The village of Thornhaven was at the edge of the world—or so the people there believed.
Past the final wheat field, the forest turned dark and deep. Beyond the woods, the mountains reared up like broken teeth in the sky. And beyond the mountains? No one knew. Nobody had ever gone back to tell.
Elara didn't much care what was outside. She had plenty to worry about here.
She mopped sweat from her brow and shifted the basket on her hip. There had been a crush at the market today, vendors calling out prices and farmers arguing about the last cabbages of the season. Her feet ached. Her shoulders ached. Everything hurt, honestly—that was just living in Thornhaven.
Just twenty-three, and she already felt like an antiquity.
"Elara! Wait!"
She turned. Geezer Maren was trundling after her, waving a cloth-covered hand.
"You forgot your change, girl."
Elara smiled and walked back. "Keep it, Maren. You need it more than I do."
"Nonsense." The elderly woman placed two copper coins in her palm. "You hustle harder than anyone in this village. Don't let them take advantage."
"It's just two coppers."
"Today it's two coppers. Tomorrow it's two more. The next thing you know, you've given away your entire life.'"
A gnarled hand gripped her cheek.
"You're too kind, child. The world's gonna eat you alive."
Elara laughed softly. "Maybe. But I know its better to be kind instead of the other way."
She walked home as the sun slowly began to set, making his way across the sky, a mix of orange and pink. Her cottage stood alone on the outskirts of the village, small and weather-worn but clean. It had been passed down from her mother, who received it from hers. Four generations of women had been born and died in those walls.
Elara sometimes wondered if she would die there too. Alone. Forgotten.
She pushed the thought away and began making dinner.
Three days later, the stranger came.
Elara had first laid eyes on him at the well in the village center. And there he was, his head cocked as if he had never seen a well before, looking at the rope and the bucket with real curiosity.
He was tall. That was the first thing she saw. Taller than any man in Thornhaven. His hair was silver and white, which should have made him look old, but his face belonged to no particular age. Neither young nor old. Just … perfect, in a sense that made her uneasy.
He wore simple white robes. No shoes. No jewelry. No sign of wealth or standing,
But his eyes.
When he turned and looked at her, she forgot how to breathe.
His eyes were wrong. Beautiful, but wrong. She could have sworn she saw things moving inside them — little points of light, swirling ever so slowly, like stars reflected in deep water.
"Hello," he said.
His voice was calm. Deep. It resounded in her chest in a way voices shouldn't.
"Hello," she managed. "Are you... lost?"
He took the question seriously, as if it held depths she had not meant.
"I don't think so," he said, finally. "But I don't know where I am."
"This is Thornhaven. Edge of the Westmarch. Far away from any place of consequence as you can be.'"
He smiled. It completely altered his face — made him look almost human.
"Nowhere is unimportant," he said. "Every place matters to someone."
She had no idea what to say to that. So she said nothing.
He looked at the well again. "I'm trying to figure out how this works.
"You've... never seen a well before?"
"I've seen many things. But to know them is not to see them."
Elara stepped forward and took the rope to show. Lower the bucket. Let it fill. Pull it up. Simple.
He observed with the rapt attention of a scholar poring over holy texts.
"Thank you," he said when she was done. "What's your name?"
"Elara."
"Elara." He said it slowly, as if savoring the word. "That's beautiful."
Heat rose to her cheeks. "It's just a name."
"Names are never 'just' anything. They carry meaning. Power. History." He paused. "I'm... you may call me Aeon."
"Aeon?" No one had ever heard of such a name. "That's unusual."
"I suppose it is."
They were both standing in silence. Elara noticed she was still holding the well bucket.
"Do you have a place to stay?" she said, then hated herself for saying it. What was she doing, inviting strange men with impossible eyes to stay in her home?
But he shook his head. "I'll find somewhere."
"There's an inn in the middle of the village. It's not much, but—"
"Thank you." He smiled again. "You're very kind."
That word again. Kind. Everyone called her that. As if it were both a compliment and a warning.
His bare feet made no noise on the cobblestones as he walked away. Elara watched him leave, her heart racing strangely fast.
She told herself it was a nothing.
He stayed.
That was the part no one saw coming — least of all Elara. Thornhaven saw strangers from time to time, but no one ever stayed. There was nothing here worth waiting for.
But Aeon had rented a room at the inn and seemed in no hurry to leave. He would walk the village, the fields, along the forest edge all day. He discussed crops with farmers. He spoke to children about the things they played. He interviewed elderly people about their memories.
He had an authentic love for everything.
"He's a weirdo," Maren said one morning, as she watched Aeon help fix a fence his private trial code intended to neglect. "But not dangerous, I think."
"How can you tell?" Elara asked.
"Look at him. Just watch how he looks when he works. He's not pretending. He gives a damn about that fence." Maren shook her head. "A man who gives a shit about fences ain't a man to worry about."
Elara looked. Aeon was holding a wooden beam while Old Gareth hammered in nails. His face was intent, serious — as if this fence were the most important thing in the world.
Maybe it was, to him. She didn't have any idea what was wrong with him.
Their second actual conversation came a week later.
Elara was picking herbs out in the meadow past the village when she came across him there, sitting in the grass and staring up into the sky. The sun was nearly set, and the light fell on his silver hair like flame.
"You come round here a lot," he said, avowing her. It wasn't a question.
"How did you know?"
"The grass remembers. It tilts in different directions where you have walked previously."
She sat next to him, careful to leave some space. "That's an odd thing to say."
"I say many strange things. I apologize."
"Don't." She surprised herself. "I like it. This is what everyone here talks about — weather, crops, gossip. You write about grass remembering and names having power. It's... different."
He turned to look at her. Those eyes again, the swirling depths of them.
"You're lonely," he said softly.
It wasn't an accusation. Just a statement. A truth.
Her throat tightened. "Everyone's lonely sometimes."
"No. Not sometimes. Always. I can see it in you — this hunger for something more.
Something outside this village, this life." He paused. "Ordinary life is not meant for you, Elara."
"That's ridiculous. "I'm the most normal person here."
"That's what they've told you. It's not what you are."
She looked away. The sun was sickening on the horizon, bleeding red and gold over the clouds. Her eyes stung but she would not cry.
"Why are you here?" she asked. "Really. This village has nothing. Why stay?"
He was silent for a long moment.
"Well, because I've assiduously been at very uncommon places," he finally said. "Surrounded by extraordinary things. And I forgot how it felt to be... small. To belong to something rather than stand above it." He looked at the sunset.
"I needed to remember what it is like to live. To not just exist, but to live. To walk barefoot in the grass. To watch the sun set. "To speak with somebody who isn't afraid of me."
Why would any one be scared of you?
He didn't answer.
"Aeon?"
"You're not scared of me," he said instead. "Why?"
She considered the question. He was strange. His eyes were impossible. His riddles, it was as if he knew things that no one should know.
But when she looked at him, she didn't see danger. She recognized someone as lonely as she was.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I just... I'm not."
He smiled. It was sad and beautiful and completely human.
"Thank you," he said.
They fell in love slowly.
Or maybe it hadn't been slow at all; maybe it only felt that way, because Elara had never been in love before and couldn't identify the signs at first.
It started with conversations. In the meadow, at the well, in the still hours before dawn when neither of them could sleep. He shared the world outside Thornhaven with her — not details, never specifics, but feelings. Huge expanse of sky from a mountaintop. The silence of deep forests. How light appeared though ancient windows.
Her dreams were the subject of his stories. Small dreams, embarrassing dreams. She wanted to see the ocean. She wanted to read the books she couldn't buy. More than anything, she wanted to matter to someone.
"You're important to me," he told me one evening.
They were perched on the hill behind her cottage, watching stars twinkle into being one by one.
"You barely know me."
"I know enough." He faced her, and his eyes seemed softer than she'd ever seen them. "I know you give your surplus coins to old ladies who need it more than you do. I know you sit with sick children even when their families can't pay you. I know you fed a feral dog for three weeks last winter until he trusted you enough to come inside."
"How do you know about the dog?"
"I know many things." He put his hand out, palm up to touch her face — gently, as if she were something precious. "I know you are the kindest soul I've met in longer than you can remember. And I know that being around you makes me feel things that I thought I no longer knew how to feel."
"What things?"
"Hope. Warmth. Fear."
"Fear?"
"Yes." His voice dropped. "Fear that I'll hurt you. That being around me will cause you suffering. Fear that I am too selfish to leave, despite knowing the risk."
"What risk? Aeon, you're scaring me."
"I know. I'm sorry." He pulled his hand back. "I should leave. I should have left weeks ago. I'm not… I'm not who you think I am, Elara."
"Then what are you?"
He gazed at her for a long moment. She saw suffering in those eyes, which were impossible — real human suffering.
"It's a good question, I don't know how to answer that."
"Then don't." She reached out and held his hand. His skin was warm to the touch, almost feverish. "I don't care what you are. I care about who you are. And whoever that is … I love him."
The words suspended in the air between them.
Aeon closed his eyes. When he opened them again they were soaked.
"You shouldn't," he whispered.
"Probably not." She squeezed his hand. "But I do anyway."
He kissed her that night.
It was gentle. Hesitant. Like he was scared she might shatter.
She drew him in and proved that she wouldn't.
Three months flew by like a dream.
They were Elara's happiest months. Somewhere deep in her heart, she knew that it could not last. Happiness like this never lasted — not for girls like her, in villages like this.
But she shooed the fear away and went ahead and lived.
They walked in grassy fields and talked until their voices went hoarse. They together prepared awful meals and laughed when dinner was burned. They reclined in the grass and watched clouds swirl past, lazy giants.
He never revealed to her what he truly was. She never asked again.
Certain questions are better if left unanswered."
The truth came out one spring night, when raiders arrived at Thornhaven.
Elara had heard tales of raiders — groups of violent men who came through empty villages, taking whatever and burning the rest. But stories were distant things. They occurred to others, in other locales.
Until they didn't.
She woke to screaming. An orange light flashed through her window — firelight. She ran outside and saw hell.
Houses burning. People running. Horseback men, swinging swords, laughing as they did their killing.
One of them saw her. He rode up to her, blade drawn, eyes shining with cruel pleasure.
She couldn't move. Her legs wouldn't work. This was how she died — not of old age in her family cottage, but here, now, with a stranger's sword thrust into her chest.
The blade swung down.
And stopped.
Not blocked. Not deflected. Just... stopped. Suspended in the air, inches from her face.
The raider looked down at his sword. Tried to move it. Couldn't.
Then he glanced past Elara and turned pale.
She turned.
Aeon stood behind her. But he was different now—transformed. His silver hair floated around his head as if it were underwater. His skin shimmered, incandescent. And his eyes...
His eyes contained galaxies. Literally. Stars swirled in their depths, nebulae bloomed and withered, entire universes spun languidly within his gaze.
"Leave," he said.
His voice was different too. It reverberated, resonated, felt as though it came from all directions at once. The raider's mount cried out and bucked him off, then galloped into the dark.
"Leave," Aeon said again. "All of you. Now. Or I will erase you."
The raiders froze. Every single one of them. They could not move—not because they had decided to stand still, but because there was something causing them to remain still.
"GO."
The command shook the earth. Windows shattered. Flames flickered and died. The raiders tumbled off their horses, got to their feet and fled. They ran like men who'd glimpsed the face of death itself.
In seconds, they were gone.
The village was silent. In horrified eyes, people gazed at Aeon.
Then he turned to Elara.
The glow faded. His hair settled. His eyes grew nearly normal again — but she had seen what they really held. She couldn't unsee it.
"Elara," he said, and the voice cracked with archetypal human fear. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She should have run. Should have screamed. Must have been scared as hell like everybody else.
Instead, she moved closer and cupped his face in her hands.
"You saved us," she whispered. "You saved everyone."
"You're not afraid?"
She was. God love her, she was terrified. But not of him.
"I told you," she said, her voice shaking. "I don't care what you are. I love who you are."
He broke then. The most powerful entity in existence — and he cracked. He drew her into his arms and held her as if she were the only real thing in all the universe.
"I love you," he said into her hair. "I love you so much that I'm terrified."
"Good." She held him tighter. "Be terrified with me."
That night, he told her the truth.
Everything. Who he was. What he was. The Creator of all creation—the First Flame that ignited reality itself. Ancient beyond comprehension. Powerful beyond imagination.
And madly, hopelessly in love with a mortal woman from a village at the edge of the world.
"Why me?" she asked when he'd finished.
"Because you saw me," he replied simply. "Not my power. Not my position. Just... me. A lonely stranger at a well. You showed kindness to me when you did not have to. You liked me before you knew I was special." He touched her face. "Do you have any idea how rare that is? How precious? No one has ever loved me for the essence of who I am, not in all creation, throughout all of time. Only you."
She was crying. She couldn't help it.
"What happens now?"
"I don't know." His voice was heavy. "I should leave. Being with me is dangerous. There are... things out there. Entities that would harm you to harm me. I can't—"
"No." She grabbed his hand. "Don't you dare leave me. Don't you dare."
"Elara—"
"I've been careful my entire life. Being safe. Being ordinary." Her voice broke. "And I was so lonely. So empty. But then you came along, and for the first time I felt alive. And if danger is what it means, so be it. I'll take danger. I'll take anything. Just don't walk away from me."
He stared at her. This small, mortal, impossibly brave woman who loved him despite it all.
"You're extraordinary," he whispered.
"No. I'm just a girl who won't let the best thing that ever happened to her walk away."
He kissed her then — not softly this time. Desperately. As if she were air, and he was drowning.
When they finally pulled apart, his forehead was resting on hers.
"Then we can deal with it together," he said. "Whatever comes. Together."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
For a time, the promise was kept.
They were happy—genuinely, painfully happy. He showed her marbles she never counted. The aurora borealis flickering over frozen skies. Crystal cities floating through clouds. Gardens in which the flowers sang and rivers ran with liquid starlight.
She showed him simpler things. How to bake bread. How to mend a torn shirt. How to be quiet together and not need anything other than each other.
They complemented each other perfectly. His vastness. Her groundedness. His power. Her humanity.
She conceived on a winter night, when the snow drifted soft outside their window and the fire crackled low.
Neither of them planned it. Neither of them expected it.
But when she told him his face climbed through so many emotions that it was all too much for her to follow. Fear. Joy. Wonder. Terror. Love.
"A child," he breathed. "Our child."
"Is that... is that possible? You're not human. Can we even—"
"I don't know." He rested his hand on her belly, light as a whisper. I don't know what this is supposed to be. What they'll be. But..." His voice cracked. "I want them. I want them so much."
She put her hand over his.
"Then we'll figure it out. Together."
That word again. Together.
It was becoming their word.
The pregnancy was difficult.
Mortals bodies were not designed to carry the child of the Creator. As the months wore on, Elara grew weaker. Her skin paled. Her energy faded. Others she couldn't find the strength to get out of bed.
Aeon stayed beside her constantly. He poured his power into her — not enough to harm the baby, but just enough to sustain her. It was a dangerous balance, and he walked it with the centering focus of a man whose whole universe trembled on the brink.
Because it did. She was his universe now.
"I'm scared," she confessed one night, when the baby kicked within her and pain coursed through her body.
"I know." He held her hand. "I am too."
"If I don't survive this—"
"You will."
"But if I don't—"
"You will." His voice shook. "I will not allow you to die, Elara. I will not. I will rip the fabric of reality itself before I let that happen.
She smiled weakly. "That's very dramatic."
"I mean it."
"I know you do." She squeezed his hand. "That's what scares me."
The birth nearly killed her.
It lasted for two days. Two days of torture, of screaming, of bleeding. Aeon wrapped his being around her as she weathered it all, power streaming into her from him without interruption, keeping her heart beating when every rhythm wanted to end.
And then, finally, a cry.
A baby's cry — forceful and loud, and unbearably alive.
Elara cradled her son for the first time, and everything else disappeared. The pain. The fear. The exhaustion. It all faded away in the presence of this small, perfect creature.
He had her brown eyes. His father's silver-streaked hair. And when he looked at her, she could have sworn he saw her — really saw her, the way newborns aren't supposed to.
"Kael," she whispered. "Your name is Kael."
Aeon sat next to her, crying openly. The Maker of all things, crying at the sight of his child.
"He's perfect," he said. "You're both perfect."
For one glorious moment they were a family. Complete. Together. Happy.
The moment didn't last.
It couldn't last.
Aeon sensed it first — a disturbance at the boundary of being. Something ancient. Something hungry. Something that had been lying in wait for just this moment.
Oblivion.
The void before creation. The nothing he'd pushed away when he created everything. It was waking. Sensing. Reaching.
And it had noticed the child.
"I have to seal him," Aeon said, hollowly. "I have to hide his power. If Oblivion catches wind of him—if my enemies catch wind, of him—they'll come. They'll never stop coming."
Elara held Kael tight against her chest. "No. There has to be another way."
"There isn't." His face had been hewn from grief. "If I do not seal his bloodline, he will be a beacon. Every dark thing that exists will pursue him. He'll never have peace. Never have safety. Never have a life."
"So you'll take his power? Make him weak?"
"I'll make him hidden. Make him seem ordinary. The seal will protect him—"
"And what about us?" Her voice cracked. "What about his family?"
Aeon couldn't meet her eyes. "I have to go. I have to contain Oblivion before it can ever wake. It will take... a long time. Maybe forever."
"Then take us with you."
"I can't. Where I'm going, you couldn't survive. And Kael..." He finally looked at her.
"He needs to grow. Away from me. Away from where they might attract attention. He has to be ordinary until — until I make the universe safe for him."
"This is insane. You're abandoning your own son!"
"I'm protecting him!" His voice broke.
"Do you think I want this? You think I want to leave you? Either of you? You are everything to me. Everything. But if I stay, if I keep him with me — he dies. You both die. Everyone dies."
Elara was sobbing now. Kael cried in her arms, sensing her distress." Please," she begged.
"Please don't do this."
"I'm sorry." Aeon knelt in front of her, lifted her face to him. "I'm so sorry. I'll come back. I swear I'll come back. When it's safe. When Oblivion is contained. I will find you both, and we will be a family again."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
"Promise me you'll come back."
"I promise." She wanted to believe him. She wanted to so badly. But some vows are too large to deliver on.
He sealed Kael that night.
Aeon put his hand on their son's sleeping chest, and Elara watched. Light poured from his palm — gentle, careful, heartbreaking.
She witnessed something lock into place. Something close. Kael's faint glow faded. All sense of power she'd harbored in proximity to him melted away. He became ordinary. A normal baby. Nothing special at all. Aeon lifted his hand. It was shaking.
" It's done."
"Will he remember us?"
"He's too young. He won't remember anything."
"Good." She was crying again. Would she ever stop crying?
"Then he will not remember being abandoned".
"Elara—""Go." Her voice was dead.
"Just go. Before I hate you forever." He kissed Kael's forehead. Then hers. His lips were warm. Wet with tears." I love you," he said.
"Both of you. To the end of existence and beyond." Then he was gone. Light wrapped around him, and he disappeared from reality. Elara sat alone in the dark, cradling her son, and screamed. She tried to stay. For three days, she struggled to company Kael. To raise him herself.
To be the mother he deserved. But that knowledge was killing her. Each time she saw him, she remembered Aeon. Whenever he cried, she felt sad about how alone he was. How abandoned. How robbed of his birthright, aged and sealed away by a father who said he loved him.
And Oblivion bubbled on the periphery of her mind. Now she could feel it—the void that Aeon had warned about. It was searching. Hunting. Looking for the Creator's bloodline. If she remained with Kael, she would bring it directly to him.
Her presence was the danger. She dropped him off at a temple on the very cusp of the divine realms. It was the safest place she could think of — a sanctuary where lesser gods accepted orphaned children. They would raise him. Protect him. Give him a life. An ordinary life. A sealed life. But a life. She held him one last time. Memorized his face. His weight. His warmth.
" I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'm so sorry, my baby. Mama loves you. Mama will always love you. But I can't—I can't stay. If I stay, they'll find you. The bad things will come after you." Kael gazed up at her with his large brown eyes. Silent. Trusting."
"One day you'll understand. When you are strong enough, one day you will know the truth. And I pray — I pray with all that I am — you won't hate me." She kissed his forehead. Let her tears land on his face.
"Goodbye, Kael. My son. My heart." Then she set him down on the temple steps, knocked on the door, and ran away. She ran until her breath stopped. She kept running until she ran out of legs. She fell into a field betwixt and between worlds and screamed at the sky.
" TAKE ME TO HIM!" The universe answered. The light encircled her — Aeon's light, extending across dimensions — and dragged her from existence. Away from her son. Forever.
Kael grew up alone. He could not remember the feel of his mother's arms. Didn't remember his father's face. Didn't remember being loved. He knew only the temple, and then the streets, and then the battlefield. All he knew then was hunger and pain and scorn.
All he knew was survival. Yet, somewhere deep inside him—deeper than memory, deeper than the crack in time that locked away his power—a spark burned. It called to him in his lowest hour. When he was dying the hundredth time. The thousandth time. The ten-thousandth time. You are more than this. You will rise. You will be something this universe has never witnessed.
He didn't know what it meant. But he believed it anyway. And one day — one day long in the future — the universe would find out what happened when you abandoned a god.