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Chaos erupted.

It began with a horrified scream. A god pointed at the fallen branches, her cry cutting through the clamor. Heads turned. Eyes widened. Gasps of horror turned to cries of fear, warbling screams of grief. In seconds, the sound was one unified roar of panic.

The voice of the Neheamatt rose above all. She roared in pain, the sound so encompassing that it shuddered through the dirt of the hippodrome. The world shook. Pus and rot flooded the stands. Branches fell from the sky, crashing into the stadium floor, the inner bark already so withered and ashen that most shattered into splinters.

Lanir hovered above the turmoil, her red eyes glimmering as she tried to speak with the tree. Below, Thimera was attempting to corral the crowd with the beautiful harmony of her voice. Rushan was standing alone, watching the Neheamatt suffer with an unreadable expression. Guards brandished their sunspears. Exalted spread into swarms.

Sadik attempted to lift Kavaia from the stage. He did not succeed. The crocodile was easily several times his weight, and the process of losing her godhood—of having every trace of Glimmer extracted from her flesh—had left her in a daze. She hardly reacted to his efforts. All she could do was blink her eyes, wrap her limbs and tail around herself, and try to breathe.

“Goddess!”

Below the screams of the crowd, a low keening came from her throat.

Sunspears fired into the air as several guards tried to restore order. The Exalted flocked together into a cloud, arcing into streams wherever the mob was attempting to stampede. A mile above, swarms of leaves fell from the upper canopy, drifting like a fleet of ships across the deep blue sky.

Sadik could run. The gods were distracted. The Exalted had left his flesh. He gazed up at the tangle of vines and rot that poured down the stands, realizing that not even the Neheamatt could stop him now.

He had to return to the Sons of Sorrow. Thousands of lives were counting on him.

It was his duty.

He looked down at Kavaia. She was naked, sobbing into the wooden stage, heedless of the chaos around her. Completely defenseless.

Her words flashed through his mind.

I thought you would understand.

“Gamó,” Sadik said.

He lifted her with all his strength. Her armpits engulfed his shoulders, her long snout dangled across his back, and her chest was a heavy boulder of soft green scales, threatening to crush him with every step. All she could do was moan, as if trapped in the throes of a nightmare.

He dragged her off the stage. Around them, the air began to erupt. Sunspears lanced through the sky, catching the falling leaves aflame. Another branch crashed into the hippodrome, the colossal impact swallowing the screams of gods.

Without warning, a gout of flame consumed a guard. Hard light sliced through bone. An Exalted ate a man alive. Limbs were crushed beneath stampeding feet, the screams boiling into animal terror.

Sadik pulled Kavaia away from it all, stumbling as fast he could towards the opposite end of the stadium. There was a long tunnel at the end. It might lead somewhere. Sadik had no idea how to navigate the pantheon, no idea which of the porticoed walkways would lead him to safety or death.

At the same time, he could still see the sun. He could still see the broad wooden trunk of the Neheamatt, rising so high that it split the sky in twain. They both gave him more than enough direction.

Turn his back on the tree, face the morning sun, and run for his life.

He tried not to remember the palace.

Lanir had mentioned the seeds of the Neheamatt. Dropping from the branches. The gods usually descended from the tree with a complex series of vascular elevators inside the trunk. With the rot and pus currently seeping from Aldunya’s bark, it did not seem a pleasant option. He didn’t know how deeply the infection had spread. He certainly did not wish to know what this disease would do to his mortal flesh.

Sadik did not enjoy the prospect of falling more than a mile from the sky, either, but he supposed that sheltering inside a holy seed would be better than jumping.

The Neheamatt roared again. Her pain eclipsed the violence. Thousands of vines slithered across stone, their flesh as brown and distended as a wasting corpse. Branches raked against the sky like the arms of shipwrecked sailors, begging for rescue.

It all made sense now. The great tree had not grown silent out of indifference. She had been dying. Rotting from the inside. All her strength must’ve been occupied with fighting the disease. After weeks of silence, the symptoms were finally boiling to the surface.

What a horrific illness it must be, if it could stagger the world’s most ancient creature. How could it possibly kill an organism the size of mountains?

Was it the same plague that had ravaged Acheron?

“Mortal!”

Sadik’s vision was eclipsed by Kavaia’s massive form. He heaved her body upon the track, bringing Dusksong to bare.

Thimera was racing towards him on the back of a destrier, the blackened beast moving in a blur of quills and purple blood. Her bovine horns quivered like a pair of snakes.

“You will not leave!” she shouted.

Sadik felt the words echo in his mind. They repeated endlessly, digging through his skull, worming beneath his muscles. No matter how hard he tried, he could not shake them away.

At his side, Kavaia began to stir.

Thimera slowed to a halt in front of him, the six-legged destrier rearing back into the air with a mournful cry. “Drop your sword!”

Her voice was harmony. Her words were gorgeous. Everything around him—the sunlight, the violence, the seeping rot—all of it seemed to blur. He could only stare at the goddess of pleasure and beauty.

“Drop your weapon, mortal!”

Dusksong fell from his grasp. Kavaia’s hands roamed over the broken blade.

“Listen to my words,” Thimera said, her voice dropping to a whisper. Every syllable was an orchestra of sound. Thrumming with power. “You will return to the god of war.”

The edges of his vision began to darken. Her words smothered every thought, repeating endlessly in his mind.

“You will cower at his feet and beg for mercy.”

The cow was all he could see. Beauty and power.

“Come to me, mortal. Abandon your cause.”

He came to her. Stumbling, his bare feet shaking with every step, Sadik walked towards the goddess as if it was his life’s only desire.

Kavaia shot past him. She had taken Dusksong into her grasp, wielding the massive greatsword like a dagger, charging towards the blackened beast and its beautiful rider. Underneath the words ringing in his head, Sadik heard a war cry.

The destrier panicked first. Quills erupted from its flank, flying like arrows. Two pierced the crocodile. None of them made her stop. With a shrieking whine, the beast hurled Thimera from its back and sprinted down the hippodrome track, disappearing behind the husks of fallen branches.

Thimera scrambled backwards through the dirt, gasping from the impact. Kavaia was still charging. Screaming like a barbarian.

“Goddess! Goddess!”

Kavaia kicked her in the stomach. The next blow split her broken arm like a twig. Thimera’s scream of pain shattered the words in Sadik’s mind. He collapsed to the dirt, gasping for air.

“I warned you!” Kavaia shouted. “You scheming harlot!”

Thimera’s reply was silenced when the crocodile kicked her across the face. Teeth bounced through the dirt.

“You deserve his lies!” She spat upon the bleeding cow. “Khöörkhii khulchgar!”

Thimera writhed in pain. The crocodile clutched her glowing sword like a knife, preparing to drive it deep into flesh.

“Please,” Thimera whined, her mouth flowing with blood. “Please.”

Kavaia looked deeply into her eyes. She gazed out upon the violence and rot that gripped the stadium, as if remembering where she was. Something seemed to return to her. With a rumbling huff of disgust, she turned away.

Sadik struggled to stand. In a daze, he saw Kavaia limping towards him. Bright red blood dripped down her breasts, the black quills of the destrier still jutting from her shoulder. She seemed a vision of an ancient warrior.

“Cover me!” she shouted.

Dusksong was thrust back into his hands. He’d barely managed to brace himself with the weight before Kavaia was lifting him off his feet. His naked torso met the curve of her shoulder, and the crook of her elbow settled across his bare ass. She held him like a sack of grain.

“I carry, you fire!”

He was not given time to argue. The Neheamatt roared again. There was a thundering crack, a great shuddering through the dirt and stone. Slowly, as inexorable as the planets in the sky, the floor of the hippodrome began to tilt. Entire buildings lurched down through their foundations.

The branches of the pantheon were beginning to break.

Kavaia ran as fast as she could. Sadik braced the thick blade of his sword against her shoulder, ready to fire at any who would pursue.

No one followed. The teeming masses of gods had overrun the guards, spilling through the tunnels and stands. Rivers of rot cascaded down into the dirt, sweeping away the branches and fallen bodies. Above, the Exalted had abandoned any attempts to corral the masses—instead, they were spreading towards the vines, dispersing into clouds of dust. They buried themselves into the flesh and rot like insects returning to their hives.

Just before Kavaia carried him into a tunnel, Sadik saw Rushan. He was standing alone in the middle of the field, surrounded by nothing but dirt and blood. He seemed heedless of the hippodrome tilting beneath his feet. He did nothing to help his fellow gods. Instead, he watched the mass of rot and leaves flowing towards him, as if entranced by the sight.

His mouth was open. His head was swaying.

The god of war was laughing.

And then he was gone. Kavaia sprinted down the tunnel, her heavy footfalls echoing through the gloom. From the pain in her breaths, it was taking all her strength to remain on her feet. Sadik had witnessed mortal criminals be stripped of their Glimmer—if they survived the process at all, the experience would leave them bedridden for weeks, and the withdrawal symptoms would have most begging for death. Any modifications would melt right off the bone. It was nothing short of miraculous that the goddess had recovered so quickly.

Former goddess, actually. She was exiled now. Stricken from her providence.

Mortal once more.

“Put me down!” Sadik shouted.

“Too small!” she replied, holding him tighter.

“Put me down!”

The tunnel spat them out into the destrier stables. With the Neheamatt screaming around them, the Glimmer-riddled beasts had panicked, broken through their stalls and smashed open the double doors of their enclosure, leaving nothing but flames, quills, and the six-limbed bodies of those caught in the rush. Kavaia ran through the shattered entrance, leaping over a bed of rotting vines that still squirmed through the hay.

“Goddess!”

“Not now!”

Thimera’s destrier had gored her across the shoulder. Blood dribbled down her naked body, leaving a clear trail for all to follow.

The floor heaved, lurching beneath her feet. Kavaia nearly threw Sadik from her arms as she fell across a shattered column. There was a thunder of cracking stone, a bubbling susurration of leaves—to their right, an entire feast hall sunk beneath its foundations, plummeting down through the branches until the building was gone, screaming towards the mountains below. Icy wind howled through the open wound.

Kavaia jumped across the rubble of columns and statues. Broken marble shifted beneath her toes. The hallway was a battlefield of craters and oozing geysers of rot. She ran through it all, passing beneath cracked murals, shattered archways, friezes melting beneath the blight of a dying god.

He had no chance to ask where she was going. Around them, the buildings fell through open sky. Rivers of water flowed from broken xylem. A tree wailed in pain.

For some reason, he could only think of the words that she had spoken to Thimera. Khöörkhii khulchgar. Wretched coward. It was the language of the plain riders, the same nomadic tribes who had traded Acheron their destriers, and the very same warlords who were currently besieging the city.

Of course, she had spoken an ancient dialect of the barbarians. He did not think that she was currently—

A wall of vines greeted them in a courtyard. The creeping tendrils had wrapped themselves around a series of porticoes, pulling themselves across the architecture until they were as tightly wound as a basket. Every other building around them had collapsed into ruin. There was no other way forward.

“Watch your snout!” Sadik yelled, twisting the haft of his sword.

Against her shoulder, Dusksong’s mouth began to bulge with a sunbeam. Kavaia twisted her neck as far as she could.

A sigh gusted through the courtyard. The tendrils unwrapped themselves in a flurry of snaps. At their feet, wooden capillaries began to bend like snakes, pushing away the chunks of stone and shards of branches. In moments, the path ahead of them was clear. A sunlit hallway beckoned like a torch in the dark.

The wind moaned. The leaves murmured. All around them, the plants of the courtyard garden bowed their fleshy stalks. Flowers and roots pointed toward their exit.

“Oh, Nema,” Kavaia said, trying to caress one of the leaves. “I—we didn’t know—”

Another sigh blew across their bodies. Sadik could hear the urgency beneath the wordless voice.

The crocodile ran forward. The human in her arms kept his sword ready to fire.

And, as they raced through the halls of the pantheon, the Neheamatt continued to guide them. Around every corner, they found a swarm of vines pulling rubble from their path. Fallen leaves, easily as large as the sail of a trireme, were blown away by gusts of wind. Above and below, the curling stalks of branches formed seals against the shattered architecture—bridges across the floor, stitches across the ceiling.

Had Aldunya been guiding them all along?

The tree had saved Sadik’s life in the plague district. She had granted him her blessing just as Xaeyr prepared to start his coup. Then, during the trial, she had revealed her horrific blight the moment Rushan challenged him to battle. Now, she was escorting them across her branches, bringing them closer to the seeds that would allow their escape.

The tree was ancient. The source of Glimmer, the gods, and all life in the world. Over the course of Acheron’s history, she had often performed enigmatic actions, choices that seemed to defy all logic and reason . . . only for their true purpose to be revealed years later. Her wisdom often defied the grasp of mortal understanding. The greatest city in the world had only survived by her grace.

Had the Neheamatt guided Sadik and Kavaia together? Had she allowed the goddess of death to be deprived of her powers, only to give her the strength to stand again? What purpose would it serve? If she was truly on their side—

A shadow fell across their backs.

Above, a burning meteor crashed through the branches. It shattered the domed ceiling of a fortress, rushing straight into their path. Kavaia scrambled. The missile screamed. A mezzanine exploded in a shower of rubble and dust.

Lanir, goddess of truth and justice, bounced across the marble floor in a flurry of wings and flame. She slammed through a wall, collapsing an entire storage room full of urns and textiles. The impact left the branches trembling. The air vibrated with a scream of pain.

A streak of gold slashed across her back. Rushan leaped off his opponent and punched the dragon in the jaw, snuffing out the flames that had been boiling in her throat. She swiped a claw, gnashed the air with her teeth, but the jackal was a blur of movement, harrying her with dozens of blows in the span of a breath. Her flaming scales cracked like glass.

Sadik tore himself from Kavaia’s arms. Without a single thought, he raced across the broken hall, naked as the day he was born, bracing the growing energy of his sword against his hip.

“My lord!”

Rushan stopped. His fists gripped Lanir’s throat. His gold-rimmed eyes burned with anger, reflecting the sunbeam growing in his direction.

Sadik fired. Dusksong hit nothing but stone. The jackal was a blur once more, moving so fast that the air shattered in his wake. Sadik could only slash his sword on instinct, aiming for the streaks of gold and black.

He missed. Two hands slammed into his chest. The floor spun away.

Rushan’s face surged into view. There was snarling teeth. Golden fury. Sadik couldn’t even gasp from the blow—the jackal gripped his torso in both hands, holding him high above the floor. With a thundering growl, he began to squeeze.

Blood rushed. Bones bent. Lungs cried.

Crushing.

The darkness—

Kavaia slammed into the jackal, angling at his waist. Rushan hardly budged. The crocodile kicked her leg behind the back of his knee, attempting to flip him off his feet. He took a hand off Sadik’s chest, wrenching her arm away. She snarled and fought. Sadik slashed at the wrist holding him aloft. Violence bled into frantic motion.

The air boiled. Rushan dropped Sadik to the floor. The jackal’s body contorted, limbs forcing themselves apart. To the side, Lanir bounded from the sundered wall of the storage room, her red eyes a piercing glow. She concentrated, putting all of her strength into the telepathy. Rushan struggled against the grip upon his flesh, as if he wanted to bash the very air to pieces.

Finish him.

“You are nothing!” Rushan shouted at the dragon. “Pawns in her game!”

Finish him!

Sadik hacked at the jackal’s heel, taking a fair sliver of flesh. An ordinary man would’ve lost the foot.

“See how she rots! See her desperation!”

Kavaia leaped onto the jackal, snapping her long maw against the nape of his neck. Dozens of teeth ripped through flesh.

“You are slaves!”

His fist tore through Lanir’s telepathy, smashing into Kavaia’s jaw. Sadik barely blocked a kick of his heel, the force of the blow sending him bouncing across the hall. Lanir reared her head, her eyes glowing as bright as the sun, but Rushan was smashing through her grip, snarling against every force, ripping his way towards the dragon like a man carving himself through a hurricane.

“Ilios was her mistake! Her lesson!”

Fire boiled in Lanir’s maw. With a roar, she buried the jackal in a cloud of flame, his body lost in the heat and light.

The gout of fire burst open. Rushan slammed into Lanir’s flank, forcing her down with a kick to a foreleg. Snarling, his obsidian fur covered in flames, the jackal threw the larger dragon into the air, sending her smashing through a row of columns. His war cry was nearly feral.

The Neheamatt answered his roar.

Dozens of vines shot from the hall, sliced through the ceiling, burst through the floor. They rushed for the jackal. Rushan became a dazzling cloud of blows, his fists and stomps so incredibly fast that Sadik could only see the fleshy pulp that flew from the vines. But the tendrils kept coming, their numbers swelling at an unstoppable pace. Streaks of gold became buried in leaf and stems and bark. Slowly, struggling every inch of the way, Rushan was forced to his knees.

“She will not control us!”

A branch fell from the sky. It was the size of a street, hitting with the force of a whale. Rushan disappeared. Clouds of dust flew from the impact, nearly shredding Sadik’s skin with splinters and stone.

Lanir pierced the haze with the beatings of her wings. She took to the air. As she circled above the ruined ceiling, her eyes began to glow once more. The dead branch shuddered. Stone began to fracture. She was pushing the ashen wood down through the foundations, hoping to send the jackal falling down into the mountains below. The dragon put all her might into the telepathic heave. The branch sunk through stone like white hot metal stabbing through ice.

There was a decisive crack. Gusts of wind screamed up into the hall. At the last possible moment, just when the branch began to snap in twain, Rushan smashed a hole in the wood, his body still wreathed in vines. He leaped towards the dragon. Splinters of holy bark fell towards blood-red clouds.

Lanir fluttered through the air. Rushan wrapped himself around her neck, his fingers ripping through her flaming scales. As the dragon spun and rolled, furiously attempting to fling the jackal from her body, blood spurted across the sky in long, glistening arcs.

Sadik stumbled forward, aiming his sword once more. The Neheamatt bellowed in response. Vines surged across the architecture, forming another solid wall in his path. A gust of wind, seemingly from nowhere, blew against his naked body, pushing him back.

Mortal! Run! Aldunya—

Lanir was silenced by a savage kick to the jaw. Rushan had become a shimmering wave of gold. Nothing but fire, blood, and fists. In seconds, the two had soared over the broken crown of a fortress, disappearing from sight. The roars of battle carried across the air.

The Neheamatt bellowed again. Another gust of wind sailed down the rest of the sunlit hall, beckoning him forth.

Kavaia scrambled across the broken stone. Her legs buckled beneath her, sending her naked form slamming down into layers of dust. The quills of Thimera’s destrier were still lodged in her shoulder. She snarled, coated in blood, climbing back to her feet, fighting against the combined effects of injury and Glimmer withdrawal.

Sadik stabbed his broken sword into the floor, attempting to lean on it for support. Rushan’s assault had cracked his ribs. There was little Glimmer left inside him, barely enough to start healing the injury. He gasped through the pain.

“Stay still,” Kavaia said, kneeling down from above. She clamped a hand on his shoulder. “I am able—”

Her breath caught in her throat.

She no longer held the power of healing. Her touch was empty, the same as any other. She had wielded the ability for so long, spent so many centuries being the arbiter of life and death, that she had tried to take his injuries upon herself without a second thought.

Nothing came. Their wounds remained.

She hadn’t been given the time to grasp her mortality. The revelation struck her with a shattering weight.

For a moment, the only sound Kavaia could make was a small gasp.

“I can stand,” Sadik said, leaning more of his weight onto Dusksong. The uneven edges of the blade slipped through the rubble, sending him back to the floor.

“Sadik, no, let me—”

“I am fine.”

He pushed himself up. Every breath held a stabbing pain, and he was quite certain he’d sprained his ankle while bouncing across the floor.

“Let me carry you,” Kavaia said.

“I rather enjoy having dignity, goddess.”

“Sadik!” she shouted. “Let me carry you!”

The pantheon rumbled. Screams crawled across the sky. Somewhere close, a battle between dragon and jackal continued to rage.

He took a moment to nod. “As you command.”

Her hands wrapped around his body. Gently, he was raised to her shoulder again, both of them adjusting their position according to their injuries. Once settled, he braced his blade against her body.

“Thank you,” he said.

She looked at him. Her long snout opened and closed. There seemed to be a thousand things she wanted to say.

“Later,” Sadik said.

She blinked. Then, she nodded.

They ran through the pantheon. The sound of fighting began to grow distant. Archways and columns and long, painted friezes rushed by him in a blur, all the histories and grandiosity lost beneath an animal panic. Kavaia dashed until her lungs were heaving, until her body was coated in stone dust and rotting pulp, until the only thing she seemed able to concentrate on was the growing warmth of sunlight, the icy spells of wind that signaled the approach of freedom.

With her sizable legs, it would’ve taken him several strides to match the distance she could travel in one. Perhaps it was wise to let her carry him.

Perhaps he should’ve believed in the Neheamatt. Even now, the tree was still tracking their progress. It would clear any rubble from their path, guide them through the halls with blooming flowers and tilted capillaries. With the disease ravaging her softwood, and the chaos unfolding atop her branches, Aldunya must’ve been using the last of her strength to ensure they escaped the pantheon.

Sadik remembered the night he fled the palace. The confusion, the smoke in the air, the rushing tide of violence. The blood flowing upon the marble. He shut his eyes, focusing on the embrace of a goddess.

As they kept running, the buildings began to decrease. Morning sunlight replaced the walls of stone. Fortresses of gods became open terraces, the facades and recessed statues turning to bridges that spanned the last of the outer twigs. Once they emerged from the last rows of buildings, the wind grew sharp. The rocky canyons stretched beyond the curve of the horizon. Mountaintops, as sharp as pointed teeth, tore through the blood-red clouds.

Across a series of bone-thin promenades, the seeds of the Neheamatt were gathered inside a metal tower. There was a circular stage built upon the terminal bud, an open platform with stands and stockades and a lectern for long, dramatic speeches. Beyond, there was nothing but open sky. The branches had finally ended.

This was the ceremonial stage where gods would be exiled. A lonely peak at the edge of the pantheon. If her trial had not been interrupted, Kavaia would’ve been led here in chains, her name and visage stricken from the record for all to see. Now, she was running toward the stage of her own volition, escorted by no one but the wind at her back and the human in her arms.

A grill opened in the metal tower. With the weight of several boulders, a seed rolled out onto the stage, stopping just before the precipice. It was hairy and ridged with bark, easily the size of a house. Slowly, the medial ridge cracked open like a chestnut, revealing an interior of white flesh and oozing jelly. It seemed as inviting as an open maw.

Kavaia almost dove into the seed. But just as she placed her hand upon the wooden ridges, something seemed to come over her. She stopped, gazing backward.

The pantheon spread out before them. There was a marble city sheltered inside a colossal shell of leaves—or, at least, one had been there before. Now, there were only jagged remnants. Fortresses had fallen. Atriums had collapsed. Columns laid shattered like specks of gravel. Even the twigs rising from the central branch, normally blossoming with leaves and sap, had withered down into gnarled stems. With the bare bark above, and the husks of white marble below, Sadik could only think of a corpse that had been picked clean by scavengers. Nothing but bone and cloth.

Kavaia absorbed the sight. Each of the buildings might’ve held meaning for her. A name, a face. A memory. Her eyes searched them all.

“Goddess,” Sadik said, raising his voice above the wind. “I am sorry if—”

The crocodile gripped the destrier quill sticking from her shoulder, ripping it out in one jerking motion. The second quill earned a shuddering whimper. With no ceremony, she tossed the bloody quills out into the open sky beyond.

“I am no longer a god,” Kavaia said.

Her eyes searched the pantheon once more. At the same time, her hand rubbed the wounds in her shoulder.

“There was nothing but pain. Millions of scars.”

She was silent for a moment, as if expecting a revelation. One last bit of meaning from the place that had been her home. Nothing seemed to come.

“I wish. . . .”

She looked away. Choked something down. The wind howled in their ears.

Instead of gazing at the pantheon, Sadik turned his face toward the sun. Despite the chilly wind, despite the terrifying plunge he was about to endure, the last member of the Luminous Path was finally able to close his eyes and savor the gentle light.

The sun did not care about the petty squabbles of gods. Not even the Neheamatt could halt its journey across the heavens. It would rise and fall, day after day, just as it had since the beginning of time, and just as it would until the end of history. Long after those living today had faded from memory, the sun would still bring warmth and light.

Around them, the desert stretched on. The horizon was an endless curve. The world was very large.

Sadik contemplated the insignificance of his life. In a way, he found it comforting.

They climbed into the seed, burrowing through a viscous shell of jelly. The endosperm was as thick as tallowed fat—when he opened his mouth, he discovered that it tasted rather sweet. Once they had fully entered the seed, and completely entombed their bodies, the viscous goo rushed into their mouths, just as the Exalted had done before. Sadik felt air begin to ooze into his lungs, giving nourishment to his blood and body. It still felt like he was drowning.

The seed shuddered. With a soft crackle, it closed its wooden coating, severing the pantheon from sight. Only darkness remained. The sound of the wind was muffled by jelly and wood.

The world tilted. The seed was rolling. Gathering speed.

Sadik felt himself shifting through the slimy darkness. As they spun with the seed, he shuddered away from Kavaia’s grip. She searched for him, blindly grasping through the endosperm. After a moment, she found his arm, pulled his body against her chest, and hugged him as tight as she could. He held onto her in kind.

They began to fall.