information than we had before. After all, the Demeot’s influence on the World System couldn’t be what prevented a god from responding to a summon.

However.

Something else clicked for me—an unspoken something that I was sure Helas had already realized. It was possible that demonic influence was the reason I still hadn’t received my first Slayer quest. A tremendous amount of demonic influence that would only be possible if a massive number of demons had crossed over.

“I need to get stronger,” I said. Yes, for my basic survival in the face of a demonic invasion, but because this had only deepened my desire to go beyond simply survival. “Strong enough not just to survive Father again but to kill him the next time I see him.”

I wanted to thrive.

Helas beamed at me. “I was hoping you’d say that. I have a friend with access to a dungeon that I know you’ll love.”

“A friend?” I asked with a scoff and a grin. “Like Sak’hed?”

She slapped the back of my head.