Ages passed in their company. She had learned to sit with him. To drink tea without suspicion. To accept cookies without wondering what he wanted in return. But the rage never left. It simmered beneath her skin, coiled in her chest, burned in the space behind her eyes. And with it came questions that had no answers.

One day—if time meant anything in the void—she turned to Balance with fury in her voice. “Why do they exist?” Balance looked up from his tea. “Who?” “The mortals,” she spat the word. “The fragile, fleeting things that the gods made. Why do they get to exist while I am cast out? Why do the gods get temples and prayers while I get nothing but exile?” Her form flickered, shadows and flame dancing around her. “I want to destroy them,” she said, and the void trembled at her words. “I want to unmake every single one. Burn their cities. Shatter their world. Make them feel what I feel—abandoned, broken, alone.” She looked at Balance, expecting judgment, expecting him to finally see what she truly was. “I don’t understand why I shouldn’t,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Tell me why. Tell me why they matter and I don’t.”

Balance was quiet for a long moment. He set down his teacup carefully. “You do matter,” he said softly. “You matter, child. They matter. You all matter.” He turned to look at her fully. “But I could tell you that a thousand times, and you wouldn’t believe me. You would think I was lying. Or manipulating you. Or trying to protect them because they worship the gods and you are what the gods cast away.” She wanted to argue. Wanted to say he was wrong. But he wasn’t. “I could give you all the reasons,” he continued. “All the philosophy. All the cosmic balance and divine purpose. But none of it would reach you—not until you see it for yourself.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she asked bitterly. “Just… accept it? Accept that they matter and I’m just the mistake that carries everyone else’s rage?” “No,” Balance said. He stood, brushing imaginary crumbs from his clothes, and held out his hand to her. “You’re supposed to go find out for yourself.” “What?” “Go live among them,” he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the universe. “Live among—” She stared at him. “Are you insane?” “Possibly,” he said with a slight smile. “But I’m also right.” He gestured outward, toward the distant world spinning in the darkness below. “You want to know why they matter? Go see for yourself, child. Walk among them. Watch them. Listen to them. Feel what they feel. Live what they live.” “And then destroy them?” she asked flatly.

“If that’s what you choose,” Balance said calmly. “But make it a choice. Not a reaction. Not rage acting without thought. Make it a decision—one you come to yourself, with full understanding of what you’re destroying.” She shook her head. “You want me to learn to care about them. You think if I see them, I’ll decide they’re worth saving.” “Maybe,” Balance admitted. “Or maybe you’ll decide they’re exactly as worthless as you think they are.” He shrugged. “Either way, you’ll have your answer. And it will be yours—not mine, not the other gods’, not the rage they poured into you. Yours.”

She was silent for a long time. The idea was… terrifying. What if she went down there and destroyed them by accident? What if her presence alone burned everything to ash? What if Balance was right? What if she learned something she didn’t want to know? “I don’t know how to be around them,” she said quietly. “I am rage. I am fury. I will destroy them just by existing near them.” Balance stepped closer, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Then learn not to,” he said gently. “Learn to hold yourself together. Learn to be more than the rage. Learn what exists beyond destruction.” He smiled—that same gentle smile he’d worn when offering her that first cookie. “You learned to sit with me without tearing me apart. You learned to drink tea without setting it on fire. You learned to be family when you didn’t even know what family meant.” His hand squeezed her shoulder. “You can learn this too.” “And if I can’t?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “If I go down there and I destroy everything? If I prove that I am exactly what they said I was—a mistake, an error, something that should never have been made?”

Balance looked at her with infinite patience. “Then I will still be here,” he said. “Waiting. With tea, and some delicious cookies.” He paused. “But I don’t think that’s what will happen.” “Why not?” she asked. “Because,” Balance said, his eyes warm with something that might have been pride, “you are not what they made you. You are what you choose to be. And I believe—” He smiled. “—that you will choose to be more.”

She stood there, in the void between stars, with this impossible choice stretching out before her. Go to the mortal world. Walk among the fragile things she wanted to destroy. Learn. Decide. Make it her choice. She looked down at the world, spinning slowly in the dark, covered in lights and life and everything she didn’t understand. Then she looked back at Balance. “You’ll be here?” she asked. “When I come back?” “Always,” he promised. She took a breath—unnecessary for a god, but somehow fitting. “Then I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll learn. I’ll decide for myself.” She turned toward the world, her form shifting, preparing for descent.

She hesitated at the edge of the void, her form flickering uncertainly. “Wait,” she said. “How do I—” She gestured at herself, at the black fire and shadow, the eyes like dying stars. “They’ll see me and run. They always do.” Balance nodded slowly. “Yes. They will.” “So how am I supposed to walk among them if they flee at the sight of me?” “You watch from a distance,” Balance said. “At first. Until you learn to… soften. To pull the fire inward. To make yourself less overwhelming.” He paused. “It won’t be easy. And you may never look quite mortal. But perhaps, in time, they’ll see a strange girl instead of a monster.” She looked down at herself—the way shadows curled around her, the way flame licked at her edges. “How long will that take?”“I don’t know, child. As long as it takes.”

She was quiet for a moment. “And if I can never soften enough? If I’m always too much for them to bear?” Balance’s expression was gentle. “Then you’ll have your answer from a distance. Sometimes that’s enough.” She descended to earth not in mortal disguise, but as herself—a being of black fire and shadow, eyes burning like dying stars, her form shifting between woman and tempest. She chose a forest far from civilization, where she could watch mortals without being seen. At first, she hated it. The smallness of human concerns. The endless, trivial chatter. Their fragile bodies that broke so easily. But slowly, something changed. She watched a mother sing her child to sleep. She saw an old man tend his garden with patience. She felt the warmth of fire on a cold night.

One day, she saw a poor woman approach a shrine in the forest—one of the small, forgotten ones where no god had answered in years. The woman knelt, her clothes threadbare, her hands worn and cracked. She pulled bread from her sack—bread that looked like it might have been her only meal—and placed it on the altar. “Please,” the woman whispered. “My daughter is sick. The fever won’t break. Please. Anyone. Just… please.” She left the bread there and walked away, her shoulders bent with exhaustion and hope she couldn’t quite afford. The god of rage watched from the shadows. She could have ignored it. Should have ignored it. It was just one mortal. One fragile, fleeting thing. But something in the woman’s voice—the desperation, the love, the willingness to give up her own food for a chance, just a chance—made the rage quiet. Just for a moment. She stepped forward, shadows pooling around her feet, and looked at the bread on the altar. Then she reached into the space between things—the way Balance had taught her, though she’d never tried it before—and pulled. A small vial appeared in her hand, filled with liquid light, a healing potion woven from starfire and will. She could have left it on the altar. Could have let the woman find it and think the gods had answered. But something about that felt… wrong. This was her choice. Her first kindness. So instead, she followed the woman through the trees, silent as shadow, and when the woman stopped to rest against a tree, the god slipped the vial into her pocket. The woman never saw her. Never knew. But later, when she reached into her pocket for a handkerchief and found the vial instead, her gasp of wonder echoed through the forest.

The god of rage returned to her watching place and sat very still. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t know why. Then she noticed something on the stone beside her—a cookie. One of Balance’s cookies, still warm, as if it had just been baked. She picked it up slowly, looking around the empty forest. He wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t. But he was watching. And he knew. A smile tugged at her lips—small, uncertain, but real. She ate the cookie. It tasted like approval.