[god. all right they hear all of this, even if he’s speaking quietly and quickly to the star:]

I have always welcomed the strange legacy our name brings, but my little brother has found it Sisyphean. He sought no secrets in our vaults, growing up. He has been layabout and laggard in his lessons, without sufficient will to back his beliefs.

But I suppose he must have found something worth living up to it for, at last. He managed to see through me at the end of our war, which I did not expect of him. “Our battle isn’t over yet—and until it is, don’t die on me.”

He has potential to be brilliant, my brother. But I don’t intend to let him be, or any generation of us after him.

I am going to kill a god, someday, and erase the need for genius at war in my world. And in part it will be because I never wish to feel as I felt again, learning that he stood on the other side of the field.

[the star drifts down, and he snaps it out of the air, light burning silver-gold down his throat.

the first mist wolves come slinking into sight, the edge of the wave they’ve stirred up caught up to them at last.]