Joseph Kirslev sat on his throne as the Capital of Kerania burned around him. Courtiers babbled around him about plans, but he could see the writing on the wall.

  “It is not certain that the princes are dead, Your Majesty,” his spymaster whispered soothing words, but the King did not believe them. There were enough witnesses to report that his children had been torn apart alongside their retinue by a frenzied mob. He did not think his sons could survive something like that.

  “We have to marshall the troops!” Someone shouted, making the King chuckle.

  As his quiet chuckles grew to unhinged laughter, the court grew quiet.

  “What troops? Who do you think is willing to oppose the god in the sky? They wish to repent, and what god does not appreciate blood sacrifice?” The King spoke calmly, as if he and the people in this room were not the sacrifices he was alluding to.

  The noble blanched but had no retort.

  Slowly, the throne room emptied as all his supposedly loyal subjects scurried away to save their own skin.

  The King remained, for he had nothing left to live for.

  Finlay sang to herself as she cleaned her blade. She sat in the courtyard of Fort Serenity, the seat of the Kerania Order and one of the forts surrounding the first temple. With Order Master Keres dead, the fort was leaderless. Thanks to the Custodian’s final orders, it had also been depopulated, making her and a few hundred knights the only occupants of the once teeming fortress.

  The score of warriors sat in front of Finlay, watching her in silence.

  With both the Custodian and the Knight Commander missing, command fell to her. As one of the Chosen, her authority was already high, but thanks to the other, remaining, Chosen losing their powers, it was elevated to unseen heights.

  Some were already murmuring that she might be the next Custodian of Eigos.

  Finlay didn’t think so. When alone, she had removed her pendant. Immediately, her powers disappeared. A true Custodian would certainly not need any trinkets to bring forth Eternity’s power. But then, why did her pendant still work when others ceased to?

  If anything, this perplexed her more, which is why she was currently singing. Better to appear eccentric than confused. It was clear that she was once again chosen, but the question of her purpose still remained.

  Word was slowly spreading, both about the Temple Knights using Fort Serenity as a temporary headquarters and about her presence there. It was in the night that another group of knights trickled in, bearing news.

  “The Terrans… They are not leaving?” Finlay asked, voice incredulous.

  “It appears so, Lady Finlay,” the knight reported.

  Just like that, her purpose was clear.

  “It seems that we are stuck here,” Ashwood began.

  The arrayed troops listened with rapt attention while Jane stood behind him. Grimsson had regretfully died in the battle, his position a tad too close to the front to survive the final countercharge.

  “This is, of course, a temporary affair. Eventually, our comrades will come to rescue us, but until then, we will have to make do,” Ashwood spoke, neglecting to mention that any help might be far off indeed, considering the war raging back in the republic.

  “Our first objective,” he paused, “Will be to seek peace with the remains of the Church.”

  Murmurs erupted immediately, as expected.

  “I know, I know,” he placated, “Yet, the Custodian is dead,” probably,, “and many of those who've participated in the massacre of our people are dead or missing. Unsurprisingly, the locals don't exactly keep detailed records,” he paused as some chuckles resounded throughout the crowd, “which makes distinguishing the remaining guilty from the innocent impossible. I say enough blood was already spilled.”

  And he certainly did not desire to risk his neck to pursue a fruitless war, but he wasn’t about to say that. Especially when the vast majority of their fuel and food supplies had been lost alongside the fleet. They had fuel for their fliers to transport everyone away from this place, but not to keep running indefinitely. Figuring out food would be the larger issue. None of his people were exactly used to subsistence farming, but he doubted the locals would be too keen on messing around with ‘heretics’ for a while yet. Hardship awaited them, but they would prevail. He refused to let this backwater moon become his grave.

  The soldiers grumbled, but he could see acceptance on their faces. Whether they agreed with his reasoning or were merely happy to accept any excuse not to go against whatever creature was hiding in the gas giant above their heads. The great eye might have disappeared fairly quickly, but the event lingered in all their minds.

  Ashwood did not think it was a god, but you did not need to be one to decide the fate of a few thousand soldiers. Power was power, regardless of what the wielders called themselves.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A distant, rhythmic rumble interrupted Ashwood before he could continue with his speech. He frowned. They had no birds up in the air, to conserve fuel.

  “Horses,” Jane remarked.

  “Defensive positions,” Ashwood commanded calmly.

  The troops moved quickly, putting on their helmets and forming lines. Unfortunately, their current camp wasn’t much of a camp at all. Merely a gathering space where he had not intended to linger.

  Soon, they heard the war cries. Ashwood squinted. He was pretty sure he recognised the rider in front of the approaching horde by their armour. It was the same knight who had catalysed yesterday’s rout.

  “FIRE!”

  Aisac sat in a forest, watching water flow through a creek as birds sang around him. His armour lay discarded to the side, leaving him only in his bloodstained tunic. One of his hands held a pristine dagger, while his face was covered in dried blood, part of his jaw missing. A ghastly sight.

  He felt lost. The Custodian was gone. He had not thought her absence would affect him so much, but he felt like someone had kicked his legs out from under him. He was the Knight Commander of the Temple Knights and thought that he’d remain just that until his death or infirmity, yet now, he didn’t see how he could carry that burden forward. Not when his mistakes were this overwhelming. He didn’t deserve it.

  Though the battle was gone, he had failed. In hindsight, the Custodian’s words were obvious. He knew that excessive use of Eternity’s power was dangerous, but he had never connected the dots. How could there be a limit for someone who could shatter mountains?

  She must have realised that the chances of victory were slim, just as he had. Instead of meeting her determination with understanding, he had yelled at her. A deep, aching regret filled him.

  Worst of all, he understood the depths of his failure. The Custodian had been counting on him, on their people, to reverse the situation. She had given them all the tools she could, and she had protected them from the monstrous attacks from the sky. They had been given everything they could want to even the playing field. They had still failed.

  He had failed.

  Aisac raised the dagger, examining it closely.

  Then, he moved it towards his neck.

  A fully autonomous ship jumped in system. It remained just long enough to figure out what had happened with the previous task force, then quickly left. The ship was a new model, fresh from the shipyards, instead of the many retrofitted commercial craft that formed the bulk of Athena's forces. As such, it possessed a stationary version of the Faster-Than-Light Communications Array, allowing the machine mind to observe in real time. A vessel she could not have spared at the start of the war, but now that the end was drawing near, the ship could be dedicated to less critical tasks. Losing one of the mobile arrays had been a loss, but one that had paid off.

  The destruction in the system was great. Athena's mind was quick to determine that the amount of debris matched the mass of the sent ships, translating into total annihilation.

  Though Athena could not feel emotions the way humans did, if she could, she would be feeling pleased.

  Once the Mobile Array had reported its findings, Athena had done her best to ensure the task force contained mostly humanist forces, not trying to contest Eigos at all.

  The possibility of total loss had been remote, but the enemy never had any hope of benefiting from any discoveries. In the worst case, an entire task force would have been occupied in a futile attempt to reverse engineer an outside-context problem, weakening their faction’s overall combat capacity.

  That the Erinyes had been utterly destroyed was a boon nonetheless, if slightly concerning. Once the war was done, the machine mind would have to investigate more.

  Carefully.

  Sylviane Winterstar slowly walked on a forest path with only the stars to illuminate the way, a book clutched tightly to her chest. Her grey robes were tattered, yet her face was one of determination. Twigs crunched under her feet as she marched in the night, accompanied by the hoots of an owl.

  The handmaiden had searched through the remains of the tower, but of the Custodian, there was no trace. She did find the book she was clutching. The Book of Invocations.

  Sylviane had been curious at first, but it did not take her long to realise the importance of what she now held.

  The book was filled with records of every Ritual of Invocation performed since Eternity went to sleep last, thus, it contained everything the Custodian should convey to Eternity now that she was awake. Yet the woman who had dominated so much of Sylviane’s thoughts in the past year was nowhere to be found. The Great Eye might have been gone, but Sylviane doubted that Eternity herself was as well.

  Deep in her thoughts, Sylviane failed to notice a root and tripped, falling straight to the ground.

  Hissing in pain, she slowly rose to her feet. At least her clothes couldn't get any dirtier. Despite the sharp pain in her ankle, she pushed on, the rest of the way passing in a blur.

  Soon, she spotted the tranquil surface of the lake. A marble table sat on the lake’s edge, with moss beginning to grow on its legs.

  Sylviane spared it a look, but while the sight would make her curious normally, she was too nervous to be distracted so easily. Instead, she sat on the lake’s edge, bathing her feet in cold water as she hesitated.

  She knew that someone had to do it and that there was no one she could entrust the task to. Unfortunately, there were no rules or provisions made for the Custodian’s absence. Who would plan for the absence of the sky or the sun?

  While the idea of talking to the Goddess might excite many, Sylviane felt only dread. What if Eternity did not want to be disturbed? She might as well be erased from existence on the spot!

  Yet, at the same time, she couldn’t just leave like this. After the Custodian’s disappearance, much of the remaining Temple staff dispersed. Sylviane, too, felt the call of home.

  She sat there for a few minutes, her determination growing. She would do this last thing for the Custodian, then she would go home.

  “Now, how did the Ritual of Invocation actually go?” She muttered. In the stories, the Custodian always did something, though what differed from storyteller to storyteller. Sometimes she sang, sometimes she prayed or danced. Sometimes, she did... weirder things.

  Sylviane cringed as she realised she might have to experiment.

  She sighed and looked up at the sky, only to have her breath catch in her chest.

  The night sky was gone, replaced almost entirely by a giant eye.

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  Well, that's it. Two years and two months of writing, and here we are. The ending has been more or less set in stone since I began writing, so hopefully, it works well enough.

  I've certainly made some mistakes. Song was kind of shuffled into irrelevance alongside the poor colonists, for example. I've also never managed to have a Soma Aspis vs Chosen fight, which is a bit of a shame, but it never seemed like a good time for it. I'm also not 100% sure if I characterised Aisac well enough for his last scene to feel natural, but oh well. There are a few others things, but it brings me to the information you all might be interested in now - what's next for the story?

  Unfortunately, I do not have a satisfying answer for you. I do have some ideas for a sequel, but I am unsure of whether I even want to write it. In any case, any such thing would only occur after some extensive editing done on this story and I have no timeline for that. It'll happen when I have time and motivation for it, though I'll try to do it this summer. If nothing else, I'd like to print a typo-free copy for my shelf haha. After that, I'll likely try for more traditional publishing. While I wouldn't say that this is some masterpiece, I feel like it might be worth a try.

  I am already working on a (very) different story, so that's where most of my writing focus will be going towards for now. I'll announce its release on here too, so if you like my writing (for some reason), then stay tuned.