Kairos tutted as he rummaged through the massive pile of mail that had been shoved through the castle letterbox. He always received a lot of letters and notes, but today, after a massive earthquake on one of those fanatic Kronospast planets, he had been overrun with letters begging for miracles, forgiveness and other godly things. That sort of thing was always up to Epani or Yisini, but they always begged to Kairos anyway. Normally he wouldn’t even be doing this, he had a machine that organized these letters into neat piles, but something had got lodged inside it, causing it to malfunction.
That something was a very thick, golden envelope with a red seal on it. Kairos was annoyed at first. It was probably from some rich Kronospast fellow who wanted a few extra years on their already insanely long life and were willing to pay almost anything to get them. But as Kairos opened the letter, he could see that it was something far, far worse.
A letter from Kenon.
Kairos’s father. Or at least as close a father figure he could be.
The fact that Kenon had sent him a letter was pretty bad. He only ever did that if he was in trouble. Reading the letter, it was clear that Kenon definitely was in trouble, but apparently so was everything else.
Kairos read the letter three times, just to make sure he was understanding it properly.
At first, the Whenvern wasn’t sure what to think. His little brother Arkadin, mind-controlling his mother? That seemed a bit weird. Kairos didn’t even know Arkadin could do that. Then again, there was a lot Kairos didn’t know about the Lord of Death. Really, he and Arkadin had been getting on quite well lately. There’d been a few bumps, a few personality changes, but…
Kairos paused.
Maybe that was all for show. A trick so that he could sneak in, befriend his mother and then take control.
It all seemed a little too ludicrous. Arkadin wasn’t like that, was he?
The Whenvern turned his attention to the other letters. Now that the blockage had been fixed, the sorting machine had returned to normal. A huge pile of prayers about that earthquake had quickly built up.
Confused, Kairos checked the planet that the letters were coming from. Weirdly, it was a planet that never really had many earthquakes. The last major earthquake there had happened… Kairos had to look it up. Five hundred thousand years ago. After it was hit by a meteor. None of the planet’s current inhabitants could have known there would have been a major earthquake. The planet wasn’t even that tectonically active in the first place.
Coincidentally, that planet was also home to a couple of Kairos’s larger cults that worshipped him. Not cults that Kairos liked or anything, but still, they worshipped Kairos and he didn’t mind that. Funny how another planet nearby with much more tectonic activity was… absolutely fine.
There was only one conclusion to be had.
Epani had made that earthquake on purpose.
Kairos re-read the letter from Kenon. It mentioned something about the Lord of Death mind-controlling his sisters as well. Suddenly, the random earthquake killing a large number of Kairos’s worshippers made much more sense.
Something needed to be done. His siblings all needed to be stopped. But Kairos couldn’t do that alone. He needed to make a plan. He needed to visit an old friend…