The white sands still smoked faintly where the void had spat them back into the world, thin curls of acrid vapor rising like ghosts unwilling to depart. The arena's marble tiers lay cracked and blackened, as if the ground itself had recoiled from what it had witnessed.
Atlas stood motionless, the axe resting against his shoulder. Its edge, once mirror-bright, was now dulled by divine blood that refused to drip—thick, luminous, clinging like tar.
The air tasted of ozone and copper, sharp enough to sting the back of his throat. His chest rose and fell in slow, deliberate breaths, but beneath the rhythm something else moved—something ancient and patient that had been waiting since the day he first drew breath in this world.
A pulse.
Not his own.
