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The land before us was dead and black and empty.

Life had perished here, and not that long ago. I thanked the universe for killing the local civilization thousands of years ago. I would have hated to see them die a slow and miserable death from the World Crusher’s unstoppable toxicity. I’d thought the Black Fever had been bad, but World had surpassed Unending quite elegantly.

The six Ghoul Reapers walked ahead of me, spread out and sniffing the carbonized ground. Here and there, puffs of steam burst through the cracks. A volcano had erupted not that long ago. I assumed the heated rocks beneath my feet were a mass of cooling lava. Nature was truly savage and unforgiving. My brother’s finest work, for sure.

“We’re getting closer,” Eneas whispered, as if afraid World might hear him.

“Relax, she won’t be running from me,” I told him. “She’s done running.”

Filicore shot me an acid sneer. “Right. She’s just waiting for you, arms wide open, so that you can shove her back inside another book.”

There was nothing as far as the eye could see, with the exception of a single smoking mountain. Streams of red lava were still snaking their way down under the ridges. I could smell the Sulphur and ashes from here. What a desolate realm. The perfect metaphor for how World must be feeling.

“She’ll be ready for that. Your snark is poorly constructed,” I replied dryly, choosing to focus on sensing my creation. She was definitely near. I couldn’t feel her from afar, but down here, my senses flared. Either her cloaking magic didn’t work as well as she’d thought, or she’d deliberately taken it off. It did not matter. An encounter was imminent, and I was about to face my greatest mistake.

How I handled her would dictate how the entire universe might fare, going forward.

As if to deliberately spoil things for me, the Time Master’s voice came through, a beacon of anger and despair and confusion. “Death… please, tell me you’re there.”

I stopped walking. The Ghoul Reapers stilled, also, incredibly responsive to each of my gestures. I couldn’t help but appreciate that. What had happened to them was awful. I’d caused it, and I would absolutely need to find a way to make it up to them. The best option was to send them into the nothingness and spare them this misery entirely. But that wasn’t my only possibility.

“I’m here,” I told Time.

“There’s a Valkyrie wreaking havoc in the world of the living,” he said, then proceeded to tell me everything from the moment he’d been summoned to assist with the clone attacks in The Shade and all the way down to the seconds preceding this telepathic conversation. The more he spoke, the more troubled I became. There was so much happening in the Word’s domain, yet my brother still couldn’t be bothered.

I’d certainly made my own share of messes, but the Word had responsibilities that he’d been skirting for quite some time now. It didn’t feel right.

“Order is indeed useless outside her realm,” I told Time. I couldn’t shake what he’d told me about Unending. Damn it, I should’ve seen that coming, but I hadn’t. Hrista… Anunit, she’d played everyone, myself included. Shame would’ve done the entire world a favor if it could just swallow me whole. I had been bested by a Valkyrie. “I owe her an apology, though. A while back, I mocked her creation for not being brazen enough. Look at things now …”

“What about Unending? How do we save her?” Time replied.

“I’m not sure you can. Not from her body, anyway. From what you told me, I might have a clue as to what happened to her, but everything else… I admit, I’m speechless. Worst of all, my darling, I have my fingers dipped in another, equally dangerous pie. I’m afraid I won’t be able to immediately assist you with this.”

Not until I get my firstborn under control.The World Crusher running loose made Hrista seem like a few scattered raindrops on a sunny day. Nothing we couldn’t handle. The Time Master didn’t appreciate my response, however.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, the fury mounting in his voice. “You’re leaving us to fend for ourselves?”

“No, I’m telling you I’m busy right now. I will come when I can, but in the meantime, you need to find the Word. Go through the swamp witches, summon the Hermessi, I don’t care how you do it. Find a way to bring the Word to you. He might be able to help.”

“How?”

The Ghoul Reapers all stood up straight at once. A moment later, they scuttled back past me, running as fast as they could while the volcano roared and spat more bright orange lava. But it wasn’t the eruption that had scared them off. It was the one Reaper they’d been forced to share a planet with for too long. The one Reaper who had destroyed their souls and turned them into anomalies of their realm. The shame I felt whenever I looked at them was unbearable sometimes.

I finally saw her. A dark silhouette against a reddish sky, rippling against the heat that emanated from the hard, black ground.

“The magic that Hrista is using… it’s hybrid, like you said. Life and death, light and shadow. You have all four elements through Astra, but she needs an extra kick from each to… activate her full potential.” I’d always known what a fortunate blend of magic and supernatural genes the Daughter-Sentry was. I’d kept it to myself, because such power was rare, and it had to be nurtured in the right conditions. Alas, Hrista was forcing my hand now. I didn’t have all the answers, of course, but I did have a general idea of what could be done to help lift Astra toward her full potential. “A Reaper of good repute such as yourself. That’s death. Add the ghoul Aphis to ring a bell with her sentry nature, and you’ll have a winning formula. Darkness and light, that means one of each of your special friends,” I added. “A Valkyrie and a Berserker. The stronger, the better. She’ll be feeding on your spiritual energy.”

The figure grew clearer as she approached me. Every feature screamed with familiarity as I saw her for the first time in ages. She was beautiful. Angry and miserable, lonely and betrayed, complicated and still so woefully ignorant. Yet she was mine. My own. My first.

“And considering that Hrista’s weird dome thingy sounds like a life-building spell of titanic proportions,” I concluded, my gaze fixed on the World Crusher. “You will need the Word to pour his energy directly into Astra. She will need conduits and all the support you can give her, but I have faith in her. Don’t you?”

“I had faith in you, once,” Time replied. His words cut deeply, but looking at the World Crusher now, I understood that I deserved it. “But yes, I have faith in Astra. We all do.”

“Then follow her. Build her. Nurture her.” I exhaled sharply, bracing myself for what would come next. “I will join you when I can.”

“Wait. Unending said something about the World Crusher. What are you—”

The telepathic connection was cut off. My doing. I would’ve liked to tell him more, but there wasn’t much I could do until I brought my first under control. There were many things I’d done wrong with her, yet I dared hope it wouldn’t end badly. I wanted to face him with at least one problem resolved.

“Hello, Mother,” she said.

My whole being froze, the sound of her voice frosting my very senses. Oh, I was foolish to harbor such hopes. I saw that, now. Foolish. Like a mother, I suppose.

I would have to do better. If I was to return the universe to its true glory, if I was to restore its balance, I would have to do better. For too long, I had allowed my emotions, my selfishness, to get the better of me. Maybe I wasn’t anybody’s role model, and maybe I’d pissed off too many Reapers throughout my existence. There were so many of them, and only one of me.

“Hello, World.”