Page 57 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

Mother, why do we call parts of the continent vestiges?

Because, smart girl, they’re all that’s left after Dama remade the world.

Diminishing returns.

I see it now.

The truth mingled with stardust and the roar of primordial combustion.

Tyr stands before me, gripping my arms, face in shadow even surrounded by all this god light.

Cyrne.

Pherin.

Aurelime.

Except he doesn’t stand.

Neither of us do.

There is no ground. No floor.

We’re in the space before.

Before time.

Every time she—I—remakes the world and starts the cycle anew, the plane, whichever one it happens to be, grows smaller.

“Do you see it now?” Tyr asks, gripping both my arms.

I don’t answer.

Because I don’t see it.

I relive it.

All of it in a moment.

A council of gods on a mountain hewn from pure crystal. Each seated in a golden throne, all familiar to my bones but not my eye.

“She must be stopped!” Varek says, though now he wears the skin of a bear as his face, the body of a man beneath it.

“She’s too powerful. She created a race of creatures who excel at magic beyond anything ever ? —”

“Beyond what you’ve managed to create, Lorien?”

It’s her. Me. Dama. Standing trial in front of?—

Her entire pantheon.

“Did you fail to recall, Lorien, that I am the Creator? I pulled this pantheon from the dust of the cosmos because I willed it. Because I desired camaraderie.”

The memory bends, changes, and suddenly I’m not remembering. I’m not watching.

I’m speaking.

“You’re here because I birthed you, and now you dare to say I’m too powerful? How pitiful. How weak and despicable.”

Another god begins to speak—The Withered King—only he’s wearing the face of a radiant star god.

“I’m not finished, Morvain.”

The god instantly falls silent.

I meet each of the god’s gazes. Lorien, Varek, the Withered King’s. Two at the end with mirrored faces, Steedlords ?

And at the other end of the dais?—

Tyrenoch. My heart swells under my ribs at that familiar face. Different, but the same. No white hair. No black-as-coal stare.

But he is mine. My bones know it.

I scan their faces…

I don’t see the Void King or the Shrouded King.

My gaze tracks back to the Steedlords…

That’s right. They are both.

“I made you. Imbued you with slices of my own divinity. And you dare to say I’m too powerful?” I scoff. “My children, the demons, are more grateful than my supposed compatriots, the gods I filled their skies with.”

“Your children are the problem, Dama.” Lorien says with a smirk. “They’ve accumulated too much knowledge of our ways. We must send them to a realm without native magic.”

“I forbid it. If my creations are bright enough to unlock the mysteries of magic, who are we?—”

Lorien slams his fist on the arm of his throne. “Gods! We are gods, Dama. And it is incumbent on us to see that no lower creature ascends to the Origin Plane, lest we lose cohesion.”

I stand, and the other gods rise as well. “If you think I’ll idly stand by while you forcibly relocate my children to a lesser plane?—”

“We know,” Varek sneers. “We can’t overpower you. But we can distract you.”

“Forever, if that’s what it takes,” Lorien says with an oily smile.

One of them, I can’t tell who, snaps their fingers and chains wrap around my wrists and body .

Chains forged from molten stars, strong enough to bind even me.

The floor gives way beneath me.

And I’m falling for what feels like lifetimes.

When I hit dirt, I bones crack.

Mine.

All but one of the god-kings stand above me, chanting, throwing dirt over me.

And the world goes dark.

Until…

I lounge on a chaise, feet resting in a lover’s hands. Head in another lover’s lap, while yet a third lover feeds me decadent morsels.

The first cycle.

A prayer rings in the back of my mind.

“Veydra, oh fertile goddess, bring us wild love and strong crops, and even stronger wine.”

It’s not the ring of memory.

That’s the adulation of my acolytes. It’s the sound of their prayers to me.

My favored love, Tyrenoch, with flowing hair and eyes so dark, enters the sacrament chamber.

He bows before me.

Someone is screaming.

“Amara!”

Tyr’s grip on my arms is brutal, searing.

“Stay here, Amara. Do not relive the cycles. You must stay here.”

Me.

It’s me. I’m screaming.

I suck in a great, gasping breath. “They—they did this to me. Buried me in the realm they sundered and forced my essence to relive an unending spiral. ”

Tyr nods. “Who?”

“The other gods. Gods I carved from oblivion and my own magic.”

He nods again, colors and wind and stars screaming past us.

“Why?” he asks.

Each variation, each incarnation a new verse in the same godsong.

It’s not what they said atop their thrones.

I wasn’t too powerful.

They weren’t afraid of my children rising and taking their place among the stars.

They wanted to rewrite the myth.

To make kings the dominant force. Gods, not a Goddess, despite being the force that creates worlds.

Life springs from our minds, our belief, our bodies.

They buried me, destroyed my plane, and forced my essence into a spiral shaped prison so I’d stay quiet while they reordered the cosmos.

Put themselves in charge and let everyone else forget…

A Goddess gave them everything.

A woman birthed them.

They scrubbed our names from the holy texts.

Tiamat.

Inanna.

Ashera.

Sinea.

Vella.

Lilith.

Danu.

Rewritten as shadows. As subordinates. As symbols—never selves .

“Why?” Tyr repeats.

The cosmos screams past us, but Tyr holds my arms tight, grounding me in his black gaze. “Why, Amara?”

My head tips back, and a voice that’s not entirely mine rips from my throat.

“I WAS THE ALTAR BEFORE THEY BUILT THE TEMPLE. THEY CALLED IT HOLY WHEN THEY STOLE THE SHAPE AND REMADE IT IN THEIR IMAGE. BUT I REMEMBER. I KNOW WHAT BURNED BEFORE THEM.”

“Why?” Tyr begs, tears limning his shadowed eyes.

“So no one would remember how powerful we truly are,” I say with Amara’s voice. My voice.

And I say it to you as well, reader.

They renamed me, caged me, and put me in a spiral prison so you’d forget your own power. But I’ve always been here. Waiting for you to remember what they tried to sanctify out of you.

They buried me in story. Called me a myth. Called me a monster.

Destroyer.

But I am the god they feared you might become.

“That’s right, my love.” He presses his forehead to mine. His next words are soft. Barely more than breath. “So, what will you do about it?”

My chest aches. Not with memory or emotion.

I’m beyond that.

It aches with renewal.

Rebirth.

The searing hot pain.

I always forget how much it hurts.

A ring of fire in my whole body.

It burns clean. True.

“Tyr,” I whisper. “You have to let me go. ”

“I won’t.”

“Please,” I beg. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

He shakes his head. “I will not let you go, my heart.”

“Tyr! It will burn through you. Through us both. I’m the only one made to withstand?—”

Light leaks from my chest, my eyes, blurring Tyr’s lovely face as my radiance flays away skin, muscle, and bone.

His gaze never leaves mine as I unmake him.