Chapter 27 Fractures
I woke to the sound of screaming.
Not physical screaming, but the psychic kind that tore through the bond like broken glass. I bolted upright, disoriented, and felt Theron's agony blazing through the connection. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
"Jeron," I gasped, but he was already moving, shadows gathering as he reached for the door.
We ran through the palace corridors, following the pull of the bond toward the eastern ramparts. Other gods were running too, all heading in the same direction, and I could hear alarms blaring throughout the realm.
The eastern barrier had collapsed.
We burst onto the ramparts to find chaos. The sky was torn open, a massive wound bleeding darkness into the Divine Realm. Void creatures poured through by the dozens, and in the middle of it all, Theron stood alone, lightning crackling around him as he tried desperately to hold back the tide.
"He's been out here for an hour," Kael said, appearing beside me. Blood streaked his face, and his armor was scorched. "The barrier failed suddenly. He was the closest, so he started channeling everything he had to keep the breach from expanding."
"An hour?" I repeated, horrified. Through the bond, I could feel Theron's exhaustion, his power draining at an unsustainable rate. "He'll kill himself."
"He knows," Kael said grimly. "But if he stops, the breach expands and wipes out the mortal settlements below. Tens of thousands of people, Athena."
I looked down and saw them. Mortal cities, small and fragile, directly in the path of destruction. They had no idea what was happening above them, no idea that one god was burning himself out to keep them alive.
"We need to evacuate them," I said.
"We're trying," Naia said, rushing up. "But it takes time to move that many people, and the breach is expanding despite Theron's efforts. We have maybe thirty minutes before it overwhelms him completely."
Through the bond, I felt Lysander coordinating evacuation efforts in the mortal realm, his mind working at impossible speed. And I felt Jeron calculating trajectories, trying to find a way to seal the breach that didn't require Theron to martyr himself.
"I can close it," I said. "If I unmake the breach itself."
"That's not how Void breaches work," Aurelius said, arriving with a contingent of former Council members. "They're not things that can be unmade. They're absences, gaps in reality. You can't destroy what doesn't exist."
"Then what do we do?" I demanded.
"We wait for the evacuation to complete, then we let Theron collapse the barrier entirely," Aurelius said. "It'll cause massive damage, but it's the only way to seal a breach this large."
"That's not good enough," I said. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Aurelius said flatly. "I've dealt with Void breaches for ten thousand years. Trust me, there's no magic solution here."
But they were wrong. They had to be wrong. Because I could feel Theron dying through the bond, feel his life force draining with every second he held back the Void. And I couldn't just stand here and watch.
I reached through the bond, connecting with all four of my mates simultaneously. "I need your power. All of it. Right now."
"Athena, what are you doing?" Jeron demanded.
"Something stupid," I admitted. "But it might work. Aurelius is right that I can't unmake a breach. But I can unmake the space around it. I can erase the section of reality where the breach exists, then rebuild it from scratch without the wound."
"That's reality manipulation on a scale that's never been attempted," Lysander said, his mental voice sharp with concern. "You could tear apart the entire realm."
"Or I could save it," I said. "Theron's dying. We're out of time. So either help me or watch me try it alone."
The bond pulsed with their conflict. Fear and faith warring against each other. Then, one by one, I felt them commit.
"Together," Kael said.
"Always," Theron managed through his pain.
"Until the end," Lysander agreed.
"Or until you destroy us all," Jeron said, but his power was already flowing through the bond. "Whichever comes first."
I gathered their strength, feeling death and war and storms and lies merge with my silver light. The combined power was staggering, almost too much to contain. I could feel why gods failed trying to channel this much. It was intoxicating and terrifying, like holding a star in your bare hands.
I focused on the breach, on the section of reality it occupied. Not the absence itself, but the reality around it. The space that had been torn, the fabric that had been damaged. I reached out with my power and began to unmake it.
Reality screamed.
The section of sky where the breach existed simply stopped being. Not destroyed, not collapsed, just gone. For a horrifying moment, there was nothing there. An absence so complete it hurt to look at.
Then came the hard part. Rebuilding.
I poured creation into the void, not just my power but my understanding of how things should be. Sky and barriers and the separation between realms, all woven back together from nothing. The strain was immense, worse than anything I'd experienced. Through the bond, I felt my mates anchoring me, keeping me from losing myself in the work.
It felt like hours. It was probably seconds. When I finally finished, there was sky where the breach had been. Solid, stable, whole.
The Void creatures that had made it through were suddenly cut off from their source. They shrieked and dissolved, unable to maintain form in the Divine Realm without the breach feeding them.
Theron collapsed, his lightning finally guttering out. I ran to him, my legs barely supporting my weight, and caught him before he hit the ground.
"Hey," he said weakly, his storm-grey eyes struggling to focus. "That was impressive."
"You're an idiot," I said, tears streaming down my face. "You almost died."
"But I didn't," he pointed out. "You saved me. You saved everyone."
"We saved everyone," I corrected. Through the bond, I could feel the others converging on our position, their relief mixing with exhaustion.
"What you just did," Aurelius said, staring at the sky with something like awe, "should have been impossible."
"Add it to the list," I said, too tired to care about their shock.
"The barrier is stable," Naia reported, checking instruments I didn't understand. "Better than stable, actually. It's stronger than it was before the breach."
"Because Athena didn't just repair it," Lysander said, arriving and examining the sky with his analytical gaze. "She remade it. Built it from scratch using our combined understanding of how barriers should work. It's not the Council's design anymore. It's ours."
"Can you do that for all the barriers?" Moros asked, practical as always.
"Eventually," I said. "But not right now. That nearly killed me."
"Nearly killed all of us," Jeron corrected. Through the bond, I could feel how close we'd come to losing control, to the power consuming us all.
"But you didn't lose control," a new voice said. I looked up to find a goddess I didn't recognize standing at the edge of the ramparts. She was beautiful in an understated way, with brown skin and eyes that held quiet strength. "You held together. That's remarkable."
"Who are you?" Kael asked, instantly suspicious.
"My name is Aria," she said. "Goddess of Harmony. I felt the disturbance from three realms away. Five gods working as one, creating instead of destroying. I had to see it for myself."
"And now that you've seen it?" I asked.
"Now I want to help," she said simply. "What you're trying to do, rebuilding the barrier system, it requires harmony between realms. That's my domain. My specialty. I can help make the transitions smoother, reduce the strain on you."
"Why?" Theron asked, still leaning heavily on me. "Why help strangers?"
"Because I've waited two thousand years for gods to stop fighting each other and start working together," Aria said. "And I'll be damned if I miss the chance to help when it finally happens."
Through the bond, I felt Lysander's power reaching out, testing Aria's words for lies. He found none. She was sincere.
"We could use the help," I admitted. "Especially with a Void Titan arriving in less than two days."
"I heard about that," Aria said. "All the more reason to strengthen the barriers before it arrives. A Titan in a realm with unstable barriers would be catastrophic."
"More catastrophic than it already will be?" Kael asked dryly.
"Significantly more," Aria said seriously. "But if we work together, we might actually survive this."
Might. The word hung in the air like a question.
"Alright," I said, making a decision. "Aria, work with Naia and Aurelius. Start mapping the most critical barrier weaknesses. We'll prioritize those first."
"And the Titan?" Moros asked.
"We proceed as planned," I said. "Gather at the Shattered Wastes. Prepare for the battle. Hope we're strong enough."
"Hope isn't a strategy," Jeron said.
"No," I agreed. "But sometimes it's all we have."
The gods dispersed to their tasks, and I was left with my four mates. Through the bond, I felt their exhaustion mirroring mine, their fear for what was coming, their desperate determination to see this through.
"That was too close," Jeron said quietly. "When I felt you reaching for that much power, I thought you'd lost yourself."
"I nearly did," I admitted. "For a second, I couldn't tell where I ended and the power began. If you hadn't been anchoring me through the bond, I might have become exactly what Lysander warned about."
"But you didn't," Kael said firmly. "You held on. You stayed yourself."
"This time," I said. "But when we face the Titan, when I open a breach large enough for it to pass through, I'll be reaching for even more power. What if next time I can't hold on?"
"Then we pull you back," Theron said, his voice gaining strength. "That's what the bond is for. Not just channeling power, but keeping each other human. Or divine. Whatever we are."
"Disasters waiting to happen," Lysander suggested.
"That too," I agreed, and despite everything, I smiled.
We had less than two days before the Void Titan arrived. Less than two days to strengthen barriers, evacuate populations, and prepare for a battle that would determine the fate of all realms.
Less than two days before I'd have to reach for power that might destroy me.
But I wouldn't face it alone. Through the bond, I felt their presence, their love, their absolute refusal to let me fall.
Together, we might actually survive this.
Or we'd die trying, bound together until the end.
Either way, we'd made our choice, and there was no going back now.