Rowan had drifted in and out of sleep. His dreams had been filled with demons eating him from the inside, and part of him was sure it was more than a dream. They whispered to him now, even while he was awake. They demanded freedom while threatening his sanity.

  Sanity is an odd thing to lose. It doesn’t disappear all at once. Or at least, it didn’t for Rowan.

  At first, you know not to believe the images that cannot be real: the blood on your hands, the spiders on your shoes, the fire spreading through the forest.

  But then those images come with sound: the clicking of chitinous feet, the drip of liquid, the crackle of sap catching fire. And you start to doubt your senses.

  It isn’t until you feel the crawling of spiders on your leg, the sticky blood on your hands, and the heat of the flames that you start to believe.

  The final point of madness comes when you smell the smoke and taste the blood.

  When all your senses work together in an orchestrated attempt to upend reality, there is no way to know the way out.

  Rowan absently wondered if this was how Marcus had felt as his mind was consumed by demons.

  “Rowan,” said a nearby rock.

  The voice was familiar.

  “Gretta?” he asked the rock.

  “We need to move,” the rock replied.

  The world swayed and shifted. The forest vanished. Rowan was now in a vast desert. Not the desert of Arizona, with scrub brush and cacti, but a desert of endless sand dunes and nothing else.

  “I don’t know what’s real,” Rowan said. He tried to smirk in the direction he hoped he’d last heard the voice. “I think you’ll have to save Fairy on your own.”

  A sand dune to his left rumbled. “Should I knock some sense into him?”

  The voice sounded like Meg.

  Rowan tried to turn, but he simply fell over.

  “You’re going to let a couple of demons kick your ass?” Gretta asked.

  The desert sand began streaming into the sky. The ground tilted sideways—then upside down. Rowan fell with the sand into open blue.

  He might have screamed, but he lacked the strength.

  He shut his eyes, but it didn’t help. Even in darkness, he saw the sand cascading around him and the black void rushing up to meet him, swallowing the sky above.

  “It’s not real,” he whispered.

  “He’s coming undone,” Meg said.

  Rowan looked down. His feet were gone—replaced by smoke. No, not smoke. Shadow, unraveling at the edges.

  “He’s the effing god of chaos,” Gretta said. “He isn’t going to let a little insanity get in his way.”

  “Not a chance,” Rowan muttered. “Never liked it anyway.”

  “No, look at his feet,” Meg said again. “He’s coming undone.”

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  “Shit,” Gretta said. “He’s turning into shadow.”

  “What are you doing?” Meg asked. “I don’t think we can save him.”

  “He just needs to get back to the Astral,” Gretta said.

  Rowan felt it when he left reality. A slight disruption in his senses. A brief moment where he saw Gretta’s Astral self—then the nothingness took him.

  He heard nothing. He saw nothing. He was nothing.

  Whether it was hours or weeks or years, he couldn’t tell. But eventually—some unknowable time later—he realized he wasn’t alone in the dark.

  “Are you going to spend eternity just laying about?” a woman asked.

  Rowan realized he was lying on a surface. It was pure black, but solid beneath him—undeniably real.

  He looked around and saw a woman in jeans, with dark hair and a tawny complexion. He recognized the shimmering bracelets on her wrists, shifting between woven fiber, bone, and gold.

  “Tocatl?” Rowan asked. “Are you real?”

  She laughed. “Are any of us real?” She held out a hand.

  He took it, and she helped him to his feet.

  “I feel… better,” he said.

  Tocatl looked around. “I didn’t expect you to visit this place so soon.”

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Only the part of me you carried with you—in the walking stick—is here. The real question is, where are you?”

  Rowan sighed. “You didn’t strike me as the pedantic one. I figured that was your brother. What did he call himself?”

  “Najanjir?” Tocatl laughed. “I’ll bet he gave himself a grand title. Maybe Pathfinder?”

  “That was it. What did you say his name was again?” Rowan asked.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she said.

  “Why not?” Rowan asked.

  “You can’t feel it?” she said.

  “I don’t really have time for this,” Rowan said. “I need to get back and help Gretta deal with my brother.”

  “All you have is time,” Tocatl said. She sighed. “It was always likely you’d end up here, but I had hoped that by giving you part of myself, we could avoid this branch of fate.”

  “Now you’re being annoying on purpose.” He folded his arms and glared.

  She laughed. “We have all eternity here. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot. This is oblivion.”

  “Is that like the Void?” Rowan asked.

  She gave a sad smile. “No. This is where gods who are destroyed end up.”

  “Does that happen often?” Rowan asked, glancing around. “Maybe we can meet up with the others and form a way out. Good old-fashioned god squad super team. Might even make it easier to take on my brother.”

  Her smile faltered. “Ascending to godhood means immortality—but not permanence. It doesn’t guarantee a place in reality. You’ve been pushed so far outside of any world that there’s no way back.”

  “Nobody’s ever found their way out?” Rowan asked, trying to keep his voice light. “Not in all of history?”

  “Where did you get that backpack?” Tocatl asked.

  “Fairy gave it to me,” Rowan said. “It’s kind of weird. If you wish for things vaguely enough, it sometimes delivers.”

  Tocatl smiled. “Well, we might need some playing cards if we’re going to sit around here for eternity.” She looked at the bag. “It’s quiet now, but Fairy might have known you’d end up here.”

  “She said she was your predecessor,” Rowan said. “I think she implied you were the god of fate before me, and she was the god of fate before you.”

  Tocatl nodded. “She was something of a mentor to me when I was new.”

  “That sounds handy,” Rowan said.

  Tocatl laughed. “I was trying to help you.”

  “I’d been a god for over 25 years, and I just met you for the first time the other day.”

  She smirked. “You realize 25 years is a blink to the elder immortals?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a blink to me,” he said. “But… I can see your point.”

  “Thank you for the understanding,” she said, with only a touch of mockery.

  “Do you think we can use Fairy’s gift to escape?” Rowan asked.

  “Even the god of fate cannot escape oblivion,” Tocatl said. “Fate is a path through time—and there is no time here. No here, either. We are outside the concept of space and time.”

  She hesitated, then added, “But you’re not quite like the others who ended here.”

  Rowan sat down heavily. “I’m sorry you lost part of your soul because of me.”

  She shrugged. “I’d seen your paths. I knew it would come to this eventually. I’d hoped to do more for you first, but mostly, I wanted to be here—so you wouldn’t arrive alone.”

  “You don’t even know me,” Rowan said.

  She smiled. “I’ve walked your futures more than you have. I’ve seen the good you’d do. I’m okay with my fate. It was a path worth walking.”