Vivian, Star of the Silken Sky, Pearl of the Blackest Ocean, and Prophet to the Great Goddess Renewal, drew on every scrap of magic, will, and strength she had to avoid looking like she’d just walked past a particularly rancid sewage system.

Vivian interlaced her fingers upon her lap with the grace of a queen. She looked down at the man before her, a practiced smile upon her perfect lips. The hard throne behind her felt cold against her back, the white marble uncomfortable even through the delicate cushions lining it.

He gazed up with adoration in his murky green eyes. They were like two crystal forests suspended within a sea of alabaster skin. Perfect features, a regal brow, and a well-cared for mane of hair that fell all the way down to his shoulders in a silken cape.

His body was sculped to such a degree that even a master sculptor would have found themselves weeping at their inadequacy should they have tried to re-create his form in stone. His muscles were large, but proportional. He wasn’t a hulking ape. These were muscles that came from use, from application rather than just pure training.

“No,” Vivian said.

“What?” the man exclaimed. “I — but I traveled here! For weeks! My father requested an interview with you a year ago! You have to help us! We pay the Church of Repose for protection! Honorable Prophet—”

“I do not have to do anything,” Vivian said. “The Church decides its own actions. I am simply a guiding light in the dark. They may choose to follow me. They may not. Such is their choice. Repose does not demand obedience. But it does demand respect.”

The man’s beautiful jaw clenched as his hands tightened into fists at his sides. “What good is our agreement if you don’t protect your vassal kingdoms? We have paid you an immeasurable amount of Crystal in our years. Enough to make a hundred Rank 7 mages. How can you turn on us in our time of need?”

Vivian’s eye twitched.

“We protect you from threats of the world,” she said, her words cool and measured. It did not become a Prophet to allow emotion through her words. She was above such mortal concerns. “Not from problems of your own making. Does the World Serpent Stir? Do Obsidian Gate’s Demon Lords knock upon your door? Does the Horde of Man steal away your people for their experimentation?”

“They could,” the man said weakly. “You must help us! Or are you a liar, Prophet? Do you abandon those who pay you? You owe it to us! This enemy—”

“Is another Kingdom,” Vivian said flatly, anger flaring up in her like a hot fire. “One with whose princess your son eloped with, got pregnant, and then ran away from when he realized he would now have to bear more responsibility than porking the scullery maids that you pay to pretend to like him!”

The man took a step back, his eyes going wide.

Vivian blinked.

Oh, bother. I said that out loud. What has gotten into me? That’s not becoming of my position at all.

“You b—” the man started.

Vivian snapped her fingers.

Her runes flared. Then the man imploded, crushed in from every direction as a ball of Rune Force closed around him with such speed that he didn’t even have an instant to realize what was happening. His body was compacted down to a fingernail-sized marble instantly.

Vivian didn’t even feel the magical energy from his death enter her soul. The difference between their strength was so vast that she may as well have stepped on a fly. Perhaps that would have been a better use of her strength. Maybe the fly would have enjoyed it.

“Why are the pretty ones always so damned stupid?” Vivian asked, blowing out a weary breath. She flicked her fingers and the marble vanished, shunted out of Obsidia with nothing more than a thought.

Another flicker of anger coiled through her mind before she snuffed it. This was becoming all too common.

The complaints, that was. Not the slip-ups. Her mental guard dropping was exceedingly rare. But these last few months had been some of the most infuriating ones of her life. It wasn’t because some great enemy was at her doorstep, nor was it due to any real matter of worth at all.

Her troubles all sourced from the idiots who had seemingly decided that they could start wars with their neighbors and then run to the Church to deal with their problems for them.

Idiots. If you screw with another kingdom, they’re going to fight back. You think I’m going to crush them for defending themselves? For protecting their honor? And, in the name of Renewal, I’m certainly not destroying a kingdom because they’ve asked your stingy ass for a fucking dowry since your son got their princess pregnant. The only thing that fool wanted me to protect was his coffers.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Vivian let out an exhausted sigh and slumped down until her shoulders were pressed against the seat of her chair and her head was uncomfortably crocked against the backrest, her lower body hanging off the edge of the chair and arms awkwardly propped against the armrests.

It was not a very Prohpet-like seating position. But she wasn’t feeling particularly Prophet-like.

There are real problems. Ones that actually need my attention. But if I don’t deal with these idiots, they’ll tear each other apart. I can’t let the Church’s faction destroy itself… and if given the chance, the fools will do it the moment I turn around.

We have enough enemies. Why do they need to go looking for more?

Vivian pushed herself upright with a distressed grumble. This couldn’t last much longer. She was certain. Soon — perhaps in a few hundred or a thousand years — she would finish her contemplations upon her Divine Rune.

Then she would Ascend. She would become a God, and none of this stupid bureaucracy would ever bother her again. The Gods were different. She could join Renewal in studying the great delights of the universe. In freedom of all control.

I wonder what Renewal is doing right now. Is she flying through the universe, witnessing all of its greatness? Dining with the other gods and discussing their runes? Seeking enlightenment?

It must be incredible. Certainly nothing like this.

But this — and the duty she held to it — was all Vivian had. And it was not something she would abandon. Eternity waited. Her Divine Rune would still be there.

“But… thinking about Divine Runes,” Vivian muttered, her mind drifting for a moment. It had been some time since the Night’s Shadow had fallen. That little debacle still hadn’t finished dealing its damage. She hadn’t even had a chance to check on the corpse of the monster.

Frankly, she hadn’t needed to. It was stuck in the Beyond. Not even the other Factions had a pathway to that. Vivian alone possessed the keys to it. It was sanctum and prison alike.

I suppose I should make sure the Night’s Shadow hasn’t found a way to start gathering power again. That Divine Rune it had was quite the menace. I can’t allow something like that to ever come into fruition.

Vivian pressed her palms together.

Then the world shifted, spinning as if someone had turned it upside down. Wind rushed past Vivian’s face, coiling through her flowing hair with a roar, and then everything was nothing. Nothing but an endless white expanse.

The Beyond.

And then, with a thought, she was elsewhere.

There was a trick to moving within the Beyond. Space wasn’t a concept here. Only existence was. The idea of moving was far more important than the actual movement itself.

In an instant, the Night’s Shadow appeared before Vivian. Or perhaps she appeared before it. When everything was relative, it became hard to tell which was which.

Vivian looked down upon the withered, compressed corpse of the horrid monster. It took her less than a fraction of a second to realize something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

No power resided within it. None at all. Not even a flicker.

The Night’s Shadow hadn’t been truly dead when she’d sent it here. The monster had been crushed, broken, but its Divine Rune had persisted. And so long as the Divine Rune existed, so did the Night’s Shadow. It should have still been alive.

But it was not.

There was no mistaking what was before her. This was not the Night’s Shadow. It was little more than a corpse.

The Divine Rune was missing.

The back of Vivian’s neck prickled.

“Impossible,” Vivian whispered. “Nobody else can enter the Beyond.”

That, unfortunately, did nothing to rewrite reality. The Divine Rune wasn’t here. That meant that somebody else had entered the Beyond. As powerful as Divine Runes were, they still needed a body to move.

And then she noticed something else.

Her head snapped to the side, her eyes going as wide as saucers as she spotted an abnormality in the white expanse. A tiny chip in the endless nothingness. One that, by definition, couldn’t have been there.

Somebody hadn’t just found a way to sneak into the Beyond.

They’d broken in.

They’d broken into the Beyond and stolen a Divine Rune.

Vivian swallowed. She couldn’t even comprehend how much power it would have taken to locate the Beyond from Obsidia without her Rune. There were only a few spots in which it made direct contact with the mortal plane, and she had close watch over every single one of them.

If some powerful figure had ever even gotten within the same kingdom of those spots, she would have known.

But none had.

That meant they’d had to have broken in from some other place. One where the Beyond wasn’t nearly as close to the mortal realm. And for that to be possible… they’d have to be more than just her equal.

The alternative was that somebody had somehow already been present withinthe Beyond and had only carved a way out, but that was even more impossible.

Anything strong enough to do this much damage to the Beyond would have drawn her attention the moment it had entered. Unless, of course, it was so strong that it had managed to completely cloak its presence. But to conceal that much power from her would have meant she was up against someone as powerful — if not more — than the other Faction heads.

No. The only option was someone from Obsidia had somehow cut a way into the Beyond and stolen the Rune. She refused to believe that something could have hidden its presence from her when she’d deposited the Night’s Shadow here. She could barely even believe that something was powerful enough to completely cloak its entrance to the Beyond… but whatever had taken the Rune had been weak enough to pass under her gaze, then it certainly wouldn’t have been able to make a way out.

Goosebumps raced across Vivian’s skin.

Just what kind of monstrous existence did this?