She took another drag from her pipe. "This is the true curse of godhood, sisters: not responsibility, but the endless, grinding ennui."

"This is not ennui!" Thalyssra snapped, her celestial composure cracking.

She sat upright, her form seeming to draw in the light of the room.

"I am the harmony of the cosmos, Kailthrys. I know a sour note when I hear one. This is not in the score. It is an intrusion."

"An intrusion we cannot identify," she said. "Something from outside?"

The words hung in the air, heavy and unspoken.

Outside.

The one concept that held any mystery, any fear, for beings who were themselves the definition of reality.

Kailthrys laughed, a rich, booming sound that made the star-core dais vibrate.

"Outside? There is no 'outside.' There is only the realm of Pantheia and the countless realms we have spun from its essence. You speak like frightened mortals, jumping at shadows. There are no shadows here that we did not cast ourselves."

She swung her legs off the dais, sitting up.

The movement was fluid, imbued with a terrifying grace.

The servants around her shifted, their postures becoming more attentive, a silent acknowledgment of her rising energy. VaThalyssra remained on her knees, her head bowed, but her shoulders were tense.

"You wish for a distraction from this phantom?" Kailthrys's eyes, now blazing with captured lightning, scanned her sisters.

A slow, predatory smile spread across her face. "A meeting to discuss nothing? How dreadfully dull. I have a far better idea for how to pass this eternity."

Her gaze swept over Neryssa, who stood resolute, her oceanic eyes filled with frustration.

"Your tides will still be there tomorrow, sister. Your mysteries will keep."

She clapped her hands, and a few women came into the room quickly.

She looked at Thalyssra, who just came, "The music will not fall silent if you miss a single beat." Finally, her eyes landed on Dreyssa and Gaela. "And your fires and forests have endured greater neglect."

She rose to her full height, a figure of devastating beauty and absolute authority.

The simple silks she wore did nothing to diminish the raw power that radiated from her. It was a pressure in the air, a weight on the soul.

"You speak of dissonance," Kailthrys purred, stepping down from the dais and walking toward Neryssa.

"Let us create a harmony of our own. You feel a tremor in the fabric of reality?"

She stopped inches from her sister, reaching out to trace the line of Neryssa's jaw. Her touch was like static electricity.

"Let us make it tremble for a better reason."

Neryssa stiffened, a conflict warring in her deep-sea eyes. Duty and concern against the undeniable, magnetic pull of her queen and sister.

"Kailthrys, this is not the time for… for your games."

"It is always the time for my games," Kailthrys whispered, her breath cool against Neryssa's ear. "It is the only thing that makes this endless existence bearable. You came here pleading for my attention.

You have it.

Now, shall we discuss abstractions, or shall we feel something real?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

Turning her back on Neryssa, she addressed the entire chamber, her voice amplifying, filling the space with her will.

"The conclave is adjourned! We shall have a new gathering, a communion of flesh and spirit!" She snapped her fingers, and the very air in the room seemed to thicken, charged with a new, primal energy. The objects in the walls swirled faster, their colors deepening to passionate purples and urgent crimsons. The scent of air was joined by the fragrance of night-blooming flowers and warm, salty skin.

Kailthrys's gaze fell upon the servant women. "VaThalyssra. Kaelen. Rhys. Attend us."

The named servants moved without hesitation.

VaThalyssra rose from her knees, her powerful form a study in disciplined obedience.

Kaelen, whose dark skin was a canvas for shimmering gold sigils and whose muscles coiled like serpents, stepped forward. Rhys, the tallest of them, with a mane of fiery red hair and a body that looked carved from marble, joined them.

Kailthrys walked back to the dais and let the silks fall from her shoulders, revealing her own flawless, powerful form. She reclined once more, a queen upon her starry throne, her eyes burning with invitation and command.

"Sisters. Come. Let us forget this phantom menace in the warmth of each other. Let the realm shake with our passion, not with fear."

The resistance in the room crumbled.

Time passed as the noises of the ladies moving on the soft cushion increased.

The chamber became a canvas of heaving bodies, glistening skin, and intertwined limbs. The air grew thick with the sounds of their union—the slap of flesh on flesh, the ragged pull of breath, the low, commanding whispers of the goddesses, and the helpless, ecstatic cries.

Kailthrys's laughter rang out, rich and victorious, as she moved against Neryssa, driving them both toward a precipice of sensation.

"See?" Kailthrys gasped into Neryssa's ear, her voice raw with power and pleasure.

"This is real. This is all that is real!"

And for a time, in that room of captured nebulae and star-core daisies, it was.

The phantom menace, the dissonance, the scratching at the edge of the realm—all were forgotten, drowned in a tidal wave of divine sensation. The realm did tremble, just as Kailthrys had promised, but with the rhythm of their passion, a harmony of flesh and power that, for a few stolen hours, convinced them they were still the masters of all existence.

But far away, in the silent, unseen places between the realms, the scratching continued. Unnoticed. Unheeded.

***

The Silver Spire was the heart of Coven power.

It rose from the center of the city, Hanompetra, like a needle piercing the sky.

It responded to the presence of powerful witches, its defenses activating automatically against threats, its halls reshaping themselves to accommodate the needs of those who walked them.

At the very top, occupying the highest floors, was the Council Chamber.

It was a sphere hall—a perfect shape form suspended within the tower's upper reaches. The walls curved seamlessly from floor to ceiling, made of translucent crystal that showed the sky beyond.

During the day, sunlight poured through, illuminating everything in brilliant clarity.

At night, stars were visible in every direction, making those inside feel as if they floated in the cosmos itself.

The chamber was supported by twelve massive pillars, each one square and carved from a single piece of obsidian. Runes covered every surface of these pillars, glowing faintly with contained power. They weren't just structural—they were anchors, binding tremendous defensive spells that protected this place from any conceivable attack.

In the center of the spherical chamber stood a round table, large enough for twenty to sit comfortably. It was made from ancient wood, harvested from a tree that had grown for a thousand years and been infused with origin energy throughout its entire life.

The table itself held power and served as a focus for the collective will of the Coven leadership.

And around that table, the most powerful witches in the realm had gathered.

Mother Supreme Wendelina occupied the central seat, positioned so that all others faced her. She looked exhausted.

It had been several days since the battle in the forest was over.

The battle at the Ki'thara clan's village had taken its toll—not just physically, though she bore new lines of fatigue around her eyes, but mentally. The weight of what she'd witnessed and what she'd fought pressed down on her shoulders like a physical burden.

To her immediate right sat Synnove, her most trusted advisor and second-in-command.

She wore the formal robes of a High Witch—deep grey trimmed with silver thread, marked with symbols that indicated her rank and specializations. At her hip hung a focus crystal the size of a fist, pulsing with barely contained power.

Across from Synnove sat Eunice, the head of the Illumariti and head of the Northern Covens.

Beside her was Susan of Emerald Willow.

Ladraella Coven's Sonja.

The other seats were occupied by regional representatives, each one a powerful origin user in their own right, each one commanding hundreds of witches across their territories. Their names carried weight in the mortal realm—Synthara of the Southern Reaches, Morvenna the Storm-Caller, Celestyne, who commanded the Coastal Covens, and others whose reputations preceded them.

And yet, despite the collective power gathered in this chamber, the mood was grim.

Wendelina had just finished recounting the events at Ki'thara.

The battle.

Jaenor's transformation.

The appearance of Draelusa and Lilinathara.

The fight over the temple's treasures.

And the results of that fight.

"Two artifacts," she said quietly, her voice carrying clearly in the perfect acoustics of the spherical chamber.

"The temple held two items of significance. A crown and a sword, both dating from before the Separation. Both contain knowledge and power from that era."

She gestured, and original energy formed into shapes above the table—images of the artifacts she described.

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