After who knows how long, I've finally found her—the mortal whose soul hummed in quiet pain, whose light flickered like a dying candle refusing to go out. I watched her for days, maybe weeks. Time had little meaning in this place between divinity and descent. She moved through ash and ruin, her hands shaking as they stitched wounds, poured tinctures, whispered prayers that no longer held hope.
Thalia Gorse.
A name I somehow knew, as if written into the stars before I ever fell toward her world.
She sat alone by a broken well, her hands raw and trembling. The last survivor she’d saved had passed the night before. She hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t slept. Her breath hitched, and she crumpled forward.
“I wasn’t fast enough,” she whispered to no one. “What’s the point if they all die anyway?”
I stepped closer, not with feet, but presence. I felt her shiver.
“Thalia,” I whispered, my voice like the brush of wind through leaves, a thought barely formed. “Let me choose you.”
Her head snapped up, eyes wide and wet with grief. She looked around, frantic. “Who’s there?”
“Someone who sees you.”
Her breath hitched again, but it wasn’t from grief this time. “You’re in my head…”
“I am real. I’ve watched you. And I’ve seen enough to know. Your pain is not weakness. Your kindness is not failure.”
Tears streamed freely now. She pressed her palms to her eyes. “I’m losing myself. Maybe I already have.”
“You haven’t,” I said. I knelt beside her, not in body, but in spirit, the world bending ever so slightly to make room for me. “You give life. Now let me give something back.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
She blinked. “What?”
“My blessing. A gift to to help you on your mission”
She shook her head. “Why? Why me?”
---
Thalia woke up groggy, a thin layer of mist still clinging to her thoughts. Her limbs ached with a dull gentle echo of overuse instead of the stabbing exhaustion she’d grown used to. She blinked, eyes adjusting to the soft morning light filtering through the trees.
Something… had happened.
She furrowed her brow, struggling to recall the blurred edges of the memory. A voice? A hallucination? Something ancient… and powerful? She couldn’t tell. But the thought lingered like the last scenes of a dream before waking.
Then she realized, she wasn’t hungry.
Nor was she tired. Her stomach didn’t twist with the familiar pangs, and her hands didn’t tremble from sleepless nights.
She sat up quickly. “What…”
But before she could finish the thought, her gaze drifted to the base of the old, crumbling well. A strange mold—white, that shimmers like a gemstone—clung to the mossy stone.
She stood, drawn to it as if by instinct. Something inside her pulsed in recognition.
That’s important…
You need that…
She didn’t know why. But the knowledge bloomed in her mind like a forgotten memory. She knew what it was. What it could do. Penicillin. Life-saving. Healing.
Her hand hovered above it.
Then—snap!—a branch cracked nearby.
Her head jerked toward the sound. The forest, dense, whispered with movement. Birds startled. The brush trembled.
She took a step back, heart beating faster. Not with fear but with awareness.
For the first time in days, she... zzz... zzz
---
Thalia sat against a jagged pillar of stone with her back pressed to the cold cavern wall. Her hands trembled as they cupped over her mouth, muffling her uneven breathing. Her legs almost collapsing for every little noise. Dark circles haunted her eyes, and a single tear slid down her cheek.
She remembered the encounter she had yesterday. A bunny had been the first sign. It hopped from the underbrush, gentle and oblivious. Then, just as it blink its eyes, it also blinks out of existence.
Maws. Countless, jagged, misshapen maws burst from the shadows of the bush with a sickening snap, devouring the bunny in a spray of blood and crushed bone. It just happened. No warning. No chance to react.
The jaws had slithered back, vanishing into the bush like a tide receding, but they left a glistening trail of bloo. A trail that slipped quietly deeper into the forest. And she had followed.
"Why did I follow it?"
Shame burning under her skin. Stupid. Stupid. Even if it was to make sure no one else wandered near, even if it was to help. It was a mistake.
The thing that ignored her then… isn’t ignoring her now. It knows. It now... hunts.
She had run until her lungs burned, until her legs could carry her no farther. Now she was here—hiding like a cornered animal in the deepest part of this cavern, surrounded by silence and stone.
Thalia’s heart pounded in her ears. She waited. One heartbeat. Two. Five. Ten. The darkness didn’t stir.
Quietly, carefully, she slid from her position to sit on the ground, her lips still clamped shut, still wary of what might happen if she so much as produce a sound.
She tilted her head up, eyes flicking to the cavern ceiling above. A terrible image flashed in her mind. That thing, waiting up there, mouth open. Saliva dripping down from its maws, maws waiting to snap at her body.
But no. There's nothing. Just stone and shadow. She let herself breathe a deep and slow one. Then another. Her eyelids fluttered shut.
Info Dump #3:
- "zzz... " Indicates that the line between the candidates and the Godlings have been disconnected.