"Rift seeds had many functions," Momo said, her voice carrying easily over the chaos around them. "As I told you, it could be used to make a self-sustained world from a concept that was allowed to grow. But even then, the shape of the world where a concept was planted still needed a reference."

They were moving now, not walking so much as advancing, cutting a path through the dark rural road toward the purple glow ahead.

The horde had thickened as they approached the rifts. Zombies shambled from every shadow, their corrupted bodies jerking with that horrible, wrong motion Cecilia had first seen from the truck.

She didn’t let them get close.

A wave of telekinesis rippled outward from her outstretched hand, and the first row of undead simply... stopped. Then lifted. Then folded backward like a page being turned, their bodies tumbling over each other.

The second row met the same fate, and the third.

"So, even making it from scratch, it wasn’t something entirely separate from other worlds?" Cecilia asked, steady despite the exertion.

"It’s a separate bubble, yes," Momo replied. "But it drew its reality from others."

A zombie lunged from the treeline, a twisted thing with its jaw hanging by a single tendon and its fingers sharpened into claws.

Cecilia flicked her wrist, and a mailbox tore itself from the ground and folded around the creature like a metal cocoon. She launched it into the night sky. It didn’t come back down.

"WHY DOES IT HAVE EXTRA LIMB—" Bunny screamed as if he himself didn’t have unnatural body parts, yanking Momo’s body off the ground and burying his face in her back. "WHY ARE THERE LIMBS WHERE EYES SHOULD BE—"

Cecilia had smushed that one against a tree. It was no longer a concern. Bunny’s composure, however, was. He might even scream just looking at a mirror.

"Why so?" Cecilia pressed, ignoring the wailing god. "Why can’t it be completely separate? Like a concept world no one had ever imagined or heard before?"

Two zombies came at her from opposite sides. A pincer attack, probably accidental, since the undead didn’t seem capable of strategy.

Cecilia didn’t bother turning. Her telekinesis caught them both by the ankles and swung them into each other like a pair of cymbals. The resulting crunch was deeply unpleasant.

"The concept came from us," Momo said, her voice perfectly serene even as her husband used her as a human shield. "Of course it would draw from the worlds that we knew. The worlds creatures could imagine."

She paused, tilting her head. "Can you genuinely make a concept that had never been seen before, completely separate from your knowledge about the world?"

Cecilia hummed. A cluster of zombies was forming ahead, blocking the road. She reached out with both hands, her fingers curling as though gripping something invisible, and tore the asphalt up in a great rippling wave.

The road became a ramp, and the zombies became projectiles, launched over the treeline in a shower of corrupted limbs and startled groans.

"You’re saying that in theory, it could be done," she said, lowering her hands. "But you, a god, can’t?"

Momo chuckled. "Do you want to create paradise?"

Cecilia flinched.

She stopped walking. Her telekinetic grip faltered, and a zombie nearly reached her before she recovered, slamming it sideways into a fencepost with enough force to splinter the wood.

She turned to face the gods fully, her eyes wide.

She saw Bunny smooshing his face entirely into the body of All-Memory, his muffled whimpers barely audible over the growling horde.

Momo, despite being manhandled like an emotional support teddy bear, remained perfectly elegant. Her posture still poised, her expression still patient.

Cecilia stuttered. "T-that’s... I was... presumptuous."

"You’re not." Momo smiled. "Your brain just moved quicker than most of the other creations. We admire the essence of your soul."

Cecilia looked down, guilt flickering across her face. She hadn’t meant to question their capabilities. She hadn’t meant to imply that she understood divinity better than the divine. But the thought had simply... arrived. Fully formed. Demanding to be spoken.

"That means..." She hesitated. "Someone can, right?"

"Mmmm~" Momo hummed melodically, her voice suddenly so beautiful that even the zombies seemed to pause for a moment. "Some’One’ can."

The emphasis was audible. Cecilia felt them settle into her bones.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA—" Bunny, without looking or unburying his face, without breaking his death-grip on his wife’s waist, dodged a mauled zombie that had crawled out from beneath a wrecked car.

His shovel came up in a blind arc, caught the creature under the chin, and launched it skyward in a perfect parabolic trajectory. It disappeared into the darkness. A distant thump followed three seconds later.

He hadn’t opened his eyes once.

Cecilia stared, speechless. This god... could still sense the figures around him even without sight and fight them. He clearly moved through a battlefield like a dancer while whimpering into his wife’s spine...

"Rift seeds can also integrate you and your life temporarily into another existing reality," Momo continued, as though her husband were not currently using her as a sensory deprivation chamber.

She swayed gracefully with his movements, never stumbling, never losing her composure. "And after the concept whispered into the seed concluded, you and your life would slowly disperse from this world. Only the memory remained."

Momo’s smile softened. "Your memory. In this case, also your husbands’."

Cecilia’s mind caught on the phrase. Your life. Which meant the people she knew and met in these worlds, because they were part of her original world, her original life, were integrated into this world too.

Her husbands. Her friends. Her connections. All of them, woven into a reality that existed before she arrived.

"And then this world... would continue as though we were never there?" Cecilia asked.

"Exactly."

"But what about the school romance world?" Cecilia pressed. "It was created from scratch. What happens after the scenario concludes?"

"Because of your prayers, it continues for a while." Momo smiled warmly. "At least until yours and your husbands’ story there fully concludes. Then, the concept that was allowed to grow stops growing. The base of it was you and your life, after all."

"That..." Cecilia paused. "You... listened to my prayers...?"

Momo shrugged. "Ever-Living and Sustainer. My job is just to remember. And sometimes, just to remember is enough to keep things alive."

Cecilia frowned. These gods did explain things to her, more than she had expected and more than she probably deserved. But some of what they said was still... vague.

It hovered at the edges of her comprehension.

Perhaps because, as Momo had said, they didn’t want her head to combust.

They moved once more, the three of them pushing deeper into the purple glow. Cecilia’s telekinesis cleared their path in rhythmic pulses, each wave sending zombies scattering like leaves before a storm.

"Back to this world, Goddess," Cecilia said, her voice quieter now. "This world... after we leave it... what will happen to it?"

"Are~ you~ that worried~?" Momo’s voice had turned sing-songy, half because of playfulness, and half because she was still being tossed around by her husband’s blind panic-dodging.

"I am worried." Cecilia said firmly. "What will happen... if we’re not here anymore?"

Momo grasped Bunny’s wrist gently. That was when he shuffled closer, still not opening his eyes or releasing his grip. Momo reached out and placed her hand on Cecilia’s head.

She caressed Cecilia’s hair like a mother soothing a frightened child.

"Pray for what you want to happen," she said. "Haven’t you learned that prayers are being fulfilled?"

Cecilia’s eyes widened.

Pray...?

"It means... I can’t do anything for this world after I leave?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You keep saying it as if it’s a lost cause," Momo teased, her fingers still stroking Cecilia’s hair. "Grow stronger. That’s the only solution. And your only job."

Her voice gentled. "Something you can’t do now, you can do later. Everything you don’t have the luxury of doing by yourself, we’ll do our best to make it happen for you."

Cecilia stood very still in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by zombies and purple light and two gods who were nothing like she had expected and everything she didn’t know she needed.

ROAAAAAAAAAAAARRR—

"AAAAAAAA–aaaaaaaaaaaa-hwaaaaa-hwaaaaaa—" Bunny sobbed from Momo’s back. "Are we there yeeeet? Momooooooo~"

***

A white dragon descended from the night sky. The landing was as precise as a butterfly on delicate petals, barely disturbed the grass.

Then the form shimmered, contracted, folded inward, and Oathran stood in his human shape. He was naked and unbothered, already striding toward the command center.

Behind him, Eastiel and Arkai too, landed on the ground.

Eastiel tossed the bundle of clothes tucked under one of his arms to Oathran without ceremony, and the eldest caught them without looking.

The command center tent loomed ahead, its canvas walls glowing from within. Floodlights casting harsh white halos across the perimeter, personnel scrambled between workstations.

Damon threw open the tent flap before they reached it, barely containing his stress. The man looked like he had aged five years in the last ten days. Given what had happened at the dam, given what was happening now, that was probably generous.

"She’s pushing through," Damon said, forgoing any greeting. "I think she wants to close the rift herself—"

"You have eyes on her?" Arkai cut him off. "Show us."