[Falla]

Her steps followed barren paths, already decayed. She refused to look at the unwithered flowers to either side. Every footfall left blight in her wake, seeping stains of her personal defilement. How long could Toamna endure? She dreaded coming to the gate grounds, infecting them with her presence. She'd already ruined so much.... The silver trees lay bowed and weeping, naked, pale blossoms scattered in blackened dust. This was her legacy to her world: destruction. Hope had fled with the warmth of the sun. Falla had only cold winds and lonely souls for company as she came upon the portal.

Nox Nocturnalis had always been a time of joyous memories for her, the harmony of mortal spirits and their shepherding gods. Now, it was a night of dread and revulsion, of tainted blood and doom-bound promises. She could open the portal, but without Faust to guide the fallen....

Her focus swayed for a moment, images of Toamna's ruin assailing her, the wasteland of her home and all that had been lost in a year's seething darkness. It withered her heart to see such things, the rot of the great white oaks, vibrant flowers fading to wind-thrown dust, the silver grasses stamped to ash. If there was to be any hope, it would be found tonight, in whatever gloam of power yet hung in the hollow within her.

The goddess stood ready, facing the pallid ridges of the Gates, their looming frame shadowed without souls to lend their light. With a breath of cherished things forsworn, she began the ritual of passage. Power wove a skein of pearl and coiling gray, wreathing the marble pillars in sorcerous twines. Nascent light stirred in the ancient rune-script.

Ripples shimmered on portal's dull surface, the first tellings of its slow waking, but none of it was right. The spell, her words, tendrils of black blight striking across the placid edifice, melting, sundering....

Detonations split the hallowed stone, spewing bursts of vile ichor from the living rock. She lost control of the magic, falling from numb legs, helpless but to stare as the gate collapsed.

What... what have I become?

No souls would pass here ever again. The power that had wrought the majesties of Toamna was long vanished from the world. And here she lay, a goddess among billions of dying dreams, all seeping through unfeeling fingers...

She could let it all end here, just close her weary eyes and let the all the guilt fall away, the ache of failing bones, the sickened humors of her heart. She could lay it all aside, and who would dare cast blame? Who would shed tears for her loss?

Faust...

The image of her brother came ineffable to her mind's eye – not a memory, but Faust in this very moment, down on Quesaria. She saw the adamantine chains upon his soul, sourceless fetters reaching through the ether to the titan's fist that held them fast. And his eyes... would they ever stop bleeding? The sight wracked Falla to her depths, past her own pain. She saw what he was doing, to those poor souls... heard the horrid cruelties her spoke, and yet... how could she love him? How could she not... live for him?

So be it. Even now, I have not forgotten what it is to serve. I shall be a goddess once more, then. Until you are saved, my brother. Let it never be said that we know nothing of sacrifice.

The course was clear to her now, a road she would walk to the end of her days. In the wake of love, there was duty. Necessity would be the torch to light her way. They were mortals, helpless, hapless, ever in need of divine hand upon the rudder of their chaotic lives. She would take them all, all their frailties and failures, and raise them into something greater than worlds had ever seen. And there would be vengeance, reclamation, absolution, before she was done.

Sitting up, Falla reached into the thinning panoply of the mist, reaching through the turmoil of screams and wails. Countless souls she passed by in their forlorn terror, until she found the one she sought. The sovereign, cowering, as lost as any of the others. Niya.

You are proof of his weakness, the one thread that yet restrains him. With you, Niya, I will tear him down.

As the woman's shade crawled through the debris, unable to refute the goddess' beckoning will, Falla reached out. The magic sparked from her fingers once more, virulent as always, but the weakness was gone from her now. With cold, newfound breath, she watched her power weave a collar around the spirit's neck.