Countless bells passed as they recounted the paths that had led them here, piecing together fractured stories like fragments of shattered glass.

  They filled each other in on every hard-fought battle, every half-whispered scheme, every failure, and every loss that had scarred them since they had last stood as one. Their voices rose and fell in the flickering torchlight, weaving a tapestry of wounds and victories. And with each new revelation, the silence in the gaps grew heavier, as though even the air knew there were words unspoken, secrets left to rot beneath the surface.

  No, Daine thought, that wasn't quite it.

  Here, time felt like an open wound, raw and pulsing, each moment torn free from the one before it. The air itself held a weight, as if the hours had stacked upon each other, forgotten and stagnant, without ever moving forward.

  The shadows in the Dark God’s realm didn’t merely bend—they shivered, folding in on themselves with a restless hunger, pooling in corners where they seemed to thicken into something more like ink than darkness. And every breath she took tasted faintly of decay, of something worn and cast aside.

  Here, time was not a steady river but a torrent, rushing and slowing, caught in an unseen rhythm she could never quite predict. Seconds stretched and then snapped back, like an erratic heartbeat or the clench and release of some ancient, unknowable creature.

  There was no clear past, no obvious future—just an endless now, each moment bending in upon itself. For reasons she could not name, she sensed that time here was a predator, lurking at the edge of awareness, watching her with unblinking eyes.

  It was more than mere moments stretching or distorting—she was familiar enough with the ebb and flow of time when invoking the Goddess’s power, but this? This was far from any divine elegance she’d known. Time in this realm had no clean edges, no neat ends or beginnings.

  It slipped, looped, and even repeated, as if the world beyond these cold walls were caught in an unseen vortex, spiraling endlessly upon itself. Each word they exchanged, each glance passed between them, felt layered with the strange weight of deja vu, as if they had spoken, glanced, and gestured not just once but a thousand times before, only for it all to fold back and unfurl again.

  To Daine, it felt as though they were prisoners not only of this Keep but of the very fabric of time itself—a trap without a single door. Voices bounced off the stone passages, but they carried a strange hollowness, like memories dredged from some faraway place, and her own words felt unfamiliar, as if echoing not just in space but in time. Every movement, every breath, was haunted by the eerie sensation that it had all happened countless times, that they were walking in circles through moments that refused to end.

  The sense of déjà vu was unnerving, and it clung to her thoughts like cobwebs.

  Time is a river, the Goddess spoke in Daine’s mind, her voice like distant chimes carried on the wind. However, whether this was the echo of an old conversation or a new sending, Daine could not tell. And that was unnerving. You can never truly know at which point you enter.

  Daine frowned; the Goddess’s cryptic words—whether freshly spoken or echoing from some forgotten place in her mind—offered her no comfort. Rivers, she thought, did not capture time as she knew it. A river had grace, a natural path from beginning to end, winding yet inevitable, flowing ever onward with some sense of purpose.

  But her life had never been a river; it had been more akin to a jagged road blasted through unyielding stone, unchanging, harsh, and wholly devoid of mercy. Time for her had always been a brutal arrow, shot straight and unbending, dragging her from one merciless conflict to the next, toward the inevitable wear of decay and age.

  The flight of that arrow had torn her from the na?ve idealism of youth, from the small certainties she had once held about the world. It had carried her, instead, into the heart of blood and steel, a relentless journey where she’d learned not to expect tranquillity.

  There were no gentle currents, no drifting rest stops. Time didn’t allow for that. It was unforgiving, a single, narrow course pointed forward, never back, forcing her down paths she had no power to alter.

  Even before Eliud had explained his non-appearance at Swinford, Daine’s faith in the Goddess’s wisdom had been wavering. Now? Well, she was beginning to wonder whether her patron had her best interests at heart.

  "Are you alright?" Eliud’s voice broke through her musings.

  Daine blinked, her eyes refocusing. Tears—she hadn’t even noticed them—had gathered at the corners of her vision. Eliud had moved closer, his face uncharacteristically soft with concern as he stood a little further down the stone passageway, away from the others.

  She forced a smile, surprised by the warmth that seeing him again brought her. "Not really, no. You?"

  Eliud’s purple eyes flashed with something almost like amusement. "Oddly enough, yes. You must remember, for the last few years, my life has consisted of isolation in a cottage with a giant lapdog and a sarcastic cat for company. I’m finding all this rather invigorating."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  That made Daine laugh—truly laugh—for the first time in what felt like years. The sound startled her, as though her body had forgotten how to produce such joy. "An entire Sky Keep built to imprison little old you, eh? Who knew Logan Twilight had it in him?"

  "Yes," Eliud replied, his voice dropping to a more serious note, "I’ll need to find a way to thank him. Something appropriately malevolent. Potentially involving radishes." He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a near whisper, meant only for Daine's ears. "She died, you know."

  Daine’s brows furrowed in confusion. "Who?"

  "Kirstin. She died escaping the cage. I thought I could easily overwhelm a feedback loop. I was wrong."

  The admission hit like a dull blow. Daine's gaze flicked toward Kirstin, who sat across the room, stroking Savage as though nothing were amiss. The girl had spoken glowingly of her new Skills and her unexpected Class Evolution, but there had been something off in the way she’d glossed over the details of how it had all come to pass. That haze now made sense.

  "Do you have some new abilities we need to talk about?" Daine asked, her voice laced with forced brightness to mask the unease creeping into her chest. "If you've become a Lich since we last spoke, it would have been polite to lead with that. I have a reputation to uphold, after all!"

  "The Goddess offered to resurrect her," Eliud said, not rising to her humour. "But I had to agree to a favour in return."

  "And that favour was leaving Swinford to its fate?" Daine’s tone was harsher than she intended, but the sting of betrayal still lingered from the City's fall.

  Eliud shrugged with a casualness that she knew belied the pain he was feeling. "I’ve always told you not to trust any of the Pantheon."

  Daine thought back to Old Gant, recalling his words spoken in a rumble by the fire, his voice thick with too many ales. “You should never trust a god,” he’d said, eyes narrowing as the flames danced over his face. “They’ve got their games, and they don’t give a damn for the pieces.”

  She’d laughed then, chalked it up to the old man’s bitterness, a cynicism borne of too many hard years on the road.

  But now, with everything she’d seen, all she’d endured, she was no longer laughing.

  The gods played with mortals as they pleased, their hands ever hidden, shifting lives as though they were dust scattered on the wind. She doubted the resurrected Gallant Stonehand—once flesh, now puppet of their whims—was laughing, either.

  "I only mention it," Eliud continued, his tone lightening again, "because I’m not sure how well I’ve helped her deal with it."

  Daine followed his gaze to where Kirstin sat, smiling as Genoes peppered her with questions, his young mind hungry for every scrap of knowledge. She turned back to Eliud. “So, you’ve kept her endlessly occupied, driven her to the brink of madness, and somehow managed to avoid any meaningful conversation on the matter?”

  Eliud’s grin was a touch sheepish. “You know me far too well.” He tilted his head in a rare moment of genuine warmth. “It’s good to have you back, my Lady Darkhelm.”

  The sincerity in his words made Daine pause. Eliud had always been a puzzle to her, his glib wit masking a depth of feeling she rarely got to see.

  But here, now, something in him had shifted. He looked more alive than she had ever seen him. It was as if the constant peril and uncertainty had unlocked something in him, a vitality that lay dormant in the years of isolation. She held his gaze a moment longer than she meant to, and when she finally looked away, her chest felt tight.

  "And Genoes?" she asked, eager to shift the conversation. "What do you think about what he said?"

  Eliud’s face darkened slightly as he considered the boy. "That he seems to have access to almost limitless Skills? I don’t know what to make of it. I’ve never encountered anything like it before, and as you know, I’m quite the well-travelled genius."

  "Modesty aside…"

  "What he describes is theoretically possible," Eliud said, his tone shifting into the serious, scholarly mode Daine had always loved. In another life, she thought, he would have made an extraordinary Professor. "Think of it this way: every person’s available Skills are tied to their Class. Someone without a Class should have access to none. Or to all. Certainly one of the two."

  "I’m glad your recent ordeals haven’t dulled your ability to be cryptic."

  Eliud’s eyes twinkled with mischief. "If being embalmed and hurled into Mount J'Zark didn't rob me of my ability to amuse and amaze, nothing will. Although," his expression grew thoughtful, "I admit, the possibility of Genoes outstripping me in terms of raw power is unsettling."

  Daine’s smile faltered. "You truly believe he has that kind of potential?"

  "He hasn’t chosen a Class," Eliud said. "Which means, by every rule and precedent we understand, he should be incapable of accessing any Skills at all. Imagine it this way: you were born a Farmer. Had our…mutual friend not swept you away into a life of blades and blood, the Skills available to you would have been bound by that starting point. Daine Orban, Farmer, is not Lady Darkhelm, Knight of the Road—” he caught her eye with a mischievous glint, “No, pardon me. She’s not a Templar Ascendant. Daine the Farmer could have trained endlessly with a sword, but she would never unlock the powers bound to the Darkhelm's Templar path. It’s one of the essential truths of the realm. One we hold as irrefutable."

  "And yet," he added, his tone shifting, "here we are, faced with one who challenges that fundamental law.”

  “What does that mean for Genoes?"

  "I do not know. He should not, in truth, exist. And yet, here he is, manipulating mana in ways even I cannot begin to explain. He mirrors Skills—ones he has not even formally acquired—using only his intuition. Something - do not ask me what, or I may lose my composure - is pressuring him to define what he does into a named Skill, but he seems to have no difficulty in resisting that compulsion. Genoes opened the portal that summoned us here, of that I have no doubt. I just have no idea how he was able to do it."

  Daine glanced at Genoes, who was giggling at some joke Donal had made, utterly oblivious to the weight of the conversation surrounding him. A child, innocent and untouched by the dark realities of the world—yet with the power to bend reality itself.

  "You’re saying that boy, without a Class, without any training, summoned us all here?"

  "No," Eliud said, his tone grave. "What I’m saying is, as far as I understand it, Genoes has the potential to do just about anything he wants."

  Daine felt a coldness settle over her at his words. The power Genoes wielded, unchecked and undefined, was more dangerous than anything she had ever encountered.

  And somewhere in the back of her mind, the Goddess’s laughter echoed, soft and unsettling.