Page 35 of Rise of the Gods: Vardor’s Destiny (Time for Monsters)

I lay on the altar, the stone hard and cold beneath me, the golden light from above cascading over my body like a thousand whispered prayers. Vardor stood below the stone steps, staring up at me. His expression was filled with agony. My heart broke when I saw the war within him. I watched his fists clench as if he was trying to restrain himself from rushing up here and carrying me away. Part of me wished he would. I was scared. So, so scared. For myself, my son. For Vardor.

I closed my eyes as a tear slipped down my cheek, a tear for Roweena, for her last breath. With a breaking voice, I cried, “I love you, Vardor.”

I didn’t want him to ever forget that. My love for him was as eternal as the goddess who would be returned to him soon. If you love it, you set it free ; no words have ever been wiser than those or hurt more. A second tear slipped down my cheek for us. For what could have been and for our unborn son. What would become of him? Would Vaelora's body reject him once she took possession of mine?

Even through my closed eyelids, I saw the light thickening, seeping into my bones, pulling me down, pulling me inward. I barely heard Vardor whisper my name before the world vanished.

I did not wake.

I became.

I was Vaelora again.

Not all at once.

Not in a violent rush.

But piece by piece.

I remembered the first moment I had ever existed—not as an infant, not as something born, but as something that simply was .

I had emerged into the world fully formed, without past, without childhood, without weakness. The goddess of balance.

And I had brothers.

Maezharr.

Xyphor.

Draeven.

We were equals, once. We were meant to rule together, to shape existence, to ensure the world we ruled was a paradise. But greed had crept into them one by one. First Xyphor, the shaper of worlds, who thought creation belonged to him alone.

Then Draeven, the one who wielded time, who hoarded eternity as if it were his to command.

And lastly, Maezharr. The strongest. The hungriest. The most cunning and ruthless.

I remembered arguing with them, pleading, only to be laughed at. They enjoyed the mortals’ suffering because starving people believed stronger. And the stronger the people’s belief, the stronger we were. The mortals forgot about me; what did they know about balance? Instead, they prayed to my brothers. Unwittingly increasing their power, thus increasing their own suffering.

I should have acted sooner, but time moved differently for gods. A thousand mortal years were nothing but a breath to me. I had watched mortals from afar, moved not by their plight but by my inability to bring forth balance again. With the scales tipped, I felt off-kilter. I felt lost, like I was failing my one duty.

And then I saw him .

Vardor.

A warrior. A conqueror. A man who defied kings, who bent armies to his will but never bent his own. A man who felled kings and didn't ask for rewards.

I watched him fight. I watched him lead. He fascinated me because he was so different from the other mortals. He was proud and hard. But where success led lesser men to greed, he stayed with his roots, laughing at all the rewards offered to him.

And I was fascinated.

A plan formed in my head. He was the warrior I needed to restore balance to our world, so I made him mine. I took him, lifted him beyond mortality, and shaped him into a god of war—my warlord, my weapon.

He defeated my brothers, one by one. All but Maezharr, who escaped. If only I had pressed harder for him to finish Maezharr, but I was selfish too. He made me feel things I had never felt before. He made my body sing in a way no one ever had.

With the mortals believing in me again, I grew stronger, and the world prospered once more. All was well. Or so I told myself, knowing all the while that we were living on borrowed time.

One day, something changed. He looked at me differently and said the words that had never meant anything to me. He said, "I love you."

Words I’d heard so many times from mortals' mouths. For the first time, I wondered what love felt like.

I had no childhood, no mother, no father, no history. No warmth. I didn't know how to love. But I wanted to. Very much so. I tried, I really did. But then nothing mattered any longer, because he betrayed me. He caged me.

That's when I felt something deeper than rage. It was sharper, nearly unbearable. I didn't have words for it then; it was almost like... pain?

Vardor had put himself above me. He had unbalanced the scale of power. An act I couldn't let stand. He had to be punished. Not only for what he had done, but because I was angry. In all our years together, he had finally made me feel .

I sealed him away. Because I was angry. Because I was wounded. Because I didn't know what to do with those feelings.

I missed him so much that, over the millennia, I woke him three, four, five, ten times. Whenever I did, I realized just how much I missed him. I wanted nothing more than to be in his arms. But then the confusion and rage would return, and I put him back to sleep. Unsure and afraid of my emotions. Afraid of doing something I would regret until the end of time. Gods could do many things, but they could not create life nor bring back the dead.

And so one millennium passed by, followed by another.

Things began to gradually change. A power of evil was coming, building, growing, and I knew I could not stop it or stand in its way.

So I ordered this city built underground and the beacons above. They led the true believers to me, and my kingdom grew. Over time, the mortals turned my beacons into things they weren't meant to be, but that was fine with me. Mortals would do whatever mortals did.

Empires rose and empires sank. Life moved on. Life without Vardor.

I wanted to forgive him. I truly did.

Then the visions started.

A glimpse of the future, a rip in time too powerful to ignore.

I saw Malzhaedon.

Not as the warlord Vardor had defeated twice, but as something bigger, darker, a force that twisted the world in his hands. I saw what he would unleash—demons, horrors, the monsters of the abyss pouring into the mortal world. I realized that I would lose. Not only my existence, but that of all these mortals who had put themselves into my hands. There would be no more balance. Evil would prevail and good would be lost.

I knew I wasn't strong enough to stop him.

Not alone.

Not as I was.

Not even with Vardor by my side.

No, in order to defeat my brother's new army, we needed to be an army. We needed demigods at our side. Sons. Not just the sons of mortals I picked for Vardor to breed, but sons of him and me.

That's when I knew.

That was when I made my choice.

I had finally forgiven Vardor for what he had done, but how could I be sure he wouldn't do it again? I couldn't allow us to bring sons into this world who would turn as greedy as Maezharr, raised by a father who did not honor his mate enough to trust in her powers. Lack of trust bred weakness, and weakness led to greed.

His lack of trust had brought this misery forth. Had Vardor not caged me, once he had weakened my brother's army, I would have defeated Maezharr for good. That was what I could not allow to happen again. I was tired of ruling alone. More than that, I was tired of missing him and of these feelings I couldn't explain. This longing deep in my chest that made it hard to breathe and got worse every time I saw him. I knew, deep down in my heart, I did not trust him. There was only one solution: I had to test Vardor.

We could not have sons as long as I was a goddess, nor could I test him in that form. There was only one solution: I had to become a mortal.

Whatever choice Vardor would make—and I prayed he would make the right one—I would have Vardor. At the very least, we would have a mortal's life span if he failed and eternity if he prevailed.

I did not want to live another breath without him, but the balance of the world hung at a precipice. It would either burn or prosper. If I became a mortal, the mortal's memory of Vaelora and Vardor would vanish, the same as it had of so many other gods over the history of mortals. They were fickle in their beliefs that way. Gods were only as strong as the people who believed in them.

And Malzhaedon was gaining believers.

Especially now, as a new millennium dawned on Earth. An era of wonder and ingenuity. People's beliefs in gods were waning, but not their certainty of evil. Maezharr was genius; he became the one thing men would never stop praying to. His powers grew, and my vision had shown me how terrible it would become.

Only the power of love could stop his evil army. Because as gods, what did we know about love? Of longing? Or suffering?

If I became mortal and bore Vardor's sons, the world would have something Malzhaedon could not foresee.

A new kind of gods.

Gods who were born, not made. Gods who knew how to love.

So I let myself be born.

And now, as I lay on the altar, as my mind realigned, as the golden light tried to pull me back into what I had once been, I understood something else.

I had changed.

In becoming a mortal, I experienced a mortal's emotions: dreams, hate, suffering, aspiration, and, most of all, love.

I loved Vardor.

Had always loved him, all along.

And I never knew it.

The truth burned through me, stronger than the light, stronger than the pull of divinity.

And I made my choice.

I forced the transformation to stop.

I would stay mortal.

For now.

I would carry our children. I would live this life a little longer.

Because I finally understood why Vardor had caged me.

Because love is not logic.

It's not balance or control.

It's madness, and risk, and sacrifice.