Noah could barely make out the sound of his own panicked footfalls over his pulse thudding loudly in his ears. He raced down the last narrow bridge connecting the external Spirit Veins to their core. Beneath it was a free-fall into the darkness of oblivion, the space in between Realms from which nothing could escape.
He’d had so many false starts, but this was the right path. He could feel it in his bones.
Beneath the overwhelmingly strong flow of mana pulsing through the Spirit Veins, he could feel a familiar, albeit weak, signature.
This was the place.
“Just hang on, Cain—” he panted. It was a desperate plea to a man who wouldn’t hear him, but he repeated it again and again beneath his breath, as if the words might reach the deity if he said them enough. “Hang on, hang on…”
Faster.
He needed to push himself.
They were running out of time.
But he had come too far to turn back now—he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
He could feel the Spirit Veins around him beginning to crack as their inner structure began to fall apart. The bridge beneath his feet felt unstable.
It’s starting, a voice in his head whispered. You need to hurry, Astraeus. If you haven’t reached him yet, you need to get yourself out of there. The structure won’t hold.
“No,” Noah said, racing full speed ahead. “I’m almost there.”
He would want you to leave him and save yourself.
“I’m sure that stubborn bastard would, but there’s not a chance in hell of that.”
There’s only a minute left, Astraeus. Not even you can postpone this.
“I know that!” Noah snapped. “Ready the transport spell, but if you activate it without my say so, I swear I’ll break the spatial transport talisman myself.”
Astraeus, you only get one shot at this. If you break the talisman, there’s no coming back.
“So be it—”
Overhead a chunk of stone plummeted to the ground, taking out the platform up ahead of him.
“Shit—” Noah cursed beneath his breath, his mind racing for an alternative as he barreled forward at full speed ahead. He refused to slow down. He couldn’t stop now.
Astraeus—
“Would you shut up so I can concentrate—”
It didn’t matter what the obstacle was, he wasn’t stopping for anything.
If there was no solid ground for him, he would make his own.
Power crackled beneath his fingers as he tapped into his mana, at last amplified to its full potential. Brilliant, blinding white light danced in the palm of his hand. With a flick of his wrist, it crystallized beneath him, illuminating the darkness underfoot that it kept him from plummeting into.
Noah raced full speed ahead, the stonework collapsing rapidly beneath him.
He used his power to catch his every step, racing down the crumbling bridge at a reckless speed he hadn’t known he was capable of. The light couldn’t support him for long, but it was solid enough to give him something to jump from.
Each steppingstone appeared just in time to keep him plummeting into the eternal darkness, allowing him to maintain his momentum.
He couldn’t feel the fatigue that should have been weighing him down, or the exhaustion of the trials he had just gone through. He couldn’t feel the burning in his muscles as they struggled to support his pace. The mana racing through his veins overwrote all of that.
He was burning through divine energy at breakneck speed, but he could feel it welling up within him as quickly as he burned through it.
It felt something like victory. Finally, he could access all of the power his bloodline entitled him to. Finally, he was the one in a position to do the protecting.
There was no way in hell he was letting anything keep him from saving Cain. He wasn’t going to sit back, oblivious and protected while his husband put everything on the line. He wasn’t going to live out another tragedy, not like he had with Tama.
Things with Cain wouldn’t go the same way they had with Tama.
He wasn’t going to let it.
He reached the end of the path, the sacred core at the heart of the Spirit Veins. The stone rumbled as it reacted to his mana and opened, revealing the chamber within.
This was it. There were no further obstacles—no mazes, no locked doors, there was only—
“—Cain!” Noah called. His knees went weak at the sight ahead of him.
The proud deity was on his knees, his arms stretched out on either side of him as chains held him in place. The iron coils were so densely and tightly wrapped around him that Noah could barely tell where they began and ended. The spiderweb of restraints was chained to every available inch of wall space, an excess designed to keep even the strongest of deities in check.
Cain’s head was hung low, his silver hair stained with crimson. His charcoal-tipped ears drooped weakly atop his head, not so much as twitching in response to Noah’s approach. Blood dripped from his brow to the floor below, joining the growing pool beneath him.
Noah stumbled forward, desperately grasping the deity’s pale face. He could feel the warmth of Cain’s pooled blood seeping into his clothes as he fell to his knees. In contrast, Cain’s skin was cool to the touch.
“Cain!” he said, clapping his hands frantically against the deity’s cheeks. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
The deity groaned quietly, his ears twitching as he stirred. He cracked his eyes open, a narrow sliver of his golden eyes peeking forward.
“Cain!”
The deity’s gaze went from hazy and unfocused to wide awake as he recognized Noah, snapping to attention. Cain jerked in place, the chains around him rattling loudly as he came to. Anger, horror, and elation flashed across his face in rapid succession as he took in the sight of Noah.
“What are you doing here?” Cain sputtered. “What—no, why are you here?”
Noah scoffed, tightly cupping his husband’s face. “What do you mean ‘what am I doing here’? I came to get you.”
He let his mana flow freely into the deity, mending his wounds and breathing more life back into him. He could feel his own body beginning to ache with phantom pain as he exchanged Cain’s suffering for his own, but the boundless influx of divine mana racing through his veins soothed it just as quickly.
“But—” Cain protested, shaking his head more vigorously. “What are you doing? Why?”
“What, did you think I would choose to stay in the Reverie Corridor?” Noah leaned his forehead against Cain’s, relief flooding through him as he felt the warmth begin to return to the deity’s body.
“But that’s where Tama is,” Cain said, his voice tight. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“We don’t have very much time, and that’s what you’re going to talk about?” Noah asked, shaking his head. The walls shook around them, a spiderweb of cracks winding through the stonework. “The Reverie Corridor has beautiful memories of him, Cain… but that’s all they are. I left that life behind a long time ago.”
“You’re right—it’s dangerous. You must go.” Cain said, pulling back. The deity yanked hard at the chains binding him, but they only rattled in place “These aren’t coming down until the walls do, Astraeus. You’ve got to go.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“Astra,” Cain said, smiling bitterly. “As happy as I am to see you… Go. Get out of here.”
“So be it.” Noah grasped his face firmly, forcing Cain to look him dead in the eye. “Look at me, Cain. I’m not leaving you. Not now.”
“You don’t have some clever way out of this, do you?” Cain leaned his forehead back against Noah’s as a quiet, humorless laugh escaped him. “We’re out of time.”
“Please,” Noah snorted quietly. “We’ve always been out of time.”
Overhead, the ceiling began to creak and groan ominously. A crumble of fine, powdery stone sprinkled over them as the structure around them began to collapse.
“If this is the end, I need you to know. I’m yours. I have been for a long time—”
Astraeus— the voice in his head interrupted him, more urgent than ever. This is it.
Noah ignored it, determined to tell Cain what he’d left unspoken for far too long.
“—if this is the end of the line, I’m going with you. I love you.”
Noah closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressing a tender kiss to Cain’s lips to stifle his protests. Around him, the stone walls began to give way, groaning under their own weight as they came tumbling down.
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