Brimstone

Saeris¹ visits Fisher's² comatose half-sister Everlayne,¹⁶ speaking softly to the sleeping woman. When she touches the quicksilver in Everlayne's¹⁶ earrings, the metal liquifies — and her eyes snap open, milky white.

The voice that emerges belongs to Edina,¹⁹ Fisher's² mother, who has been clinging to this side of death for centuries. Edina¹⁹ tells Saeris¹ to find a blue book with a butterfly, hidden among stars in a library. The book will explain how to stop the rot. She commands Saeris¹ not to tell Fisher.²

Then Saeris's¹ runes ignite — blisters rising, flesh burning, smoke curling from her hands. An Alchemist must seal their runes, Edina¹⁹ gasps, before the magic pouring through them tears the wielder apart. Fisher² arrives to find Saeris¹ calling his dead mother's name.

After dinner at Cahlish, Fisher² presses Saeris¹ against his bedroom door and confesses: he wants to marry her but can't. A Fae wedding requires exchanging true names — the most sacred commitment possible — and Fisher² never received his.

His mother died before his fourteenth birthday, when the name would have been given. Without it, the ceremony cannot take root. Saeris¹ laughs and tells him she doesn't need a wedding. Their God Bindings outweigh any ritual. Then she says it for the first time: she loves him.

Fisher² carries her inside and the tension that has simmered between them for weeks finally breaks. Their intimacy is raw and transcendent — his shadows explode from his body during climax, forming gossamer wings that cocoon them both in glittering dark.

In Zilvaren, a treacherous vault breaker lures Fisher² and Carrion³ into a sealed bell tower where the demon Joshin has waited centuries in the dark, manifesting as millions of scorpions.

Venom courses through their bodies, triggering hallucinations of dead loved ones — Fisher² sees his mother¹⁹ berating him; Carrion³ endures ghosts he won't name. Fisher² shatters the magically sealed walls with his bare fists, cracking bone, until sunlight floods in and incinerates the demon's body.

He forces a bargain: the demon's life for theirs, plus venom for an anti-venom and one secret. The secret lands like a cold blade — to kill a queen, Fisher² must travel to the darkest of all places and strike a deal with something far worse than a scorpion god. He keeps one surviving scorpion in a wooden box.

A vampire tackles Saeris¹ in Ammontraíeth's library, lunging for her throat. She fights back with Fisher's² silver dagger, and when her runes flare uncontrollably, a blast of energy tears a twenty-foot hole in the library wall. Lorreth⁵ arrives and recognizes the attacker: Foley,⁷ their long-lost brother from the Lupo Proelia.

Made vampire against his will at Ajun, Foley⁷ was shunned by Malcolm — his canines ripped out, replaced with gold-plated teeth. He's survived on rats and birds for nearly a thousand years, convinced his friends abandoned him.

The truth cuts deeper: Zovena¹⁵ intercepted every letter they ever sent. Foley⁷ agrees to help Saeris¹ understand her Alchemist heritage, drawing on centuries of obsessive reading and his grandfather's teachings. But he insists she sleep first. Without rest, her power will remain ungovernable.

Saeris¹ falls asleep and wakes in a snowy valley she's never visited. Fisher² is there, shirtless, chopping wood outside a cottage at the edge of Cahlish's borders. He assumes she's a hallucination — then she touches him, and they realize this dreamscape is shared.

The bite marks from their last encounter are real on her thigh. The stew he's cooking has texture and warmth. When they make love by the fire, it's no fantasy — Fisher's² broken hand from his fight in the bell tower heals overnight from drinking her blood in the dream.

They've discovered a new dimension to their God Binding: the ability to meet across any distance, affect each other physically, and find moments of peace even when realms apart. Onyx¹² appears too, having visited Fisher's² dreams for weeks.

Fisher² and Carrion³ find Hayden⁸ on the streets of the Second Ward, but Saeris's brother⁸ hurls a knife at Fisher² — Madra's propaganda has convinced him that this Fae warrior murdered his sister. Carrion³ talks him down.

When guardians corner them during a cleansing day — teenage girls lined up for forced sterilization — Fisher's² rage detonates. He slaughters dozens of soldiers, then extends his shadows over the entire city, plunging Zilvaren into unprecedented darkness.

They escape through tunnels to the forge of Elroy,²¹ Saeris's¹ old mentor, who reveals a generational secret: metalworkers have been refining quicksilver beneath his shop for centuries. A massive hidden pool waits underground — their way home. Carrion³ mourns Gracia, the last of the Swift women who protected him, at her funeral pyre in the desert.

In Ammontraíeth's library, the paper stargazers — tiny magical birds folded from paper and nesting in the rafters for centuries — swarm Saeris¹ in a whirling vortex. One cuts her cheek, testing her blood. Then the entire constellation collapses.

The birds unfold mid-air and flutter down as yellowed pages covered in elegant handwriting. They organize themselves into a book: navy blue cover, a silver butterfly stamped on the front. Edina's journal. A note inside reads: thank you for loving my boy.

Saeris¹ shares the book with Fisher² despite Edina's¹⁹ command to keep it secret — and passes the test. Edina's¹⁹ hidden note to Fisher² confirms it: the dominoes must fall in order. Each entry corresponds to a precise moment ahead. The dead oracle has left her daughter-in-law a map through the chaos to come.

Belikon's¹³ seneschal Orious²⁰ arrives through the quicksilver with guards carrying null blades — strange alloy weapons that resist Saeris's¹ elemental magic. She fights five soldiers simultaneously, the combat forms Lorreth⁵ drilled into her finally flowing as instinct.

Overwhelmed, she plunges into the Ammontraíeth quicksilver pool in desperation. The sentient metal tests her, demanding to know if she's worthy. When it asks whether she'd sacrifice what's most dear, she refuses to give up Fisher.² The quicksilver accepts this answer and seals her first rune.

Emerging transformed, Saeris¹ projects her Alchimeran shield — a glowing sigil of interlocking icons — and detonates a pulse of energy that flings the remaining guards across the tomb. Then she takes Solace in both hands and splits the god sword in two. The twin blades name themselves: Erromar, meaning Mercy, and Selanir, meaning Honor.

At the annual Evenlight Ball, Taladaius⁴ stages a coup disguised as celebration. He publicly severs his bond with Saeris¹ — she vomits his blood before the court — then reveals the night's true purpose. The blood-laced wine has been poisoned by Iseabail's¹⁰ witch spell, channeled through sigils secretly inked on Tal's⁴ chest.

High bloods collapse throughout the hall, hemorrhaging black blood. Antidote vials are offered: drink and become Fae again, or refuse and die forever. Most choose death over surrendering their power. Saeris¹ names Foley⁷ as a new Lord of Midnight.

Tal⁴ swallows an enormous dose himself, intending to follow his court into oblivion — but Foley⁷ forces the cure down his throat. The witch mark on Tal's⁴ chest erupts, nearly ripping open a portal to hell. Saeris¹ uses a rune gifted by the Hazrax¹¹ to shatter the spell before it consumes them all.

An infected feeder scales Cahlish's courtyard wall and seizes Archer,¹⁷ the loyal fire sprite. When the creature tears into Archer's¹⁷ throat, brimstone — the molten element that sustains sprite life — sprays across the feeder's body. Black veins bulge beneath its skin, split open, and incinerate.

The rot disintegrates on contact. Saeris¹ and Carrion³ carry the wounded sprite inside, burning their own hands on his cooling body. The discovery is monumental: brimstone is the cure. But every drop of brimstone sustains a sprite, and harvesting enough to fight the plague would kill every fire sprite in Yvelia.

Lorreth⁵ reveals there is one other source — but Fisher² refuses to discuss it, his face drained of color. The plan exists, terrifying everyone who knows its shape, and its destination is a place Fisher² hoped never to revisit.

The rot reaches Cahlish. Fisher² tears open a massive shadow gate and evacuates fifteen thousand warriors to the coastal town of Inishtar. The fire sprites refuse to leave their underground pyre, trusting their brimstone to protect them.

One by one, friends pass through — Te Léna¹⁸ carrying the comatose Everlayne,¹⁶ Taladaius⁴ barely standing, Carrion³ bundled in three coats. Fisher² enters last, cradling Onyx¹² against his chest. He does not emerge. The shadow gate snaps closed behind him. At Inishtar, infected feeders have already struck.

Saeris¹ fights through carnage with Erromar and Selanir blazing, searching for Fisher² among the dead and the dying. Hayden⁸ passes out. Lorreth⁵ battles with Angel's Breath crackling from his blade. Ren⁶ is still missing. For the first time since finding her mate, Saeris¹ is entirely alone.

Saeris¹ enters the dreamscape and finds Fisher² catatonic in Cahlish's rotting ruins — clouded eyes, blue lips, barely breathing. The Hazrax¹¹ transports her physical body to the Wicker Wood, where Belikon¹³ has imprisoned Fisher² inside a corrupted dryad tree that feeds on suffering, slowly encasing him in living wood.

She fights through guards wielding null blades and projects her Alchimeran shield across the haunted forest. A dead stargazer she pocketed weeks ago unfolds into a missing page from Edina's journal bearing Fisher's true name: Khydan Graystar Finvarra.

She screams it across the wood, commanding him to rise — and his magic obliterates the prison from inside. When Belikon¹³ weaponizes the name, Saeris¹ activates her breaking rune and severs its power permanently. Fisher² drives Nimerelle through the king and takes his head. Belikon's¹³ dark magic means even decapitation won't kill him for good.

Belikon's¹³ seneschal lunges at Saeris¹ with a null blade, but Onyx¹² launches from the shadows and tears into the man's face — the fox had been haunting the Wicker Wood for days, scratching at Fisher's² prison tree. Saeris¹ kills the seneschal, but the blade catches Onyx¹² across the body.

By the time she cradles him, the wound is fatal. Fisher² holds her as she grieves, then tells her a Fae belief: animals are ascended beings from the afterlife who choose one soul to protect. The Hazrax¹¹ confirms Onyx's¹² spirit hasn't departed yet.

Saeris¹ pours every scrap of her magic into the breaking rune, undoing death itself for one searing heartbeat — long enough to pull the fox back into his body and heal the wound. The rune shatters permanently. The cost of a god's gift, spent on a little white fox. She'd pay it again.

At Ajun Sky, the mountain fortress where Fisher² once entered a cursed pool as a child and nearly lost his mind, Ren⁶ waits. He was summoned here by his oath mark — a knight's call to guard the gate between realms. That gate has reopened, and the wards are failing.

Fisher² reveals the only natural source of brimstone besides fire sprites: Diaxis, the realm mortals call hell. They step through the black pool together and emerge before Arissan, a seventy-foot dragon whose offspring Fisher² killed at Ajun a millennium ago.

She spews brimstone and drags them before her sons — two half-god males wielding shadow magic identical to Fisher's.² When they demand to know how a mortal commands such power, Fisher² reveals what no one knew: Styx, lord of Diaxis, king of dragons, is his father. He demands an audience, claiming a son's right to trade.