Chapter 6: Avatar of Death

The blue-haired woman straightened from her bow, studying the little crow on the other side of the window with the careful eyes of someone who had waited a very long time for this moment.

"How is heaven, Myra?"

"Disgustingly doomed."

"Define it."

Myra glanced left and right. Finding nothing, she conjured a small flame of blue spirit fire in her palm and let it drift upward — passing through the window glass as though it were not there — before sinking into the crow's feathers.

The memory arrived in first person.

Iron walls. Iron ground. The sound of footsteps and hushed voices through thick steel, barely audible:

"Did you hear? The gods have killed the death god. We might live forever now."

"If I were old and content with what I had, perhaps I would have let him finish his work. But they should have at least allowed a replacement."

"And what of Myra? The messenger?"

"The gods are still deciding. But I imagine they will get rid of her eventually."

The voices drifted away. The memory shifted.

Iron ground beneath her feet — trembling, as though something vast was pressing down from above. She looked up.

The round table. The shadowed figures. Every pair of colored eyes, turned downward toward her.

The golden eyes spoke.

"Myra. Shepherd of Souls. We have reached a conclusion regarding your fate, now that the Death God has passed."

She did not answer. She kept her eyes level.

"Your master is gone. A messenger without a god is a liability — a door with no lock." The golden eyes moved, slow and deliberate. "You will transfer your service to us. Collectively. Or you will be unmade."

The weight of every eye in that room pressed down on her shoulders.

She had served for over a hundred years. She had guided every soul that passed through death's domain with care — because her lord had asked her to. Because she had chosen to. And now these gods, who had taken everything from him, wanted that same loyalty turned in their direction.

She breathed. In. Out.

"I will need time," she said. "To close the domain properly. To ensure no souls are left unguided during the transition. A hundred years of work does not simply stop overnight."

A silence. The gods considered.

"Thirty days," the golden eyes said finally. "Then you come to us."

"Thirty days," she repeated.

She bowed. She left.

And the moment the doors of the round chamber closed behind her, she ran.

The blue spirit fire faded from the crow's eyes. It looked up at Myra, whose white gaze had gone somewhere distant and tight.

"I am sorry you went through that."

Myra's composure cracked just slightly. She leaned forward, forehead nearly meeting the window sill.

"It is not your fault, my lord. It is those disgusting, doomed gods!"

The crow exhaled — it had lost count of how many times today — and looked away.

"You have done well to make it here. But you should go before anyone sees you."

"If I leave you alone you will get into trouble again!" She was keeping her voice low with effort. "I have served you for more than a hundred years — I will not risk it!"

"Then stay nearby. Not here. Two hundred meters should be enough."

Her gaze drifted past him to the sleeping figure on the bed — Nuriar, back turned, breathing slowly. "With that woman?"

The crow followed her gaze. Then looked back.

"She is the one who found me. Treat her with at least basic respect, or I will send you further away."

"I — yes, my lord, but —"

"But what? If it is not a good reason, I am ending this conversation."

Myra went quiet. Her glowing eyes shrunk to something small and conflicted — an expression that sat very oddly on someone who had just escaped a divine tribunal.

"...I am simply envious that she gets to be the one close to you."

The crow stared at her for a long moment.

"Stay within two hundred meters. Notify me if any god or messenger approaches." A pause. "And I will find you a coconut cake."

"I will serve you until the end of time, my lord."

"Two hundred meters, Myra."

She bowed. Then, quietly:

"The trial — do you intend to let her win?"

"By her own strength. If she cannot reach it on her own, I will reduce the damage where I can — nothing more. You will be the judge, will you not?"

"By the regulation of the land, yes, my lord."

"Then judge fairly. If she does not win, so be it."

Myra bowed a final time, turned, and walked back across the rice field — soaking wet, unhurried, disappearing into the pale early dark.

The crow watched her go. Then it turned to look at the bed.

"How much did you hear?"

Nuriar lay perfectly still. Breathing slowly. Eyes closed.

"HOW MUCH DID YOU HEAR?"

Still nothing. In and out. The very picture of sleep.

The crow considered this for a moment.

"...If you tell me now, I will hug you. In human form."

Nuriar sat bolt upright.

"From the beginning! Hehe!" She threw both arms open toward the crow, which was already airborne. "Now hug me, Lord Ashvern!"

"WHY DO YOU HAVE NO MANNERS!? EAVESDROPPING ON OTHERS!"

"THIS IS MY ROOM! MY HOUSE! I CAN LISTEN TO WHATEVER I WANT!"

"DON'T YOU NEED TO SLEEP!?"

"I'LL SLEEP AFTER YOU HUG ME!!!"

"I'LL BE CRUSHED!"

"BUT YOU ARE THE DEATH GOD! YOU'LL BE FINE!"

"WHAT—"

"AM I RIGHT!? RIGHT!? DEATH GOD DEATH GOD DEATH GOD—"

"..."

The crow fixed her with a long, flat, unamused look while she rocked back and forth on the bed, chanting under her breath with the unbothered energy of someone who had decided she was completely correct.

"No."

"LIAR!"

The door opened. Nuriar's parents appeared in the frame — both in pajamas, both squinting — her mother concerned, her father wearing the expression of a man who had been woken up many times and had opinions about it.

"What is happening? Why so loud?"

"Did the crow do something perverted?" Jonard shrugged, rubbing one eye.

From down the hall, dependably: "PERVERTED! NO SHAME!" Then Douglas: "RUFF!"

Nuriar looked at the crow. The crow looked at Nuriar. She leaned in and dropped her voice.

"I will tell Mother and Father that you are the Death God."

"They will not believe you."

"...Hehe."

The smile that followed was the specific kind that meant she was already thinking three steps ahead. The crow felt something in its chest shift from tired to genuinely concerned.

It kept its voice quiet, and level.

"If what you are guessing is true — then you already know what I am capable of. And if you care about your family, or about my feelings even a little, you will end this now."

The smile faded. Nuriar went still.

"Nuriar?" her mother asked softly.

A beat. Then Nuriar turned to her parents, expression reassembled into something innocent and slightly too cheerful.

"Crowley told me I farted, but it was him!"

The crow's face went very still.

Her parents sighed in perfect unison, turned, and pulled the door shut behind them.

"Try to keep it down."

The latch clicked.

Nuriar turned back to the crow, slid off the bed, and bowed until her forehead was nearly at the floor.

"Please spare my family, Lord Ashvern!"

"How did you figure it out?"

She straightened, and the guilty expression gave way to something she was visibly struggling to contain.

"The woman said 'Ashvern' — the name of the Death God. You said 'heaven'. She said she had served you for more than a hundred years. You asked if she would be the judge, and only a god's messenger can serve as judge." She took a breath. "Everything fit. And no one has ever said any of that seriously before."

"Nonsense,"

the crow thought, more to itself than anything.

I should have chased Myra off immediately.

It looked at Nuriar — still bowed, still shaking slightly, though whether from nerves or suppressed excitement it was genuinely difficult to tell. It weighed its options. Then it made a decision.

"Since it has come to this — I am going to mark you. And then I will tell you everything."

Blue spirit fire gathered around the crow's small form — and grew.

The shadow that fell across the room was not made of darkness. It was made of presence — the weight of something vast made briefly small, now released. Nuriar felt it before she saw it: every instinct in her body firing at once, ancient and unanimous.

She raised her head.

He was tall — broad-shouldered, pale-skinned, black hair long and straight as crow feathers falling across his face. The eyes that met hers were a deep, luminous blue, and they looked at her with something that might have been patience or might have been much older than that.

Then it hit her.

Not pain. Not threat. Something more fundamental — the wordless, full-body understanding that the thing standing in front of her was the border between existing and not existing, and that border had eyes, and those eyes were looking directly at her.

Her legs stopped working. Her chest pulled inward. The room felt smaller.

Am I going to die? Is this what dying feels like?

Images moved fast — childhood, her mother's hands, her father's laughter, the night she got lost in the forest, the first hunt, the boys lined up to confess their feelings one by one while she turned each of them down with genuine apology, Foomy's red scarf appearing from around corners at completely wrong moments —

A hand settled on her shoulder.

The pressure lifted. The room came back. Color returned to the edges of things.

She looked up at him. He was watching her steadily, his expression carrying no alarm — only the particular calm of someone who had seen this many times and knew exactly how long it took to pass.

"You are all right now. I have marked you as my Avatar." His voice was the same voice she had heard in the bathroom — low, measured, unhurried. "The presence of gods will no longer affect you the way it just did."

"Marked...?" Nuriar blinked. Then her eyes lit up. "Then... marry?"

"You are my Avatar. Not my soulmate. Not anything romantically adjacent to my soulmate."

"Aww."

"It means you carry a piece of my authority. No more, no less." He looked at her evenly. "You asked me, once, if I had ever loved someone. I told you the truth: I am not sure. But I have watched over a great many people for a very long time, and I will watch over you too — for however long this lasts."

Nuriar was quiet for once.

"Is that enough?" he asked.

She thought about it for exactly three seconds.

"Yeah." A small smile. "That is more than enough."

The blue fire gathered again. The shadow shrank. And by the time the first true light of morning touched the window, there was only a small black crow sitting at the edge of the stone table, its eyes half-closed, looking out at the rice field beyond.

"Sleep, Nuriar. You have a trial in a few hours."

She was already pulling the sheets back up around herself, face half-buried in the pillow.

"Goodnight, Ashvern."

For a moment, he did not correct her.