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“Who are you?” the voice asked. The sound carried the weight of millennia. Vaguely curious, mostly uninterested. They were the indifferent words of an ancient.

I felt light and untethered. My mundane senses faded, useless in a reality formed from pure energy. I remained fae—bound to this isle, formed from its earth. My corporeal form faded as I became my spark of divinity.

I knew this sensation, this detached sense of being. This was how I had talked with Teyr.

“You’ve met with my brother,” the voice continued. “I know his scent, the ashflower, born of fleeting beauty as lava becomes obsidian. Life begets death begets life…”

She wandered off, drifting in her ancient mind.

“Gloom?” I asked.

“I am,” she answered.

The goddess didn’t elaborate. Her energy drifted, expanding and relaxing. She considered me with bored curiosity.

She was linked to the black diamond, like Ayla’s ruby ring to Ninti, but bigger—like I held a single shard, one of many. Pieces that had been broken and abused. Still, it was an artifact powerful enough to communicate with a goddess, to funnel power from Gloom to Inarus.

I shivered.

Divine artifacts belonged in lore, not the modern age of fae goods. Yet as long as the primordial deities remained, so did their influence. The artifacts may have vanished from memory, but they had not been lost.

“How is my brother?” she asked. “We’ve been separated for so long.”

Gloom was not as I’d expected. The cold and dark goddess of stagnation wasn’t hungry to consume. She was lonely.

“Teyr misses you too,” I replied. His detachment had been clear in my last chat with a god.

God.I trembled, realizing what I was doing. I swallowed, forcing down my panic, and focused on the unexpected turn of events. I had been strong enough to speak with Teyr—I could communicate with Gloom.

“Your brother was surprised to learn of your expansion,” I said.

“Expansion?” she asked. A sense of emptiness arrived with her question, reinforcing her words. She didn’t know of the Collapse.

Neither had Teyr. I had explained it to him too.

I reviewed my memories, finding images of Gloom. From the mist’s initial descent, to my hours of study, and finally, an impression of the Isle of Shadow as it had become. I packaged what I knew and sent my knowledge to her—a trick I had learned while communing with Teyr.

Gloom fluttered, her power stuttering. “I didn’t cause this…” she whispered.

She muttered for a long while. Eventually, she stopped speaking, losing herself in thought. I couldn’t tell if her mind had wandered elsewhere.

“Then please fix it,” I said. “The black diamond I’m holding, it’s empowering a necromancer who—”

Another being entered the space. They brought the scent of warm beaches and algae, reminiscent of Mer.

“He lies,” the newcomer said. “All is fine.” She stepped before the goddess, commanding Gloom’s attention with diamond shards of her own. “I am the one you can trust.”

Gloom rushed to me. Closer. And closer. She grew, dominating my world. Earlier, she had given me the scarcest of her attention, only vaguely interested in a disturbance. Now she looked at me with awesome strength.

The other figure shifted. They said something. A bright light flashed, and my hand—somewhere far away—burst with pain.

“You’ve hurt me!” Gloom hissed.

If I had hurt her, why did my hand burn? The other figure had faded.

“Go!” Gloom yelled, her shout vibrating the realm. Her power shook my soul, and I fell away, disconnecting from divinity and returning to Zayne, as I knew myself to be…

The black diamond shattered in my hand. It cleaved and fractured, shrapnel cutting into my soul flesh.