Mother of Midnight

Chapter 210 – Guessing

Lyridia played her role flawlessly. Vailora, ever lazy, would undoubtedly roll over and let sleep reclaim her, blissful that her duties had been handled in her stead. The little nothingness would slip away with her companions, retreating into the night like the shifting of ink on a page, and the story would proceed as it was always meant to.

The script had been altered, just enough. The escape had been secured. The threads of fate had bent beneath her touch, adjusting the tale to ensure the nothingness would live to see another chapter.

That had been the extent of her interference. That was all it was meant to be.

And yet—

Lyridia gripped the fabric of reality, tracing the patterns of what had transpired, and felt a sickness coil deep within her core.

Rava was not meant to die.

The woman’s story should have continued. The last shift, the final note, should have been a retreat. That was what she had arranged, what she had carefully nudged into place with all the grace and subtlety of a master weaver adjusting a single, delicate thread in a grand tapestry.

But Rava had returned.

She had gone back in for one last strike, and Lyridia had watched—helpless, horrified—as the tapestry she had so carefully tended began to unravel.

Drakthar was always meant to fall. That was a truth woven so deeply into the fabric of the world that not even she could change it. But this—this was not what was meant to happen.

The abomination had cracked open, its flesh parting like the shattered shell of an egg. But inside, there was no Divinity.

Lyridia knew divinity. She was divinity.

The gods, in all their forms and aspects, carried the weight of existence, their essences woven into the very heart of creation. Even the lesser ones, those whose names had been eroded by time, still bore the unmistakable mark of the divine.

But Akhenna?

Akhenna was not divine.

And the thing within her creation—the thing that had been waiting—was something else entirely.

The moment it had escaped, Lyridia had felt the shift ripple through reality like a discordant note, a fracture in the melody of existence that refused to resolve itself.

And Vivienne—

Vivienne had always been other. A contradiction. An anomaly. A story with a single, weak, thread, her tale ever-shifting, always on the cusp of something greater, yet never truly defined.

She was not of this world. Not truly.

But now, she was certainly something else.

Something that Lyridia could no longer track.

She had guided the nothingness, subtly directing the aetherbeasts in her path so that she might grow, so that her tale would not end too soon. She had ensured that the overwhelming threats—the few that had truly posed a danger—would pass harmlessly by.

It had all been so careful. So controlled.

And she had failed.

Now, Vivienne’s story thread was gone.

Not cut. Not tangled. Not frayed.

Gone.

A severed thread could still be traced, its remnants left behind in the weave of existence. A tangled one could still be unwound, a frayed one mended. But this—this was an impossibility.

Every living thing, from the smallest insect to the mightiest beast, from the towering mountains to the distant, nameless stars, had a story.

Even the things beyond this world, the creeping, forgotten horrors that lurked in the cracks between existence, had threads that could be followed.

But Vivienne had none.

Lyridia reached, searching, desperate, and found—

Nothing.

No whispers of fate. No lingering echoes in the great weave.

She might as well have been trying to read a book that had been erased from history, as though it had never been written at all.

It terrified her.

Not just because it meant she had failed. Not just because it meant something had changed in a way she could not understand.

But because it meant that, for the first time in all of creation, there was something moving through the world without a story to guide it.

“Are you enjoying the story?”

Lyridia flinched. A full-body jerk, like a startled animal, as if she had been caught in a place she had no right to be. Impossible. Impossible. No one—no one—got the jump on her. Not mortals, not spirits, not even the gods themselves.

But Akhenna was not a god.

The hole in reality sat before her, draped in crimson silk, the fabric clinging to her like blood that refused to dry. It was a deep red, rich and unyielding, a shade that set itself in stark contrast against her deep, dark skin.

Her eyes burned with knowing. Knowing of things Lyridia dared not put into words. They were the kind of eyes that could strip even the most modest of old maids bare with a glance—piercing, unwavering, hungry.

She was beautiful. Beautiful in a way that made beauty itself seem lesser. A sculptor’s nightmare, a painter’s torment, a perfection so absolute that it defied imitation. It wasn’t just the way she looked—it was the way she was. A presence that filled the space around her, twisting the air, the world itself leaning toward her like a moth drawn to a flame.

Lyridia was no fool. She understood the pull of desire, the poetry of the flesh. Had she been more like Serranos, who drowned himself in his indulgences, or Sirasyr, who saw beauty as something to be owned, perhaps she would have found herself ensnared.

But she was not them.

She was Lyridia, and she saw what lurked behind the veils of existence.

And what she saw when she looked at Akhenna was wrong.

A thing that should not be, wrapped in the illusion of something breathtaking. A hole in the world, clothed in silk and sweet perfume.

Lyridia forced herself to breathe, to steady her voice against the fear tightening in her chest. “To an extent.”

Akhenna smiled. Not a smirk, not a sneer—an indulgence. Like she was humorously allowing Lyridia the privilege of this conversation.

“I wasn’t talking to you, but I am glad to hear that.” she purred. She gestured vaguely with one delicate hand, her nails painted the same deep red as her gown. “This winding road of possibilities. The fall of a great city. The hatching of something greater. It’s all I could ask for.”

Lyridia swallowed.

It was all she could do to keep her hands still, to keep her breath measured, to keep herself from bolting.

Akhenna’s voice was velvet and ruin, every word dripping with amusement, as though she were savoring the taste of the conversation itself.

Lyridia had played her part well, had rewritten the story just enough to allow the nothingness—Vivienne—to escape.

And yet, the story had spun out of control.

Rava was not meant to die.

Vivienne was not meant to disappear.

And now, this thing sat before her, speaking of winding roads and hatching horrors as if it were all some grand performance, as if she had already read the script while Lyridia was still fumbling with the ink.

Lyridia’s hands curled into fists beneath the table. You know, she wanted to say. You saw what happened.

But of course she had.

Of course she had.

"Be it boon or bane, life is interesting."

Akhenna just laughed, a sound like silk unraveling, like the first tear in a tapestry that would soon come undone. She shifted in her seat, languid and self-assured, as if the dim candlelight of the tavern bent itself toward her rather than the other way around.

"I concur," she purred, lifting a single, delicate finger to trace circles along the rim of an unseen glass. "But you feel something, don’t you? You may be the goddess of stories, but even you are not immune from sympathies, are you?"

Lyridia swallowed. The warmth of the ale in her gut did nothing to steady her hands. She laced them together, squeezing tightly as if that would still their slight tremor.

"I don’t want this world to go through another sundering."

It was the only thing she could say. The only thing that mattered.

Akhenna’s grin widened, sharp and gluttonous, like a starved thing let loose before a feast. The shadows at the edges of the tavern seemed to pulse in response, flickering unnaturally, as if the very fabric of the place recoiled from her presence.

"But that would be fun to watch."

"No, it wouldn’t!"

Lyridia’s fist came down on the wooden table with a force that rattled the cutlery, sent the candle dancing wildly in its holder, and overturned her ink pot. The black liquid spread like a creeping wound, splattering across the parchment she had been writing on, curling at the edges of her half-finished words, and pooling around the base of her mug.

A heavy silence followed, thick and suffocating.

She hadn't meant to lash out, but the thought of it—another sundering, another age of ruin and despair—set a spark of something hot and unbidden inside her. And now, that spark had become a flare, a moment of raw emotion laid bare before the last creature in existence she should ever let see it.

She regretted it instantly.

The fear crept back in, slithering cold and cruel down her spine.

Akhenna did not move. She did not flinch. She merely watched, her expression unreadable, her gaze drilling into Lyridia’s very essence. There was no need for words; she could see everything. She always could.

And then, after a long, excruciating pause, she let out a slow breath, the curl of her lips never quite faltering.

"I disagree."

A glass materialized between her fingers, seemingly from the very void itself. It was filled with something thick, dark, and rich—something that glistened in the dim candlelight in a way no wine ever should.

Lyridia could smell it. Coppery. Aged. It smelled like memory. Like something stolen. Like the past refusing to stay buried.

She tore her gaze away, swallowing down the bile rising in her throat.

Akhenna only chuckled, tilting her glass ever so slightly in a mockery of a toast.

"To interesting times, my dear."

Lyridia did not lift her mug. She did not acknowledge the toast. Her fingers curled into the sodden parchment before her, ink staining the creases of her knuckles. Her words had been ruined—words meant to set the next tale in motion, words meant to guide the aftermath of Drakthar’s fall, to account for the fractures in fate that she had not foreseen.

Now they bled together in an illegible mess, and she couldn’t help but feel that it was fitting.

Akhenna took a slow sip from her conjured glass, watching her over the rim with eyes that knew too much.

"You seem troubled, goddess. But you should be celebrating. You’ve done something new. Something unexpected."

Lyridia’s jaw tightened. "I did not intend for this."

"Does everything go as everyone intends?" Akhenna’s voice was a slow, honeyed drawl, amusement dancing at the edges of her lips.

"Sometimes."

Akhenna tutted, shaking her head as though scolding a particularly dense student. "An intention is narrow. Focused. You should know that better than any mortal. Gods included."

Lyridia exhaled sharply through her nose, but she did not argue.

The gods were often thought of as immortal beings—not in the sense that they would never die, but in the way that they could not die. The primordials, if they could be slain at all, would likely just reform in time. Changed, perhaps, but their essence enduring. The mortal gods, like herself, were a different matter. They could be killed. They had

been killed. Just recently, the god of festivities had fallen, his domain left untended. His name would fade in time, and with it, all that he had ever been.Lyridia understood this. She had always known she was no true immortal—simply ageless.

But as she sat across from the thing in the crimson dress, the one testing the limits of her lust, her will, her very being, she could not extend that same understanding to her.

Akhenna was something other.

If she was right—and she was certain she was—then even if this fragment of Akhenna were to be destroyed, it would mean nothing. Her death would not be an ending, only a momentary inconvenience. She would return, whole and unchanged, because she was never truly separate from the abyss she came from.

Lyridia shivered at the thought.

It slipped from her lips before she could stop it.

"What are you?"

Akhenna stilled.

For a heartbeat, the world itself seemed to hesitate. The dim candlelight of the tavern flickered strangely, shadows stretching unnaturally long. A whispering pressure built at the edges of Lyridia’s senses, something not quite sound, not quite thought, as though reality itself was straining against the weight of the question.

And then Akhenna smiled.

Not the small, teasing smirks she had been offering throughout their conversation. Not the sultry, knowing curl of her lips. No, this was something else entirely. Something vast. Something that did not belong on a human face, or even a god’s.

It was hunger.

It was joy.

It was revelation.

And when she finally spoke, it was not with words, but with something deeper. A truth pressed against the fabric of existence itself, warping it ever so slightly around the edges.

Akhenna tilted her head, amusement flickering in her dark eyes. “I play this game with all who ask me. I will not tell you, but I will confirm it if you guess right.”

Lyridia exhaled slowly, studying the impossible woman before her. She had always thought herself perceptive—more than that, she was supposed to know things. It was her domain, her very essence. Stories wove themselves into the fabric of existence, and she followed their threads like no other. Yet here sat something outside of that, an entity that didn’t belong, that moved between the lines of reality like an ink stain bleeding across a page.

She felt like a child trying to read a book in a language she had never learned.

Lyridia tapped a finger against the table. “You’re not a god.”

Akhenna smiled, but it was not a confirmation. Nor was it a denial.

“You’re not a mortal either,” Lyridia continued, narrowing her eyes. “And you’re not… divine.”

The woman in red swirled the glass in her hand, the thick, crimson liquid inside moving slower than wine should. “So sure of that, are you?”

“Yes.” The answer came too quickly, too firmly, but Lyridia stood by it. “Divinity is… pure, in its own way. Even the cruelest gods, the most destructive ones, carry a thread of divinity within them. You don’t.”

Akhenna’s grin widened just a fraction, but she said nothing.

Lyridia drummed her fingers on the table, her mind racing. “You feel like something that was—no, is—part of something greater. Not a broken piece, but… a fragment, moving on its own.”

“Interesting,” Akhenna murmured.

“I don’t like interesting.”

“I do.”

Lyridia frowned, glancing at the spilled ink on the table, the black liquid creeping toward the edge like it was trying to escape. “You called me narrow for thinking about intentions. You spoke as if you were outside them, like you aren’t bound by the same rules as the rest of us.”

Akhenna leaned forward, resting her chin on the back of her hand. “That’s because I’m not.”

Lyridia swallowed. “Then what are you?”

Akhenna chuckled, low and velvety. “I told you, I won’t say. But I will confirm it if you guess right.”

Lyridia clenched her fists. This was a game, but not one she had the upper hand in. She had played word games with mortals, with gods, with creatures that whispered in the dark places of the world, but never with something like this.

And she had the distinct feeling that if she guessed wrong enough times, she would not like where this game led.

“Who were you talking to, then?”