Noah could barely make out the sound of his own panicked footfalls over his heart pounding in his ears. He raced down the last narrow bridge connecting the external Spirit Veins to their core. Beneath it was a freefall into the darkness of oblivion, the space in between Realms from which nothing could escape. He’d had so many false starts, but this was the right path. He could feel it in his bones.

Beneath the overwhelmingly strong flow of mana pulsing through the Spirit Veins, he could feel a familiar, albeit weak, signature within its depths. The unmistakable mana signature of the mountain god he’d been bound to. The companion that Noah’s very existence had once hinged upon, but who had come to represent so much more to him than just survival.

Cain.

Noah gritted his teeth. This had to be the heart of the labyrinth, where condemned gods were held. Where fallen deities were returned to the fabric of the realm, as the Spirit Veins slowly but steadily consumed them. If he could feel Cain’s signature in the ambient mana, how far had the process already gone?

“Just hang on, Cain—” he panted. It was a desperate plea to a man who wouldn’t hear him, but Noah repeated it again and again beneath his breath, as if the words might reach the deity if he said them enough. “Hang on, hang on…”

Faster. He needed to push himself. They were running out of time. But he had come too far to turn back now—he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He could feel the Spirit Veins around him beginning to crack as their inner structure began to fall apart. The bridge beneath his feet felt unstable.

It’s starting, the Revenant’s voice whispered, audible only to Noah. You need to hurry, Astraeus. If you haven’t reached him yet, you need to get yourself out of there. The structure won’t hold.

“No,” Noah said, racing full speed ahead. “I’m almost there.”

He would want you to leave him and save yourself.

“I’m sure that stubborn bastard would, but there’s not a chance in hell of that.”

There’s only a minute left, Astraeus. Not even you can postpone this.

“I know that!” Noah snapped. “If you try and pull me out now, I’ll break this stupid teleportation talisman myself.”

Astraeus, you only get one shot at this. If you break that talisman, there’s no coming back—

“So be it—”

Overhead a chunk of stone plummeted to the ground, taking out the platform up ahead of him.

“Shit,” Noah cursed beneath his breath, his mind racing for any alternative as he barreled forward. He couldn’t stop now.

Astraeus—

“Would you shut up so I can concentrate!” It didn’t matter what the obstacle was, he wasn’t stopping for anything. If there was no solid ground, he would make his own.

Power crackled beneath his fingers as he tapped into his mana, at last amplified to its full potential. Brilliant, blinding white light danced in the palm of his hand. With a flick of his wrist, it crystallized beneath him, illuminating the darkness underfoot while keeping him from falling into it.

Noah raced ahead, the stonework collapsing rapidly beneath him. The Revenant had warned Noah that brute-forcing his way through the safeguards that shielded the heart Spirit Veins would cause irrevocable damage to the structure—but not this quickly.

Noah used his power to catch his steps, chaining the parts of the crumbling bridge together in midair as he raced down the path with a recklessness he hadn’t known he was capable of. His power couldn’t join the pieces together for long, or with great precision, but it was solid enough to give him something to jump from. Each makeshift step came together beneath his feet just in time to keep him from plummeting into the eternal darkness, allowing him to maintain his momentum.

He couldn’t feel the fatigue that should have been weighing him down, or the exhaustion of the trials he had just gone through. He couldn’t feel the burning in his muscles as they struggled to support his pace. The mana racing through his veins overwrote all of that. He was consuming divine mana at breakneck speed, but it was welling up within him just as quickly.

His mana was finally unfettered. No more limits on it imposed by the elders of the Astraeus Clan or their teachings. It had been a long road, but Noah could finally feel and access all of the power his bloodline entitled him to. At last, he was the one in a position to do the protecting. And there was no way in hell he was allowing anything to keep him from saving Cain.

He wasn’t going to sit back, oblivious and protected while the deity put everything on the line. He wasn’t going to live out another tragedy. Not like he had with Tama. Things with Cain wouldn’t go the same way. He wasn’t going to let it.

He reached the end of the path, the sacred core at the heart of the Spirit Veins. The stone rumbled as it reacted to his mana and then opened, revealing the chamber within. This was it. There were no further obstacles—no mazes, no locked doors, there was only—

“—Cain!” Noah called. His knees went weak at the sight ahead of him.

The proud deity was on his knees, his arms stretched out on either side of him as chains held him in place. Iron chains were so densely and tightly wrapped around him that Noah could barely tell where they began and ended. The spiderweb of restraints was chained to every available inch of wall space, an excess designed to keep even the strongest of deities in check.

Cain’s head was hung low, his silvery white hair stained with crimson. His charcoal-tipped ears drooped weakly atop his head, not so much as twitching in response to Noah’s approach. Blood dripped from his brow to the floor below, joining the growing pool beneath him.

Noah stumbled forward, desperately grasping the deity’s pale face. He could feel the warmth of Cain’s pooled blood seeping into his clothes as he fell to his knees, but the deity's skin was cool to the touch.

“Cain!” Noah clapped his hands frantically against the deity’s cheeks. “Hey! Can you hear me?”

The deity groaned quietly, his ears twitching as he stirred. His eyes cracked open, a narrow sliver of his golden eyes peeking forward.

“Cain!”

The deity’s gaze went from hazy and unfocused to wide as he recognized Noah, snapping to attention. Cain jerked in place, the chains around him rattling loudly as he came to. Anger, horror, and elation flashed across his face in rapid succession as he looked at Noah.

“What are you doing here?” Cain asked, shaking his head. “What—no, why are you here?”

“What do you mean ‘what am I doing here’?” Noah scoffed, tightly cupping the deity’s face. “I came to get you.” He let his mana flow freely into the deity, mending his wounds and breathing more life back into him. He could feel his own body beginning to ache with phantom pain as he exchanged Cain’s suffering for his own, but the boundless influx of divine mana racing through his veins soothed it just as quickly.

“But—” Cain protested, shaking his head more vigorously. “What are you doing? Why?”

“What, did you think I was going to fall for the Spirit Court’s cheap tricks?” Noah leaned his forehead against Cain’s, relief flooding through him as he felt the warmth begin to return to the deity’s body. “I’m offended.”

“I don’t understand. You could have chosen to live in peace, in the Reverie Corridor. That’s where Tama is,” Cain said, his voice tight. “You could have been happy there. You shouldn’t have come here.”

“We don’t have very much time, and that’s what you’re going to talk about?” Noah asked, shaking his head. The walls shook around them, a spiderweb of cracks winding through the stonework. “It’s true that the Reverie Corridor has beautiful memories of him, Cain… but that’s all that they are. They’re beautiful, but they aren’t real. That life ended a long time ago.”

“Then…” Cain hesitated before averting his gaze. “No, you’re right—we don’t have time. It’s dangerous here, and getting worse. You have to go,” he said firmly, pulling back from Noah’s grasp. He yanked hard at the chains binding him, but they only rattled in place. “These aren’t coming down until the walls do, Astraeus. You’ve got to go.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Noah,” Cain said, with a thin, crooked smile on his face. His golden eyes, as hauntingly beautiful as ever, were filled with resignation. “As happy as I am to see you… go.” He nodded towards the entrance. “Get out of here. No good will come of this.”

“So be it.” Noah grasped his face firmly, forcing Cain to look him dead in the eye. “Look at me, Cain. I’m not leaving you. Not now.”

“You don’t have some clever way out of this, do you?” Cain leaned his forehead back against Noah’s with a quiet, hollow laugh. “We’re out of time. You have to go—I mean it.”

Overhead, the ceiling began to creak and groan ominously. A crumble of fine, powdery stone dusted over them as the structure around them began to collapse.

Astraeus— the Revenant’s voice interrupted him, more urgent than ever. This is it.

Noah ignored it, determined to tell Cain what he’d left unspoken for far too long.

“If this is the end of the line, I just need you to know—I’m exactly where I need to be, with who I need to be with, understand?” he said, his fingers pressing into Cain’s cheeks to force the deity to face him head on. “If this is going to be the end, I’m not leaving you here to face it alone—do you get it yet?”

“Noah—”

Noah closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressing a hard kiss to Cain’s lips to stifle the deity’s protests. Around him, the stone walls began to give way, groaning under their own weight as they came tumbling down.