Chapter Eighteen:

  “Revelations From a Goddess”

  They walked through a city that was beginning to remember how to breathe.

  Nerathe wasn’t silent anymore.

  In the streets beyond the coliseum’s shadow, people emerged in ones and twos. Then more. Eldorians who had survived the blood trials. Residents who had once only whispered their prayers. They stepped into the light cautiously, like waking from a dream that might not yet be over.

  Someone strummed a lyre. Somewhere else, bells rang, soft and slow, not as summons, but as invitation. A child laughed. Doors opened. Banners that had hung in red and gold were torn down by hand, replaced with scraps of color pulled from old clothes, dried flowers, painted fabric. Symbols of hope. Resistance. Relief.

  Helen walked near the front, sword once again slung across her back. She’d found it wedged beneath a cracked column near the edge of the coliseum, still clean, untouched by ash.

  Beside her, RW walked with ears forward, alert but not tense. Her fur had been smoothed clean again. Her eyes missed nothing.

  Roland trailed just behind.

  He hadn’t said much since they’d left the arena.

  They were headed toward the sloping switchbacks east of the city, where John had stashed Realmweaver beneath a frayed olive tarp, hidden in the dust-shadowed mouth of a stone outcrop on the outskirts of Nerathe. They didn’t know what waited for them. Only that it was the next step.

  “You think it’ll still be there?” Helen asked.

  RW nodded once. “It’s right where we left it, outside the city. No one found it. No one even looked.”

  Helen grunted. “Comforting.”

  “Realmweaver isn’t just transport,” RW added, glancing at her. “It’s a bridge between realms. A transdimensional anchor with a built-in timeline stabilizer. John called it a car because it looks like one, but it’s much more than that.”

  Helen raised a brow. “You’re telling me he left something that could crack open reality under a tarp like spare supplies?”

  RW’s whiskers twitched. “Yes.”

  They turned down a quiet corridor of ancient stone. The music faded behind them.

  That’s when Roland spoke.

  “We need to talk about what comes next.”

  Helen looked back at him. RW didn’t stop walking.

  Roland’s voice was flat, not cold, but steady. “I don’t know what happened after I died. Not really.

  “What do you remember?” Helen asked. “And we don’t know what you’re missing. Not really.”

  “I remember enough.” Roland looked up at the sky, then back at the road. “But I need the rest. What happened to Sterling? To Souleater? To Keira and the others?”

  RW started to turn.

  But Roland was already gone.

  Not vanished in a blur. Not dragged away. Just, gone. One moment there. The next, not.

  Helen stopped short. “Where...”

  RW’s eyes narrowed.

  "Uh-oh,” she said quietly. “It's her. Gameweaver.”

  And far beyond the skin of the world, something smiled.

  There was no flash of light. No sound. Just a blink, and Roland was somewhere else.

  He didn’t remember moving. Just one footstep after another, then suddenly his boots sank into something too soft to be real, too clean to be trusted.

  No sense of travel. No transition. One moment he’d been walking a narrow stone corridor with Helen and RW, and the next, his feet touched something soft and green.

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  Grass. Real, but not.

  It shifted beneath him like breath, breathing in and out in waves of color, lavender, sky-blue, deep silver. All around him, the world shimmered with contradictions. Trees that grew upside-down from the sky, flowers blooming in reverse, koi swimming through the air as if gravity had been given new instructions and decided to let beauty float.

  A garden.

  Or a dream of one.

  Light filtered through it from no sun he could see. There was no temperature. No wind. Only the soft, endless rustle of leaves that might not have been leaves at all.

  He turned in a slow circle.

  “Hello, Roland,” said a voice behind him.

  He spun.

  She stood among the blossoms, smiling.

  Tall. Robed in layered silk that flickered between white, gold, and a shade that never settled, like light trying to remember its own shape. Her hair moved like it remembered rivers. Her face was flawless, but not perfect, like it had been generated by something that understood beauty better than it understood people.

  Gameweaver.

  He froze.

  Every part of him went rigid. One hand hovered near his weapon.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” she said gently. “There’s no combat here.”

  He didn’t relax.

  “You pulled me here,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled again, wider this time. “Because I missed you.”

  He stared.

  Gameweaver didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  “You’re not going to pretend we’re friends,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m going to explain why you’re alive.”

  A pause.

  “It worked,” she said, utterly pleased with herself. “Exactly the way I designed it to.”

  Roland didn’t speak.

  He kept his stance locked, his eyes wary. Not because he thought she would strike—but because he knew she didn’t need to.

  Gameweaver turned and began walking through the garden.

  The grass unrolled beneath her feet like a living scroll.

  “I thought you should know,” she said, “how beautifully everything aligned. John found Realmweaver. He took it to the Thousand Isles. And from there… well, you’ve seen the ripples.”

  Roland didn’t follow.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Come. It’s easier if you see the threads.”

  He stayed where he was.

  Gameweaver didn’t stop smiling. She made a careless sweep of her hand, and the garden buckled slightly, folding like heat-warped glass as if the air had been peeled sideways.

  Suddenly, they weren’t standing in the garden at all.

  They were inside a cathedral of woven starlight. Giant columns rose into infinity. Every surface flowed with moving images, memories, battles, faces.

  A war-torn Tokyo skyline. Keira screaming. Sterling ascending. A black-edged blade etched with it's name, set with a diamond and an emerald, two other sockets still waiting. Beside it floated a medallion, gleaming with a ruby and a sapphire, pulsing faintly in time with the blade’s breath.

  Souleater.

  “You were dead,” Gameweaver said calmly. “But your death created a vacuum. Into that, I poured potential. I gave John a tool. And with that I let the experiment unfold.”

  She walked past a screen showing Dorian’s last stand. Rai’s final strike. John’s sacrifice.

  “I didn’t plan every step,” she said. “Just the push. And look how far they fell to meet it.”

  Roland finally stepped forward, eyes locked on the images.

  “What happened to my friends?”

  Gameweaver didn’t turn.

  “Chris went first. Hex caught him off guard—green mist, violent and fast. He died choking. Rachel tried to fight. Tried to adapt. But Hex twisted her—turned her against Keira. She died with her blade in her hands and Keira’s name on her lips. And Keira…” Gameweaver’s eyes flicked toward a memory thread burning slow and steady. “She burned to save them. All of them. Even if they were already gone.”

  Roland’s fists clenched.

  “And Sterling?”

  Gameweaver stopped walking.

  “He built himself a throne. Turned monsters loose. Used Souleater like a scalpel and a torch. He nearly ended everything.”

  An image of Sterling frozen mid-motion appeared, Souleater half-buried in his hands, his body stilled in the wake of a sleeping spell.

  “But it wasn’t enough. He’s sealed now. Sleeping somewhere cold and deep, far from the game he tried to end.”

  She turned to Roland.

  “So he’s still alive.” Roland said.

  “Yes. But they stopped him. That should please you.”

  He said nothing.

  “None of this was about you,” she added after a beat. “But it was because of you.”

  Roland didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes on the moving images—on Sterling, on the blade, on everything that had happened since he fell.

  “You played them,” he said quietly.

  Gameweaver smiled. “I gave them opportunity. The choices were their own.”

  “And now me.”

  “Now you,” she agreed. “You’ll need both artifacts. Souleater, with its diamond and emerald. The medallion, with its ruby and sapphire. Reunite the four.”

  She stepped back, hands folding inside her sleeves.

  “When the gems align, the gate will open. Not just to another location. Another realm. The one beyond this game.”

  He finally turned to face her.

  “And what’s waiting there?”

  Her smile deepened.

  The cathedral light dimmed. Threads of energy looped tighter, pulled into a single point around Roland’s chest.

  And the world collapsed around him.

  He dropped to one knee.

  Not from pain. Not from exhaustion. Just from the shock of being somewhere real again.

  The garden of contradictions was gone. The cathedral of memory, gone. Only cobbled stone and the dry air of Nerathe greeted him now.

  Helen turned sharply. RW was already staring.

  “You’re back,” Helen said. Her voice was calm, but not flat.

  RW narrowed her eyes. “What did she tell you?”

  Roland stood slowly. His breath steamed in the air like he’d walked through something colder than death.

  “She told me why I’m alive,” he said.

  Helen’s hand drifted toward her sword. “Is that a problem?”

  Roland didn’t answer at first. He looked down at his hands, like he was waiting to see if they still obeyed.

  “No,” he said finally. “But it changes everything.”

  He looked at RW. “Souleater still exists. And a medallion.”

  Her ears flattened. “She showed you.”

  He nodded. “I need both.”

  Helen blinked. “Why?”

  “Because of the gemstones.” RW said.

  They stood in silence for a beat. The wind stirred dust across the ground. The coliseum loomed behind them like a tomb.

  Then Roland looked up.

  “We need to move,” he said.

  Helen nodded once. “Then lead.”

  And this time, he did.