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She cut her gaze back to Pyetar, to find him pale as the snow that surrounded him. What was his problem? Iryana struggled again, almost getting a knee under her before being knocked back down.

“No god would stand for this,” she seethed.

“Child.” He shook his head, amusement dancing across his features. “Don’t you know who I am?”

Child.

“Doesn’t matter when you’ll be dead soon.” The words spat out of her mouth violently, before she could consider how unlikely that seemed to be, given how easily his magic overwhelmed her.

“Tell us then, who are you?” Pyetar demanded, voice deeper than usual, strained like he barely had control over himself.

The man straightened. “I am Thelbiz, of course.”

An angry laugh tore from her. “Thelbiz? Named after the god? That’s blasphemy.”

Again, the man laughed. “Poor child, you haven’t even realized. You stand before a god.” His voice amplified, tearing through the clearing with a volume that shouldn’t have been possible. The words echoed between the trees, slamming into her head.

Iryana scoffed at the ridiculousness. He wasn’t a god, he couldn’t be.

She could acknowledge he had power he shouldn’t, which clearly made him dangerous and arrogant. But he was no god. His claims were pathetic. Pathetic and disturbing.

The gods wouldn’t be trying to kill them all.

“You’re insane,” she accused. But she still couldn’t free herself.

“You’re Thelbiz, god of air?” Pyetar stuttered, voice weak.

Iryana stared at Pyetar. Did he believe the nonsense coming from this killer’s mouth?

“Of course I am.”

She turned back to the man who thought himself a god. He looked so calm, so sure. He truly believed it. Really believed that he was a god. She opened her mouth to argue more, but then she realized how little it mattered. He was creating the dakii, god or not. If they wanted any chance of stopping it, they had to kill him. Perhaps not today, but they’d hunt him to the end of Istri to put a stop to it all. The more information they could get from him first, the better.

Iryana stopped struggling.

“But… the gods are all dead,” she let herself say, as if in shock. As if part of her believed him.

“A god can’t die, my dear.” He snickered as if he found her delightfully stupid. “Merely forced to sleep, to recover.”

“To… sleep,” she repeated. It was ridiculous.

“Have you humans already forgotten the war between the gods? It was only a few hundred years ago, surely that isn’t so long even with your short lifespans.”

She bristled, but forced herself to fake calm.

“You didn’t all kill each other? Just… had to sleep… to recover?”

“Yes. This really isn’t that complicated.”

“Where are the others, then?” She tried not to sound accusatory but wasn’t entirely sure it worked. “Were they just sleeping, too?”

The man calling himself Thelbiz straightened. “They are waking. I saw the end of our last battle coming, so I ensured I would wake first. But the others weren’t far behind me.”

Her stomach flipped.

She didn’t believe any of it, but he did have magic like she’d never seen before. And if he could access it, why not others? And if he used it to create monsters to ravage Istri, what would others do if given such magic?

“Thelbiz,” Pyetar started, a surprising amount of deference in his voice. “You said the death caused by the dakii was a sacrifice. For what? Why are you creating the dakii?”