He floated aimlessly in a sea of darkness, unchained by any physical restraints. Yet somehow, his limbs were paralyzed and he could not move. He struggled against invisible, immaterial bonds, until its futility dawned on him and he sagged back into them.

What was going on?

What happened?

Who was he?

Lukas.

That was his name, wasn’t it? Yes. Lukas.

As everything slowly came back to him, his mind felt clearer than ever before. The cracks in his mindscape, that deafening discordant hum, it was all little more than a memory. He remembered the terrible heat that incinerated him—the pain had been horrible. But then, something happened. Something changed him from within, tearing at his psyche so badly that he’d nearly lost himself. It was like he had—

Like he had evolved in some way.

A loud, static buzz cracked around him like a whip, and suddenly, Lukas found himself lying on a cold, hard floor. Except for his head. That was lying on something soft and…fleshy?

“Good,” he heard a voice speak. A feminine voice. “Very good.”

Inanna?

He easily recognized her all-too-familiar voice, but it sounded…different. The Inanna he knew oozed strength, and her words reverberated like a commandment from the heavens. Even in his mindscape, or in that final illusion of hers, it was booming. This couldn’t possibly be her, could it?

“Do not overexert yourself, mortal.”

…It was definitely Inanna. Why did she sound so normal?

Lukas squirmed in place, trying to get a feel for his body. It felt heavy and dense, like someone had replaced his bones with steel and flesh with leather. It was as if an invisible mountain pressed down on him from above. He tried to speak, but his lips did not so much as twitch. Even the most strenuous attempts produced little more than weak, incomprehensible grunts.

“Excellent,” the voice rasped. “I always knew you possessed fortitude. Try opening your eyes.”

His eyelids, like the rest of him, were too heavy to move. He tried opening them. And failed. And then he tried again, only to end up with the same results.

After what felt like a small eternity, he managed to wrench them open. His eyes felt coarse, like they were swimming in sand, and they squinted from the sudden brightness that overtook his vision. And it hurt.

“Slowly, if it pains you. Take your time.”

First, Inanna’s voice was soft, and now she cared for his well-being? This was a dream. It had to be.

Someone chuckled in the background.

No, not someone. Her. Inanna.

Lukas tried once more, and this time, his eyes opened without discomfort. The wooly mist around his vision faded, and the world came into sharp focus. It was only then that he realized that something—or someone—was holding his head in place. On their lap.

The Goddess of Desire. The Akkadian Queen of An and Ki. And she was holding him, his head in her lap, her hand running gently through his hair, like a mother with her son or two loved ones sharing a private moment.

“Ah,” Inanna whispered, looking down at him, a soft smile on her face. “Dawn, at last.”

“Am I dying?” Lukas’s words came out less humanlike and more like a frog’s croak. At least his body was no longer in pain. “Because if so, then there are certainly worse ways to go than in your lap.”

Inanna stared at him for a moment, before letting out a little tinkling laugh, one filled with a puzzling melancholy. “It is a sad world that finds your attempts at humor passable.”

“I’ll have you know—” He broke out into wet, scratchy coughs. And god, did it hurt. “Where I’m from, people found me hilarious.”

“Perhaps you were too simpleminded to realize they were laughing at you, rather than with you,” she quipped back.

“Well, I got you to laugh, didn’t I?”

The corners of Inanna’s lips twitched upward. “That you did, mortal. That, you did.” And then…

Nothing.

They sat in an unbroken, amicable silence. Lukas could not tell how much time was passing.

“So,” he finally asked, “am I really dying?”

“I have told you this before. You being dead is counterproductive to my desires.”

“Huh… That’s good to know. I guess it all worked out.”

Inanna said nothing.

It was then that the absurdity of his current situation made itself known to him.

Lukas took a moment to look at Inanna. Really look at her. All he could think of was how…odd she seemed. The Inanna he was familiar with had been preternaturally strong, healthy, and confident. Her angelic face was more radiant than the sun, and her figure exuded a sensuality that was impossible to describe with mere words, far more comparable to nature than it was to man.

But this Inanna was far from it. She was as thin as a stick, and her hair was mussed into an unkempt wreck. Her face was twisted with pain, and her eyes were sunken, a strange uncertainty swimming in her gaze as it bored down into him.

He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. It—it had to be a dream. It just had to. There was no way this could be anything else.

Unless…

“What happened back there? I’m—I’m alive, right?” he asked.

“Yes, but only just.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Your ability to understate the problem is as powerful as always,” Inanna said, her lips twisting into a frown so bitter he could nearly taste it on his tongue. “The spell I performed worked, but it did not yield the results I expected. It traversed across the world and reached into every realm in existence to find a link to my sister’s domain.”

An eerie, foreboding feeling clutched at Lukas’s insides. Somehow, he just knew that he wasn’t going to like the next few words coming out of her mouth.

“It found nothing.”

His stomach plummeted. “What?” he whispered, shocked.

“I realized partway through the scrying ritual that nothing was being detected. So I altered it mid-course. I not only searched for Irkalla, my sister’s home, but for everything else. Ereshkigal. An. My throne room. My relics. The faith I held in my ancient temples. I searched for every deity of my pantheon, using myself as an anchor.” Inanna laughed aloud, but there was no humor in it. “I found nothing.”

Lukas gazed up at her, horrified. “You couldn’t find any sign of your home at all?”

Inanna slowly nodded. “It is as if the entire realm of Ki, the thrones of An, the Underworld of Irkalla, are all just gone. Vanished. My followers, my betrayers, my Truths, my sister…none of them exist.”

“But the spell faltered midway, right?” he asked desperately. “I couldn’t keep it going all the way. Maybe you’d have found something if it finished. If—if we go back and try it again, then—”

Lukas’s words died in his throat as he took in her expression. Never before had he seen her so lost. So helpless. It was almost as if she had just…given up.

And suddenly, he decided he hated seeing her like this.

He absolutely abhorred it.

“The spell did not fail, my dear mortal.” She gently ran her dainty fingers through his raven-colored locks. “No single spell can span the entire universe in a single attempt. I cast the spell thousands of times, all at once, in the blind hopes of finding anything to connect me to the life I know I have once lived. In doing so, I used up all the energy you gained from the anomaly’s core.”

“…So where does that leave us?” Lukas finally asked, not knowing what else to say.

The goddess looked crestfallen. “I do not know. For the first time in aeons, I simply do not know. As the laws for lostbelts do not align with that of the Origin, it is possible that Akkadia and Sumer have fallen prey to time. Or worse, the Dirge has swallowed them whole. Even so, I find it hard to believe it can be so cleanly eradicated. There would be remnants. Fallen gods. Truths embedded into the Origin itself. Something.”

Lukas bit his tongue. But there wasn’t. Was there?

“Nothing,” Inanna sighed, answering his unasked question.

“Still, there has to be an explanation,” he pressed, wholeheartedly believing his own words. After all, Inanna always had the answer. And if she didn’t, then she would eventually find it. Always. “Maybe this is a different universe or something.”

“Your bards feed you surreal stories.” Inanna chuckled. “There is but one universe. The Bedrock of Creation. The Cosmic Demiurge. Remember, you yourself know but a small piece of my story, though your knowledge is distorted, no doubt due to the overactive imagination of your historians.”

He tried to get up and argue the point, but her arms, frail as they seemed, held him down tightly.

Helplessly, he just stared back at her.

“The way I understand it, one of two things has happened,” she continued. “The first is that this life, the pendant, your planet, you, and everything else I have experienced in this form is a great lie. An illusion crafted by the Seven Gates to keep me trapped within for eternity, and I am only discovering it now.”

Lukas gulped nervously. “And the other?”

“That everything I’ve experienced here, with you, is real. It all exists. Someone has gone to extreme lengths to erase the Akkadian pantheon, and everything associated with it, out of time itself.”

He stared at her, flabbergasted by a conspiracy so bizarre that it made his own situation of forced homelessness feel tame in comparison.

“But I have lost my chance at finding the truth. My only solace, as much as it pains me to admit it, is you.”

“Inanna, you’re scaring me,” Lukas said quietly. Surely she did not mean what he thought she did. Right?

“I—” The goddess looked like she was trying to pronounce a word she had never spoken before. “I am sorry. I failed. I should have realized it and shut it down. But I—in my desperation for freedom, I lost control. I knew what would happen if that memory was unleashed. I knew what would happen if I allowed it to run rampant. But I ignored it. In my arrogance of my divinity, I—”

Broken exclamations slipped past her lips.

“I could have alleviated you. I should have alleviated you. It would have been temporary, but you would at least have a chance. I would have a chance. But I did not. I was so…hasty. One would think waiting inside a relic for aeons would have taught me patience.” She caressed his cheek. “But no. I was reckless and sloppy. So lost was I in the dreams of finding what I wanted, that I carelessly ignored what I had. Ereshkigal was right. I won the World, but lost my sister. Perhaps that is why she betrayed me.”

“Inanna—”

“But you…” Inanna gazed down at him proudly. “You did not. You, a mortal, kept your word, even at the cost of your own sacrifice. Your omphalos tried to protect you, but your mind perished in the assault.”

And there she went again, saying all sorts of confusing things. “But you saved me, right?” he asked.

“Must you always make me repeat myself?” She sighed fondly. “I saved you for my own selfish pursuits. Would you like to know the circumstances?”

Lukas wordlessly nodded.

“Your soul was shattered. Your brain…suffered tremendous damage.”

“Oh. I…I see.” Lukas didn’t like it, but he had to accept it. “Prophylaxis only heals physical damages.” He’d kept his word to the fullest of his ability and let the chips fall as they may. And now, it was time to face the consequences.

“One of its many shortcomings,” she said. “You and the crypt were connected at a spiritual level. The backlash from the memory destroyed the crypt’s consciousness, as well as yours.”

“That sounds an awful lot like being dead, if you ask me.”

“You hear, but you do not listen,” Inanna chided. “You are a soul. You have a body.”

“Then…?”

“The scrying spell we performed? That was a little over a month ago.”

“A month?!” Lukas exclaimed. Every time Inanna spoke, he felt like he was being doused with ice-cold water.

“Indeed. The terramancer and his compatriots have been keeping you hidden in their kingdom.”

Kingdom? Llaisy Kingdom? Haviskali, if he recalled correctly. Tanya and the others had taken him to Haviskali. Out of the desert. And his body had been there for an entire month? It was all so—so—

Damn.

“I used whatever leftover power I possessed to alleviate your mind. The damage is now undone. Completely. I believed it would provide an incentive for your omphalos to aid you. So I waited. And waited. And waited.” She stared at him with glassy eyes. “The help never came.”

Lukas eyed her. “So it gave up on me?”

Surprisingly, Inanna shook her head. “Do you know what an omphalos believes in?”

“Annoying screens and prompts?”

Her lips twitched. “It believes in calculation. Logic. Mathematics. To it, the lifespan of a mortal is nothing more than a blink of an eye. It realized the harsh truth of what has happened, and since then, it has been endlessly trying out spiritual combinations to create a faithful approximation of yourself.”

“It’s been trying to create my clone?”

Truthfully, he’d had his fill of strange beings made to look like him.

“A puppet. A spiritual reflection, minus the annoying attribute called rationality.” Her eyes became distant. “I cannot find fault in its actions. Creating a soul is one thing. Bringing it back is another. The former requires anomalous energy. The latter, divinity. So…I did what was required.”

Inanna’s body turned slightly translucent for a second.

No.

“I trusted you, a mortal, once, and you came through.” She let out a pained chuckle. “I must now put my trust in you a second time.”

“Inanna,” Lukas breathed, his heartbeat picking up in its tempo, “what did you do?”

“I used my Presence to bind your shattered soul. To”—her voice cracked—“to manifest your mind once more and awaken your consciousness. Now, I have nothing left. No power. No faith. No Presence. And, unless you find a way to make it otherwise, no existence.”

He didn’t care how much the action hurt him. He pulled himself out of her lap, grabbed her by the arms, and shook her. Relentlessly.

“What the fuck were you thinking?!”

Inanna, to her credit, remained unfazed. “Without power, I could not manifest elsewhere. I would be stuck in a dark corner of your sedentary form. The omphalos would not care for my existence. The best option, my only option, was to awaken you.”

“But—but you—don’t you realize what this means? You’ll—you’ll be—”

And for the first time, the unassailable wall that was her facade cracked. Her lips trembled. She was afraid. He knew it. She knew it. And she knew that he knew it. “I had enough energy for this one final conversation. Now that it is over, I will fade.”

“You mean, you’ll—you’ll—”

“It is the nature of the universe that things remain. Nothing ever disappears completely. The very sound of the first Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness. The universe remembers. Now, I have become a part of you. The matrix for your very soul. My divinity has become the bedrock for your existence.”

“What does that mean?” Lukas asked worriedly.

“Will your questions never cease?”

“No.”

A patient smile floated on her face. “What you are now, I do not know. You were always a miracle to begin with. An anomaly with a mortal mind. And now, you are yet another. A mortal mind born of divinity that bears an omphalos within. How this plays out will be most entertaining to watch. It is rather unfortunate I will not be there to witness it.”

“That won’t happen,” Lukas growled.

“If nothing else,” Inanna replied. There was a rush about her, as if she wanted to say her fill before it was too late. She cupped his face with her hands. “You have fulfilled all your promises, mortal. Except one. A favor that remains uncollected. Will you fulfill it?”

“Of course!”

“Even if what I ask of you is a burden? A curse you must bear?”

Tears ran unbidden down his face. “Anything! Anything!”

Inanna’s expression became serious. “Then I curse you to never give up on your selfishness, or your defiance. It is what makes you what you are. Stay true to yourself no matter how many you trample upon. Be the invader that I was. The monster. The conqueror. You are no longer allowed to pretend you are merely a survivor.”

Her words rang true deep within Lukas. He had started this journey for the sake of survival. He had bargained with her for survival. But somewhere down the line, his goals changed. He sought power, growth, and evolution. He wanted to break the system that the omphalos had granted him to obtain power in the most efficient way. Even if it meant snatching it from others.

“I don’t have a choice in this, do I?” he finally asked.

“If it were easy, it would not be a curse,” the goddess said.

“Then that’s what I get for biting off more than I can chew, I guess.”

Inanna smiled. It was a brilliant thing.

“You know I won’t give up on you, right?” Lukas demanded. “I made you a bargain. To free your real body from Irkalla. I will make it happen.”

With every word, Inanna became more transparent. He could nearly see right through her. “It took a miracle to find my way back to this realm. You were my miracle, Lukas Aguilar. I can only hope that you will be my miracle once more.”

“I will,” Lukas promised. “I swear it, you hear me? I will find a way to bring you back. No matter the consequences.”

A cup appeared on the floor between them. Tenemu. The wine of Sumer. Drink of the gods, Inanna had once described it.

Drink to it, mortal, her eyes seemed to say.

A long-lost tradition, after a bargain was struck.

Lukas clenched his fingers tightly around the cup, his eyes never leaving Inanna’s slowly dissipating face. He pushed the rim to his lips and lifted it up. The liquid was dark and rich, tinged with honey. He lowered it and looked ahead to see her one final time and—

Nothing.

Just like that, she had vanished.