Page 92 of Invoking Ruin

Besides, what will they say if I turn around and run home like a coward?

In the center of the Void, Nyx lifts her head, sending ice through my veins. She’s still alive. Her edges are bleeding into the Void, the sparkling night all eaten away, but she’s not gone yet.

Not helpless.

She doesn’t say anything at first, but I catch a sparkle of starlight on her face. Tears?

Could the goddess of night have regrets, too?

“So you came.” Her voice is barely a whisper over the sound of air rushing past us. “I didn’t think it’d be you.”

“Yes you did. We’re alike, after all,” I snap. My grip on the sword tightens and I will myself not to drop it.

Nyx lowers her head, staring at the blade sticking out of her stomach as though she’s surprised its there. Can she even feel it anymore, or did the Void eat away too much of her for that?

“I didn’t want to be without him,” she says.

She’s brought about all of this suffering: ours, her own, all of Gaia’s. It seems to have been no balm for the keen edge of grief. She must realize that here, at the end. Trapped between living and dying.

“I know how that feels, grandmother,” I say. “But I don’t want to be without my companion either. Do you know the difference between us, Nyx?”

I lift the sword in my hand, waiting until she sees it.

“I can still save him.”

Before I lose my nerve, I take careful aim and launch towards the Void and my death.

The crack in the sky grows, but with it, so does my view of Nyx. She looks impossibly small in all that nothingness.

At some point, I can’t stop myself or control my flight. The Void has me. Will I shatter? Will it swallow me like a white speck inside a puddle of ink?

There will be none of me left.

One chance. One chance to save Dionysus.

I’m only a few meters away when she grabs the knife lodged in her belly and yanks it free with all her strength. The rift knife flickers in and out of existence, so close to the source of its power, but it’s still ready to end me with one well-placed cut.

I should have known she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

But our collision is unavoidable.

She’s just ensuring our mutual destruction.

A wiser god might have hesitated. Or perhaps they would have known how to reason with her, a grief-filled goddess willing to go to any length to assuage her own pain.

I, who have never lost a bond like that, but have also never had one, can imagine that pain only too well.

My vision blurs. I blink past useless tears and bring my sword back for the swing.

“I’m sorry.”

My aim is true, and the reach of the sword is longer than the rift knife’s. I deliver Nyx the only mercy I can give—a sharp line through her neck.

Her head and shoulders split, and Nyx breaks, shattering into a thousand pieces. Her body is like glass on hard tile, tumbling along the edge of the Void but never penetrating it. The Void seals itself over like ice freezing over a pond, filled with thousands of broken, floating pieces.

Then I collide with the half-sealed Void, my scream swallowed up and silent. Pure nothingness cuts into me like a thousand rift knives, each point of impact leeching the ichor right out of my veins.

But I don’t fall in.

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