The first time Cassian saw a god die, he was covered in pig shit.
Not his finest moment, but then again, working as a farmhand in the middle of nowhere didn't offer many fine moments. He'd been mucking out the pens behind Old Man Harrow's barn when the sky tore open.
Not metaphorically. Actually tore.
One moment, Cassian was shoveling manure and contemplating his life choices. The next, reality ripped apart like wet parchment, and the world turned inside out.
The tear in the sky was massive—a jagged wound of pure darkness stretching across the heavens. Lightning the color of blood spilled from the edges. The air itself screamed. And through that impossible wound, two figures fell.
They crashed into the earth half a mile away, in the fallow field beyond the northern fence. The impact shook the ground so hard that Cassian was thrown off his feet. The pigs went berserk, squealing and ramming against their pen. The barn's roof collapsed. Somewhere in the distance, someone was screaming.
Cassian lay flat on his back, ears ringing, staring up at the torn sky. His first coherent thought was: I'm going to die.
His second thought was: I should probably run.
He didn't run.
Instead—and he'd spend the rest of his considerably long life wondering why—Cassian got to his feet and started walking toward the impact site.
The field was on fire when he arrived. Not normal fire. This burned silver and black, and the flames moved wrong, twisting against the wind like living things. The heat was intense even from fifty yards away.
In the center of the burning crater stood a woman.
She was tall and impossibly beautiful, with skin like polished bronze and hair that shifted between white and gold as if it couldn't decide which to be. She wore armor made of light itself, but it was shattered. Cracks spider-webbed across her chest piece, leaking something that looked like liquid starlight. Blood, Cassian realized with a jolt. Divine blood.
She was wounded.
And she was fighting.
Her opponent was a nightmare given form—a creature of shadow and bone, twelve feet tall with too many joints and a face that hurt to look at. Where the woman blazed with light, this thing seemed to devour it, pulling darkness around itself like a cloak.
"MALACHAR!" the woman's voice rang out, and the word carried power that made Cassian's teeth ache. "You will not pass! The mortal realm is forbidden to your kind!"
The creature—Malachar—laughed. It sounded like breaking glass and dying children.
"Forbidden?" Its voice was a chorus of whispers. "The old laws are dead, Celestine. The gods grow weak. And the mortals..." Its head swiveled, and Cassian suddenly realized it was looking directly at him. "The mortals will feed us well."
Celestine's eyes widened. "RUN, MORTAL! RUN!"
Cassian's legs finally remembered how to work. He turned and bolted.
He made it three steps before Malachar moved.
The creature crossed the distance in a blink. One moment it was in the crater, the next it was in front of Cassian, reaching for him with hands that ended in too many fingers. Cassian could smell it—rot and copper and something ancient and wrong.
This is it, he thought. This is how I die.
Then Celestine was there.
She slammed into Malachar like a falling star, driving the creature backward. Her fist connected with its chest, and the sound was thunder. Light exploded outward. Malachar shrieked and lashed out with those terrible hands.
Celestine caught one arm, twisted, and tore it off.
Black ichor sprayed across the burning field. Malachar screamed, but it was a scream of rage, not pain. The creature's body rippled, and the severed arm began to regrow.
"The boy!" Celestine shouted. "Protect the boy!"
Who? Cassian thought stupidly. Then realized: Oh. Me. I'm the boy.
He was twenty-three, but apparently to a god, that still counted as a boy.
Celestine and Malachar clashed again, and this time Cassian saw how badly the god was losing. She was strong, fast, powerful beyond mortal comprehension—but she was injured, weakened by whatever battle had happened before they fell through the sky. Malachar was wearing her down.
And Cassian was just standing there like an idiot.
He needed a weapon. Anything. His eyes fell on a fallen fence post, one end sharpened to a point. It was something, at least. Cassian grabbed it.
"What are you doing?" a voice said behind him.
Cassian spun.
A girl stood in the burning field, completely unaffected by the silver-black flames. She looked about his age, with copper-red hair pulled back in a braid and eyes the green of deep forests. She wore leather armor that had seen hard use, and twin daggers hung at her belt. Pretty didn't quite cover it—she was striking, the kind of face you'd remember even in a crowd.
"Who the hell are you?" Cassian demanded.
"Nara Thorne. Adventurer, monster hunter, and apparently the only person here with any sense." She nodded toward Celestine and Malachar, still locked in combat. "That's a god and a void-spawn. You're a farmhand with a stick. What exactly is your plan?"
"I don't have a plan!"
"That's what I thought." Nara drew her daggers. "Stay behind me and try not to die. I hate it when civilians die. Makes me feel guilty."
"Wait, you're going to fight that thing?"
"Someone has to." Nara grinned, and there was something wild in it. "Besides, void-spawn pay well. Assuming we survive."
Before Cassian could respond, Nara sprinted toward the battle.
She was fast. Inhumanly fast. She covered the distance in seconds, then she was on Malachar, her daggers flashing. The blades burned with a pale blue light—enchanted, Cassian realized. She struck at the joints, the gaps, the vulnerable points, moving like water around the creature's attacks.
It still wasn't enough.
Malachar swatted her aside with casual contempt. Nara hit the ground hard and rolled, coming up in a crouch. Blood ran from a cut on her forehead.
"Stubborn mortal insect," Malachar hissed. "You will watch as I consume your world."
"Talking's boring," Nara shot back. "Less monologuing, more fighting."
Celestine took advantage of the distraction. Her hand blazed with white fire, and she drove it into Malachar's chest. The creature howled and stumbled back.
"The seal!" Celestine's voice was weakening. "I can... seal it... but I need... an anchor..."
"An anchor?" Nara called back, circling Malachar. "What kind of anchor?"
"A mortal... willing to bear... the burden..."
Celestine's eyes found Cassian.
No, he thought. No, no, no.
"You," Celestine said. Blood—that liquid starlight—poured from her wounds. "You have... the right soul... Please... I'm dying... if the seal fails... it will consume... everything..."
Cassian looked at the dying god. At Malachar, already beginning to recover. At Nara, bleeding but defiant. At the burning field and the torn sky.
He thought about his simple life. Shoveling pig shit. Counting coppers. Going to bed tired and waking up to do it all again. Safe. Boring. Meaningless.
He thought about his parents, dead five years now in a plague that swept through the villages. He thought about how he'd promised them he'd make something of himself.
Hadn't managed that yet.
"What do I have to do?" Cassian heard himself say.
"Cassian, was it?" Nara shot him a look. "Think very carefully before you volunteer for divine nonsense. It never ends well."
"If I don't, we all die, right?"
"Well... probably yes."
"Then I don't have a choice."
Celestine's face softened with something like gratitude. "Come... take my hand... quickly..."
Cassian ran forward, still gripping his stupid fence post. Malachar saw him coming and lunged, but Nara was there, daggers flashing, buying him seconds.
Cassian reached Celestine. Up close, she was even more radiant, even dying. Her hand was warm when he took it.
"Brave mortal," she whispered. "I name you... Threadbreaker... Bearer of my last light..."
Her other hand pressed against his chest, and pain exploded through Cassian's entire being.
It felt like swallowing the sun. Like his veins were filled with molten gold. Like every cell in his body was being rewritten. He tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Light poured from Celestine into Cassian. Her divine essence, her power, her very life force. He could feel it burning through him, changing him, marking him.
And with it came knowledge. Terrible, beautiful knowledge.
The truth about the gods. The truth about the world. The truth about the Threads—the invisible strings of fate and power that connected all things.
And the knowledge of how to break them.
"Seal... the void-spawn..." Celestine's voice was fading. "Use... my power... save them..."
Then she crumbled. Her body dissolved into motes of golden light that swirled in the air for a moment before fading away.
A god had died.
And Cassian stood in her place, burning with stolen divinity.
Malachar froze. Its head tilted, regarding Cassian with new interest.
"Oh," it whispered. "Oh, how delicious. A mortal wearing a god's skin. You don't know how to use that power, do you, little boy?"
Cassian didn't. He could feel the energy raging inside him, vast and terrible, but he had no idea how to control it.
"Hey!" Nara stepped in front of him, daggers raised. "He might not know what he's doing, but I do. And you're going back to the void."
"Brave words from meat."
"I've got lots of brave words. Want to hear them all?"
Malachar lunged.
And something inside Cassian broke free.
He saw it suddenly—the Threads. They were everywhere, connecting everything. The earth to the sky. The fire to the air. Malachar to the void. And one thread, pulsing and dark, that anchored the creature to this reality.
Cassian reached out—not with his hand, but with his mind, his will, his newly divine power—and he grabbed that thread.
"No—" Malachar's eyes widened. "NO! What are you—"
Cassian pulled.
The thread snapped.
Malachar's scream shook the world. Its form began to unravel, pulled back toward the tear in the sky. It clawed at the ground, at reality itself, trying to hold on.
"THIS ISN'T OVER, THREADBREAKER!" it shrieked. "I WILL RETURN! THEY WILL ALL RETURN! THE AGE OF GODS IS ENDING, AND THE AGE OF VOID BEGINS!"
Then it was gone, sucked back through the wound in the sky. The tear sealed itself with a sound like reality sighing in relief.
Silence fell.
Cassian collapsed to his knees, gasping. The divine power was already fading, settling into his bones like embers instead of fire. Still there. Still warm. But contained.
For now.
Nara walked over and looked down at him. Her expression was unreadable.
"Well," she said finally. "That was new."
Cassian laughed. It came out slightly hysterical.
"I think I just killed a god and banished a demon."
"Void-spawn, technically. And the god was already dying." Nara extended her hand. "But yeah. Pretty impressive for a pig farmer."
Cassian took her hand and let her pull him up. Their eyes met, and something passed between them—recognition, maybe. Or the beginning of something neither of them had words for yet.
"What happens now?" Cassian asked.
Nara glanced at the sky, now whole and blue and innocent. Then back at Cassian, who was still faintly glowing with divine residue.
"Now?" She sheathed her daggers. "Now we run. Because what you just did? Every god, monster, and power-hungry lunatic in the realm felt that. They're going to come looking for you."
"Why?"
"Because you're carrying the essence of Celestine, the Goddess of Dawn. One of the most powerful divinities in the pantheon." Nara started walking toward the tree line. "And because you just proved that you can kill things that aren't supposed to die. That makes you either the most valuable weapon in existence or the most dangerous threat."
"Which one am I?"
Nara looked back at him and smiled. It was a sharp smile, but not unkind.
"That's what we're going to find out, Cassian the Threadbreaker."
He should have gone back to the farm. Should have checked on Old Man Harrow, helped rebuild the barn, gone back to his simple life.
But that life was gone. Burned away the moment he took a dying god's hand.
So Cassian followed Nara into the forest, away from everything he'd ever known, toward a future he couldn't begin to imagine.
Behind them, in the ruined field, a single golden feather drifted down from the sky—the last remnant of Celestine, Goddess of Dawn.
And in the spaces between worlds, in the darkness beyond reality, ancient things stirred.
The Threadbreaker had been born.
And the world would never be the same.