My throat was sore. My entire body hurt, but I couldn’t get past how much my throat bothered me. It felt like—

I sat up, blood rushing to my head so fast it made my vision spin. Kaiya…

The fight had been quick. One moment I was teaching Tivna and Morli the rules of go fish, the next I was fighting for my life. That bitch was huge and strong, but I put up a fight she wouldn’t soon forget. Even if a sorcerer attended to her, she’d be hard pressed to walk away without a scar.

It didn’t help that during the fight, she grabbed my head and slammed my face into her knee, breaking my nose. That part didn’t really matter, but when she grabbed me, her nails dug in and tore into the daffodil behind my ear, cutting off contact.

I was mostly unaware of my surroundings for the days after, a canvas bag placed over my head as I was jostled like a sack of potatoes on the back of a horse. The next time I saw light, I was being marched into a bright room. I could hear Enri’s voice and I knew this encounter wasn’t going to end well for me.

Enri had a soldier’s stance, all sharp angles and hard edges. Kaiya was more relaxed, a look of polite disinterest that I could never quite master on her face. It brought me no small amount of pride to know that even in his castle she didn’t give a damn about him.

As they pulled me through the door, my fractured leg aching, I could see her eyes begin to widen.

“Be still,” King Asshole said. “Your king speaks.”

Enri and Kaiya froze in place, Kaiya’s eyes only a fraction wider. Her eyes were stuck to me and even through his villain monologue, her eyes stayed on me. And when that jackass slit my throat—with my own damn dagger, at that—he released her from his hold, and I had to watch as she disintegrated into a mess of terror and grief.

Blood is hot. It’s not warm in large amounts and as it soaked my shirt and burned against my rapidly cooling skin, Kaiya was there with me, her eyes begging me to stay. But even the most talented sorcerer had their limits, and Enri had her hands tied.

There was no stopping the deluge of blood that flowed, so I used the last of my strength to sign to her.

I love you.

I’m sorry.

I was glad it was me who beefed it. If one of us was going to be able to continue on, it was going to be her. Kaiya had always been the stronger one between us.

That still begged the question as I held my head and pressed my hand against a wall to keep from falling over: why was I still alive? There was no denying how deep he cut. There was no way it was sheer luck I was still breathing—even if it was hard as hell to take a breath.

I was in a small, one room hut. The floor looked and felt like hardpacked dirt, and the walls looked like wood rot had gotten to them centuries ago. There was a fire pit on my left and a door in front of me.

“Welcome to the world of the living.” I turned to see a lanky man with long, wavy hair leaning against the wall. I was just as surprised to see him as I was to see the building staying put.

I opened my mouth to talk and only a hoarse, gravelly sound came out.

“Careful. I just barely managed to put you back together.”

Something about him was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Maybe I’d gone to school with him. His smile was soft and easy, like he was a friend, but I knew I couldn’t have had even one meaningful conversation with him if I didn’t at least remember his face.

“Where… is… Kaiya?” I winced with the effort. “Who… are… you?”

He smiled, his face so soft and full of love it threw me off. I for sure didn’t know who this man was, but it didn’t throw me off because of his look. It threw me off by how at ease it put me.

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“You two have always been like that,” he said. “Always looking towards the other. She’s fine, relatively speaking. Training, I would assume. As for who I am, that’s a bit more complicated. Depends on who you ask.”

It was irritating the way he danced around the question, but it made me feel better to know that Kaiya was still alive. If he was telling the truth, that is. I needed him to be telling the truth. I stared at him harder, as if that would somehow jog my memory. There had to be a reason he felt so familiar.

“Who are… you to… Kaiya?”

He grinned, his face lighting up. “That one is easy. To Kaiya Wilson, I’m just her college friend.”

It clicked. I recognized him from the pictures Kaiya used to send me and our roller-skating fiasco. “Enrique?”

He nodded. “In the flesh. For the most part, anyway.”

“How—Why—Wha—?”

He laughed at my confusion, and it reminded me of how Kaiya had described him the first time she came home from college. “He’s so annoying, but somehow it makes him endearing rather than punchable.”

“That sounds like a scam.”

She laughed (a sound I would give anything to hear right now) and said, “Yeah, it is.”

“Are you…a sor-sorcerer?” I barely finished my question, leaning into a hacking cough. Blood splattered my hand as I covered my mouth, and I felt dizzy again. Everything hurt.

Enrique rushed forward, leaning my weight against him as he moved me to settle against the wall. “Kind of.”

God, he was so vague. “How can y-you kind of be a s-sorce-rer?”

He placed his hand on my throat, and a soft light emitted from his palm. It felt like the most soothing cup of tea was washing down my throat, the pain subsiding, and I almost felt like a person again.

“I use magic, but not in a sorcerer way. More in a reincarnated god kind of way.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was joking. If he wasn’t telling the truth, it was some kind of weird joke. If he was telling the truth, that just led to several more questions. Judging from the look on his face, he believed everything he said. And since he healed me, there was no reason for me to believe he was tricking me.

His smile was more sad this time than playful. “I bet that sounds like a joke to you, huh?”

“Yeah.” My voice was almost normal this time. Still hoarse, but it didn’t feel like I was tearing my vocal cords apart just by breathing. “It doesn’t sound real. But I’m also on a planet with magic and rapidly changing seasons. What’s one more unbelievable thing to add to the pile?”

“You’ve always been like that. Just adjusting to a new environment with eyes and mind wide open.” He gave me that look again, like he was trying to convey how much he cared through his eyes. “Are you familiar with the religion of this world?”

“A bit,” I said. Kind of off topic, but I’d roll with it. “Why?”

“If you read anything about the myths and fables, did you ever read the quintessential myth about hubris?”

I thought back to the books I’d read in the library. In the early days, I spent a lot of my time in the library. If there was one thing that was the same, it was books. Information needed to be written down and stored somewhere, and religions had always piqued my interest. Following a rabbit hole was my favorite hobby when I had access to Wikipedia. It was no different in a library of physical books.

“There was a nameless goddess. A subset of the main water god, Henu. She didn’t have many temples, but there was one she took a liking to. There were two temple keepers there that she grew to love and enjoy. When their time came, she grew selfish and angry, determined not to lose those she loved dear. So, she snuck into Ankth’s domain and stole their souls back. When Ankth found out, she condemned the god to wander the world as a mortal to understand the importance of death.

“That was the gist of it, I think.”

He nodded, looking past me to the door. “That sounds like something they’d have the scholars write down. The true version of that is more complicated. It’s how we all came to live this hellish cycle of abuse. How I damned us so thoroughly.”

“What do you mean by that?” My stomach was turning in circles, and it wasn’t just because my ribs were still broken. I didn’t believe in coincidences and even if I did, it was no coincidence that we were here now. That I was still alive when I should rightfully be dead. “Tell me what that means, Enrique.”

He sighed, leaning against the wall. He held his hands up and the glowing image of four people appeared. I didn’t recognize them, but somewhere in my soul, I knew who they were. I knew that two of them were me and Kayia. That one was Enrique, and one was someone that made hatred bubble up and sit in my chest. That feeling alone was enough for me to sit back and listen. I couldn’t interrupt him until he was done. I needed to know what happened.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” he said. “Over a millennia ago. It starts with a lonely god, two temple keepers, and a man who sought to destroy it all.”