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“No. Not I. I barely lift a finger. I let them kill each other. Or my children—those who truly act in my image—do it in worship, carrying out my will. Whoever orchestrates it is of no interest to me. I just don’t stop it.”

The person Falizha mentioned in her journals, the one they took orders from, didn’t sound like Rem because …

“The Council follows orders from someone higher up. Someone who answers directly to you.”

“Someone with more intelligence than that fat oaf on his stolen throne. One of my first children. Ruthless and cunning, he has made me proud.”

“But you’re killing legacies. You’re hurting people. Don’t you care for the children of your brothers and sister?”

Rem’s light flared, and I backed against the door, my bones aching.

The blacks of his eyes darkened as his anger rose.

“Did Mayra care for me when she hid her children below her seas? Did Erabas care for my children when he chose his favourites and protected them instead? Does Ouras care for my children while he keeps his docile—never to engage with others, never to join my own children in making the world a more structured place? I think not. We care for our own, and the best future for my children is one where they rule.”

“They aren’t ruling, they’re massacring.”

“Semantics, dear child. Now, I think I will take that magic from you after all. I don’t like the look in your eye. Like you think you can do something about it.”

The magic rebelled, spiralling and thrashing in my chest, burrowing itself down deep.

Rem’s glow intensified as he reached for me.

His magic pulled at mine, feeling like it had when the Aspis tried to take it from me, though it wasn’t a match.

Rem’s face transformed into one of fury.

Black swallowed the gold in his eyes until I stared into the ends of the night skies.

Inhuman. Deadly. His anger leaked into the surrounding glow, pulsing.

He couldn’t take the magic. He was struggling.

My theories were right—the magic stolen from the gods had made them weaker.

I am stronger than the god of Day.

I buried my magic, imagining my box inside and slamming the lid closed.

“It won’t go to you,” I said.

“Give it to me!” The room shook with his anger.

I clapped my hands over my ears. Warm liquid pooled around my fingers, and I wondered if my ears were bleeding. I squinted against his light, bending over as I suffocated from the pain.

Until a shadow pulsed across the room.

Behind Rem, a swirling darkness loomed, pacing back and forth, agitated, much like the glowing god before me.

The shadow monster was here. Taller than Rem, it soaked up the light in the room, swallowing everything that existed past the golden god.

I watched it prowl silently, its movements filled with anger.

Rem caught my staring, and he, too, peered over his shoulder. “What are you looking at?” he asked.

I shook. “You can’t see it.”

If Rem couldn’t see the shadow, it couldn’t be a servant of Erabas or the missing god himself. What was this monster following me? Why could no one sense it, not even a god?

The shadow rose tall in the chamber, consuming Rem’s light, towering over him. The humming from Rem’s magic and the whooshing sound coming from the shadow behind him forced me to shout to be heard. “Make it stop!” I grabbed my ears. “End this!”

Rem pulled back, nearing the shadow that paced around him as claws grew from the shadow’s hands.

“End? There is no end to hate and cruelty. You’ll see.

Watch how everyone looks at you, Ikhor. Watch how they treat you.

You’ll burn the world in the end, just like the rest. And I won’t have to even ask you to do it. ”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as my legs trembled violently, nearly buckling beneath me. For the first time since leaving the Endless Forest, I almost wished I hadn’t been found. Death would be so much better.

“You’re a monster,” I cried.

“Says the monster,” he purred. “Erabas would be put out to know what happened to his world when he was defeated.”

Defeated?

Erabas was gone. So then, how did I know the language of Night? Why was I haunted by shadows?

“Am I a child of night?” I asked, and the shadow went still, its faceless head swirling in my direction. The room grew darker.

“No. It makes me wonder how you got loose. How did you escape your little island? No one has since the conflict between the gods.”

I didn’t have time to register what Rem said because that was the moment the shadow monster ran in my direction. I screamed as it flew past Rem, colliding with me.

“What are you doing?” Rem’s voice was small, the sight of him dimming.

The monster hadn’t grabbed me like I had dreamt before. It didn’t crowd me, choke me, or pin me down—it ran into me, absorbing me, or I absorbed it.

Inch by inch, that darkness disappeared, sinking into my skin. It reached into my body, my mind, my soul, and it took over. Then I finally realized why no one else saw it or sensed the monster when it was close.

“I know what it is.” I had repressed it, denied it, and it grew into a monstrous thing.

“What?!” Rem screamed, “What is it.”

The Oracle had warned me, had given me the answers. “You were brought here by chaos and darkness.”

I was brought here by the magic, the shadow monster, the?—

I looked into Rem’s menacing black eyes. “It’s the Ikhor.”

Blackness clouded my vision, and I lost sight of Rem.

The shadow monster hadn’t been following me. It had been within me, trying to get loose, trying to gain control. This whole time, I had been sensing the evil buried within me, manifesting it outside my body as if being haunted.

The shadow stopped struggling as the last of its essence latched onto me. Tiny wisps danced around my vision until the Ikhor fully consumed me.

Rem stared at me, his black eyes matching the monster crawling under my skin.

I looked out through eyes that no longer belonged to me.

“It has taken over,” Rem whispered in fear before disappearing, taking the light with him and casting me into darkness.