Chapter 36 - The god who laughs

  Earlier

  Ariel lay there, motionless, her heart aching with every breath.

  Lilia’s hands trembled as she worked beside the fire, doing what she could to keep them alive. The smell of blood and smoke hung heavy in the air, clinging to every surface.

  Ariel wanted to move…to help—but her body refused her. Every time she tried to lift her arm, pain lanced through her chest, sharp and deep. So she just watched. Watched Lilia struggle, whispering words of comfort to Ryn even as her own voice broke.

  A guilt she couldn’t name pressed down on her, heavier than the stones above.

  Her fingers twitched uselessly against the cracked floor, her nails tracing faint grooves in the stone. She wanted to speak, to tell Lilia to stop before she hurt herself too.

  But the words stayed locked somewhere between her heart and throat.

  All she could do was watch as the firelight danced across Lilia’s ash-streaked face, the glow catching in the tears she didn’t have time to wipe away.

  And Ariel hated herself for it.

  She was the cause of their pain, after all.

  Every breath reminded her. Every movement made the golden cracks along her skin flare and sting, like fire beneath her flesh, an agonizing reminder of what she had done.

  They pulsed faintly in the dark, crawling across her arms and neck like veins of molten guilt. She tried to turn away from their light, but they followed her.

  And so she closed her eyes… not to rest, but because she couldn’t bear to see anymore.

  The only thing she could do now was sleep, and hope that when she woke, the ache would dull… even if just a little.

  However—

  What met her when she closed her eyes was not the calm of sleep,

  but a nightmare.

  It began as something almost peaceful, the faint echo of bells, sunlight spilling across marble streets, laughter that didn’t belong to this world anymore.

  For a moment, Solvara was alive again.

  Then it wasn’t.

  The bells twisted into screams.

  The light turned to fire.

  Stone walls split apart, raining ash like snow. Every sound, every breath, carried the weight of that day. The heat came back first—the unbearable heat that had swallowed the city whole—and with it the smell of burning cloth, burning flesh,a burning memory.

  Her body remembered what her mind tried to forget.

  Every heartbeat replayed the moment she lost everything.

  Ariel clawed through ash and light, choking on smoke until it felt like she was burning from the inside out.

  Her lungs screamed. Her skin blistered.

  She tore at herself in panic, nails raking her arms and her throat, trying to peel away the fire beneath her flesh.

  Hoping…no, praying, that if she could just tear deep enough, the pain would end.

  But it never stopped.

  She lay there, writhing in the endless light, the agony looping in on itself like time refused to move forward. Every time she tore at her skin, it healed, only to burn again a heartbeat later. Flesh reknit, cracked, burned, and mended once more.

  A cycle without mercy. A rhythm without end.

  Her throat was raw, but no sound escaped. Even her screams had grown tired. The pain had no beginning or end.

  The pain felt too real.

  Too real to be a of a dream

  At some point, she stopped fighting. Her fingers went still against her scorched skin, trembling. She wanted to die, to disappear, to stop existing, but even that release was denied her.

  The light pulsed again, warm and terrible.

  Then all of a sudden

  It vanished.

  Just like that. Gone, erased, as though it had never existed at all. The burns, the fire, the light — all of it slipped away in an instant, leaving her weightless. Her lungs filled easily for the first time in what felt like forever, her body warm not from flame, but from sunlight.

  Ariel almost thought she’d died.

  But death shouldn’t smell like flowers.

  Golden rays spilled across an endless field of soft gold lilies, swaying gently in a wind she could not feel. The air was bright, impossibly so, the kind of brightness that wasn’t meant for eyes.

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  Then she heard it.

  Laughter.

  Light, soft, childish laughter.

  It came from everywhere and nowhere at once, dozens, hundreds of voices, giggling, whispering, singing in tones that overlapped and echoed in the air like glass chimes in the wind. There was joy in that sound, but something else too. Something off. The longer she listened, the more it began to warp, too rhythmic, too uniform, every giggle perfectly timed, perfectly measured, perfectly wrong.

  Ariel’s chest tightened.

  The laughter was without breath. Without life.

  And when she turned toward the sound, she realized all the lilies around her were facing her now… their golden centers gleaming like eyes, millions of them, all watching.

  And beyond them

  Impossibly

  stood her father.

  ...

  No… that couldn’t be. Nothing about this place made sense…so it had to be a dream. Her father had vanished with the rest of Solvara, gone without a trace. And yet—

  “...Father?”

  The word trembled out of her before she could stop it.

  The figure didn’t respond. It only looked down at itself, as if her voice had reminded it that it had form at all. Its head tilted, slow and unnatural, the movement too awkward.

  Then came the laughter again, the same choir of child voices, now weaving into something like a sentence, threading words through their giggles.

  “My apologies, child…”

  The sound wasn’t spoken aloud. It moved through the air, through her, vibrating in her bones. Her body shuddered.

  “How careless I’ve grown…”

  Her breath caught.

  The figure, her father’s shape, shifted. Bones cracked, light bent, and flesh moved like liquid silk. His face melted into something else, hair lengthening, shoulders narrowing, eyes softening into gold.

  Her lips parted in horror.

  “Mother…?”

  The figure smiled — her mother’s smile — but it was wrong. Too wide. Too still.

  The laughter of children rose again, louder now, circling her like a chant.

  Her mother waved a trembling hand, tears of laughter streaking down her face. It should have been familiar, comforting… but it wasn’t. The sound was wrong, hollow and shrill, like something imitating joy without understanding it.

  The way her body moved was almost human…almost. It bent and twitched as though the bones inside didn’t quite remember how to fit together.

  “No, I shouldn’t,”

  “I really shouldn't”

  The voice came again, not from her lips, but from everywhere, echoing through the golden lilies that still faced Ariel.

  “I’m just soo excited… It’s been too long since I’ve had an Apostle.”

  Ariel’s throat went dry. ‘An apostle’

  The figure — her mother’s face — tilted its head back, grinning wide enough that the skin along its cheeks cracked, bleeding gold.

  “And one with so much potential, as well…”

  The voice rippled like silk tearing. Then, suddenly, her mother’s face twisted — not in pain, but in disgust. The laughter stopped, cutting abruptly.

  The silence rang.

  “I do hope you end up better than this… one.”

  Her mother, or what wore her mother’s skin, turned, gaze falling to her own body as if seeing it for the first time. The smile faded.

  Then, with a faint chuckle that was anything but human, the voices whispered:

  ??“She served her purpose… but she always was afraid of burning.”

  The laughter that followed was faint at first, a child’s giggle, hollow and breathless, before spiraling into something wild, something wrong. It echoed across the golden field until even the air seemed to tremble beneath it.

  “But with your vow,” the thing crooned, voice laced with delight, “I don’t think you’ll have a choice…”

  “Who are you!?” Ariel shouted before she could stop herself.

  The sound of her own voice startled her. She clamped a hand over her mouth, heart hammering.

  What was she doing? This was wrong. Every instinct screamed that speaking to this thing, looking at it, was a mistake.

  But no creature or whatever this thing was, had the right to wear her mother’s face like this.

  The figure paused mid-laugh. Then, it tilted its head, the motion jerky and birdlike.

  “Oh my…” it said, amusement dripping from every whisper.

  “I truly have grown careless.”

  It straightened… no, folded — into an imitation of a bow, limbs bending the wrong way, skin pulling taut as though it was remembering what a body was supposed to look like.

  “Allow me to introduce myself properly,” it said, the voices echoing from everywhere at once,

  “It is I…”

  The form’s smile widened until skin split wider, too wide, teeth gleaming like shards of glass.

  Gold leaking from the jaw.

  “One of the Nine Celestials.”

  “The highest rank of gods.”

  The field darkened as the false sun above flared gold and crimson. The figure’s body rippled. flesh peeled away to reveal light burning beneath, it laughed again, the sound rolling through the golden lilies.

  “Sol,” it declared,

  “God of the Sun.”

  Then he toppled over laughing, a child’s cruel joy spilling through the air as petals turned to ash around him.

  And Ariel, trembling and ash in her throat, the gold cracks faintly burning across her skin, could only stare.

  As she was face-to-face with a god.