Chapter 3: Blood of the Divine

The altar responded to their combined presence with a surge of energy that sent cracks of golden light racing across the chamber floor. Images formed in the air above the white stone, translucent and shimmering, showing events that had occurred before human memory began. The old gods had not always been seven. There had been an eighth, Nethys, who governed the space between things: the silence between sounds, the darkness between stars, the emptiness between atoms. Nethys had been necessary for creation because without gaps, nothing could exist as a distinct entity. But Nethys had grown resentful of the other gods, who filled every space with their domains and left less and less room for the between. They had bound Nethys at the dawn of the world, imprisoning the eighth god in a void beneath the foundations of reality itself, sealed by the combined power of all seven. Now three were dead, and the seal was weakening. 'Each death transfers power,' Cael translated from inscriptions that glowed on the altar's surface. 'Nethys consumes the essence of the fallen gods and uses it to erode the bonds that hold the prison. When four of the seven are gone, the seal breaks entirely.' 'Four remaining gods,' Seren counted. 'Which means Nethys needs to kill only one more.' The altar showed them the ritual that could reinforce the seal. It required the blood of the divine, willingly given, from descendants of each element. The blood would activate the shrine's ancient mechanisms and channel the residual power of the dead gods into strengthening the prison. But the inscription carried a warning that Cael read aloud with visible reluctance. 'The donors will lose their divine heritage permanently. The storm in your veins, the sea in mine, the forest and the fire in theirs. We would become entirely mortal.' The four descendants looked at each other across the altar, weighing the cost of sacrifice against the price of inaction.