Rohzlav watches Chyrnog from the shadows, as the one hungers, the other delights in the act of starvation.
—The Volokhtaznikon
“You said she would be easily swayed,” he hissed at … himself? Wait, no, Chyrnog hissed at him. Malachiasz was separate, there were broken parts of him left. Small pieces.
“She can hear my songs. The songs of my kin. She is darkness and divinity and she can raze this world to the ground! Stubborn girl. Why doesn’t she listen?”
Chyrnog, ever confident, ever arrogant in his power, had been the one to speak to her. Appealing to her emotions, appealing to Malachiasz’s vulnerability. He had failed.
Her darkness, thrilling as it was, had never turned to destruction. If it had, Tranavia would have been ashes a year ago. Serefin would be dead, Malachiasz, too. The sanctuary where she had been betrayed would be dust. She wouldn’t be convinced.
Chyrnog didn’t care.
Malachiasz retreated. He had finally found a battle that was too much for him. There was only one path for him to take. More chaos. More pain. It was all he knew.
He pressed out. There was a pulling at his chest and he recognized the pieces of his soul that he had thrown away. He needed them back. But then Chyrnog would have them, and what would he have left? Nothing and nothing and nothing.
“No,” Chyrnog snapped. “They’re here.”
On an island in a forest in a tree and Malachiasz couldn’t remember how the rest went but before them was a small temple. Cut from bone. The bones of a god carved into doors and windows and towers. He saw Nadya turn, her face going pale. She touched Serefin’s arm and he followed her gaze.
The end was destruction no matter how it went.
“Go inside,” Nadya said. “Take whatever you find.”
He shot her a dubious look, blanching when he saw the relic in her hands. He turned to Parijahan.
“She stays,” Nadya said. “I need whatever it is she does that keeps his chaos at bay.”
Parijahan took a deep, shaky breath. Sighing, Serefin steeled himself and walked into the temple.
And right into a nightmare.
He should have expected it, honestly. Where else would his brother’s soul be comfortably hiding? The floor was strangely squishy under his boots, like he was standing in the mouth of a great beast. Glowing candles, held up by grotesque hands on the walls, cast a sickly light on blood trickling down from the ceiling.
He pressed past it. Past the screams, full-throated and mad, past the eyes that opened on the stone walls, watching him silently as he walked. He stepped over a body and did not investigate it further. Who would come to this place of dread horror?
Well, him, he supposed.
The dim hallway broke into a wide sanctuary, primal and jagged, and Serefin had the feeling of having been here before. A blade poised over his heart, carving out his chest. His blood splashed across the stone altar.
It was all the same. A space folded over and over again in time.
The small stone church, the clearing of horrifying statues, and a thousand other spaces where people had been sacrificed to the old gods. Where blood had spilt for the sake of divinity. No different from how it was spilt for magic. It was the same. They were the same.
There was a tree carved on the stone altar, blood spattered against it. A box rested in the pool of blood, and when Serefin opened it, the ground shook. The gods turned their eyes on him all at once and a shiver cracked down his spine.
He found a single black feather, blood staining the tip, and laughed.
Nadya didn’t understand Parijahan’s magic, but every blow he tried to land, every claw grasping for her flesh, missed. She didn’t want to take the next step, better to fight him forever.
Distantly, she knew Serefin had returned, a box in his hands, and it was time. There was only one way to do this. Pelageya had told her that it would hurt him, and he must be separate from Chyrnog for it to cling to him. And he had to want it.
She caught Malachiasz’s hand, letting his claws dig into her palm. She pulled him closer. She had expected that when Chyrnog finally won, he would take the chaos god, the monster. But instead, he had taken the boy. Fitting, she supposed, as all Malachiasz’s atrocities were done when he looked his most harmless.
“Dozleyena, Chyrnog,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s time we talked, you and I.”
A slow smile stretched over Malachiasz’s face, but it wasn’t his. It never reached those haunted, murky eyes.
“Are you ready, then, for oblivion?”
Nadya had known oblivion. She had walked amongst the gods. She had died and been reborn. There was nothing this being could do to her that had not already been done. There was nothing she had not already lost.
“Your power grows with each passing moment, but it’s not enough, is it? There are so many gods who would fight you. Willful, cruel beings who still recognize when one means true harm. You want me because I am all you are not. You are nothing but a sad glimmer of darkness in eternity.”
“I am everything,” Chyrnog snapped.
“Are you? You were locked away once, you can be locked away again.” Nadya grinned.
She jerked him closer, slamming her hand against Malachiasz’s forehead and diving deep. If only she had known, when she had carved into his palm, what she would be creating. A way to know what was him, what wasn’t, a way to yank hard at the void Chyrnog clung to and separate it from Malachiasz.
She took the relic and stabbed it into Malachiasz’s chest.
“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered in his ear at his little gasp of surprise. “I had to.” She twisted the blade a little farther, severing Chyrnog’s hold as much as she could.
Malachiasz fell to his knees. Nadya knelt with him, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Serefin?” she called, beseeching.
She felt his hand on her shoulder. He fumbled with the box, opening it, revealing a single black feather. She let out a helpless laugh.
“Always a Vulture at heart,” she whispered. She took the feather and pressed it past his lips, and pulled the blade from his chest, holding her palm over the wound as it bled.
Another hand landed over hers. Brown skin and careful, long fingers. He shouldn’t be here. Rashid furrowed his brow, flowers blooming from his fingertips.
“No, he has to die,” she said. “He has to die for it to work.”
“Nadya?” Malachiasz’s voice, soft and weak.
“Malachiasz.” She took his face between her hands. “Twice death-touched boy, this will work. Please trust me.”
Serefin made a strange sound from behind them. Nadya glanced over her shoulder. There was an odd red light emanating from within the temple. Her vision split jarringly. The temple was a clearing—that horrible clearing—the altar in the center soaked with blood. Malachiasz let out a long, pained breath through his teeth and struggled to rise.
“No, no, no,” she said, trying to keep him in place. Not the clearing. Not the place that had stripped him of his humanity and showed him as he truly was. Keep him here, keep him safe, set him free. “You’ll die for good.”
He pushed past her hand on his chest, kissing her. His lips were soft against hers, leaving an ache that nestled beneath her ribs.
“Maybe it’s time for that,” he whispered.
“What? No.” She tried to cling to him, but trembling and bleeding, he stood and moved away from her. He gently pressed his lips against Rashid’s temple. He rested his forehead against Serefin’s and gave a sad smile.
He’s saying goodbye, Nadya thought, horrified.
He cupped Parijahan’s cheek in his hand. She knocked it off, shaking her head, saying something, but Nadya couldn’t hear past the rushing in her ears. Malachiasz stepped into the temple.
“No,” Nadya breathed, getting to her feet. “This is not the time to be a hero.”
Serefin closed his eye. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.” And with a muttered curse, he followed.
It was the clearing. It was that clearing and those statues and every dead and living god and they would all be unraveled. This would kill them.
Parijahan glanced over her shoulder at Nadya and Rashid, and without another word, she went, too.
Nadya didn’t let herself think about how she would be destroyed by this. She ran into the temple and let herself be devoured.