One

  “Where are my kids!?”

  Fiona’s voice tore through the chamber, raw with panic and fury. Her hand clenched the robe of a teenage boy, no older than sixteen, as the rest of the robed teens scrambled to open the sealed pillars. Their hoods were down now, revealing pale, terrified faces. No answers. No explanations. Only fear.

  The boy she gripped whimpered, trying to pry himself free, but Fiona wasn’t letting go.

  Fifteen Minutes Earlier

  Fiona had stood quietly at first, watching as each of the seven massive pillars silently opened, revealing shadowed interiors. The inside was dark, too dark. But no one else seemed concerned.

  The couple ahead of her in line, Jack and Asil, were guided to the first two pillars. Their robed attendants moved silently, gesturing with deliberate calm.

  Next came Mike, her eldest nephew. He was led to the third pillar. Then Veronica, Abby’s friend, went to the fourth. Abby followed, stepping into the fifth. And finally, Petros, her youngest, disappeared into the sixth. Each entered without protest.

  Fiona hesitated when her own guide gestured to the final, seventh pillar. Something felt wrong. The silence. The ritualistic manner. The eerie obedience of the robed figures.

  Still, she stepped forward, pausing at the threshold of the open pod. It was barely larger than a standing coffin. The confined space triggered something deep and visceral.

  She froze.

  “Nope. Nope. Nope.”

  Fiona backed out quickly, bumping into the robed figure behind her.

  “Ma’am,” came a muffled voice, cracking slightly. A teen boy. “You need to enter the pod to begin the beta.”

  “No,” she said sharply, wrenching herself free.

  The other robed figures, previously silent and statuesque, began to move. One by one, they pulled back their hoods, revealing more teenagers, barely old enough to drive. One, a red-haired girl, stepped forward and spoke softly.

  “Ma’am, the pods are perfectly safe. There's nothing to worry about.”

  Fiona’s gaze flicked back to the open pillar. Her breath caught. She shook her head, trembling. “If it’s safe, then let me see my kids. Open one.”

  The girl turned to another robed figure, the boy who had led Petros. He shrugged, uncertain, and stepped toward the pillar. He pressed along the surface, feeling for a seam.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, this time with greater effort. Still nothing.

  Panic swelled in Fiona’s chest as the other teens rushed to the pillars, trying each in turn. Their fingers searched desperately, but the surfaces had become seamless, smooth, utterly solid, as if no doors had ever existed.

  “Where are my kids!?” Fiona screamed, voice cracking.

  One of the teens began to cry. The others’ expressions twisted into dread as realization set in.

  TWO

  The old man, who once stood silently in the Demon God’s temple and watched Jack shatter the key, now floated in utter darkness. He had no body; only a consciousness suspended in the endless silence of the void.

  Purgatory.

  He had known this fate would come.

  He had chosen it.

  Better to be cast into oblivion than unleash the ruin that would have followed the Demon God’s rise. The sacrifice of the old gods of Aeothane was a small price to pay for millions spared. Still, even in this void, he managed a conceptual smile, if such things could exist without a face.

  At least he would be free of,

  “What the actual…”

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  A shrill voice echoed through the black.

  His nonexistent heart dropped.

  “I’m in hell,” he muttered.

  The little girl’s voice, maddening, mocking, eternal, rippled around him. The same voice that had tormented him for millennia as they reigned over Aerothane.

  “I warned you,” she snapped, already filled with venom.

  “There’s no point now, child,” he said wearily. “Our time is over. Aerothane must make way for the new gods. The old magic is gone. Flushed away. So are we.”

  “No, no, no, no, NO!” she screeched in the petulant child she always wore, an eternal child clinging to power.

  That earned another smile from him.

  She wasn’t getting her way.

  Then her voice changed, dropped an octave into something older, something ancient.

  “Child?” she growled. “I will have you know, you impudent little god, I am a primordial being. I watched civilizations rise and crumble for a million years before your immortal ass was conjured into existence.”

  He sighed. Loudly.

  “Don’t you dare sigh at me, you dried-up piece of rune-riddled parchment!” she exploded.

  But her next insult was swallowed by blinding white light.

  Sound returned first.

  A roar of voices, mechanical bellows, and shrieking engines.

  When the light faded, he was standing. Feet planted. Solid stone beneath him.

  No… not stone. Tile?

  He turned slowly.

  Humans rushed past him, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They wore strange clothes, carried glowing rectangular panels, and spoke into them or stared blankly as if mesmerized. Some of them had metal cords in their ears, talking to invisible companions. Others moved with purpose, pushing square carts or dragging odd rolling boxes behind them.

  Behind glass walls, massive metallic beasts screeched and hissed as they glided to a stop. More people exited from within them, not in agony, but chatting idly, riders in some strange, mechanical carriage.

  A new world. A world of noise. Of speed. Of tech.

  Earth.

  He realized it just as a sharp, delighted laugh burst beside him.

  The girl was there, face alight with wild glee, spinning slowly, her eyes wide with manic delight.

  “They’ve never seen anything like me,” she whispered with reverence.

  Then thunder cracked overhead.

  He looked up.

  Clouds swirled above towering buildings of glass and stone. But it wasn’t natural. The storm shimmered with something old.

  Aerothane’s magic.

  The old source.

  It had found a way through.

  The old man’s face turned grim. He braced himself against the wall, sensing what was to come.

  As magic washed over this new world, the balance shifted again.

  And the gods, both new and old, were far from done.

  THREE

  He sat in the corner of the café, half-finished coffee cooling beside his elbow, utterly unaware of the storm gathering beyond the rain-speckled windows.

  Fingers danced across the keys of his laptop, eyes fixed to the screen. He was deep in research, threading through data, cross-referencing anomalies, and chasing rumors that had no name. His world was confined to the glow of the monitor, to the pulse of obsession.

  He didn’t notice the sky darken.

  He didn’t notice the wind howling.

  Not until the yellow light broke through.

  It wasn’t lightning.

  It was something else.

  A wave of brilliance surged through the café, flooding the windows, swallowing the room. People screamed. Dishes shattered. Someone called for help.

  And then came the pain.

  It stabbed behind his eyes, drilled into his skull. White-hot. Searing. Blinding.

  He screamed.

  And then.

  Silence.

  The light was gone. The pain vanished. So did the café.

  He opened his eyes.

  A field. Endless. Grasses rolled over gentle hills, dotted with wildflowers that swayed in a wind he could not feel. The air was soft, impossibly clean. The sky was clear, no sun, no clouds, just light.

  He gasped.

  Only then did he realize he had stopped breathing.

  He looked down. His clothing had changed; he now wore simple white linen robes, identical to those worn by the others standing dazed and scattered across the field.

  Some were forming a line.

  Without questioning, he joined them.

  Time moved strangely. The line inched forward, though it stretched beyond sight. When his turn came, he found himself alone, standing before a heavy oak table with two ornate chairs carved from the same dark wood.

  The setting hadn’t changed; it was still the field, but it also felt enclosed, intimate, like a room without walls.

  He sat.

  Across from him, a man in flowing brown robes lowered his hood. Long hair, braided like roots, cascaded over his shoulders. A beard of the same texture framed a face that was neither young nor old, timeless in its calm. His eyes, dark and endless, studied the book before him.

  He was looking at a book open before him.

  Still looking down at the book, the robed figure began to speak, then hesitated; the words caught in his throat.

  “Hello, Ma…”

  But the man smiled and looked up.

  “Hello, Maximus Oddo. Welcome to Aerothane.”