War learned how to breathe.
Every scream became oxygen—raw, ragged inhalations drawn from the throats of the fleeing and the fallen. Every prayer, whispered or wailed to indifferent heavens, became fuel—hot and intoxicating, stoking the furnace behind Ares's ribs.
Every shattered body scattered across the cracked marble, every fleeing demigod scrambling over golden benches, every demigod who turned their back and ran—each fed the towering thing that now stood before Atlas.
Ares spread his arms wide, palms open as if embracing an old lover.
And the lower heaven answered.
Red mist rose from the broken stone where demigods had fallen earlier in the tournament—blood burned free of flesh, evaporating into steaming spirals that curled upward like sacrificial incense offered to some older, hungrier god.
