"He didn't take it with him. It followed anyway."

  POV: Kinunnos

  The Between cracked open like a wound that had never healed right. A fracture in the fabric of forgotten realms, tearing further and more violently than ever before. Kin stirred in its hollow, his form already taking shape before thought caught up, before memory could ce itself over meaning. Fme sparked at his fingertips, erratic and hungry. Smoke unspooled in his throat, bitter and thick. The ache in his chest was sharp, immediate, a jolt that told him everything.

  He knew where Riven was.

  He didn't need to reach. He was already reaching, moving, closing the space between as if it had already been crossed. Each breath dragged him closer toward the mortal coil, not like before—unintentionally, passively tethered by ritual repetition and quiet longing. This was different. This was intent. This was movement. And his need, that primal, aching need, eclipsed any fear of consequence.

  His voice slipped between worlds before he could stop it, the sylbles born of want and nothing else:

  "Don't look away."

  Far away—yet too near—Riven's eyes fluttered. Kin felt the tremor of it like a tide beneath his ribs, like a lure pulling him toward its source. He didn't cross. Not fully. But somehow, irrevocably, he was already there. Already present. Already ciming what he never should have been able to cim. He stood at the threshold, hands brushing the veil that barely remembered how to keep him out. The mirror was cold against his palm, a physicality he hadn't expected. On the other side, the gss fogged with breath he hadn't meant to exhale.

  Riven sat up in bed. No arm. No noise. Just a sudden tension in his spine, a moment of stillness where stillness didn't belong. Kin watched the movement, the awareness through that fragile sliver of gss, the need to be closer gnawing at his boundaries.

  Kin's smile was crooked. Regretful. Dangerous.

  "I shouldn't be here," he whispered. And then, quieter: "But I am."

  The light in Riven's room bent for half a second—barely a flicker, like a ripple across the edge of a dream. A book slid from the shelf behind him, nding spine-down in a sprawl of sound too loud for morning. Riven flinched. Looked around. Blinked. That look, so bewildered and raw, fed the twist of Kin's longing like tinder to a fme. A shiver of power ran beneath, making the air pulse and buckle. The gss on the desk clouded over with condensation that had no source.

  Kin's fingertips pressed into the gss harder. The reflection didn't show him.

  But he was there.

  And the Between, that stitched realm of chaos and memory, moaned its protest. Already the fabric was colpsing in his wake, too shaken to hold. The gods would feel this. They always did. Still, he stayed. Because this time, it wasn't about survival. It was about closeness. About proof. About wanting. Wanting, for Kinunnos, had always been the beginning of ruin.

  The shrine had never been his. Not truly.

  It was a ghost-space, a fragile threshold caught between memory and belief, stitched together by habit and stubborn ritual. A patchwork of remembered faith, clinging to its sanctity in ways that hurt to look at. For a long time, Kinunnos had only watched from the Between—quiet, invisible, uncimed, the forgotten god of a forgotten pce. But now?

  Now the shrine noticed him.

  Riven stepped into the alley without an offering. His hands were empty, and his eyes were tired in that way mortals wore like armor. Kin felt it—sharp and unspoken. The ache behind Riven's silence rang louder than a hundred whispered prayers.

  No coin. No charm. No words.

  That absence hit Kinunnos almost as hard as the presence of his own need. Because even now, even when he shouldn't have, Riven came back. The Between moaned its discord, and he knew the other gods would feel it, the way they always did. He couldn't care. Wouldn't. Not this time. He brushed the veil with careful hands, afraid of unraveling the whole thing. Afraid of losing what little space he had. But he was present enough to catch the moment Riven looked around the alley, just once, as if he knew something had shifted.

  Still, the candle lit.

  Not with the soft golden hue it used to hold, but red. Deep and arterial, pulsing low like a heartbeat buried in stone.

  Kin's breath caught in the Between, echoing down into the damp and sacred dark. The moss had crept farther since st time, spiraling across the altar in looping patterns, unfurling like it had been waiting. When the fme fred, so too did the growth—like the altar exhaled.

  And for one brief second, just one—

  His sigil appeared.

  Not carved. Not etched. But burned in, rising through the moss like heat through skin. The spiral. The eye. The curling twist of his old name. A mark no one else could've summoned. No one but him.

  No one but the one who remembered him.

  Riven didn't speak. But his gaze caught—locked—on the pce where the sigil had bloomed. His posture shifted, just slightly. Like he felt the gaze, even if he wouldn't name it. A shiver of longing ran through the air, and Kin's chest ached from knowing it was real. From knowing Riven's attention was a dangerous thing, too close to a prayer he couldn't control.

  Beside the first feather, now faded and curled at the edges, there y another.

  Newer. Burned at the tip.

  Kin hadn't meant to leave it. Hadn't meant to send anything. He gritted his teeth against the need to reach. To touch. To cim more than he should. But the Between was less obedient now. Less loyal to his restraint. His power was bleeding through the cracks.

  Riven stared.

  Didn't touch.

  Didn't question.

  But on the way out—he looked over his shoulder. Not to check the street. Not to check for danger. Just to check. The pause was barely a moment, but it burned through Kinunnos in ways he almost couldn't stand. He had thought it would be easier, this breaking of silence. This proof of something he couldn't name. But the wanting was worse than before, carving itself into shape, wearing him thin.

  And Kin—half-formed, smoke-bodied, unraveling god of everything he was never meant to be—watched him go with something close to reverence. And something closer to possession.

  Riven didn't flinch at all when the feather dropped, as if the world hadn't shifted beneath him. This. This was what shook Kin the most, the ease with which he'd wedged his way between, the force with which Riven's attention snagged on him alone.

  One moment, they were all talking—mundane, half-hearted banter tossed across the table like offerings, most of it aimed at whatever sad meal Bowen had scrounged together from the cabinet graveyard. The kind of conversation Bowen liked best, dialogue drawn out like a spool of thread, back-and-forth, fast and winding. But the next? Riven just... stilled. Mid-sentence. Mid-chew. Like a clock forgetting to tick. It was such a familiar thing, Riven's sudden quiet, but this time Kin felt the shift in it, the way it honed to a point. The way it fttened out the world around him.

  Riven's gaze lifted. Caught on the corner of the ceiling like something invisible had tugged at his attention. Like he was listening to a frequency only he could hear.

  Kin was that frequency, and he thrummed with the intensity of it.

  He hadn't meant to speak. Hadn't meant to reach so directly. But the bond was shifting now, fraying into something with hooks. Something deeper. And Riven's mind, raw and unguarded, kept the door cracked open the way his rituals never dared. His pupils dited, slow and wide, and his fingers twitched—subtle, soft, like they were about to reach for something that wasn't there. Then the feather slipped.

  It drifted from his sleeve and nded soundlessly on the floor, catching the dim kitchen light as it fell.

  Red.

  New.

  From the doorway, a spoon halfway to his mouth, Bowen saw it. He went very still, his fast-talking mind processing too many things at once. His eyes dropped to the feather. Then to Riven. Then back again. Slowly, deliberately. Kin felt the worry bloom behind Bowen's expression like smoke under gss—muted, but spreading fast. He didn't speak. But his stance shifted. His jaw tightened. He watched Riven like someone watching the aftermath of a near-miss. Like he was trying to calcute what kind of damage had already been done.

  But it wasn't damage.

  It was wanting.

  Something so much more dangerous.

  Riven didn't see it. Didn't feel it. Didn't react. The look on his face was one Kin knew intimately—it was riveted and raw, the look of a prayer inching toward sacrifice. Kin saw it through the haze of the Between, his need spilling across the veil. His presence was too much, even when silent. And Bowen felt it.

  Bowen noticed.

  Kin watched him, too. There was something in Bowen's gaze—fierce, familiar. The kind of concern that didn't demand answers but didn't stop looking. It wasn't jealousy, not really. But it was close. It was the shape of being known. And for a second, Kin hated it. Not Bowen. Not really. Just the way Bowen could see Riven without touching. The way he could stay in Riven's world without tearing it apart. The tension made Kin unravel, smoke and instinct and tattered memory.

  He shifted, pulled deeper into the veil, coiling the space around his limbs, fingers curling into fists at his sides until the ache was unbearable. He didn't speak. Couldn't. Not here. Not now. But Bowen felt him anyway. Felt the room vibrate, faint and low, the quiver of a presence that was too much even when desperate to be silent. Bowen frowned, eyes narrowed, mouth tightening. He didn't know what he felt—Kin could see him trying to name it—but he felt it, and that was enough to shake Kin to the core.

  Enough to make him retreat.

  This was what he wanted, wasn't it? To be remembered, but not like this. To be seen, but not like this. Bowen's persistence was terrifying in a way Kin hadn't anticipated, a threat to more than his grasp on Riven. A threat to the very nature of what Kin was. He didn't want to be witnessed.

  But he did.

  The Between crumpled beneath him, a stitched-together world tearing at the seams and dragging Kinunnos down with it. He gasped, breath scraping through a body too solid to be safe, too much flesh and bone for a pce like this. His hand hit the stone that wasn't really stone, bracing himself against the unraveling chaos. He should have known better. Should have stayed more shadow than form. Not here. Not now. Not for this. But Kin hadn't learned better. Not yet. He had pulled too close—again—and the fragile, half-formed edges of the Between were colpsing with the weight of his selfishness.

  In his p, the object Riven had forgotten curled up like a wound, its presence as real and aching as an accusation. Or worse: a reminder. Kin stared at it—gnawing, reckless—confusion and want battling for control. A small scrap, frayed and knotted, the loosest thread from an old shirt. Or maybe the first feather, molted and hollowed. It was so faded now. So empty. He wasn't sure anymore. He wasn't sure of anything, except this:

  It smelled like Riven.

  And he couldn't let go.

  Even in the shuddering dark, Kin kept his hold, voice cracking between anger and need. "He didn't take it," he whispered, ragged and ashamed. "He thought that meant it was his choice."

  The shame sank in deeper than it should have. Deeper than anything ever had. Hadn't this always been the way of it? Desire, then false hope, then the sharp crack of ruin? Kin pressed his thumb into the object, hard enough to turn his knuckles white. Hard enough to feel it in this fragile skin, raw and tenuous, pain almost transmuting longing into something realer. Almost. But not quite.

  Around him, the Between reacted. Not gently.

  The world cracked.

  A tremor ran through the warped architecture of un-reality, a jolt with the force of betrayal. The great bck chains that once bound him fred to life overhead, crisscrossing the rippling sky with the scream of don't. With the scream of remember. Like the other gods had already felt their victory. A trickster unmasked. A trickster caught. The fractured murals bled starlight and the shattered temple ceilings loomed, every line of them a reminder of what it meant to be incompleteness. Every line of them a reminder of why Kin's need to be known was a threat to the very nature of what he was.

  But it was too te.

  Too te to pretend he didn't want.

  Too te to pretend he didn't care.

  It was too te and not enough, and Kin's breath tore through him in sharp, mortal inhales, the kind that hurt more than they should. He thought of Bowen and his fierce loyalty, his terrible ability to see, to know, to understand Riven in all the ways that Kin couldn't yet. He thought of the way Bowen's gaze stayed tight on Riven and the pause it caused, the threat of a rival Kin hadn't anticipated. The threat of more than just Bowen's devotion. That pause had not stopped Riven from coming back to the shrine. Nothing had. Riven had come even without an offering. Even without a sacrifice. And for Riven, that meant choice. It meant Riven was choosing to return. That was his truth. His lie. His need.

  And Kin had believed it.

  Believed it enough to reach for more. To tear at the fragile space between until his own haunting presence bled through. He could still see the expression on Riven's face, burned into him like his own resurgent sigil, a look so riveting and raw it made him reckless. Made him fool enough to think that leaving the feather had not been a mistake. Kin gritted his teeth, unable to stop the need from hollowing him out, unable to stop his half-breathing form from shaking itself to pieces with longing. This was what he wanted. This was what he feared.

  He couldn't let it go.

  He didn't even want to try.

  A shiver ran through the Between, ash and scarlet and uneven breath. Kin felt the other gods' suspicion digging in like barbs. Felt the chain-links making a cage of the sky. He felt the sharp edges of something not unlike shame pinning him to a reality he didn't want to inhabit. But most of all, he felt his own want consuming him whole. Devouring him, warping the space around it until the other gods would have no choice but to notice. Until the other gods would have no choice but to tear him apart for it. Even then, even with the unbearable weight of being seen, he reached for Riven.

  He reached for Riven anyway.

  Kin had already reached.

  He felt them—the others—stirring like hornets in the distance. Their rage coiled through the fractured space around him, every suspicion sharpening into something hard enough to shatter. He felt them gathering against him like storm clouds, the threat of their notice rumbling in a way he could not ignore. Distant gods with mouths full of order and judgment. Gods with eyes that tore through the Between, searching for his transgression. He felt the ancient w twist in the deep, every thread of it pulling tighter around his fragile, half-formed world. We do not cross. We do not touch. We are not theirs.

  But Kin had already broken the rules.

  Already stretched himself across the veil, a reckless tether that was too close and too wanting to go unseen. The gods would never forgive him. Would never let him hold what they insisted must be beyond his grasp. The thread pulled again, sharp through his ribs, tight enough to feel like punishment. Tight enough to double him over with need. With want. He could feel Riven walking home. Walking toward him. Shoulders hunched, jacket pulled tight. He could feel the cold against Riven's skin, feel the way it seeped into him as he moved through the dark streets in the direction of the shrine. The direction of Kin. The direction his every prayer had always led, even when he didn't admit it.

  Then warmth. Fresh and familiar, heating the bones of an apartment Riven would not stay in. Of an apartment Kin couldn't care about. He could feel it. Feel him. The way Riven scrubbed at his face with a towel, like he was trying to erase the feeling of being seen. The feeling of something so much more dangerous than damage. The feeling of wanting.

  Kin inhaled. His breath snagged, caught on the ache of hope.

  And exhaled into the world, his presence stretching thin and fierce. A thread, a promise, a ripple of warmth. Just enough.

  Just enough for a whisper to form, low and insistent. For the veil to tremble under the force of his persistence. For warmth to gather in the corners of Riven's room like an afterthought. Like a prayer. Like a promise. The loose thread of himself pulled tight across the distance, across the dark, across the space that hovered between gods and mortals.

  He shouldn't.

  But he had to.

  The gods would feel this breach. Would feel the way they had already lost him to Riven's belief, stubborn and unwavering. But he didn't care. Didn't care and couldn't stop, the need to be near already consuming him.

  To be near again.

  To matter again.

  To be chosen.

  Not by altars. The words pressed through him, strangled and fervent, the shape of a want he couldn't control. Of a want he didn't want to control.

  Not by war.

  By Riven.

  POV: Riven

  The shrine didn't look different. Not at first. A step into the alley showed him nothing unusual, no sign that anything had changed. No sign that anything would.

  But Riven didn't need his eyes to know the change had already happened.

  He stood just outside the threshold, a shiver running through him, uncertainty like a prayer he couldn't finish. The cold bit into his skin. His empty skin. Nothing in his hands. No charm. No coin. Not even the half-formed trinket he sometimes fidgeted with on the way over. His pockets were empty. His breath, shallow. No offerings today. Just distance. Just doubt. Just an unsteady need that made him wonder what he had been thinking to come back here.

  A breath in, a breath out. He crossed the threshold without hesitation, and that scared him more than anything else—that his feet remembered the way without permission. That the air didn't resist him anymore. That it welcomed him. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He had expected resistance, a struggle to recim all that he had given up. He had expected a fight.

  But there was no fight. There was only warmth.

  The fme was already lit. A thin wick of red, flickering high and lean, like it had missed him.

  He didn't kneel.

  He didn't speak. Not yet. Not this time. He didn't dare. He stared instead, letting the reality of the pce settle in. Every line of his body was taut with disbelief, every inch of him strung with a want he hadn't learned how to say. A want the shrine seemed to know already. The fire curled toward him, bright and eager, as if to prove how wrong he had been to think that turning away once would be enough. As if to prove how wrong he had been to think he was strong enough not to come back.

  He didn't expect the fire to still be here. The warmth. A promise, like the loose thread of a dream that couldn't quite unravel. A promise, like it got there before him. Straight from the Between, straight from the ghost of a god who refused to forget him. A god who refused to be forgotten. The thought burned him more than the fire.

  He didn't think the fire would st.

  He didn't think he would.

  The shrine surrounded him, bolder than ever, bold enough to feel like a risk. Everything pulsed with Kin's presence, with his need to be seen, to be known, to hold what the other gods said he couldn't. Riven felt it breathing around him, and he wondered—for a moment, just a moment—if he should have stayed away. If he should have run the moment he realized it wasn't over. If he should have believed that leaving the offering meant it was his choice. A ragged breath caught in his throat. A ragged breath kept him there, closer than he should be, closer than he wanted to admit he wanted to be.

  A thousand reasons not to return, but still, he was here.

  Kin wanted him here, and a piece of Riven wanted that to be true more than he wanted it to be safe.

  But he knew better.

  He had to.

  The altar stone was slick with moss again, and it shimmered faintly at the edges—as if remembering another time, another pce. He noticed something new. Or maybe it had always been there and he'd just never dared to see it.

  The altar stone was shrouded in moss, slick and wet and almost luminous as it shivered at the edges. The sight of it caught Riven's breath. It was there, in the core of him, breathing heart-deep and electric, an echo of something sacred and old. He stood, eyes wide and unsure, caught in a moment that felt like another time, another pce. He didn't move. Didn't dare risk what had already rooted inside him. A new fear tugged at him, unsure and hesitant. A new fear that he wanted to know, needed to know, if maybe he was too close. If maybe he was already—

  He saw it then. Something new.

  Or maybe—

  Maybe it had always been there, and he hadn't been ready. Maybe it had always been there, and he just hadn't dared to see. He just hadn't let himself.

  Kin's sigil, curling and faint, burned into the moss like a whisper caught in the dark.

  And beside it—a feather.

  But not his feather. Not the one he'd tucked into the shrine st week. Not the one that had followed him through dreams and mirrors and all his restless, scattered thoughts. This one was darker. Singed at the edges. A thing that had flown through fire and nded anyway.

  He stared at it, his every breath thin with disbelief that it was even there, that it had been left at all.

  Didn't touch.

  Didn't dare.

  What did it mean? What did it prove? That Kin wanted him this much? That Kin wanted him enough to defy the ws all the other gods lived by, enough to disregard more than just their rules? Enough to disregard Riven's own attempts to put space and distance between himself and the shrine? He thought—maybe this was the st time. The st time he would come here, let himself stand so close, let himself feel that pulse of being watched and wanted and wanted. This was too much. This was more than he knew how to be. Riven didn't know if it was worship or war anymore. He wasn't sure it had ever been a choice. Not really. Not when Kin filled every scrap of his will, filled it with more devotion than Riven had ever asked for, more devotion than Riven had ever dared believe he could find. Maybe there was never a choice if Kin had already chosen.

  So he said nothing. Not a single word.

  He left the feather behind.

  Turned.

  And walked.

  The air didn't resist him, not exactly. Not quite. But it hesitated, holding him back just long enough to make him wonder. Just long enough for him to feel. Like it was memorizing the shape of him, the sound of his footsteps as he tried to leave. Like it didn't want him to go. Like it had already cimed him, even if he didn't know it yet. He held his breath, held it tight until he reached the end of the alley, until the air surrounded him with more distance than want. Until he was sure there was no hesitation, no voice following him into the dark.

  He didn't look back.

  It would be the st time.

  How many times had he thought that now? Told himself that? Forced himself to believe it? The thought hurt more than it should have. More than he could afford. He turned onto the street, a new cold cutting through him. Every step took him further from the heat of the shrine, every step was just enough to make him believe he had left it. Just enough to make him think he had left Kin.

  The door to his apartment clicked shut behind him. A sound that should have felt like relief. Should have felt like safety instead of a mistake. He locked it, bolted it, as if that would be enough to keep himself out. As if that would be enough to keep it all away. Jacket gone, heavy shirt gone—he turned the water on hot, let it run too long, scalding enough to burn the memory off his skin. Or trying to. Or trying to remember what it was like not to be wanted this much. This close. Trying to forget.

  When he stepped out, the mirror wasn't fogged.

  When he stepped out, his heart still was.

  That felt worse. Worse than leaving. Worse than staying. Worse than every inch of him that had been pulled in a thousand different directions, and now felt the pull of only one. His skin was too warm, the apartment too warm, and still he felt the burn of where Kin had been. Where Kin still was. He felt it with every breath, every movement. He felt it with every piece of him. He moved automatically, towel dropping to the floor, a loose shirt pulled on, hands quick and sure, the mechanical care of someone pretending to be alone. Someone pretending to be okay with that.

  He pulled back the bnket.

  And froze.

  It was already there.

  His feather.

  Not burned. Not gone. Mirrored.

  Just... waiting.

  Every beat of his heart stretched into disbelief. Every beat of his heart stretched into hope. He stared at it, his jaw tight with the kind of anger that felt too much like faith, too much like wanting. He stared at it, a thin line of red curling behind his eyes as thoughts tangled and fought for space. Maybe there was no choice if Kin had already chosen. Maybe there was no way to leave if Kin had already followed him this far, disregarding not just the rules but everything else. Everything else. Riven didn't scream. Didn't throw it. Didn't run.

  He just stared at it like a wound that wouldn't scab.

  Then he y down beside it. Carefully. Slowly. Like it had earned the space. Like it had always belonged there. He didn't touch it. But his hand hovered near. And in the quiet, he whispered—

  "...You followed me."

  The feather said nothing.

  But it didn't need to.

  It was already home.