BenChapter 1The god comes screaming through the trees, shoving them to each side like matchsticks, breaking and burning them as it thrashes its way out of the woods to come running, stumbling,
screaming to the shore of the lake–
Where me and Max have nowhere to run.
It looks like a giant, skinless man, just muscles on bones, a jaw full of teeth, and wild, staring eyeballs with no lids. Maybe it’s screaming because of the skinlessness or maybe because flames cover nearly all of it, like it’s coated in fuel. The burning is almost invisible except in a kind of rippling glow all around it with blue and yellow flames billowing from the top of its head. You can see its skinless body underneath as it screams and screams–
Which is
terrible, a sound so inhuman and despairing it actually hurts, actually makes your skin pull and pucker like it’s trying to get away, but the scream rose so fast all we really had time to do when we heard it was turn around, and there was a god–
“Ben, come on!” Max yells, grabbing my arm–
I must be going with him, but even now I know there’s no time, that a
god is coming for us and no one can outrun a god and I can’t take my eyes off it or plug my ears from the scream–
The ground shakes as the god powers forward, the water in the lake actually splashing, as boom, boom, boom, the god stomps toward us like a charging bull, crushing bushes and stones, burning everything it touches. Like a mountain coming at you, like the whole landscape peeling up into the sky, as if someone’s grabbed the far corners of it like a blanket and pulled it into the air, and all you can do is watch your death come at you, because there’s nowhere to stand, nowhere to run–
Though we’re surrounded by animals who are
trying to, breaking from the forest in front of the god, scrambling in all directions, tiny deer, forest squirrels, low-flying birds in wide-eyed terror, even the bared teeth of a rine, which up until this moment I would have called the scariest thing out here. Their Noise is a panic, no words, just the need to get away, the same need that’s made Max try to drag me along the lakeshore, not because it will help, but because our bodies refuse to accept the obvious–
We’re going to die–
There is nothing, not one little thing, we can do to stop it. We will be killed by a burning, screaming god–
And it’s on us even though we’re running along the lakeshore–
It’s here–
We duck our heads, instinctively, stupidly, as the god stretches out its hand to–
To
me–
Oh, crap–
It’s reaching for me–
It’s going to grab me–
I push Max to get him out of the way if I can–
The god’s hand comes down–
I hunch my back, waiting for the crush of the fingers, the burn of the flames–
And–
The god misses me.
It steps over us both, its momentum carrying it on past us with a stride as long as a crop field, one burning, twitching foot above our heads just for a moment, its hand swinging past me, so close I feel the heat burn the hairs on the back of my neck, like I’ve only just slipped out of its grasp.
But there’s no time to think about it, because the god crashes into the lake, its whole body falling forward, every towering, burning muscle of it, sending a huge wave of water over us, blasting away our little fishing spot, smashing us back up the bank in a drowning flood.
I reach out for Max, but my arm is knocked away by a log that’s been swept up. The water is murky and brown, the mud stirred up by the giant that’s fallen into it, and when it finally drops us and we cough all the water out of our lungs, we’re covered in a layer of dirt and silt.
And as sudden as that, it’s quiet.
Copyright © 2026 by Patrick Ness. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
