The gods looked stunned, as if they couldn't believe what they were hearing. To be honest, I couldn't believe what I was saying, either. I was leaving Ianite, who I had been in love with for about eight years. And, before that, I had been in love with the other Ianite for decades. And here I was, abandoning the gods, because I knew it was the right thing to do.

They say that, as you get older, it gets more and more difficult to accept change. They say that you'll want everything to stay the same after a while, and that old habits would be more difficult to give up. It didn't really strike me, until it was over, how much being a rogue would affect me. Godless and alone, without a love in the world.

And yet, when it was happening, I felt no regret for my decision. I stood firmly on Redbeard's side, even hearing Mianite's pleas. I saw the terrified look on Ianite's face, and felt nothing.

This world truly is terrible.

And then, after we faced the gods, we left. We had come into this world as four happy people, who had met two happy gods, and lived happily. We thought our troubles would be over when we defeated Dianite. And yet here we were, two of the original four remaining in awful condition. With us was a broken man, who had lost everything he cared about. Behind us were two immortal beings who had done little wrong, but we're facing permanent death anyway. And, all around us, was a slowly decaying world.

We were broken people, living in a broken world. We didn't know where we were going to go, or what would become of us once the gods were dead and the world belonged to the Shadows. We knew nothing, and there was nothing we could do about that. This was a fight for survival. Heroics were a thing of the past.

But don't, for a second, believe that we fought with strength. We were already broken, and we couldn't continue with our former courage. Once we had left the main land, and begun walking into a forest miles away, we collapsed onto some fallen logs.

"What are we going to do?" Jeriah asked in a hushed voice. "Where are we going to go?"

I looked to Redbeard for a reply, but he didn't seem to have listened to Jeriah's question. He was staring out into the woods, expressionless. I was beginning to wonder about his mental state. Surely a man who had gone through so much would have lost quite a bit of sanity. I didn't blame him for losing his temper when arguing with the gods, but would it cause him to lash out at us?

"Should we try to find Alyssa? In Ianarea?" I asked.

Jeriah looked on the edge of yelling himself. "How would that help? I... I don't know what to do. We can't go back. We can't find the Shadows, obviously. We're in no condition to start a new life. We're... as good as dead." Tears rose in his eyes, and I felt incredibly bad for him.

"When are the Shadows coming?"

"Who knows?" Jeriah was shaking at this point.

"I want to go to Ianarea," Redbeard said suddenly. "There's nothing we can do anyway, and I know the way from here. We'll just need to build a ship from some of these logs."

"Why?" Jeriah's voice was no more than a whisper. "Nothing good can come out of that."

"I want to see my home again," Redbeard replied in a firm voice. "Bella's, too. How are we going to live out here, anyway? At least there are places to sleep there."

Neither of us argued with him. With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, we used the strength we had left to construct a small ship. We were next to the sea, so we set sail as soon as we were done building. Redbeard, looking more determined than I had ever seen him before, steered the ship. Jeriah and I sat down in the back of the boat, exhausted.

"We've lost everything, Spark," Jeriah said. "Everything. I don't know if I can live like... like, however we end up living."

"We'll just have to do what we can," I told him, unhelpfully. "We still have each other, and Redbeard, which is something."

Jeriah didn't say any more. He leaned back against the ship and stared out into the vast sea.

After traveling for many long hours, we finally arrived. Redbeard pulled up to the dock and jumped out with much more energy than Jeriah or I had. It was almost dark by now, and the town seemed empty. There didn't seem to be any signs of Alyssa anywhere.

"It was in Bella's house," Jeriah told Redbeard. "You can go in there if you want, but I'm staying behind. Spark, it's up to you." He made it seem as if going in the house was no big deal, but the look on his face said otherwise.

"I'll go to the houses with you," I said to the pirate, "but I'm not going into the house."

"Fine by me." He began to walk at a fast pace toward the homes, not bothering to wait for me. I slowly made my way after him, nervous of what we were going to find there.

"I'll search some of the buildings over here," Jeriah told me, looking just as worried as I felt. "Maybe there will be food there."

"Okay." He rushed into the nearest building, leaving Redbeard and I to explore the houses.

He shoved the door to Bella's house open and entered right away, showing no fear. I walked up to the house a few seconds later, and called into the house.

"Redbeard? Are you okay?"

"They're gone," he answered, and opened the door wider so I could get a full glance at the inside without entering. "All that's left is this diary, but I'm not sure if I should touch it."

"Don't," I told him immediately. "Jeriah almost died when..."

"Yeah, but that's because the Shadows were inside the diary," the pirate reminded me. "And you never know what important information could be inside it." He slowly reached down and touched the edge of the book. I winced and took a step back as he lifted it up, but nothing happened.

"What does the diary say?" Now that I knew it was safe, I was incredibly interested in what Bella had to say.

"Hang on," Redbeard said sharply. I fell silent as he flipped through the pages. "There's not much in here. On the first page was what Jeriah said to us before he collapsed, and the rest is just everything he told us afterward, about Bella. But..." He flipped back some pages, then flipped them forward again.

"But what?" I snapped, growing impatient.

"It's different handwriting." Redbeard sounded scared now.

"What do you... different handwriting?" I stammered. "Why would that be?"

"The second part of the book wasn't written by Bella, obviously," he muttered to himself. "But then who could have written it?"

"Maybe someone else came back and wrote it, explaining what she had gone through?" I suggested, and then realized that idea didn't work at all. "But nobody else knew what she went through, and why would they have gone through the trouble of writing in her diary?"

"It's not that." Redbeard's voice was shaking. "Bella did write this part, but it wasn't really her. The Shadows must have possessed her while she wrote this, and it's his handwriting."

"You sound alarmed," I told him. "What does that mean for us?"

He closed the diary and tossed it onto the floor. "It means we don't know if that was actually Bella's fate," he said quietly. "It's just what the Shadows want us to believe."