Rowan surveyed the vast nothing. He stood on a solid surface indistinguishable from the emptiness around him, and just thinking about it made him wobble slightly. His body insisted there was a "down," but his eyes disagreed.

  He took a hesitant step forward.

  “Where are you going?” Tocatl asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Then why are you walking that way?” she asked.

  He took another step, and Tocatl moved closer, reaching for his hand.

  “Stay close,” she said. “We don’t know the rules of Oblivion. Better to stay in contact—just in case.”

  Rowan took a wobbly step forward—and realized he wasn’t holding Tocatl’s hand anymore. Instead, the walking stick had appeared in his grasp, steadying him before he could fall.

  Of course. Magic bait-and-switch. Classic.

  Walking on an invisible surface toward an invisible destination was dizzying. Each tap of the walking stick sent out a pulse of magic stretching two hundred paces ahead, briefly highlighting the uneven ground before retracting back to him. He turned slightly to his right and began climbing a gentle slope he never would have noticed otherwise.

  Without Tocatl’s magic, he might have walked forever without realizing he was going uphill.

  The first sign of change wasn’t the slope beneath his feet, but the sudden, rich scent of roasting meat. Until that moment, he hadn’t even noticed he was missing a sense of smell.

  He picked up his pace. The scent grew stronger with each step, followed by the distant sounds of laughter and clinking cups, faint but unmistakable.

  At the top of the rise, a flat plain stretched out before him, bathed in flickering lights of every color. A dozen figures gathered around a long table, eating and chatting like they didn’t have a care in the world. As he moved closer, the walking stick stopped pulsing its searchlight magic—the ground underfoot now faintly green, like someone had halfheartedly painted grass after forgetting what grass looked like.

  Overhead, the stars flickered unevenly, distorted reflections from some deeper, broken place.

  He recognized the old man at the head of the table. Najanjir—the Pathfinder, Tocatl’s brother—had the same tawny skin and easy, knowing smile. Najanjir gave Rowan a slight nod but kept talking with the man beside him, like seeing Rowan here was surprising but not exactly urgent.

  Rowan paused, taking stock of the crowd.

  They broke into rough groups without even trying.

  Najanjir chatted with a bear of a man—bushy beard, thick eyebrows, no shirt to hide a forest of chest hair, and the kind of muscles that made Greek gods look underfed.

  Then came the troublemakers: a short girl, maybe sixteen at most, biting into an apple while side-eyeing the conversation beside her. She wore a sandy-brown ponytail and had sharp, hungry eyes. Beside her, a tall woman in a flowing white gown spoke animatedly, her ebony skin luminous against the darkness, her white smile flashing every time she laughed.

  The musicians weren't hard to spot either. A teenage boy with messy blond hair leaned back, half-lost in the playful melody of his pan flute. Across from him, two bronze-skinned men in battered leather jerkins sang a low, sorrowful tune in a language Rowan didn’t recognize. Their sad song and the boy’s dancing notes had absolutely nothing to do with each other, and neither side seemed to care.

  Then there were the gamblers: three pale figures in soft white furs, laughing as they tossed dice made from imperfect bone and sipped from battered tin cups.

  Beside the musicians, a gladiator-type—broad-shouldered, thick-wristed, and wearing nothing but a leather harness and a white loincloth—roared with laughter as he banged a heavy wooden mug on the table. The woman whispering in his ear wore a toga pinned with a gleaming gold clasp and enough eyeliner to put Cleopatra to shame. Dark hair, dark lashes, and a smile sharp enough to cut.

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  Rowan’s gut told him: fighters, musicians, gamblers, and at least one apple thief. All gathered at the world’s end like it was open mic night.

  “Are you going to pull up a chair, or just stand there looking lost?” Najanjir asked, voice dry.

  Rowan shrugged. “There’s nowhere to sit.”

  Najanjir elbowed the bear-sized man beside him. “Bjore, there’s nowhere to sit.”

  Bjore let out a deep, rumbling laugh that shook the tableware. A few others looked up, grinning like they were in on a joke Rowan hadn’t caught yet.

  “You’re a funny little god,” Bjore said, eyeing Rowan like he was sizing up a meal.

  “So I’ve been told,” Rowan said. He shifted his weight, keeping one hand loosely on the walking stick-turned-spear. “What’s the occasion for the party?”

  Another ripple of laughter went around the table.

  The boy with the pan flute cracked an amused smile. “This is the very last party at the world’s end.”

  Rowan gave a half-smirk. “I thought I might recruit a god-squad to bust out of here and maybe kick a few demons around. Any volunteers?”

  “Our ass-kicking days are over, lad,” said the gladiator with a rough chuckle. “And so are yours.”

  “I mostly got my ass kicked anyway,” Rowan admitted, deadpan. “Might as well mix it up.”

  “You’re a bit late,” said the apple girl. She took another slow, crunching bite. “You’re the only god left. Unless one of us decides to throw the match, you’re stuck.”

  Rowan narrowed his eyes slightly. “You’re all Transcendents, then?”

  The girl smiled, not kindly. “We used to be something more than gods.”

  Rowan blew out a breath. “Fantastic. Nothing says ‘easy prison break’ like being the least dangerous thing in the room.”

  “Should we eat him?” one of the three fur-clad men asked, almost absently, like he was debating a snack.

  Rowan instinctively stepped back, his grip tightening on the walking stick.

  “His essence won’t hold together that long,” the gladiator said with a shrug. “We can wait for him to lose consciousness.”

  Movement—a blur, too fast to track.

  Suddenly, Rowan was face to face with the fur-clad man. The attacker looked surprised. So did Rowan, when he glanced down.

  A spear—his walking stick—was buried in the man’s chest. And Rowan was still holding it.

  He hadn’t meant to. He hadn't even thought. The weapon had simply... reacted.

  Wisps of blue magic bled from the man's mouth. His body crumbled, turning to drifting motes of dust that floated lazily through the still air.

  The others moved fast. Not in panic, but with practiced ease. They gathered the motes carefully, like sweeping up spilled treasure.

  Rowan felt something shift—his snake-skin bag tugging faintly at his shoulder, growing heavier. It drank in the magic without asking his permission.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the pale gamblers scooping up a bright blue spark and tucking it reverently into one of their bone dice.

  Apparently, even after getting speared, you didn’t get to leave the party.

  Within moments, the diners were back at the table, cups raised like nothing had happened. Only a single empty chair remained, waiting beside Najanjir.

  “Well,” one of the fur-clad survivors said with a grin, “that should hold us over for a while.”

  Najanjir smiled, an amused twinkle in his eye. “Have a seat, Trickster. You’ve earned it.”

  Rowan eyed the empty chair like it might bite him.

  Sitting down felt like asking for trouble. But trouble seemed to be the only thing on offer.

  He shifted the walking stick—still in spear form—into his left hand, keeping it ready, and moved toward the seat. It didn’t creak. It didn’t move. It felt unnervingly solid in a world that barely seemed to exist.

  As he sat, the spear shrank smoothly back into the familiar walking stick, like it had made its point and was done now.

  “Great,” Rowan muttered under his breath. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  The others went right back to their eating, drinking, gambling, and playing music, like almost getting eaten was the social equivalent of a weather report.

  Najanjir leaned over slightly, voice pitched low enough not to carry. “Stay alert, Trickster. Hunger’s easy to forget... until it isn’t.”

  Rowan gave a noncommittal grunt, his mind scanning for an escape he knew didn’t exist.

  He was about to ask the obvious—what did they want from him—when the ground gave a subtle, bone-deep shudder.

  It wasn’t the surface. It wasn’t a breeze. It was a shift in the fabric of Oblivion itself.

  Conversations faltered.

  The boy lowered his pan flute. The gladiator carefully set down his mug. The gamblers stiffened, still as statues.

  Even Najanjir straightened in his chair, his easy smile slipping into something graver.

  Something massive had entered Oblivion. Something strong enough to make even these creatures look uneasy.

  Rowan tightened his grip on the walking stick and sat very, very still.