The Stars That Fall

The meeting hall was steeped in tension. Black, inky tension that snaked its way through the room, strangling the air of all its substance. Snow pelted against the floor-to-ceiling windows, brilliant against the night sky, and Yugi swallowed a breath whole, staring at his reflection in the mirror. 

“Sanyas die all the time!” Levi yelled at Kireh. 

“But not like this,” Kireh responded. 

From the glass, Yugi could see the stiffness of Kireh’s neck as he swiveled toward Levi, his shoulders straight and locked. He blew a single breath and watched as it curled in the air like a whisper of white smoke.  

Levi threw his shoulders back, his black hair slick against his scalp as it glistened underneath the lights. His porcelain-pale skin looked ghastly, but he was indeed a beautiful ehol—Yugi would admit to at least that. Beauty meant many things, especially for the Ọba of the Central Octeract. Levi had honed his sẹda as a skilled wielder, and if it was permitted, Levi perhaps would’ve been considered an Eccentric. But those days—those clans—were long gone. 

“You need to give an account for what’s happening in your Kingdom,” Kireh said with grit to his tone. 

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Levi protested. 

“We have the Orin-Jua Festival to deal with,” Eros casually said, cutting the tension in half. 

The male had sat uncomfortably in his seat, arms folded against his chest as one leg lapped over the other. 

Kireh stared at him, something dark and cruel forming in his eyes. “I know, but the Azharanian Council has been bothering me about the sanyas—their deaths.” He turned his attention to Yugi, his freckles suddenly pale against his golden complexion. “You’ll get the Reapers, right?”

 “When did we ever agree to that?” Yugi pulled himself up in his seat, then pressed his palms into the obsidian table that stretched out before them. 

“We never did—but you need to get them.” Kireh pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “I need someone to give an account for all the sanya deaths.”

“I’m not a part of the Reaper’s Council,” he replied, tipping his head to the side.

Why were they suddenly interested in the sanyas? The mortals shouldn’t garner this much interest from the ehols … yet he could see Kireh was bothered by the growing death rates. All of them were, and Yugi would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that it bothered him as well. 

He still hadn’t told Kireh about the bodies he’d come across a few days ago or the dead girl he’d brought to the clinics, her body as hard as a rock, as he flew over snow-capped mountains and fog just to get to Daun. He hadn’t heard anything from the Healers yet, but he was sure about one thing. 

She was killed. 

“The festival,” Eros said, drumming his fingers on the table. 

Kireh arched an eyebrow at the ehol. “We’ll deal with that,” he said in a rigid tone. 

The Orin-Jua Festival was set to begin next week, and Yugi had hoped that the meeting would’ve focused on the preparations. But instead, he found himself trapped around the table, in a meeting of blood and tension and white snow peeling off the glass windows.

Eros folded his arms and leaned back into his chair, his lips pouted as he stared at Kireh through narrowed, blue eyes. 

It made no difference now that they were all here—all in Kireh’s Winter Residence in the dead of night as Kireh shot question after question at Levi about the bodies that were found in the Central Octeract. 

Yugi glanced at himself in the reflection of the table; black curls dangled over his shoulders like thick rivers of ink, but they did nothing to hide the tattoos that crawled up his neck toward the lobes of his ears like vines made of the void. 

A bit of his Nyoki trickled from his fingertips like a spark of black, and Yugi willed his sẹda away. These tattoos—this sẹda—were nothing but a dreadful reminder of who he was.

A Titan. A Reaper. 

A traitor. 

“I spoke to some Collectors already,” Kireh said. “The Azharanian Council managed to get in touch with them, but they claimed they hadn’t collected anything from the Central Octeract.”

He looked at Kireh, saw the fear in his eyes. 

Once, a long time ago, when the wars ravaged the Kingdoms, he’d thought that being a Titan was far worse a punishment that one could bear. The celestials had feared the Titanic Clan as they had torn these realms apart. The Titans roamed Ịtoba as tall, muscular creatures with stately horns and wings hewn of smoke and ash, their ruthless thirst for power destroying the realms. 

It was in those days that Ariwa-Ịte and Ịtoba were still sister realms, completely joined together and ruled by the Iyenạkh. The united realm was known as Xhian, but as blood painted the streets and terror filled the air, Xhian was no more. In the peak of war when bodies lay lifeless on desolate ground, Yugi had learned that many feared one thing far more than a Titan. 

They feared death.  

“Can you provide Reapers?” Kireh pressed. 

“I didn’t think you would care so much about sanyas.” 

The male’s lips drew thin, creating a scathing look on his face. “My hands are forced by the Council. They need answers to the—” he cleared his throat, “deaths.”

“Sanyas,” Yugi corrected. 

The ball of Kireh’s throat rolled.

“I’ll try.” His throat felt parched as he pushed the words out. 

“Is that all?” Kireh’s fingers danced around the lapels of his coat, his eyes glowing in the moonlight, fixed on every movement Yugi made. 

How would he even get Reapers? He’d known a few of them in passing, but he wasn’t inducted into the Reaper’s Council—perhaps would never be. 

Kireh took a step back, his hands pushed into his coat pockets as he strode to the other side of the meeting hall. His fire-red hair brushed against his midback as he took brisk steps, each timed and meticulous. 

They both knew why the Council wanted Reapers. 

The male cocked his head to the side, eyes still on Yugi as he awaited a response. 

“There is nothing else I can do,” Yugi said. 

“You need to figure something out, and you need to do so quickly.” 

Sometimes, he wondered about Kireh. 

He wondered if Kireh still had the nightmares of his clan dying from the disease that had spread across Xhian during the wars. Surely, Yugi wasn’t the only one haunted by death.

Kireh stood in front of them, the Ọba of North Kalér and the pinnacle of what an ehol should be. Yet, even as Kireh stood before the ehols dressed in his finest attire, there was something beneath his gaze that always frightened Yugi. His eyes were always sunken and hollow—and perhaps he’d thought that Kireh’s soulless eyes and sharp jawlines were merely traits of his Churan ethnicity, but it was more than just that. It was a terrible reminder that Kireh had been the only one in his clan to survive.

Just like him. 

He slipped lower into his seat, his arms folded against his chest as he searched for something to say, but Kireh stood at the forefront of the meeting room and said with a worried and trembling tone, “The sanyas are dying.” He looked over the room filled with demigods, then pressed his hands onto the obsidian table as he leaned forward. “The sanyas are dying and no one is able to give an account for their souls.”

“You know I’m not a part of the Reaper’s Council,” Yugi stated. 

“I know.”  

It pained him to think about it, to know that no matter how proficient he was at his duties, he would never be inducted into the one organization that should’ve accepted him. 

Yugi pushed a lone curl of his hair behind his ear and lowered his gaze to the glossy black table before him.

Sanyas died all the time, but not like this. 

Sanyas lived for centuries. It didn’t matter that they were mortals of the Seventh Rank, the beloved ardhi of the Asayli—they did not die this young. 

They should not die this young. 

And yet … Kireh expected answers.

“I will pass by your residence,” Yugi said in hopes of easing the tension; Kireh squared his shoulders in response. 

“Do something before the festival.” He glanced at the other ehols seated around the table. “Anything else?”

“I don’t have plans for the festival,” Levi said. 

“I was not speaking of the festival,” Kireh growled. “I meant about the sudden uptick in deaths that has been coming from your Kingdom.”

“Are we to have this argument again?”

“I don’t want to argue with you,” Kireh replied.

Embers soon rushed into the room in waterfalls of light and fragrance, and Yugi wiped his palms against his tunic, hoping that for once, the ehols could control their ravenous urges to choke each other to death. 

But Bry stood up, taking a few steps toward Kireh, resting his hand on the male’s shoulder. “Shall we adjourn this meeting?” he asked. 

“I need to have a private discussion with you,” Kireh said to Bry. 

The other ehols got up, making their way out of the meeting hall in a single line. Levi brushed shoulders with Kireh as he left. 

Yugi stood up, straightening his coat, before making his way to Kireh. The ehol was bleached of his golden complexion, left like a white ghost in the winter. Kireh, the lone Eccentric to survive the death of his clan. Kireh, the ehol who’d been able to see the Age of Ufahamu, a young and valiant and promising demigod, tall and lean, with wings as black as the night sky. Truly Churan indeed. 

“I need you to get me the Reapers,” Kireh said to him in a hushed tone. “I need you to help me.”

He flared his nostrils, anger seeping through his skin. “I’ll get the Reapers,” he said under his breath, but then again, when did he ever keep a promise to Kireh?

***

He’d known of the deaths—heard it from the darkest crevasses in Kalér’s streets, but the shadows couldn’t hide the tension. 

The Orin-Jua was set to be a week from now, Kireh told himself, but all this festivity was drenched in death; he knew for certain that what he heard was true, even if he didn’t want to believe it. 

Kireh’s stomach knotted as Bry casually leaned into the leather-upholstered chair. Where did he get this chair from again? 

Oh. 

His shoulders dropped when he recalled who’d given it to him. Levi. 

It was a present for his Owurọ, and Levi had gotten it for him a few years ago. 

Every winter, around this time, his sẹda would grow a fraction—a fraction enough for him to notice, a fraction to make him feel a bit older, more powerful. He’d always known that gods did not celebrate birthdays; they celebrated Owurọs, but everyone in the realms knew that a god’s Owurọ aligned perfectly with the day of their birth, and though not all gods were born, Kireh had a mother and a father—he’d lost both of them in the wars. 

He loosened a breath and stared at Bry as the male casually picked at a fingernail, ignoring the bright, silver moon outside the glass window. 

“What are we going to do?” Kireh asked. Something had to be done with the rampant deaths plaguing the Central Octeract. 

At first, it began slowly. Three children were missing from a school within a rural regency of the Kingdom. No one paid any mind to it, even as their parents cried and cried for help.

Then, more children went missing. Then, suddenly, husbands began missing wives, and so, the list of missing sanyas grew so large that Kireh knew for certain they were dying. For months, he thought the deaths would lessen, chalking it up to poisoned water or food supplies, but as the year neared its end, and more bodies were found, a sinking feeling evolved in Kireh’s chest. Someone was killing them.

“What do you want me to do?” Bry asked without looking at Kireh.

“The Azharanian Council needs us to conduct an investigation on this—or else, they will.”

Bry grunted, then straightened himself in the chair. “I can perhaps hold off the Azharanian Council for now.”

“And they need Reapers.” It was earlier in the week when the meeting was held. A few Collectors had come to the Hall stating that they hadn’t received any souls from the districts where the deaths were said to occur, but those answers didn’t satisfy the Council. 

Kireh didn’t like Reapers. No one liked Reapers. 

Their presence was as sure as death itself. If one saw a Reaper, they knew their end was near, for a Reaper was only sent out when a soul had reached the end of its life. Yet … today, and somehow, all the other days that would come after, held a terror that Kireh couldn’t shake. How could someone die without a Reaper? Where did the soul go? 

“Yugi said he will vet his Reapers and have them sit with the Azharanian Council,” he said as though saying it aloud would suddenly solve the problem. He knew better than to trust Yugi’s word, but he was desperate, and he needed to get answers to the Councilors immediately. 

Bry pulled himself forward in his seat, his fingers intertwined with each other. “You think Yugi will actually get the Reapers?” 

Kireh shrugged.

 

It wasn’t a good feeling to know that people died. It was even worse to discover that people died, and their souls went uncollected. 

Hundreds of thousands of Reapers. Not a single one of them collected a soul.

“The citizens of the Central Octeract are complaining about Levi; they’re afraid of him.”

“Isn’t it a god’s duty to make his people fear him?”

Was it?

Bry closed his eyes and pulled in a few breaths, his skin tinged with a slight pink instead of the shimmering gold sẹda usually brought. “Levi has gone insane,” he said stoically. 

Insane. 

Kireh tried to keep himself together, but his world had shattered around him. He knew what Bry meant, but he dreaded hearing that word. He’d dreaded hearing it since the day his mother took her final breath. Insanity was borne from the disease that wiped out his clan—wait—

Perhaps Bry didn’t mean that disease. 

Did he?

The male looked up at Kireh. “Levi’s soul is tortured. His mind, bent and twisted.”

No. 

He couldn’t accept it, that Bry alluded to the disease that once tore the realms apart, the disease that sparked the war. The disease that left Kireh and orphan.

Bry casually stood up, pushing his hands into his coat pockets, his hair falling over his shoulders like strands of black silk as he made his way across the room like a specter in the wind. “Kireh,” he called, his name echoing against the walls. “This is nothing to fear at the moment.”

And what shouldn’t he fear? The disease was supposed to have been eradicated. Wasn’t that what the Asayli promised? The day after the Zamŷni Wars ended, when Ịtoba was no longer a part of the Asayli’s jurisdiction, and the trades were closed, the Asayli said They were working on a cure. So, if the disease was around, what did it mean for the ehols who ruled Ịtoba? 

“If Levi’s truly gone insane, then it means he can no longer Age,” Kireh said. 

Bry turned to face him. “Power.” The word left his lips coated with sẹda, burning hot and bright.

“We Age in power,” Kireh protested. “We’ve awakened with our sẹda given to us, allowing us to join the Second Ranks—to become gods.”

“We do.” Bry’s face twisted at Kireh’s statement. “But the more sẹda we have, the more we thirst for it. To use it is to drink poison: it acts slowly, but with each sip we take, the effect of it hastens to destroy us.”

Kireh focused on the tiles beneath his feet. He’d worn his Watcher’s boots tonight, a plush velvet upper with soft soles designed to allow Watchers to meticulously hold their Gargoyle-Form for centuries without breaking stance. Yet, here was Kireh, trembling in his shoes.

He willed a bit of his sẹda to his skin, hoping to ease the tremors, but they came in waves that overpowered him. He was trained by the EzeNyera, wasn’t he? He should be able to hold his Gargoyle-Form like he was chiseled from stone, perched on the rooftop of a tower. Neither rain nor snow would cause him to shake or to break formation. He’d been the best, earned the highest scores, was noticed by the EzeNyera Himself, who’d hired him as a dignitary of the craft. 

But he was shaking. Visibly. 

Why was he shaking?

“For Levi to be saved, he must let go of power.”

Kireh looked at Bry. 

The male slackened his shoulders. “You must all let go of power. Yes, sẹda is needed to sustain the Kingdoms, but right now, wielding it is dangerous.”

There was the shaking again. 

Stop shaking.

Stop.

“We were made to harness our sẹda,” Kireh said. “How are you going to stop us?” He hadn’t been an ehol yet, hadn’t even awakened when the Asayli had moved troops into Spring Court, taking celestials from their homes and chaining them with Illaryian Bronze to prevent the celestials from using their powers.

This time, Kireh feared, there were no chains or runes involved. Only sheer will.

Bry removed his hands from his coat pockets, his fingers gripping the pendant around his neck. “I spoke with the Asayli, but They have offered a consequence that I deem too harsh, so They’ve allowed me to instruct you the way I see fit.”

Through wetted eyes, Kireh begged Bry, hoped that the male saw how desperate and frightened he was. But Bry turned his back to Kireh, staring out the window and into the night sky. 

“The Asayli have issued an Utterance: refrain from wielding your sẹda.”

“The ehols will never agree to that.”

“How do you know? Besides, it is only temporary. It gives the Asayli enough time to accurately diagnose Levi. If They can stabilize the ehol, you’ll be able to resume harnessing and wielding your sẹda within some limitations.”

“And what if They can’t stabilize Levi?”

“I’ll be forced to strip your sẹda from you, but that is a fate no ehol wants to endure. It’s much too painful, too radical. It’s akin to death for the immortal god.”

Akin to death. 

A chill brushed across Kireh’s skin. There it was again: the word. 

Death.

Why did it haunt him so much? 

Why did he think of her smiling face though her bleached-white skin sank to her bones? Why did he still remember her golden-red curls swaying in the wind as though her last form wasn’t a skeleton? A skeleton of her former self when she’d been vibrant and full of energy.

A single teardrop threatened to form in the corner of his eye, and Kireh wiped it away. 

“I must go now,” Bry said as he turned toward the door. “But know something must be done, whether by will or force.” Then, he vanished. 

Kireh dropped to his knees, and the tears he’d desperately held back now came like a rushing river. She was dead—his mother. And nothing he did, nothing he said, could bring her back. 

But somehow, in the shadows that followed him, that swirled around him, Kireh knew that death hadn’t been the worst that this life could offer. Something much more terrible than whatever Kireh knew or could ever imagine was lurking in the darkness, waiting to break free from its constraints and terrorize the realms.

 

And it wasn’t the disease.