Lyridia, Goddess of Stories, sat cloaked in the shadowy er of a modest tavern somewhere in Nymoria, her delicate fingers ed around a chipped mug of ale. Her pierg, otherworldly gaze was fixed on the bard at the tre of the room. The performer spun a tale of epic heroes and dastardly vilins, their voice rid dramatic, though the narrative itself atchwork of clichés and clumsy twists.

  As the goddess of stories, Lyridia should have been appalled by the plot’s mediocrity. But that wasn’t the point. Stories weren’t just words; they were es. They were shaped by how they were told, the passion behind them, and the shared experience of the listeners. The bard’s delivery—their wide gestures, the emotive ce, and the glint of enthusiasm in their eyes—made even the cklustre tale glow with a life all its own. And that, Lyridia thought, was the magic worth sav.

  Her lips curved into a faint smile as the crowd cheered the bard’s dramatiale. She raised her mug in silent appuse, but her mind was already wandering. Somewhere beyond this quaint tavern, a different story was unfolding—a tale that held her attention like no other.

  She reached into the folds of her robe and pulled forth a shimmering thread of aether, its surface alive with shifting images—faces, pces, flicts—woven into an unfolding story. It was no ordinary thread. What had begun as a faint glimmer in the grand tapestry of the world had thied and pulsed with a peculiar vibrancy.

  Lyridia tilted her head, her silver hair catg the dim light, as her firaced the thread’s texture. It had been faint before, subtle enough to slip past even her watchful gaze. Yet now, it thrummed with an almost magic pull, demanditention. She’d noticed it only weeks ago, its preseartling in its sudden crity.

  A, it had been there for far longer. Eight years, by her estimation. Fht years, this story had quietly unfurled, hidden amidst the vast sprawl of narratives she tended. How peculiar, she mused, that something of this magnitude had escaped her notitil now.

  Her eyes narrowed, her smile fading into something sharper. “You’ve been hiding, haven’t you?” she murmured to the thread. “Or perhaps someone hid you.”

  She leaned back, letting the thread wind itself around her fingers. A tale this bold rarely emerged without ripples. It whispered of something deeply entwined with the world’s foundations, something that could reshape destinies and challenge gods.

  Her attention drifted back to the thread’s imagery. A fsh of scales and cws. A shadowy figure dev aether. The Lekine warrior standing at her side. And something else—something darker, lurking at the edges, its form unclear but its i unmistakable.

  “Vivienne and Rava,” Lyridia mused aloud, her voice a melody of fasation. “You’re crafting quite the tale. Let’s see how far you’ll take it.”

  She flicked her wrist, and the thread unraveled into the air, f a miniature tableau. The two figures moved with eerie precision, their as ghostly echoes of the present. A faint glow surrouhem as if they were protagonists stepping into the spotlight.

  But what troubled Lyridia wasn’t the pair themselves. It was the force cirg them, intangible yet undeniable, shaping their steps and binding their fates in ways everuggled to decipher.

  "Who’s pulling your strings?" she whispered.

  She tugged gently ohread, letting it unravel in her divine mind. With each pull, she followed it deeper, spiraling through the weave of time and spatil she found it—the point where all things began to blur and tremble in the very fabric of existence.

  There, in the yawning chasm of the Abyss, she saw it. The thing that stares back when you dare peer too long into the unknown. The true creator. The monster of monsters. The a one whose presewisted the very ws of nature, whose motivations defied the uanding of even the gods. She ks did not speak it. It was not a name for mortal tongues.

  Lyridia’s breath hitched as she studied it. The entity in the Abyss had rarely, if ever, interfered with the lives of mortals. It watched, yes, but it had stayed silent, tent in its omnist presence, letting the lesser gods, like herself, py their roles. But something had ged. She could feel it now. There was a tremor ihreads, a ripple that had begun to affect even the most tightly woven lives on Nymoria.

  She could hardly begin to fathom the thoughts of such a being. pared to the in of all, even Lyridia—one of the most powerful among the gods—was no more signifit than the smallest i crawling across a fotten sto was a humbling thought, but it did not terrify her. If anything, it inspired awe.

  But then, there was Akhenna.

  Lyridia’s mind wao her old rival, the Great Architect pretending to be just anod. Akhenna had ruly belonged in the system of gods and their domains. A, her presence had been woven in seamlessly, a god of chaos and creatioiween the lines of everything, ahere was something wrong. Something missing.

  The ods—like Praxus, like Heralihought Nymoria was all there was. All there ever would be. They thought the aether, the stories, the magic, the people—all of it, was the beginning and the end. Lyridia had thought the same once, until she read the threads that Akhenna had drawn.

  Where there should have been a divine being, a god fed from the tides of aether or the apotheosis of mortal greatness, Lyridia had found something else entirely.

  A hole.

  Not a void, iness, but something beyond that. A "nothing" that wasn’t nothing at all. Something deeper than mere absehis wasn’t a gap in knowledge, nor an unexplored space. It was a plete and utter eaning—a fual break in the fabric of creation. A nothing that could never be filled, could never be expined.

  Lyridia shivered. Evehe goddess of stories, who wove tless lives as into being, could not tell what such a nothing could signify. But ohing was certain: this thing, this nothing, was not something that would stay hidden for long. Its presence was beginning to ma, spreading its influence across the worlds.

  And it was starting with Vivienne.

  Her eyes narrowed as the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. Vivienne wasn’t just a mere mortal, nor was she just the creation of some od’s whim. She was a duit. A key. Something—or someoe that nothing into the world. Perhaps the question wasn’t why Vivienne, but how?

  "What role do you py in this, little one?" Lyridia muttered to herself, her gaze darkening as the thread before her twisted again, showing a flicker of Vivienne’s chaotic journey, entwined with aether and shadows.

  The world was ging, and whether she liked it or not, Lyridia was going to have to decide how much of that ge she could trol—and how much she was simply another character in the unfolding story.

  And then, without warning, she felt it. That total absehe very air seemed to grow still, as if even time itself had paused. If she were still mortal, she would feel sweat running down the back of her neck, but instead, her divine essence shuddered. Her senses, usually sharp and unwavering, struggled to grasp at the sensation. It was a vacuum. A hole in the universe where all things ceased to be. It resence she knew well, though she would never speak its name aloud.

  She didn’t o turn to know who it was. The absence was unmistakable. It was Akhenna.

  Lyridia remaiill, her fiightening around the mug of ale that had gone lukewarm in her hand. She did not turn to face the darkness, nor did she give any outward sign nition. It would have been pointless. She knew Akhenna’s games all too well.

  "Hello, Lyridia," came the voice—soft, familiar, yet grating, like nails on gss. It was the voice of Akhenna, though spoken through the character she had fashioned for herself in this world. A mortal guise she had chosen to weave, ohat allowed her to move unnoticed, unseen by the ods.

  “You’ve learned something you shouldn’t have, haven’t you?” Akhenna tinued, her voice dripping with mock curiosity. “You’ve pulled a thread you were never meant to follow. That... is dangerous.”

  Lyridia’s lips quirked into a thin smile, but her heart was heavy with the truth she had e to uand. She set the mug down slowly, the sound of it meeting the wood betraying the calm she otherwise projected. "If anyone knows about pulling threads, Akhenna, it would be you."

  Akhenna’s ughter filled the air, not loud, but vast—like the hum of an o as it ed beh the surface. "Ah, yes, you uand. You think you’re pulling on some thread that will lead you to the truth, but the more you tug, the more you realise how much you don’t know."

  Lyridia stood up slowly, her movements deliberate. There was no point in running from Akhenna now. It had all led to this moment, the moment where everything she had built and known would be questioned. She had speuries shaping stories, weaving the very fabric of existehrough narrative. But what had it all amouo?

  "What I don’t know?" Lyridia repeated, her voice quieter now, the edge of her defiance dulling as the reality of the situation began to sink in. "I thought... I thought I could shape something. I thought I could fight against what you were doing. But it’s... bigger than me, isn’t it?"

  Akhenna’s presence shifted in the air, as though the very darkness surrounding them breathed with satisfa. "Oh, darling, it’s always been bigger than you. Bigger than all of them." Akhenna’s voice softened, almost tender, as if speaking to a child struggling to grasp a difficult truth. "What you call ‘struggle’ is simply an illusion. You only swim with them or be swallowed."

  For the first time in what felt like ay, Lyridia paused, her mind quieting as she allowed the weight of Akhenna’s words to sink in. She had spent her existerying to influeories, trying to assert some trol over the narratives of mortals, the gods, and the very world itself. But now, standing before the true architect of everything, Lyridia saw the futility of her efforts.

  "How do you do it?" she asked softly, not with anger, but with a strange, ag curiosity. "How do you… let it all unfold without struggling? Without trying to trol it?"

  Akhenna’s ughter, ge filled with an uling finality, rang through the room. "trol? I don’t o trol it, Lyridia. I am it. You, and all your little gods, are merely characters in a py. You try to give meaning to your as, to your struggles, but in the end, it’s all just part of the greater story. My story. And you’re all just pying your parts."

  Lyridia’s gaze drifted downward, her mind shifting as she thought of everything she had tried to protect, everything she had worked for. The gods. The mortals. The world itself. Was it all meaningless? Were they all just figments in Akhenna’s grand design?

  She felt something stir inside her. A shift. A resignation.

  "Then why fight it?" Lyridia said, her voice barely above a whisper, the st vestige of defiance fading. "Why pretend that I shape the world when I ’t even uand it? Why not accept it?"

  Akhenna’s presence seemed to fill the room entirely now, pressing in on every side. "Oh, Lyridia," she said, her voice soft, almost pitying, "You’re not so different from me after all. You’ve always knowruth. You’ve always known that trol is an illusion. But what if you stopped fighting it? What if you embraced it instead?"

  Lyridia took a deep breath, feeling the weight of turies of stubborand pride slip away. She looked up, her eyes meeting the absehat surrounded her, and for the first time, she saw it clearly. Akhenna’s world was not one of chaos, not one of destru. It was a world of acceptance, of uanding, of iability. The threads were already woven, and there was no point iending she could uhem.

  "Tell me," Lyridia said, her voice calm, yet ced with a quiet resignation. "What do you want from me?"

  Akhenna’s response was slow, a smile curling into her voice, as if sav a hidden pleasure. "What I’ve always wanted, Lyridia. Nothing, really. Perhaps just a few more pieces to p the board. Something... eaining."

  And in that moment, it clicked. The struggle was over. It had always beehe fight, the resista was all for naught. turies to tell a story from all the chaos that life brought. What remained was the only truth left for her to accept—her part in the grand, unwritten tale Akhenna was weaving. But there was still one question, a burning curiosity that g to the back of her mind.

  Lyridia swallowed hard, her voice steady, though tinged with defiahen why tell me all this? Why offer it to me at all?” The question hung in the air, fragile but sharp.

  She still didn’t look at Akhenna, despite knowing the goddess was mere inches away, but she could feel her presence—a palpable weight, a smile too close to her skin. It maddened her.

  Akhenna’s voice was a whisper now, curling into her ear like smoke, intoxig and dangerous. “Do you truly want to know, Lyridia? Do you want a glimpse into the vastness of my maations?” The heat of Akhenna’s breath grazed her ear, a touch that made her spine shiver.

  Lyridia nodded sharply, unwilling to back away from the question now, no matter how unnerving it was.

  “Because you’re only the thirty-four thousa hundred, and y-sed entity to figure out who I am without any clues," Akhenna purred, her voice rich with satisfa. "And do you know what, Lyridia?”

  Lyridia shook her head, her breath catg ihroat, though she already suspected the answer.

  “That makes you iing."

  The words hung in the air, electrid suffog. The pressure in the room thied to the point where Lyridia could no longer draw in a full breath. Her knees buckled, and she colpsed onto the ground, gasping, her chest heaving as if the very atmosphere was too heavy for her divine form to withstand.

  “And I love iing,” Akhenna's voice trailed off, a tented, almost fond note ione, as if she were basking in the delight of some private joke.

  Lyridia, struggling for air, felt the weight of it all settle on her—her surrender, her role, her acceptance. She looked up at the thing pretending to be a goddess, her expression softening, a small but resolute smile curling at the edges of her lips.