The world of Zenithar had started out as a pristine paradise world. Then the humans came, and built their mighty cities, resorts, retreats, temples, and created a holy world out of it. Over time even the gods sent messengers to guide the overwhelmingly powerful clergy of Zenithar. Pristine nature fell to the axe, and the planet transformed into an Ecumenopolis over a long line of generations. Only tiny curated parcels of the former paradise remained. A walk in any direction would take you past dozens of temples, and it was said every god in existence had a temple there, even if some were no bigger than shacks.

In sharp contrast to the tiny temples, the enormous temple of Ialdaboath covered nearly two thousand square miles on its own.

The ruins of the temple of Ialdaboath existed as an asteroid now, upon which Kallos stood. The entire two thousand square miles weren’t on the asteroid, not even a quarter of them were, yet she recognized the structure from her youth nonetheless.

“Do you even remember your childhood?” A ghostly figure asked Kallos. It had materialized out of thin air, yet to her Soul Sight it glowed with the authenticity of a human soul. Though wispy, she bore a fair resemblance to Kallos.

“I do, mother.” A low sigh escaped her lips. Maria had been a tall woman, with blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her ghost held none of the remnants of beauty she’d once had, and had become desiccated and less in the long years since the destruction of Zenithar.

“I could have been the next High Priestess, if not for your father. It looks like you take after him.” The ghost stared accusingly at the chains that hung from Kallos’ wings, the tattoos that could be glimpsed between skirt and boots, gauntlets and pauldrons, and the large witch hat that sat upon her head.

“He wanted to save you,” Kallos said simply.

“We didn’t ask to be saved.” Maria retorted harshly, her voice warbling across spectrums humans couldn’t reach, or hear. Kallos wasn’t human, and managed to hear the words regardless of her loss of control. Maria had been a spirit for a long time, now, and her entire existence seemed volatile. Ghosts rarely lasted for centuries without becoming something more terrible.

“Then why did you fall for him?” Kallos always wondered about the answer to that question. What had driven a high ranking priestess of the clergy of the prison warden to fall for a being that wanted to destroy the prison itself?

“I was young, dumb, and he was unlike anyone I’d ever met. Of course he was intriguing, he was an Aeon wearing flesh. He whispered of higher realms, lower realms, and even adjacent realms. He knew the truths of Existence, and empathy drove him. He might as well have been a flame, and the humans, messengers, and servants of the gods all moths, caught in the dangerous blaze of his beauty. Then we burned, for real. Why weren’t you there?” Maria lost control of her vocalization once more, her entire spectral form lost cohesion, and it took her numerous tries to look human once more.

Kallos watched the troubles of Maria through her Soul Sight. She could strengthen her mother. As a Monarch on the Ethereal paths of the Winding Road, with authority over Spirit and Law, there were few things she couldn’t do when it came to the metaphysical, even without tapping into the power granted her by her lineage through Belial.

“You wouldn’t listen to me. I begged you to join me in the Tower. There was never any way that Zenithar would be allowed to become a hot-bed for Gnosis. Even without Ialdaboath, an entire planet departing the Samsara couldn’t be allowed by the other gods, especially not the Holy World of Zenithar, but he is the warden of the cage. Zenithar’s fate was sealed the moment you walked through the first Gate of Understanding, mom. It took a few decades to play out, but the moment you started the process of ascension, it was all over.” Wise, calm Kallos struggled to keep her voice even, but even she struggled with this conversation.

“You blame me, when it was you who unlocked the Fiftieth Gate? You, who brought the Divine light of Ein Sof, which even Belial couldn’t bring with him, to Zenithar?” Maria shrieked and quailed, and only a gesture and an empowerment by Kallos kept the spirit from exploding like an angry bomb.

“No, I don’t blame you. But you were the rock that started the slide. By opening the first Gate of Understanding you opened the door for my birth with a connection to the divine light. My own ascension through the rest of the Gates were more boulders added to the rockslide, and we were not the only ones making progress through the Gates. A plague of enlightenment, an inevitable jail break on the horizon, it was inevitable Ialdaboath would react. Even after all of his disasters, Belial fails to understand the cruelty of men, and the selfishness of gods. He failed to listen to Aunt Sera, and he ignored me too. You can’t argue with someone who knows this reality is a mere facade.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Our lives have meaning, even if our universe is a mistake, or a cage, Aoibhe.” Maria’s response was light, but she seemed to have taken some of Kallos’ words to heart, if her new stability could be used as any kind of sign.

“I’ve taken the name Kallos now, mom. Telos and I share the sur name of Metanoia.”

Silence dominated for a few moments, broken only by a cry from the ghost of Maria. The names, the meaning, had been spoken with an inflection that carried meaning, intent, and even images to Maria. Such uses of Kallos’ authority of Law, Spirit, and Creation were trivial, but invaluable in communicating something that the witch didn’t know how to say in words.

“Like mother like daughter, it would seem.” Maria half sobbed, and half laughed.

“It sure seems that way, mom. I’m going to put you to rest now. Follow your love, Belial only partially dwells in our reality. Like all Aeons, he can never truly leave Pleroma.”

“Too slow,” a cruel and malevolent voice echoed through the demi-plane that overlay the floor of the Tower of Oizys they occupied. No doubt it belonged to the incarnate of Misery and Suffering, the horrible personification of Pain and Distress.

Time itself slowed down as Kallos employed a lesser miracle to buy time. Time that she could use to reach out to Telos and draw power enough to undo the attempt at the destruction of her mothers soul. Only barriers stood between not only the empathic bond, but the telepathic and soul bond that she shared with Telos. When Kallos tried to burst through the barrier with brute force it felt like she’d run into a barrier of adamantine, and just before she tried again emotions rushed into greet her. The warm sensation of Telos’ love filled her, followed by gushing torrents of Ein Sof, the infinite divine light of the creator.

Slowed time changed to frozen time, and dozens of chains swung from Kallos’ wings. Some entangled her mother, protecting and healing the already damaged soul of Maria, while the others tried to pierce and fend off the hateful presence of Oizys.

“How!? I had my thumb on your soul, and I choked every ounce of life from her but one.”

“Follow Dad’s song, mom.” Kallos whispered when she lay a kiss upon the spectral cheek of her mother, and burned up five miracles and an incredible amount of power transferred to her from Telos to transform her mothers spirit into the equivalent of a spiritual cruise missile that would hone in on the Cosmic Song of Belial in Pleroma. If five full miracles, and more of the Divine Light than she’d ever seen in a Tower couldn’t accomplish the task, Kallos really didn’t know what would.

“You’ve grown so strong…” Maria’s words hung in the air before she rocketed through the dimensions under Kallos’ direction.

“Not strong enough, it seems.” Kallos retorted with a dark twist when she stood alone, amongst the rubble of Zenithar. The ghostly glimpses of the Celestial Wardens battling Archons in the back ground became more noticeable now that she wasn’t focused on her mother. Yet before she forced her way into the chamber, she summoned a gnarled staff with a deep amethyst gem at the head. She tapped the bottom against the ground.

“By my words and Will be Bound, Oizys, Weaver of Woes,

For each tear you’ve sown, in your own eyes shall one be found,

For each name, each vessel a new, in each life you live,

You shall feel the deepest of cuts courtesy of thine own dark arts,

Your essence shall know eternal sorrow, upon each and every morrow,

Forever you shall carry the burdens you’ve spun,

until your tapestry of pain is has been learned from.”

Typically, Kallos would weave curses with Ethereal power, but in this case, she still had an abundance of Ein Sof flowing into her, thanks to Telos. So, she let the divine light be woven into the curse, and watched in satisfaction as it sank into the very essence of Oizys around her. A goddess given an inescapable, unbreakable curse, from the highest of divine sources. Even the Overgod would be unable to break such a curse, if he wanted to, and Kallos had her doubts that Ialdaboath would spend a thimbleful of power, now that he ought know the true nature of Telos. Surely, after the number of Archons they’d destroyed someone in the seven heavens had finally witnessed the use of Ein Sof?

Kallos need not have worried. While she bound the curse into the very fabric of Oizys, a curse that would chase her through endless reincarnations until the wretch learned better, Telos had been busy too.

The demi-plane around Kallos shattered, as if it had been a fragile glass caught before a baseball bat. Aeonic chimes filled the material realm, abstract and geometric forms that went into more dimensions than Kallos knew the names for appeared and vanished, and there was Telos, lit by a pillar of Ein Sof, surrounded by cascading vortexes of the Ethereal and the Void. Bobbi and Arkaziel appeared in the same fashion that Kallos herself did.

The battlefield around the four froze, the Celestial Wardens and Archons both held frozen by the display of power. Then a terrified voice cried over the battlefield.

“Kill them!”

“Did she just run away?” Arkaziel gaped at where the declaration from Oizys had come.

“Looks that way,” Bobbi agreed.

The clash of blades, spells, and powers reignited around them, but a blur of white-and-blue fought through Archons to reach the quartet.

“Siegfried, you’re still standing. Good!” Telos welcomed him.

“Lady Telos, Lady Kallos. Make haste after Oizys, my men and I shall hold the Archons here.”

Telos laughed, and the darkness of the Void around her rippled.

“Nah, let’s finish Oizys together.” Then Kallos’ lover activated one of her most terrifying attacks. As far as Kallos could see, multiple after-images of Telos appeared and disappeared. Some looked the same as Telos, some had slight differences, all exuded the power of the Void, the strange combination of Nothing and Infinite Possibility. In seconds, not a single Archon remained for Siegfried’s men to battle, all had been dispatched by the existence defying, reality oscillating attack.

“Time to make good our promise to Thalassa,” Arkaziel growled angrily, before he hopped onto Telos’ shoulder.

“And Werylin, and everyone else we promised this too. It’s time to kill Misery.”