Chapter 4: War in Heaven

Before they could perform the ritual, the sky above the shrine erupted. A column of absolute darkness punched through the opening in the chamber ceiling and struck the altar with a force that scattered all four descendants against the walls. Nethys was not waiting for the seal to break naturally. The eighth god was reaching through the weakened bonds with tendrils of void that wrapped around the remaining pillars and began to drain them. Seren felt her grandfather's pillar scream, a sensation that manifested as a sound so deep it registered not in her ears but in her marrow. She threw herself toward the altar, crawling against a wind that was not wind but the pull of absolute emptiness trying to draw everything into itself. Cael reached the altar first. His silver eyes blazed as he called upon the sea in his blood, and water erupted from the cracks in the floor, forming a barrier around the white stone that the void tendrils hissed against but could not penetrate. Brynn pressed her hands to the granite walls and the mountain itself responded, roots of stone surging upward to reinforce the chamber. Varen ignited, his entire body becoming a column of flame that pushed back the darkness with raw thermal force. 'Now, Seren,' Cael shouted through gritted teeth. 'We cannot hold this for long.' She reached the altar and placed her palms on its surface. The storm that lived in her bloodline answered, not as the devastating force her grandfather had wielded, but as a current that connected all four elements into a single circuit. Thunder rolled through the chamber, lightning arced between the intact pillars, the sea boiled, the stone sang, and the fire roared white. The void tendrils recoiled. For a single breathless moment, the darkness above the shrine retreated, and through the gap Seren saw something that looked back at her with ancient, furious recognition.