Rowan perched on a NO LOITERING sign behind a gas station, breaking the law in fluorescent style.

It wasn’t every day you saw a raven that looked like it had lost a fight with a highlighter. The lady at pump three stopped mid-motion, her coffee-deprived brain struggling to process whether this was a hallucination or just Tuesday. A guy walking his poodle locked eyes with him, then immediately crossed the street.

Two days ago, he’d shifted by accident—and now, he was stuck. Trapped. Feathered. Inconvenienced. It was his turn to get groceries, and Gretta was due home soon.

Explaining why he was still a bird would be about as fun as explaining why he’d spent the grocery budget on an extra-large pizza, two bags of chips, and a six-pack of soda. (“It’s nutritionally balanced,” he’d argued. “Carbs, dairy, and technically a vegetable.”)

When he first moved in with Gretta, things had been fine. He didn’t mind crashing on the living room floor in coyote form, and having warm food and a shower? Fantastic.

As magic started to deteriorate, the situation got worse.

It started with a trip to the print shop. Simple errand. In, out, no problems. Except—somewhere between picking up business cards and paying, he turned into a squirrel.

Which would have been fine if his squirrel brain knew how to get down from trees.

Instead, he spent twenty-four long, humiliating hours clinging to a branch, chittering existential dread. And when he finally turned back? Midair. He dropped like a bag of soup, hit the pavement, and lay there, blinking at the sky, questioning every life choice.

The next day, he tried to drop off checks at the bank. Instead, reality folded like a badly shuffled deck, and he plummeted straight into the Cretaceous period.

He hit the ground rolling. Three velociraptors watched, unblinking.

They froze. He froze.

Then, like a wind-up toy, all three turned their heads toward him at the exact same time.

Rowan did not fight. He did not flee. He did not breathe.

He just—fell. Again. Another crack in reality, another graceless landing, this time in the Sonoran Desert.

He had to walk back to Gretta’s apartment. Barefoot.

He hadn’t told Gretta. She had a lot to deal with—her magic wasn’t working, and her patron goddess, Abby, had vanished without a word. Abby—Rowan’s best friend and former accomplice—was now just another missing deity.

The lady at pump three forgot to put her gas cap back on as she drove off. Rowan chuckled. It was a rough, croaking sound—one that made him sound less like a guy with a great sense of humor and more like something that whispered to sailors before dragging them to sea.

Even he was unsettled.

Now, he was here, at the gas station where he had resurrected about six months ago, trying to find a way back to the Void.

He had spent months trying to find a way back. As the one god who could travel between realities, getting to Earth had been easy. He pretty much finds the right spot and falls through. It’s a little uncomfortable, but no big deal. Getting back to the void from Earth had proven harder. He suspected it had something to do with going to the astral.

The astral was the between place, the space layered over reality like a badly applied sticker. Nadia had tried slipping through it once to reach the Void. It hadn’t worked.

Rowan had been to the Void a few times, but largely by dying, which is not an ideal means of travel. He was getting desperate enough, he was considering it, again. Not yet though, he had one last thing to try.

He’d been practicing going to the astral—something that took a huge amount of effort for him, as a god. All gods have a tremendous amount of metaphysical mass tied up in their consciousness, and moving it between reality and the astral was hard work, however, it could be done. He’d first done it when smited by Marcus, then did it again without the smiting while in Ellie’s domain, and since then, he’d done it twice more as practice.

He hadn’t found a way to the Void yet, but maybe he just hadn’t been in the right place.

That was what he was here, next to a smelly garbage can, looking at a patch of dirt that he had once landed on after a return from death. He could almost feel the Void, now that he was sensitive to it.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

He stretched his wings, inhaled, and reached inward—toward the knot of magic where his other forms slumbered. He yanked. The effort turned his stomach inside out and nearly dragged his mind with it.

The world dimmed. Colors bled out. Everything beyond arm’s reach melted into a ghost of itself, like the universe was halfway through deleting the level. The only sounds that could reach him through the magic were those from his immediate vicinity.

If there were any magic users nearby, they would have been glowing lights. He didn’t spot anybody, but then he wasn’t sure whether that would still be true as magic unraveled. What he did spot was a dark vortex hovering above the ground in the very spot he had resurrected months ago.

Months ago, he had a choice: Purgatory or Earth. Marcus or freedom.

He chose freedom. He chose Gretta. And he’d told himself he wasn’t running.

Now? Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Nadia and Abby had asked him to help, and he had turned them down—because he couldn’t possibly be the right person for the job. Now? Now that it was clear that all of the gods were going to unravel and magic with it? It looked like he had been the only one for the job.

“About time.”

Rowan’s head snapped up. He hadn’t sensed anyone. No ripple of magic, no shift in energy, nothing. But there she was—

Perched atop the gas station roof, a woman swung her legs over the edge like she’d been waiting all night. Except—she wasn’t really there. Not in the way people were. The astral clung to her, softening the edges of her form, making her presence feel more like a suggestion than a reality. She looked human—jeans, a loose shirt, dark hair swept back by the non-existent wind. But her bracelets shimmered oddly, shifting between woven fiber, bone, and gold like they couldn’t decide what they were supposed to be.

And she was smiling at him.

Pleased. Like this was a reunion.

Rowan blinked. “Okay, so either I’m hallucinating, or the astral has its own customer service department.”

A beat later, it hit him—he'd spoken. Out loud. In the astral.

The woman laughed. A real, full-bodied laugh, like he’d just made her entire week. “Oh, Trickster. I was starting to think you’d never show.”

Rowan tensed at the way she said it—like it meant something. Like he meant something.

He landed on the pavement, shifting back into human form. His boots scraped against the unreal asphalt, but the feeling of being untethered lingered. He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you are?”

She grinned, standing in one fluid motion. “Some call me the Watcher. But in ancient times, I was the Weaver. You may call me Tocatl if you wish.”

Tocatl. The name curled in his mind, ancient and unfamiliar.

She tilted her head, studying him in a way that made his skin prickle. “You look awful.”

Rowan snorted. “Thanks. That’s what I was going for.”

“Mm. No, you’re unraveling.” She stepped forward, hands in her pockets, but her gaze was sharp, taking in every inch of him. “Your magic. It’s fraying. You feel it, don’t you?”

Rowan didn’t answer, but he did. He felt it in the way his magic stuck when he tried to shift, the way reality twisted around him instead of obeying.

He eyed her warily. “You seem fine.”

Tocatl gave him a lazy shrug. “Because I don’t drink from your little stream.”

Rowan frowned. “Meaning?”

She chuckled, like she was debating how much to say. “Your pantheon, your whole divine ecosystem—you’re pulling from one tributary. One source of magic.” She gestured vaguely, as if to indicate something much, much larger. “I stepped further downstream a long time ago. Now, I drink from the whole river.”

Rowan didn’t like the implications of that. But before he could press, she tossed something to him.

His hands caught it on reflex—a staff, dark as ink. Feathers crowned its top, shifting like they were caught in an unseen current, always pointing toward the Void.

He turned it over. The bottom of the staff was dense, hardened—not quite metal, not quite wood, but solid enough that it would hurt if swung. “Okay, is this a wizard cane, or am I supposed to poke something with it?”

Tocatl smirked. “Consider it a walking stick. Or a guide.”

Rowan raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“You’re bad at walking on paths, Trickster. And you have a long walk ahead.” She nodded toward the vortex. “You trip more than you walk. This will help.”

Rowan tested the weight of it, watching how the feathers fluttered toward the unseen path. It was… unnerving. He scowled at her. “And this isn’t going to curse me?”

Tocatl placed a hand over her heart, mock-wounded. “What kind of guide do you take me for?”

Rowan opened his mouth, then decided not to answer that.

She grinned like she knew anyway.

The pull of the vortex strengthened, and he glanced at it. His moment to hesitate was running out.

He turned back to her. “So, what, you’re my cosmic babysitter now?”

Tocatl laughed, shaking her head. “Oh, no. You don’t get one of those, Trickster. You’ve barely got friends.”

Rowan huffed. “Rude.”

She gave a languid stretch. “Well, you should get going.”

“You just hang out at gas stations waiting for people to show up?”

“Better than being stuck in a ring.” And then Tocatl was gone.

Rowan tried to speak, but no sound came out.

He glided effortlessly through the astral and hovered near the puckering vortex of darkness. Taking on Marcus was pain and suicide, and even if he won and became the ruler of Purgatory, the complete loss of freedom was worse than death. Not taking them on would cost his friends everything.

He stepped into the vortex. The air collapsed inward, crushing him down like a paper cup in a clenched fist.

He didn’t fight. Didn’t struggle. Just closed his eyes.

And fell.