Merin watched as Red reacquainted himself with their daughter. It had been a while since they'd met, but their connection was as strong as ever.

Had this been at any other time, she might have smiled as she watched them play, but her mind was stuck in the center of the temple and what they found.

Gods can die.

Merin knew this before, but it never bothered her. Her centuries-long lifespan was spent yearning for the release of life. It never came, and now the desire to end it all was the furthest from her mind.

Merin had a glimpse of life's sweetness, and now, she hungered for more. Her heart was now brimming with a newfound family she didn't want to be erased. For the first time in centuries, she was part of a family that gave her a reason to keep living and fighting.

So, she needed to find out how Gods can die. This was not just a passing thought, but a burning question that consumed her every waking moment. Because whether she deserved it or not, she was ascending. Day by day, her power grew and stretched out its capacity.

Caelestis, her ancestor, was the one whose blood granted her this chance. She's dead, and Merin was never told how she died. But her legacy lives on in Merin. If her ancestor could die, then so could she. This fear fueled her determination to understand the mortality of gods.

When she first met Mordecai, he tried to tout the benefits of becoming a Goddess. He went on about making worlds and having the unattainable power to do whatever she wanted. He laughed when she asked about dying, though.

"You'll never have to worry about that again." He had said.

Clearly, he was wrong because Merin now knew of at least two dead deities.

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"Are you going to eat or continue to make that face?" Red said.

Merin looked at him and scrunched her face up some more. "Why aren't you more bothered by this?" She said, her voice tinged with a mix of sour annoyance.

Red laughed at her, and the delicious chuckle stoked something in her.

"It's better to focus on the present before preparing for the future." He said as he wiped their daughter's mouth.

She looked away as he then fed their daughter some of her favorite finger foods.

"What if Mordecai had something to do with it." She said. It was a thought that had appeared more than once in her head. So she lobbied it to Red to see what he thought.

"Mordecai could be the culprit," Red said, but his voice was mellow.

"He's the mastermind behind everything else," Merin said as her eyes darted off toward the waddling figure of another suspicious ally. Acuzio was back with Red. She hadn't seen the dragon in quite some time, and he was already growing past the restraints of his binding. The other Gods who stuck him as a lizard either planned for that to happen or gave up stopping him.

Red watched her with a laugh as she scurried after the scaly God.

"Acuzio!" She shouted his name, and the dragon turned around to give her a mild look of patience. Instead of picking her own brain about how to kill a God, it was better to ask the one they had on hand.

"How do you kill a God?" She said.

The dragon's look of patience grew as it turned around and walked away from her. "You don't." He said.

Merin made a face, and she sat back down to tear apart her bread with furious teeth.

"They never give out anything you want to know," Red said.

Merin looked up at him. Mordecai and Acuzio were jerks, and she knew that. But they had to tell them everything eventually. What was the point in setting her upon this path otherwise?

"Is that what it was like playing Mordecai's game?" Merin said. Red hadn't had time to tell her everything yet.

"There were endless games. The prizes I won all revolved around my getting to live." Red said with a snort. "The only interesting prize was learning that Mordecai isn't even his name."

Merin's ears perked up at that. She knew from her mother's journals that the phoenix went by several names. Mordecai was the most prominent one, but she didn't know why. "Why does he call himself Mordecai." She said.

"He lost a bet to a God named Marduk," Red said. "So he goes by the name that means follower of Marduk."

"I know which God to pray to for answers," Merin said under her breath.