33 parts Complete If you had a choice of death or immortality, which would you pick? If you were wracked with grief, if you had loved ones and a peaceful afterlife waiting for you in the Realm of the Dead, if your divine father was an abusive monster who tried to manipulate and use you at every turn, if everything you'd ever valued seemed to rise up and mock you, could you make the ultimate sacrifice, and live?
This story is technically the third in the Hilrean Rite trilogy, though it is the longest of the three. It spans several centuries, with the first chapter picking up the life of Raphael, who was heard of at the end of the story 'Descendants' as a newly married man, when he is sixty-eight years old. The story overlaps the temple of balance story and the Dragon Isle story completely, and also refers to the city of Firefort as it existed at the end of the life of Glivir.
If readers are not familiar with my earlier stories the Seventh God, Descendants and Temple of Balance, the identity of the main protagonist and certain sections of the tale below might not make much sense. A brief section in brackets at the beginning of the first chapter will give some appropriate background detail. This can be skipped if you have read earlier tales.
The story contains flirting, sexual references, swearing, cruelty, child abduction, an evil deity, assassination and references to extreme grief.
note that the cover image does not belong to me