From the arms of love, he fled. No, no, not love. Fake, all fake. He was delirious, half-mad. The Daimon whispered to him, along with a hundred of its kin. He sensed their movements beneath ocean and earth. They were gathering, preparing. The end was in sight; or rather, its beginning.

  Then there was the presence of the Nergal, which he knew to be close. He felt it pulsing, a presence that was familiar, almost as though it were itself another Daimonic mind, but one just beyond clear reach. And lastly, there was the godsblood in his veins. Burning, burning, oh so sweetly. Maddeningly bright.

  He held two of them within him now, and it was almost more than he could bear. He felt like a volcano always on the precipice of erupting. A Slithgor—that is what the hideous, crocodile-headed creatures were called—had confronted him in the dark runnels of the jungle, and he had simply opened his mouth and spat a kind of rainbow-hued essence. The moment it struck the Slithgor, it turned the creature into sizzling jelly. He devoured what remained.

  He did not know himself, anymore.

  No, that was not true.

  He did know himself. He was whatever lay within The Shell. Whatever Daimons and gods could not quite transform nor melt, try as they might. But that Shell was more under siege than ever before. The effort of maintaining his defences was leading to rupture.

  Let go, the Daimon urged, as it had done once before, while he sank into the sea’s cold embrace. Let go. Let us fully in.

  But he could not. He would not let The Warden die. Not yet. Not until Telos lay dead before him.

  And so he staggered on in this state of confusion and duality.

  He wandered for days. Or perhaps it was hours. Perhaps it was years. Time had been desecrated and rent.

  He came to a city. Or rather, the remains of one. Where there had been jungle, stone uprist. The towers were eye-watering, maleficent. The stone faces sculpted onto their sides—some over a hundred feet in length—were effigies that bore no human likeness, despite having all the features of a human face. Their hideous eyes were lit by viscid darkness. Their mouths were opened in primal screams of rage.

  The towers themselves looked like they were made from the foundations of the planet, that they reached up into the darkness of space, tethering Erethia to some distant architecture.

  The forest had tried to reclaim the towers, but it was not equal to the task. In places, some were destroyed, rubble cascading down their sides, their walls breached, allowing him sight of their desolate interiors. But this was not the work of the jungle. This was the work of some mightier weapon.

  Uth, the Daimon whispered. The City of Splendour. Our capital, once upon a time. Now, only the Hideous Towers remain.

  “But Uth shall rise,” The Warden whispered. “Uth shall shine bright once more.”

  He did not know why he cared. What should Koronzon Hammyr, son of Dacran Hammyr the miller, care for the Fate of a city seven thousand years old? You are the Daimoniac, the voice pressed, and he felt physical pressure in his skull. You are part of us now. The instrument of deliverance. The incarnate will…

  Yes, he was all these things. But within the black pearl of the Shell some stubborn part of him was still Koron, Little Kor, a man—a flawed man, an evil man, even, but a man nonetheless. He had done his duty, pursued justice. And now…

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  He silenced the thoughts and walked. If he thought any longer, he would come undone. He walked beneath the cyclopean towers, their shadows so long it seemed the sun had been eclipsed. From morn to noon, he bestrode the jungle. He could have changed his form into something swifter, lighter, or perhaps even winged. But he did not want to be. He wore the flesh of his old self. He wore the flesh of a young man in his twenties; the man he had been. Of course, if the two men could have been compared side by side, one would have noticed differences despite their anatomy and features being the same.

  His re-creation lacked the lustre of the original Koron, the vibrancy of youth. But in place of that youthful vitality was something else, a burning fire, quenchless as the Night. He had always walked boldly, but now he walked entirely without fear, a condition unnatural for any living thing, even a Daimon. Yes, even Daimons told stories of things that went bump in the night, he thought. Even they feared the gods, and some of the horrors of Erethia’s past.

  But he feared naught. He had been broken and remade what seemed a hundred times now. He was a blade upon the anvil of life, and the fires of vicissitude had continually reduced him back to the ore from which he was made, only to remould him again, to temper him again, to harden him again.

  Two gods lived in him. He felt their life, quixotically stirring. With a thought he could bring it forth. His spittle was venomous. His limbs could crack the Hideous Towers down to their foundations. The dragons lurking in the jungle fled before him. He sensed them retreating, horrified by the musk of change he carried.

  He halted. Before him, upon a seven-tiered plinth, was an ancient throne.

  Vines had overgrown its arms and base. Cracks ran through the rock, riven deeper by time. Yet it was still a great throne. And once, a Daimonic Potentate had sat upon it, terrible as they were beautiful, a radiant star of blood, blistering in the darkness of ancient history. Nothing but ruins remained of the empire that once was. The gods did this. And yet, he strangely found he no longer blamed the gods, however much he hated them. He blamed the Daimons. He blamed their weakness. Had I been there, I would have driven them back. I would have reached their planet. I would have purged them and taken Nilldoran.

  He felt the Daimon within him trembling, felt the whole mind-link wavering with fear and doubt. They sensed his wrath, his power. All depended on him: all their schemes and ambitions. And he was new. He had their blood within him but he also bore other powers, other possibilities. A living alchemy. He was more even than The Daimoniac, more even than their prophecies.

  He took the steps slowly up to the throne. It was made for a giant, and so he grew. He retained the form of Koron Hammyr, but waxed, until he rivalled the treetops, until he towered. He sat upon the throne, closed his eyes. He focused inward and found the black pearl of the Shell. Slowly, he drew it through his body, moved it through the horrid network of muscles and veins and mycelial life, the seething pulse of inchoate matter that he was. Matter is nothing, he realised. There is something that lies deeper, tethered to matter, perhaps, but ultimately transcendent of it. He recognised this element in himself in the form of his willpower. How many times should he have died, only for his will to triumph, to make his flesh and bones move when they should not, to stir life in him when he should be dead. I am aptly named Koronzon, he thought. For I have conquered death. For a brief flash he thought again of his brother, of the infant who had murdered his mother, of how he had always believed he should have borne the name Koronzon. The memory flashed, then was gone.

  The pearl now rose through his throat, then through the walls of his skull and runnels of his brain. At last, he pushed it free from a bleeding orifice in his forehead. An eye, it was. A gemstone. A jewel. A diadem.

  A symbol.

  And in that instant, the two warring halves were resolved. He neither needed to revert to humanity nor to fully embrace Daimonhood. He could be all things. It was his unique destiny to be all things.

  I shall find the Nergal, he thought. And I shall destroy it. And then, then, I will make the world mine. All Daimons shall bow. All gods shall perish. And all men shall worship me.

  It was never his destiny to serve kings.

  It was his destiny to become one.

  The God King, he thought. Heaven and earth united. That shall be the poem of my life, the legacy of my existence, the triumph of my will.

  The God King smiled.