Reven's mind shattered completely.

  The truth crushed what little remained of his sanity, grinding it into dust. His body began to change, responding to the breaking of his psyche.

  Yellow pustules erupted across his skin, swelling and bursting in rapid succession. His flesh started to rot, peeling away in strips like old wallpaper. The smell was overwhelming, the stench of twenty-eight corpses compressed into a single moment.

  His left arm blackened and withered, the muscle sloughing off to reveal bone beneath. His right leg buckled as the tissue liquefied. Half his face began to cave in, the skin going gray and soft like overripe fruit.

  Nug laughed.

  The sound was pure, childlike glee mixed with something ancient and cruel. He clapped his hands together in delight, watching Reven dissolve.

  "Yes! Yes! This is perfect! Show me more suffering! Show me—"

  "Still so tasteless, my brother."

  The voice was young, no more than ten years old, but it carried weight that made the black woods tremble.

  Warm light flooded the clearing, pushing back the darkness. It wrapped around Reven's rotting body like a blanket, and the decay stopped spreading. Half of his face remained human. The other half was already gone, exposing muscle and bone.

  Reven hung suspended between death and life, frozen in transformation.

  A girl appeared beside Nug.

  She looked perhaps ten years old, with long hair that seemed to be made of living vines and flowers. Her eyes were large filled with the same ancient awareness as Nug's but warmer somehow.

  "Yeb," Nug said, his smile fading slightly. "You always ruin my fun."

  "Fun?" Yeb's voice dripped with disdain.

  "You call this fun? Tormenting a mortal like a child pulling wings off flies? You have no creativity, brother. No artistry. Just crude destruction."

  "And you have no sense of entertainment," Nug shot back. "Always so serious. Always so concerned with balance and growth. You're boring."

  "At least I don't throw tantrums and torture mortals for amusement."

  "At least I don't pretend to care about them when I'm just as capable of killing them as you are."

  Yeb turned her attention to Reven, studying his half-rotted form with critical eyes.

  "What a pathetic mortal," she said. Her voice was calm, analytical.

  "So desperate to help others that you never stopped to question your own purpose. So eager to heal that you never examined the tool you were using. You carried guilt that wasn't yours, blamed yourself for failures that were inevitable, and never once fought back against the systems that created your suffering."

  Reven tried to speak, but his throat was too damaged. Only a wet gurgle emerged.

  "Your kindness made you weak," Yeb continued.

  "Your compassion made you blind. Your desire to save everyone made you save no one."

  She paused, tilting her head.

  "But that's what makes it so beautiful."

  Nug snorted. "You and that disgusting kindness fetish."

  Yeb's eyes flashed. "And you and that childish habit of trying to play god when you don't have the full power of one."

  "I am a god!"

  "You're half a god." Yeb's voice was sharp now, cutting.

  "You're incomplete. Without me, you're nothing but destruction without purpose. Rot without renewal. Death without meaning."

  Nug laughed, but there was an edge to it.

  "You're just as half-baked as I am, sister. Without me, you're nothing but growth without end. Cancer and tumors and endless, mindless life. You need me as much as I need you."

  "Without you, I'm a god with healing power," Yeb said coldly.

  "Without me, you're just destruction. Nothing more."

  "Healing is just delayed dying!" Nug shouted.

  "You patch them up so they can rot later. You're as much death as I am!"

  "And destruction clears the way for new growth! You're as much life as I am!"

  "Then neither of us is a real god!"

  "Exactly! That's why we're supposed to be together!"

  They glared at each other, two halves of a whole, siblings locked in eternal conflict.

  Meanwhile, Reven tried desperately to hold onto his sanity. His mind felt like it was being pulled in two directions at once. The part of him that was still human screamed. The part that was rotting whispered promises of release.

  He listened to the gods argue, absorbing every word, clinging to consciousness through sheer willpower.

  Then Nug and Yeb's forms began to shift.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  They grew. Expanded. Their childlike bodies dissolved into something vast and incomprehensible.

  Nug became a mass of decay and rot, a writhing tower of diseased flesh and fungal growth. Eyes opened across his surface, all of them weeping pus. Mouths screamed in languages that predated human speech.

  Yeb became a forest of flesh and flowers, vines and organs growing in patterns that hurt to observe. Her form pulsed with life, with growth taken to horrific extremes.

  They clashed.

  The impact wasn't physical. It was conceptual. The collision of fundamental forces.

  Reven watched through his one remaining eye, the other socket empty and bleeding.

  His brain should have shut down. Should have given up, retreated into merciful unconsciousness. But he held on.

  At that moment, watching gods fight, feeling his body tear itself apart, Reven made a decision.

  I won't be someone's toy. Even if they're a fucking god!

  His willpower crystallized into something hard and sharp.

  The fight between Nug and Yeb escalated to cosmic proportions.

  They tore at each other with forces that bent reality. Nug unleashed waves of pure decay, aging matter into dust in microseconds. Yeb countered with explosive growth, creating life faster than Nug could destroy it.

  Reven stood in the center of a transparent barrier, a dome of protective energy that glowed with Yeb's warmth. Through it, he watched the universe break.

  Stars appeared and died in the sky above. Worlds formed and rotted. Time itself stuttered and jumped, moving in fits and starts.

  Nug shaped his mass into a titanic fist and brought it down on Yeb. She caught it with tendrils of living vine, wrapping around the diseased flesh and squeezing. Where they touched, neither life nor death could claim victory.

  They were perfectly matched.

  For hours, or seconds, or years, they fought. Time had no meaning in this space.

  But slowly, incrementally, Yeb began to win.

  Her growth overwhelmed Nug's decay. Her creation outpaced his destruction. It was a difference measured in fractions of a percent, but it was enough.

  Nug's form began to shrink. To compress. To be pulled back into itself.

  "You lose again," Yeb said, her voice echoing through the cosmos. "Don't try to escape this time."

  "NO!" Nug's scream shook reality. "I'll take control someday! I'll fucking kill you! If I have to kill you to be Morvexis, so be it!"

  His form thrashed, trying to break free, but Yeb's power held him fast.

  "Listen well, sister," Nug howled.

  I am the end of all things. I am the rot that waits in every heart. I am the fever that burns cities and the plague that ends civilizations.

  You can suppress me, but you cannot destroy me. I am half of everything that lives, because everything that lives must die. And one day, when you're weak, when you're tired, when you let your guard down for just one moment, I will consume you.

  I will take your flesh and your power and your precious creation, and I will use it all to spread my beautiful rot across every world, every dimension, every reality. There will be nothing but decay. Nothing but beautiful, perfect death. And I will laugh as I watch it all turn to ash.

  His voice rose to a shriek.

  "I am inevitable! I am eternal! I am the last thing that will exist when the universe ends! You cannot win, sister! You can only delay!"

  But even as he screamed, his form was being pulled inward, compressed, forced back together with Yeb's.

  The two masses collided, merged, fused.

  Reven watched as the twins became one.

  The being that emerged was impossibly tall, warping the horizon as reality bent away from it in revulsion. It was an approximation of a humanoid form, a massive frame wrapped in blackened veins thick as chains. They throbbed with sluggish, infected blood that glowed faintly beneath skin stretched to the point of rupture.

  The skin sagged in uneven layers, swollen with abscesses and bulbous sores that split and leaked yellow pus. Where the fluid fell, the ground rotted instantly, flesh replacing stone.

  Above the being's head floated a crown of rusted halos, broken rings of corroded metal and bone that slowly revolved. From them dripped thick ichor, each drop carrying the stench of old death.

  The face was a ruin. Empty eye sockets constantly vented yellow and green mist. The jaw hung crooked and unhinged, frozen between a grin and a death rattle. Strings of viscous filth stretched between broken teeth.

  Even the being's movement was disturbing. Each step caused the world to decay in anticipation, reality recoiling as if trying to reject its presence.

  This was Morvexis.

  Then Reven heard the voice.

  It spoke in eldritch language that should have been incomprehensible, but somehow he understood every syllable perfectly.

  "The Blooming of a Thousand Sores,"

  "The Fever That Devours Dimension,"

  "The Breath That Sickens Suns and Moon,"

  "The Crown of Pestilence Eternal,"

  "The Hand That Writes Death Upon Flesh,"

  "The Irrevocable Contagion of All Creation,"

  "Morvexis, the Embodiment of Plague."

  The being looked down at Reven with empty sockets that still somehow saw.

  When she spoke, the voice was feminine but layered with something else, something that carried both Nug's cruelty and Yeb's warmth.

  "Reven Reposo. You have been chosen. Will you accept my true blessing?"

  Reven's mouth worked. Half his face was still human enough to form words.

  "I won't be a god's plaything again," he rasped. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, his remaining eye.

  "I'll kill anyone who tries to toy with me. Even you."

  Morvexis laughed.

  The sound was beautiful and terrible, growth and decay harmonized into something that made Reven's bones ache.

  "This is a blessing, not a chain," she said.

  "You can use it however you want. If you accept, you will become my avatar. You can gather faith to become stronger. Rebuild my religion. Spread my name. In exchange, I give you power."

  "Fuck off," Reven spat blood. "I won't be a tool."

  "You misunderstand." Morvexis leaned closer.

  "I offer you choice. True choice. Use my power as you see fit. Serve me or don't. Build my church or burn it. I don't care. I am plague, child. I spread regardless of intent. Your choices matter only to you."

  "Then why offer it at all?"

  "Because you interest me. Because you held your sanity when witnessing my true form. Because you declared you would fight even a god." She paused.

  "Because my brother and I made a wager, and I wish to see how it plays out."

  Reven stared at her with his one remaining eye.

  "If I accept," he said slowly,

  "I keep control. Full control. Of my faith. Of my choices. Of my purpose."

  "Yes."

  "Then I'll tell you what I'll do." Reven's voice grew stronger despite his ruined body.

  "I'll build a world where everybody is healthy. Where nobody suffers from disease. Where everyone is equal, with access to healing regardless of wealth or status."

  He bared his teeth, half his mouth still functional.

  "And if I have to destroy the current world to build it, I will."

  Morvexis laughed again, this time with genuine amusement.

  "Wonderful. Do you accept my blessing, Reven Reposo?"

  Reven took a breath. Made his choice.

  "I ACCEPT!"

  Yellow and green smoke that had been flowing around Morvexis's body suddenly gathered and rushed toward Reven's mouth.

  He tried to close it, but the smoke forced its way in, down his throat, into his lungs.

  His body inflated like a balloon. His skin stretched. His bones cracked.

  Then he burst.

  Light consumed everything.

  The black woods disappeared. The impossible sky vanished. Nug's laughter and Yeb's warmth faded into nothing.