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‘You have no right even to ask, lesser being,’ came the lazy drawl.

Ki’Remi sucked his teeth, his voice a quiet, lethal rasp. ‘I know you’re playing two hands in the same game, my friend.’

Zavei kept his pace even, but amusement curled at the corner of his mouth.

‘You wound me, Sableman.’

Ki’Remi’s gaze hardened. ‘I don’t trust you.’

Zavei’s smirk widened. ‘Good. You shouldn’t.’

Ki’Remi exhaled through his nose, fists clenching. ‘You and the War Goddess are up to some shit you intend to throw in Sulfiqar’s face. So, tell me, commander, how do you justify your duplicity? Do you take pride in gaming both sides? I ask because I suspect we’re being pulled into your chaos when we’d prefer not to be.’

Zavei finally halted, turning to face him. The torches overhead cast shadows across his sculpted, regal, terrifying, inhuman face, lashed with disdain.

‘You mistake gods for moral creatures, Sableman.’

Ki’Remi narrowed his eyes and raised his chin in a challenge even as Issa appeared beside him, her eyes flicking from one to the other.

Zavei’s gaze gleamed. ‘Your mortal concepts of righteousness do not bind us. We are not good. We are not evil. We simply are.’

His voice lowered, taking on a purring, menacing edge.

‘Mortals must shit and breathe to survive. We immortals have to consume and betray. It is our nature.’

Issa scoffed, adjusting her shrouded robe. ‘So what you’re saying is, you’re just full of more pure balderdash than mortals?’

Zavei’s smirk curved like a blade.

‘A precise outtake. On that note, keep walking. We’ve much nonsense to wade through.’

Ki’Remi’s jaw ticked, but he said nothing.

The exchanged glances with Issa, then shrugged, took her hand, and prowled after the fast-disappearing Saatifa commander.

All the while stewing on how monstrous this particular pantheon of gods was, a fact that chilled him.

They moved through the palace, their footsteps swallowed by opulent corridors draped in divine energy.

At every turn, shadowed figures lurked in the periphery, servants and warriors alike, their eyes flickering with curiosity, suspicion, and reverence.

Finally, they were led to a set of towering gates.

Their fabrication was not of this world. It was a swirling, living mass of astral metal, shifting between obsidian, sapphire, and liquid stardust.

As the guards advanced and pressed their palms against its surface, it parted soundlessly, opening into the chamber of Sulfiqar.

They stepped inside.

Ki’Remi perceived it at once.

The air was dense and diseased.

It carried the scent of incense, decay, celestial ozone, and rot.

The room was vast, stretching into eternity, yet its ambiance was suffocating.

The walls, carved from cosmic glass, shimmered with reflections of entire galaxies swirling in slow, silent spirals.