Chapter 79 Priya

PRIYA

She sank for a long time.

Deep. Deep under the deathless waters.

Closed her eyes…

She woke in the sangam. She was living, breathing, not yet killed. But she was also in Mani Ara’s grasp. She sat up in the water. Moved to her knees. Then, trembling, she stood and turned, to the place where three rivers met, where Mani Ara waited for her.

The waters were wild and churning around her, salt-rich with grief. And there was Mani Ara, standing as Priya stood. She wore Priya’s own face, Priya’s own tears on her cheeks.

“My kin,” Mani Ara whispered, “have burned and died. What use are you to me now?” The distance between them peeled away, and Mani Ara’s cold-thorned hand cupped her face. “You are the only kin I have left,” she said. “That last of my own.”

“Kin,” Priya whispered. Maybe fire had burned her words away. Maybe the grief pounding in her head had done it.

“We have died before,” whispered Mani Ara, dark tears streaming from her eyes. “We were starlight once. Beings of the void. We ran from our enemies when they turned on us. Swam like fish to the shores of your world.”

Now that she had shed green and flesh and the hollow ghosts of the people Priya loved, Mani Ara was all starlight. If she was a fish, she was the kind that could swim the cosmos, the great sangam that cradled the world. The hands that cupped Priya’s face were brilliant with stars. The eyes that met her own were multitudinous, lidless. Their pupils were entire worlds, burning and collapsing into darkness.

“Why did they turn on you?” Priya asked softly, entranced despite herself. “Why did you have to run to survive?”

“Why do mortals fight one another, sapling? For the same reasons, small and terrible, vast and deep. We sacrificed our own strength. We left the void. We became part of this world: its soil, its trees. But they followed. They learned what we had learned.” Her hand moved to press over Priya’s heart, cold and sharp-fingered. “Human faith is a door that we may walk through,” said Mani Ara. “They followed us. Those creatures of fire and prophecy. Through their mortals, who prayed to them for knowledge and visions, they killed us again.”

“And then you sacrificed once more,” whispered Priya.

“Flesh is awful,” said Mani Ara. “Humanity worse. Your dreams, your emotions… I hunger for peace. But I watched my kin die and I thought: anything to live.”

Priya looked away from the burning darkness of her, at the waters beneath them and the cosmos above them; the waters where her kin had drowned, and yaksa had emerged wearing their faces.

“The sangam,” Priya murmured. “It’s… it’s your door, isn’t it? Made from the faith of so many temple elders and temple children.” Now that she’d said it, she knew . “You used my kin, those temple dead, to bring yourselves back again, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Mani Ara said. Simple, and awful.

Yes. It was like the words had come from Priya’s own mouth. She saw memories like they were her own: crawling from the sweetness of the void into the mortal world. A human’s faith, an open door. Her kin, her children , changing from light and stars to green and soil. Temple children, dead by faith, their sacrifices holding open the door of the sangam, a constant flow of magic.

And then fire, and fire, and death.

Priya closed her eyes.

“I remember,” she said, “what it was like to sleep. Endless, under the earth. You may hunger to live, but now that your kin are dead, you hunger just as much for death. Peace. You cannot lie to me, Mani Ara. I’m your heart.”

She turned and Mani Ara turned—the two of them looking together at the waters.

“You were never meant to be here,” Priya said. “Not for so long. Your gifts are meant to touch this world briefly, reaching mortals through fire or water, dreams or silence. Not reshape it.” She tasted the wrongness of it now—like rot. “Staying won’t save you, or bring back your kin. It has destroyed you, and it is destroying us.

“Let go, yaksa. We can die together. One heart, one life. We can close the doorway. These rivers can carry what remains of us back to the great sea beyond.”

“I think,” Mani Ara said, “that you speak from human weakness.” Her grasp was tight, sharp, and her gaze sharpened with it. “I did all for my kin, sapling, and I will live for them too—if I must walk the world alone, I will do it.”

Horror, sudden, crept down Priya’s spine.

She had failed.

“I wanted a glorious world, sapling,” Mani Ara said. “Rotten with green and with flesh. We would have made it together. And now I will have it alone.” Her mouth of stars and thorns pressed to Priya’s own and then—

And then—