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The moment understanding hits her silver eyes, power detonates outward with the sound of reality tearing.

The shockwave drives me backward, my bones aching as divine force rewrites the laws of physics around us.

The ground beneath us cracks in perfect spirals, ancient symbols carving themselves into stone and earth with audible precision—like the world itself screaming as it’s reshaped.

Plants burst from the scorched soil with sounds like muffled explosions—not normal growth but divine creation happening at impossible speed.

Flowers unfold with their own inner light, vines erupting from earth with singing voices that harmonize in languages older than mortal speech.

The very air fills with the sound of accelerated growth, roots breaking through stone, stems shooting skyward.

The air itself screams as reality bends around consciousness too vast for mortal flesh—a sound like breaking glass made of wind, pitched so high it makes my teeth ache and my vision blur.

My robes flutter in winds that carry scents of every garden that ever bloomed, every harvest that ever fed the hungry, layer upon layer until I’m drowning in olfactory memory.

“I am Brigid,” she breathes, and the name carries weight that makes my bones ache with recognition.

Power so ancient it predates the courts themselves.

“Goddess of healing, of growing things, of the forge-fire that transforms.” Her mortal body begins to glow, skin becoming translucent as power burns through flesh never meant to contain infinity.

The buildings around us stop burning—not extinguished but transformed, flames becoming flowers with petals of living fire, smoke becoming butterflies of pure light that spiral upward in impossible formations. She’s rewriting reality simply by remembering what she truly is.

But her mortal form is failing. Blood runs from her eyes, her nose, as divine essence tears at the boundaries of human flesh. She’s too powerful for the body she chose, awakening too fast, too completely, mortality unable to contain eternity.

The awakening sends shockwaves through the burning settlement, reality bending and warping around divine consciousness forced into mortal flesh. In the distance, I hear Orion’s voice cutting through the magical chaos.

“Finn!” The call carries desperation and relief in equal measure, his guardian senses overwhelmed by the divine display. “We need to move! Everything is destabilizing!”

I look down as Siobhan’s mortal form finally gives way.

Her divine essence burns too bright, too vast for flesh and bone to contain.

She dissolves into light and flower petals, her consciousness expanding beyond the limitations of mortality until there’s nothing left but memory and magic dancing in the air.

She’s dead. Truly gone. But in dying, she remembered what she truly was—and that changes everything.

The power she awakened still pulses through the air like a beacon, calling to others of her kind. Around us, reality ripples with the aftershocks, and I can feel other sleeping gods stirring in response to her divine death cry.

Orion appears through the smoke carrying a bundle that resolves into a child—maybe seven years old, her Wild Court heritage evident in the thorns already sprouting beneath her skin in response to terror.

She clutches his shirt with small hands, face buried against his shoulder.

Behind him, Kieran materializes from shadow-walking, ice-blue eyes reflecting the flames around us like mirrors made of winter.

“Three families,” Kieran reports, his voice carefully controlled despite the frost spreading from his feet in patterns of barely contained rage. “All dead. Children, elders, everyone.”

I gesture to where Siobhan’s body lies, still glowing faintly with residual divine light that makes the air shimmer. “Not everyone. She awakened. Right before she died, she awakened completely.”

Understanding crawls up my spine like ice water, raising every hair on my neck. If dying Wild Court members are remembering their true nature—their divine nature—then the systematic raids aren’t just genocide.

They’re preventing a pantheon from reclaiming the world.

“The Tuatha Dé Danann,” I breathe, pieces clicking into place with horrible clarity that makes my breath catch in my throat. “The Wild Court are not just royal bloodlines. They are the old gods who chose mortality.”

Orion’s amber eyes widen with understanding, the child in his arms whimpering softly as she senses the weight of revelation. “The Cauldron of Life. It did not just grant power—it let gods forget their divinity to live among mortals.”

“And now they are dying and remembering what they really are,” Kieran adds, shadows writhing with barely contained rage that makes frost climb the nearby trees. “Which explains why the other courts are so desperate to eliminate them.”

Memories of long nights by a fire reading through ancient texts rises. “According to the deepest lore, the gods chose mortality for different reasons. Love, curiosity, the desire for genuine experience without omniscience.”

“But death breaks the Cauldron’s enchantment,” Orion realizes, his guardian oath pulsing with protective fury. “They wake up divine.”

“Exactly. And if enough of them awaken simultaneously...” I close my eyes, calculating the implications. “Divine war. The mortal courts would not stand a chance.”

Kieran steps closer, political mind already calculating implications while frost spreads from his boots in increasingly agitated patterns. “How many Wild Court families remain?”

“Maybe two dozen scattered across multiple realms,” Orion says grimly, adjusting his hold on the traumatized child. “If they are systematically hunting them with these weapons...”

“They are not trying to prevent mass awakening,” I realize with sick certainty that makes bile rise in my throat. “They are trying to prevent any awakening. Kill them fast enough, brutally enough, that consciousness cannot complete the transition.”

“Except tonight they failed,” Kieran observes, shadows reaching toward the lingering divine light with something like reverence. “Siobhan awakened despite the bone sword. Which means the weapons are not perfect.”

“Or,” The Morrigan interjects, her voice cutting through our discussion like a blade through silk, “she was already too close to remembering when they found her. Death merely completed what was already beginning.”

That’s when she walks through the fire.

The Morrigan emerges from the heart of the burning settlement like she owns destruction itself.

Silver hair flows like liquid starlight, untouched by flame or smoke.

Her battle leathers gleam with fresh blood that steams in the heat, and her eyes hold the depth of eternity—ancient beyond measure, terrible in their beauty.

In her right hand, she carries a severed head—one of the Seelie soldiers who led tonight’s raid, his perfect features frozen in terminal surprise, violet eyes staring sightlessly at nothing.

But it’s what she holds in her left hand that makes every nerve in my body scream recognition.

A sword. But not any sword—this blade gleams with sickly pale luminescence that makes shadows recoil, its edge forged from what looks like bone. Ancient, divine bone embedded with fragments of corrupted crystal that pulse with malevolent power like a diseased heartbeat.

The child in Orion’s arms whimpers, but her eyes remain their natural Wild Court green—traumatized, terrified, but still Fae.

The divine awakening that marked Siobhan’s death doesn’t spread to her.

Whatever allowed Siobhan to remember at the end, this child is either too young or too far from her own awakening threshold.

“Thank the gods,” I whisper, watching the child’s frightened but stable Fae consciousness. One divine awakening we can handle. A cascade of divine consciousness would have torn reality apart.

But even one is enough to change everything.

“Boys,” The Morrigan says conversationally, as if we’re meeting for afternoon tea instead of standing in the aftermath of divine massacre. “We have a problem.”

“The awakening gods?” Kieran asks, though his voice carries respect that borders on reverence, shadows pooling around his feet in deference.

“Oh, that is not the problem,” The Morrigan corrects with a smile that could freeze hellfire. “The awakening gods are exactly what is supposed to happen when my people are slaughtered like animals.”

She tosses the severed head at our feet with casual violence, then holds up the bone sword with barely contained fury that makes the air itself tremble. “The problem is what they used to kill her.”

“They have weapons,” I realize, mind racing through implications while my throat goes tight with horror. “Something that can actually destroy divine essence.”

“Not just any weapons,” The Morrigan confirms, and her voice carries a rage so ancient it makes the air itself tremble with recognition. “This blade was torn from her killer’s hands before I removed his head. Look closely at what they have done.”

My bloodstream crystallizes as realization strikes like a physical blow. The bone gleams with familiar power, and embedded along the blade’s edge are fragments of crystal that bear markings I’ve studied in the most forbidden texts.

“Divine bone,” I breathe in horror, revulsion clawing up my throat until I taste bile. “They are forging weapons from the bones of slaughtered gods.”

“Worse,” The Morrigan says, amber flames dancing along the sword’s edge as her fury makes reality bend around us. “They have embedded fragments of the Stone of Fál into each blade. My people’s bones, corrupted with perverted treasure magic, forged into weapons designed to kill more of my children.”

Orion’s guardian instincts flare with protective fury so intense the air shimmers like heat waves, the child in his arms pressing closer for comfort. “That is... that is an abomination.”