‘I cannot grant your wish.’ The god clicked in response, rasping air through bone white teeth, after her supplication. ‘I accept all dedications without discrimination, I am not able to reject an offering freely given.’ ‘But how could it possibly be construed as being freely given, you’ve stolen his health!’ she exclaimed, frustrated, outraged at the god’s skewed reasoning. ‘The vitality of breath belongs to me, it is only being returned, I’ve stolen nothing that was not mine to begin with,’ the god asserted, shameless. Iseult paused for a moment, dumbstruck, before trying another tactic. ‘Alright, then if you can’t control yourself, you can leave the city entirely, stop drawing breath from all the citizens. It would be in your best interest anyway. There are godkillers among the citizens, and if they catch you, you will not survive. They’ve already killed one. Babkocke died brutally, burned alive.’ She wasn’t sure that the threat would mobilize the god, but if she told Mejias about him, she had no doubt the girl would take vicious action. The god paused, clearly surprised, ‘I have heard of the death of the god Babkoche, but I hadn’t realized it had been a human accomplishment.’ Iseult shifted her feet, she didn’t want to put her sister at risk by exposing her to this untested god, but she was sure Mejias wouldn’t hesitate with Hija’s life on the line. ‘Humans lead by a god,’ she bent the truth, wanting to give the plague god an extra push, ‘a god that wouldn’t hesitate to hunt you down, destroy you, if you are discovered.’ The plague god mulled over the new information, ‘hmm, I see. Why have they not taken the lives of the other gods in the city, why leave Zichu or the crying god untouched?’ They asked, suspicious. ‘This god has not deemed them to be a threat to the inhabitants, as you definitely are,’ she replied immediately. The plague god tapped his thigh thoughtfully, the dark vapor continuing to slowly climb up, like sand in an inverted hourglass. ‘A godkiller. Hmm. I suppose I have claimed sufficient breath from this place.’ He finally acknowledged. ‘I don’t seek discord with others of my kind.’

Leaving the hospital Iseult breathed out the heavy sigh of relief she had been holding in. She hadn’t truly had much hope for this to work, but she had done it. She had convinced a god. She felt a bit euphoric, actually. She had worked with Orikka plenty, was used to having her opinions considered by a god, but had rather thought Orikka was an abnormality among their kind. The time she had spent with Orikka, observing other gods and making dossiers on them and their habits had not given her a terribly high opinion of them as a group. But it seemed her half truth had paid off, and she succeeded beyond her greatest expectations. Hija would live. And hopefully, Mejias’ holy crusade against the gods would stagnate. She hurried home to share the news with her wayward sister.

She could tell right away that something was wrong. The door was gaping open. And it was quiet. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but that particularly felt wrong. That’s right. Oh no. Hija wasn’t coughing. She rushed to his room, phasing through the walls as she raced through the house. There he was, wrapped in blankets, a glass of water toppled, the liquid spilled by his side.

He was still, so very very still, and she couldn’t see his chest move, not even the faintest flutter of breath in him. She couldn’t even check for a heartbeat with her ghost hands. She felt so incredibly helpless. Hyperventilating she looked around wildly as if to materialize Mejias, where was her sister?! His ghost would be here, she assured herself, trying to think through racing thoughts, he must still be alive because otherwise his soul would be separated from his body. She bent over his prone form, trying to listen for even a faint sound from his lungs, but her own anxious gasps eclipsed whatever she might have heard. She pulled at her curls, hands threaded through panic. This couldn’t be happening. She had just bargained with death themselves. This was supposed to be a triumph. But now it was all wrong. She needed to find Mejias. She would know what to do. Where could she be?!

Maybe had decided to take down another god? Maybe she was fighting with Orikka? She couldn’t think of any place Mejias would need to go if Hija was actively dying. She raced over to the crying god’s fountain. No one had cleaned it up since Mejias had last vandalized it, but had rather dumped more dye, splashing it wildly, so that the whole square looked like a murder. Not here, no one was here, in fact. The entire city seemed empty, stalls left unattended, children’s toys left in the streets as if called away in a rush. Where was everyone? No time to think about it, she needed to find Mejias.

Zichu was the only other god in the city, she wouldn’t go as far as to fight an entire regime, would she? But she was Mejias, youngest god-to-be, leader of a holy movement, a godkiller. Of course she would take on an entire kingdom to save her friend. Iseult hurriedly made her way to the palace of mirrors. She heard it before she saw it. An ocean of people, as if the entire city was outside the palace, and they may well have well been. She could see figures moving on the raised courtyard, between the steps lined with blooming cherry blossom trees framing the path to the palace doors. She was never so grateful to be a ghost as she threaded herself through the packed crowd. She eventually made her way to the forefront. The square before the steps was cleared except for a small group kneeling, clothed in birch white-gold, layers of opaque crimped fabric draped over them, spread around each of them like a small glittering pool as they sat knees down on the marbled ground. Long hoods covered each of their heads, the occasional strand of hair peeking out. Their hands curved in front of them, each cupped around their own bowl filled with some sort of liquid manna, she could see the sun glinting off its silvery surface. Mejias was before them, standing between them and the palace, on the first landing of the steps, a strong, daring figure, straight backed against the shining of the palace. The crowd stilled, until they were all unnaturally silent, not a sound made by the entire congregation assembled.

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‘Drink!’ She heard the pale-clad girl cry out, her voice projected beyond her normal range, something deep and arcane. And Mejias’ followers drank, Iseult could see the waters dripping down chins, throats, wetting the fabric of their clothing, time layering over on itself as the movement happened over and over again, the importance of it stretching out the action. First one fell, dropping their bowl to the ground with a clatter, the sound sharp and clear over the silence of the square. Then another, and another. Until the entire procession lay on the ground, sprawled ungainly, their limbs askew, a peaceful death to a sacrificial suicide cult. Mejias had a look of fierce concentration on her face as her followers fell, her portwine red hands twisting strangely in front of her, something forming, visible between her gaps in her fingers. She stepped slowly down the stairs, hands moving with each step, until she was in the midst of the fallen, their purifying souls raised up, collecting in her hands. ‘Look!’ someone shouted, from the congregation, pointing at the sky. Mejias didn’t seem to notice, too focused on her motions, but Iseult followed the person’s cry, looking up to the palace to see something she had never even considered to be possible. Just above the palace was the sun, but not only the sun. Both moons slowly shifted, aligning in front of it, perfectly centered in its haloed sphere, a stacked russian doll of astral bodies, one just visible around another.

Gasps lit up the crowd, murmurs as something took shape in Mejias’ hands. A growing, inverting, thing, light and not light, shadow but not shadow. A strange new dimension, unexplored among the alive. But Iseult could see it clearly, beyond what the mortals surrounding her could. It was a puncture, a void where light and shadow met, tesselating through time and space, piercing through the world of the living and the soul, gathering strength from the moribund of those crumpled at Mejias’ feet, their souls stretching, stitched together in the cat’s cradle of her hands as she formed them into something. So similar to what Yanus had made, a hole in spacetime. As the sun and moons fully aligned, something sparked between Mejias’ fingers, growing, fizzling, rising in the air, until it was as if the sun itself had grown from her hands, framing her in a parhelion, threaded around the eclipse, a circumzenithal arc curved above, magnificent, before all the people of the city Sonsoliel. Pinhole shadows danced across the ground from behind the cherry blossoms, dappling the earth in strange eerie light as the congregation gasped in awe, a murmuring sweeping across the sea of people like a wave. The sun ducked behind the palace, lighting it up in golden splendor, and the moons went their separate ways, but the light from Mejias’ hands remained, until it too descended, gracefully falling to the ground before Mejias. A doorway of light, a mosaic, tesselating shadowy veil stretched between its frame. A gate.

A single human pushed their way out of the throngs, a frail child tenderly held in their arms, ‘my daughter, can the prophecy free her from the plague?’ The woman’s voice was supplicating, desperate for salvation. ‘Please, please, say you can save her!’ Mejias stood behind her gate, before raising her arms, indicating the door. ‘Bring her through and the god-plague will be purified from her body. It will dissipate and she will be freed.’ She seemed drained now, tired in a way that Iseult had never seen her before. Had the process really taken so much from her?

Leaving the elation of the crowd behind her, she wearily left, the sea of people parting to let her pass in reverent awe. Making covert eye contact with Iseult, her lamb pupils contracting marginally, she gave a subtle jerk of her head and headed towards home.

‘He’s gone,’ she said as she entered their home, aware of Iseult trailing behind without needing to turn and face her. ‘And he dissipated so fast. It was like losing him twice. I can’t, I couldn’t bear for others to continue to go through the same loss as I did, so I left. I left him there, before his body even cooled. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t stay there as he died again.’ She finally turned towards Iseult, throwing herself into the older woman’s arms, the way she had done when she was small. ‘I’m such a coward,’ she sobbed. ‘And then,’ she sniffled, seeming to need to unload her sins, to confess, ‘I did exactly what I said I wouldn’t. I killed Orikka. It was, it was the only way. I ascended and ended the plague. They don’t even know it, they think I just saved them from the sickness. They saw me as a messiah, but I really betrayed them, let gods be purified at the expense of those I loved, my own devotees. Perverted their pure sacrifice. I’m so disgusting.’ Her voice twisted at the end, filled with revulsion and self-loathing. Iseult held her tighter, her heart twisting in her chest. This was what she had planned, after all. She had set this whole thing in motion and Mejias was the one to suffer for it. ‘And now, I’m not even sure I can die. The gate purifies, but Nobi has probably already risen and absolved me. I’m stuck here in a world that reveres me for a lie.’