He sat upright.
A pressure was building.
Selene, already up, stood at the edge of the cliff. She wore a white robe conjured from the ambient magic, her silver hair glistening under the stars.
"You feel it too," she said without turning.
"Yes," Valerian replied. "Something's coming."
Not from outside this world.
From within it.
The moment he chose "New Construct," he had granted Eidion autonomy. Freedom from the prewritten code. But that freedom had a price.
For every god born… a devil would follow.
---
A low rumble cracked across the horizon. The birds scattered.
Valerian focused his vision.
Far beyond the hills, the sky turned red.
Not a sunset.
A fissure.
An orb of black fire bloomed over a distant mountain range—tendrils of corrupted magic writhing through the sky like parasitic vines. They crawled downward, touching the earth, and where they landed, landscapes changed. Forests twisted into obsidian spires. Rivers turned to ash. Reality convulsed.
