Page 67 of The Enduring Universe (The Rages Trilogy #3)

TOGETHER

A gargantuan AWARENESS slammed into the both of them.

Spearing through their bodies and minds, stilling everything.

Ahilya felt Cohesion extracted, consciousnesses tumbling into individual bodies.

Iravan saw the everpower disintegrate, and all the yakshas he’d absorbed pulled away from the falcon, their power bounding back into his body.

The last drop of everdust blossomed between the two of them, growing higher, and higher, and higher like a balloon encompassing them.

The creatures of the universe—those cosmic creatures the both of them had once been—keened in joy and exuberance, and darted everywhere within the balloon as if they were bees. They reflected everything, the planet, trees, clouds, stones, weather, a splinter of smile, a fury of grief, human faces, and yaksha shards. Cohesion had broken, and they had been released from it like everyone else. Now for the first time, they had found their form. Bound by everything, yet creatures free from everything too.

His hand found hers.

Her fingers tightened in his.

The balloon ruptured, and the buzzing of the cosmic creatures escaped into the universe beyond, but their sensation—their memory—remained, absorbed by a terrifying, ancient, overarching consciousness.

I AM, the universe whispered/blared/reflected.

Their bodies crushed together.

They wept.

Caught by each other, Iravan and Ahilya felt a cascade of overpowering, familiar emotion that they’d once named love, vibrating between them like a tangible, physical, terrifying energy.

They closed their eyes

and submitted

into nothing, and everything all at once.

Stillness shook them, overwhelming and peaceful.

The world filtered back like a song, and they floated on a river, entwined with each other, their eyes unseeing and remembering and full of stars.