Rowan slouched against the crystalline bars, the picture of lazy defiance. The moment Ellie left, he did the obvious—tested the bars. No luck. They didn’t budge, didn’t crack, didn’t even smudge. Whatever they were made of, it was stronger than diamond and, more insultingly, fingerprint-proof.

  He tried every spell he knew, poking at reality’s edges for a weak spot. Nothing. His other forms hovered just beyond reach in the astral, taunting him. No matter how hard he pushed, the barrier held. The astral was still his best bet. That’s why he lounged against the bars, running through the puzzle in his head—how does one take a body to the astral?

  The door blasted open, rattling the walls. Ellie stormed in, her eyes blazing with white-hot fury. “What did you do?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” Rowan said. “Judging by your face, I should be expecting cake.”

  Ellie’s fingers curled like she could rip the air itself apart. “I would burn you to ash—”

  “Yada, yada,” Rowan muttered.

  “—but the very fabric of magic seems to be coming undone!” She raised a palm. “Ilthar.” A faint glow flickered—then guttered out like a dying star.

  The entire realm buckled, groaning like the hull of a sinking ship. Rowan gripped the bars, watching the cracks in reality widen.

  “Well. That’s not great,” he said.

  “Not great?!” She stomped forward and kicked between the bars.

  Rowan moved the necessary few inches for her to miss. “That’s not nice. What about that cake now?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Do you know what it means if there is no order in the universe?”

  Rowan gave a half-shrug. “I win?”

  “The fabric of reality will unwind!” Spit was flying from her mouth.

  “Wow. And your plan was to come and ask the god of chaos to fix it?” Rowan smirked. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m powerless in here. You are the goddess of order—sounds like you better get to making order in the universe.”

  She grabbed the bars. “I can’t! Something you did while at the heart of magic has damaged the fabric. I need to undo it before there’s nothing left. Tell me what you did!”

  “When would you say you started noticing symptoms?” Rowan asked. “Maybe it was something you ate.”

  She knelt next to the cage. “What did you do?”

  Rowan shrugged. “Do you think it was my wit and charm that broke reality? Because I was pretty witty.”

  Ellie’s realm shuttered again, and she slipped and fell to the floor. It took a moment for her to regain her feet. She held her head as if in pain.

  “It’s tearing me apart.” Her voice cracked. “Rowan, we’ve had our battles, but I never wanted you dead. You just… you don’t see the damage you cause. The world needs to be protected from you.”

  Rowan sighed. “Ellie, the only person who has ever believed your lies is you.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Then why did you become the trickster god?” she asked. “I convinced you to become that—that was never something you wanted. That was something that I needed.”

  Rowan nodded. “That was less you and more me lying to myself. And you’re right, I never wanted this, but it’s on me that I didn’t open my own eyes and see you and Marcus for what you are.”

  “I felt your brother escape purgatory,” Ellie said. “You know what harm he’ll do now that he’s free.”

  Rowan’s eyes widened. “My brother is on Earth?”

  Ellie shook her head. “Purgatory touches all realities through the void. Something you did unleashed the demons into the void. All of the gods are now under assault.”

  Rowan thought of Abby and Nadia, each weakened by their creation of an artifact and having to fend off the demons—who were more than a physical threat but capable of driving even a god to madness.

  “Wait. Are the gods in a group chat, and I’m not invited?”

  “One of my disciples prayed to each of the gods when I asked her to,” she said.

  Rowan blinked. “Her? You have another disciple other than Victor?”

  “All of us have multiple disciples, dolt,” she said. “Without a mortal, we’d have no tether to reality—no source of strength.”

  “You need them?”

  She ignored his question. “What do you think will happen once all of the gods are dead?”

  “Nadia and Abby are strong. They’ll be fine,” he lied. Demons were not gods but still god-adjacent. If a hoard of them had been released, they’d likely overrun the gods.

  “Last chance,” she said. “Tell me what you did.”

  “Maybe you should ask what your boyfriend did,” Rowan said. “The only thing I did was look out for a child.”

  A woman made entirely from white light stumbled into the room—one of the automatons Ellie used for guards, except this one had wings. Rowan speculated that the wings were a new addition since his last escape using his raven form. The guard was flickering in and out of existence. “Intruders,” she said in a musical voice that went out of key as she winked out of existence.

  Ellie held out her hand, and a rod of pure light appeared. She glanced at Rowan with a glare. “When I come back, I’m beating the answer out of you.”

  As she stormed out of the room, Rowan sat up straighter. He had no idea what had unleashed the demons. He had unleashed chaos in the heart of the realm of magic to disrupt the ritual, but was that enough to free the demons in purgatory and release them into the void? Maybe the backlash did something? He had tried to destroy Marcus’s avatar in the backlash, but what if Marcus lived? He wondered if Sofia and Gretta escaped. He had left them both lying helplessly on the ground.

  The entirety of the disaster felt like too much. He couldn’t be in all places at once—but Abby, Nadia, Gretta, and Sofia all needed him. Or, they at least needed the strength to help each other. That meant helping Abby first. She could help Nadia and Gretta, who could all help Sofia.

  Rowan wasn’t a planner. He was a professional at winging it. But for once, he had a clear goal. Time to let loose.

  He thought about the astral problem. When he shifted, he swapped one shape for another. He had done it so much that it came easily. He simply willed that form to come forward, but his consciousness remained in the same reality. Maybe this wasn’t a matter of moving his form, but moving his consciousness.

  He locked onto his raven form—not here, but waiting just beyond the veil. He hurled his mind forward. His muscles seized, his breath hitched. For a split second, he felt it—the weightless silence of the astral.

  Footsteps were echoing down the hall, coming closer.

  He tried again. His fists balled, and he willed his consciousness into the raven. A trickle of blood ran down his nose. The footsteps were near. He pushed harder.

  With a popping sensation, his consciousness and body were no longer in Ellie’s reality. Rowan grinned. He had finally managed to reach the astral.

  A massive figure stepped into the room—taloned fingers, sharp fangs, and eyes like burning coals. Thadius. Rowan’s brother. Burns and cuts littered his skin, but he moved like he felt none of it. His gaze passed straight through Rowan’s ethereal form.

  Then he howled, a raw, feral sound, and launched himself upward—shattering the ceiling, ripping a gaping hole in reality itself as he vanished into the void.

  Rowan tried to follow his brother, willing himself to float up—but smashed his face into the bars of Ellie’s cage. The pain was unreal. Apparently, Ellie had even imprisoned him in the astral.