The God Who Made the Monsters (And Is Trying Very Hard Not to Anymore)
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There is a moment in every long life when you look back at who you used to be and realize that person was, to put it diplomatically, a lot.
Ve knows that moment well.
He is one of three brothers who shaped the world at the beginning of everything. Odin got the wisdom and the ravens. Vili got the charm and the good decisions. Ve got the creative power — the ability to reach into the fabric of existence and make something new.
The problem with that kind of power is that when you are young and impulsive and not particularly thinking things through, you make things. Things that growl. Things that hunger. Things that turn under a full moon and remember nothing in the morning. Ve did not set out to create paranormal species. He simply had a skill set, and he used it — once, long ago — and then walked away. He didn't account for the fact that what he made kept going. Kept growing. Kept multiplying across centuries without him. Every paranormal incident, every creature that went bump in the night, everything the Brethren ever had to deal with — all of it traced back to seeds he planted in another age and forgot to tend.
The Brethren assumed he was still pulling strings. He wasn't. He had simply stopped paying attention, and the universe had gotten on with the consequences without him.
There is no Monster Anonymous, though perhaps there should be. Ve would never attend. But he might have benefited from it.
Nobody noticed when he changed. That is the thing about a god who keeps to himself — there is no one watching closely enough to see the shift. But something shifted. Quietly. Alone. Long before anyone thought to look.
It started with an egg. Three thousand years ago, a young girl named Tupi made a choice that would echo across worlds and generations. She did not know that. She only knew that a red egg wanted her to take it home. Ve knew more than he let on. He always does. But for the first time in a very long time, he chose to let something good happen instead of something he would regret. That was the beginning of a very slow change in a very old god.
After Sophia was born, the shift became permanent. You don't get to be the bad-influence uncle to a child that bright and brave without it changing you. Even Ve, who speaks almost entirely in vague references that nobody understands anymore, knows that.
Sophia once said she wished he would just say what he meant.
He is working on it.
Now something old and dark is moving again — a spiral symbol appearing on victims across two worlds, a pattern Ve recognizes from centuries of wandering and choices he cannot take back. The murders are personal. Someone is sending him a message.
And for the first time in a long time, Ve has to answer for who he used to be—while trying to prove he is no longer that person.
Spiral of Redemption is coming. The Brothers of Odin and The Dragon World universe is about to get a lot more complicated.
Want to catch up before it arrives? Start at the beginning of the Brothers of Odin series, or discover the story of the egg and the girl who changed everything.