“You’ve learned,” Nishi said. “You’ve progressed far beyond my expectations.”

“So I have,” I said. “And you’ve grown closer.”

“Indeed I have. And you appear to have gained the ability of detection.”

“So I have. What was your purpose in coming?”

“To observe your progress, of course.” The older oathholder still exuded a sense of presence even though I should’ve greatly outclassed him by this point.

I hadn’t properly appreciated it in my last few excursions here, most likely because I had been focused on extracting as many meager morsels of information out of Nishi as I could, but now I could tell why this man had managed to live so long.

Even a god would know not to trifle with him.

I didn’t know how to describe it, but there was power coming in waves from him that far exceeded the oaths he held. A dozen gods were contracted to him and dozens more had broken away, and somehow he became more than the sum of his parts. A monster.

A monster like me.

“My progress,” I said. “Into doing what?”

“I must admit,” he said, flicking his fingers and creating himself a throne to lounge in, “you have done much more than I had expected you to do. When I felt the thread connecting us, I had thought you to have perhaps chanced onto one of the many contingencies I had held.”

“I found you myself,” I said, moderately miffed. “I have the abilities I need. No more.”

“Of course you do,” Nishi said slowly, as if tasting the words in his tongue. “A nascent god. The world hasn’t seen the likes of you in decades. Centuries, even.”

“The world,” I said, catching onto his wording. There was something about Inome’s paradoxical domain that grounded me, the barrier between me and my emotions broken down enough for me to feel the wariness that Nishi warranted. “Not you?”

“I’ve been around long enough to see your like, girl,” he said. It wasn’t a threat, not quite, but there was a warning in those words, one I was tempted to squash out of him with the force of the domain around us. “Be careful, lest the wrath of the world come down upon you too.”

“Yeah?” I said. “You’ve seen that happen before?”

Beware the elder in a profession where men die young. Lord Byron had said that once, and as much as I hated the man I couldn’t deny that his philosophy rang true from time to time.

Professor Lasi—I hadn’t seen him in a week now, I realized, and I might actually be stronger than him—had been a real force to reckon with on the battlefield, and he wasn’t even that old. How strong was Nishi when he’d been around for… centuries? Some of the oaths connected to him were old.

I tried poking at them harder in an attempt to ascertain their strength, and pain ratcheted through me and into that which was greater than me.

[LEAVE], his oaths cried, the images a patchwork mess of visions from gods high and low and Nishi himself.

“Ah, they don’t like it when you do that,” Nishi noted. “You live as long as I have, you learn a thing or two.”

“I can see that,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“Nascent godhood is not yet godhood,” Nishi said. “I should know. I have devoured many.”

“Have you now?” I said, preparing to cut the connection. “That’s lovely.”

I was going to have to step out of the domain, wasn’t I? Those were not words of peace I was hearing.

“The rising god,” Nishi said. “You made notice of it, did you not?”

“I did,” I said. “It was a pretty big thing with the TAG here a bit ago.”

I was still ready to pop out of the domain at any moment. On some level, one far closer to the surface when I was here away from baseline reality, I was actually afraid. Nishi hadn’t meant me any harm yet, but with the way this conversation was trending, I was preparing for the worst.

“I killed him,” Nishi said as casually as if he’d been discussing the weather. “He was one of a lesser god’s. His connection was strong enough that he may have summoned his god into reality or become it in its entirety.”

“That’d explain why I hadn’t heard of it in a while.”

“You still have much to learn, young one,” Nishi said. “The rising god was not quite so developed as you, but it was not far behind either. I subsumed it, took its god as one of my own, and I waited.”

“If you took the power of one who was about to ascend,” I said, “why did you not attempt to do so yourself?”

“The gods frown upon ascension, Lily,” Nishi said, smiling as if he was humoring a child. “Have you never heard the tales?”

“Anything to do with ascension was always locked behind a dozen layers of security,” I said. “And all I read was that they have failed.”

“Eight of the first,” Nishi recided. “Beneath them sixty-four in a burst. Eight times that for a third, four thousand ninety-six of the fourth to be heard.”

“I’ve never heard it said like that,” I said.

“An old nursery rhyme,” he said. “Lost to the ages during the continental war, I’m afraid.”

Hearing that didn’t exactly surprise me, but it did sent another jolt of fear through the already fragile barrier between me and the ball of emotions I had distanced myself from. There were fewer people alive from the era of the continental war than fingers on one hand, and for Nishi to be one of them…

Well, it made sense, but it wasn’t quite reassuring.

“The point,” the oathholder said, “is that the divinity is set. For one to rise, one must fall.”

“You need to kill a god to make one,” I surmised. “Otherwise, the gods… make you fail?”

“Had I not taken the rising god’s power for myself, he would have either become part of his god or perished in a bout of divine… I hesitate to call it retribution, for his sin would not be made manifest before he expired.”

“Great,” I sighed. “So you’re saying that I might be dead.”

“Or you may hold the key to true ascension,” he said, and for the first time I heard a hint true hunger in his words. Try as he might, he couldn’t hide his desire for that goal from me.

“Or that,” I said. “And you’re helping me because…”

“I would never slay a promising talent such as you,” he said, giving me a slight nod.

That was a lie, but I let it slide. He knew I knew he was lying, and that was fine. Neither of us needed to say it out loud.

If he could find a way to my god through me and thus his own godhood, he was going to take it. It was the same old power struggle, the cycle of nobility and ambition that I had thought I had escaped for good.

“On a different note,” I said, my words ringing oddly loud in my ears, “would you have happened to have anything to do with the primordials coming my way? I’d originally intended you to ask that, but we got a touch sidetracked.”

“I may have,” he said. “Humans are remarkably easy to influence. If my magic is working properly, then I do believe that both of them are active now. What of it?”

I affixed him with my best unamused stare. “Those are primordials, you realize?”

“And you are near a god,” he said. “I can feel it. The very domain we are in pulses with your heartbeat, moves with your magic. The god chose you, and you chose the god.”

“I did,” I said, my lips moving almost of their own accord. “And I’ll kill the others if that’s what I have to do.”

At those words, the other oathholder laughed out loud. “An ambitious one, eh? I look forward to it.”

“As do I,” I said.

I had my answer. I wouldn’t have to leave this domain right now to escape Nishi because he wasn’t going to kill me now.

That was for later.

Unless I’d horribly misinterpreted things, the way that every part of him had lit up in excitement when he’d mentioned godhood—everything from his almost perfectly-controlled expression to the strands of divinity attached to him—indicated that he was willing to do anything to obtain an ascension of his own.

There was no way he was going to let someone else get it before him.

Where before I might’ve been a potential student to him, I was now an asset and a potential threat. I had no doubt in my mind that once I’d passed some benchmark that I wasn’t even aware of, Nishi would end my life and take my power for his own.

I nodded to him politely. “I assume you have nothing more to say, then.”

“I do not,” he replied cheerfully. “If you sought my assistance in defeating the primordials, I can only say that you underestimate your own power.”

I had had a few more questions, but I didn’t ask them. No help was going to come from him, and besides I had more than enough assistance from his memories and the broken god riding in my body.

As he started to dissolve the surface he’d been sitting on, I considered killing him.

I was pretty sure I could outclass Nishi in a straight fight at this point, but I wasn’t going to risk that. Not when it could lead to a long, resource-draining battle right before I went up against two monsters that were divinity made manifest.

“Until we meet again, then,” I said, echoing the words we’d said to each other once upon a time. This time, though, it felt like there was a certain weight to it. A finality.

“Until we meet again,” he said, and then he vanished.

When Nishi was gone, I manipulated the domain once more. It was no less smooth to use, its integration into me seamless and divine, but he’d raised doubts that I couldn’t afford to have.

I enveloped myself in the domain, but the cracks in the barrier couldn’t quite be fixed.

Fuck it. I had two primordials to kill and an amazing girl to get back to. Moping around in here worrying about the future was unnecessary.

I took a half-step forward and I was back in the House Alzaq residence.

“There’s a third force at play,” I said without preamble. “He won’t enter during the period of the primordial attack, though. Both primordials are active but not moving yet. From my senses, we have a few minutes before they actually start attacking the city, which is going to drop to zero if anyone starts attacking them first.”

“Hey, hey,” Jasmine said, rushing towards me and wrapping me in her arms. “Take a moment. Hey. We’re going to be okay.”

“We need to move,” I mumbled, talking into her chest. “The primordials—“

“Hey,” Jasmine said. “Take a breath. Look at me, okay?”

I obeyed, sucking in a deep breath through my teeth. “We’re running out of time.”

“You said we had minutes, right?” she asked.

“We do.”

“Then we have time. Look around you.”

I expanded my senses.

“Actually look, Lily,” Jasmine said, her exasperation tinged heavily with something I hoped was fondness. “Use your eyes.”

I didn’t need to, but I followed her instructions anyway. I could see her intentions for what they were, and I loved her for them.

Around me, the adventurers and nobles were gone. Jasmine and I were alone.

“They left,” I said. “How? I wasn’t away for that long.”

I should’ve been gone for barely any time at all, actually. The way my domain worked meant that I could be there for minutes or even hours while seconds passed by in the real world. I hadn’t kept any part of my perception grounded in baseline reality while I was in my domain this time, so I hadn’t kept track of time, but surely there hadn’t been enough time for everyone to disappear.

“Fifteen seconds,” Jasmine said. “You disappeared for fifteen seconds and I was so worried, I know you were inside the broken god’s power but you just vanished and you haven’t just disappeared before—sorry. I was worried, is all.”

Huh. That was longer than I’d expected. Had Nishi done something to affect the realm? I wouldn’t put it past him.

“Thank you for worrying,” I said. “It’s been quite a while since someone was concerned for me.”

It was an unfamiliar feeling. It wasn’t like I’d ever received much in the way of worry when I’d been a Byron, and though the commoners in Syashan had been willing to help me, none of them had truly cared for my safety—at least, not as much as Jasmine evidently did. I could hear the truth of her worry in her voice, and for some reason I felt my chest growing warm.

“Still,” I said, pushing the fluttery feeling within me aside, “where did they go? And we do need to move.”

I didn’t actually need her to answer me—extending my perception out far enough would allow me to detect them, and I could already feel the traces of mana in the area—but it felt right to ask, and I needed someone to ground me when my mind and emotions were flying free and far apart from each other. Nishi had screwed up my balance, and I needed Jasmine to help me restore it.

And thank the gods for her, because she seemed to realize that too. “Lord Rayes has connections. Once we realized our enemy, he called out to Caël oaths across the city to mobilize. The military sent soldiers to teleport everyone out, but I chose to remain.”

“All in fifteen seconds, huh?” I said. “The military really does act fast.”

“He started sending the messages before you disappeared,” Jasmine said. “You may have thought it beneath your notice.”

I winced. That was… probably true. The disconnect from reality was a little less intense now, and I could reflect on what I had been doing and realize that I might’ve been taking it a little too far.

I was going to have to dip back into it, claim the god’s power as my own without fully attempting ascension and dive back into that mindset of viewing the oathholders around me as mere insects or I was going to die against the primordials.

“So they acted while I was gone,” I said. “What’s happening in the city?”

“Mobilization,” Jasmine said. “When they have a threat to the Crown, the kingdom is remarkably quick in their response.”

“Military response, obviously. Is the TAG doing anything?”

“There wasn’t a projected threat, but every adventurer in the area is being called in. Technically, that includes us.”

“Every adventurer?”

“Yes.”

The streets are going to run red. There were no shortage of talented adventurers, but there were also many of them who had no idea what they were doing.

Jasmine must’ve saw my expression. “I don’t like it either, but it’s what they’re going to do.”

“A lot of people are going to die.”

“They will,” Jasmine said. “But we can stem the bleeding. Save lives. You can keep this from devolving into disaster.”

“I’ll try,” I said, breathing deep.

I just can’t guarantee I’ll be properly human at the end of it. I already arguably wasn’t, and while I both needed and wanted to gain the power from associating further with my god, there was a feeling rooted deep in someplace that wasn’t my body telling me that I was going to leave my humanity behind with it.

“I know you’re worried,” Jasmine said. “I’m sorry to put this burden on you.”

“It’s not a burden,” I replied. “It’s necessary.”

“I can tell it takes something from you,” she said, shaking her head. “Something that hasn’t quite come back and might never.”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “But what can I do about it? I’m nobody special. Just a traitor who’s lived too long. Might as well make something of it.”

“You are, perhaps, the furthest away from nobody special you could be,” Jasmine said, stepping towards me and taking my hands in hers.

She was a little taller than me, so in this position I was looking just a little upwards to meet her eyes. I had to consciously remind myself to use my eyes to observe her rather than the divine senses I possessed, but it was easy to follow through on when she was this beautiful.

Her eyes were shining, her sky blue irises reflecting in the morning light, and it took me a moment or two to realize that it was tears that were glimmering there.

“Please take care of yourself, Lily,” she said, her voice breaking. “I love you. I need you to—I can’t make you do anything, but I need you to be okay. I need you to stay with me when this is over”

Jasmine’s hands were warm and soft, a stark contrast to the near-despair I could hear in her voice, and something about that just… made its way through. Broke through barriers that I’d accidentally created, crossed the disconnect and hit me.

For a moment, I was worried that I’d been shot, the sudden heaviness in my chest an unfamiliar sensation, but then I realized what it was.

“I’m going to be okay, Jasmine,” I said, squeezing her hands. “I’ll—I’ll come back to you.”

“Promise me?”

“I promise.”

She let go of my hands, electing instead to use them to bring me in closer to her.

I leaned into Jasmine, returning the gesture, and when she kissed me I met her with passion that I’d already nearly forgotten.

The kiss was hungry and fierce and desperate and so very human, and by the time we separated I was almost panting for breath.

“That seals it,” she said, wiping away at her cheek when she thought I couldn’t see. “A promise is a promise.”

“It is,” I said, struggling to find the words. Nothing I could say felt like enough. “We—we need to get out there.”

Jasmine nodded, releasing me. “You have primordials to kill.”