Three hours later the great hall of House Rotchy had settled into a different kind of quiet — one not born of sleep but of consideration. The obsidian pillars kept their patient hum; the chandelier light washed the carved crescents in pale silver. The rugs underfoot absorbed sound like memory, so that even laughs felt muted, measured, as if the room itself respected the fragile truce that had been struck between grief and purpose.
Jin sat very still, hands folded across his knees, and watched Elizabeth and Tishara with an expression that could be read in two ways: amusement, and a fledgling hunger for knowledge. Sion perched close by, the flicker of her chestnut-red hair catching the chandelier's breath. Her nearness was a quiet claim. The four of them made an odd constellation of warmth and steel beneath the Rotchy vaults.
Jin's voice was casual when he spoke, but under it there was a keen intelligence — a boy's curiosity married to something older, forged in discipline. "Grandmother," he asked, watching Elizabeth with a half-smile, "how do I use machine-energy? You and Aunt Tishara have told me tales of slaying monsters and relic hunts, but there's another thing — how did Aunt Tishara come to be Persephone's and Hades' child? Tell me."
Tishara laughed, a sharp, teasing sound that carried the lacquer of someone amused to be asked. She leaned back and let the light rest on the gold of her hair like coin. "It's simple," she said, as if telling the story of picking a flower. "Or at least, as simple as a thing like reincarnation can be. When I trained, I learned a soul-echo technique with Mother. I bound my spirit in a pattern meant to anchor and return. I fought an outer god and was mortally wounded — I died where places are empty and cold. My soul drifted into the Underworld."
She paused, eyes bright with a memory that was private and vivid. "Mother's life-power pulled me — and because she is a life-goddess, my spirit was drawn to a vessel that belonged to Persephone. I awakened in the child there, formed into what I am now. Persephone and Hades acknowledged it. They gave their blessing. So now, officially, I am Princess of the Underworld. It's a title that sounds grander than the nights I spent learning to braid shadow into a sword."
Jin sat silent, absorbing the bones of the tale. Elizabeth, who had the soft authority of a woman used to answering questions gently, smiled and added, "Jin, now that you are half-god, I will give you my blessings — the sacred life-element. You were born with Uranus' marks, but your mastery is incomplete. If you accept our gifts, the elements we hold can weave around you and steady the machine-energy you now possess."
Tishara looked at Jin, then at Elizabeth, then at Sion. Her smile turned mischievous. "Fine," she said. "I will give you darkness, shadow, and death — the pillars of the Underworld. I will also grant you the Void element. I brought water from the god-pools of the realm of shade; we can steep you in it and anchor the shadow into your flesh."
Sion's voice was softer, but it carried the weight of an old sea. "And I will give you Poseidon's blessings," she said. "Water is not only for drowning; it anchors, remembers, and binds. It will teach you tides inside your chest — a rhythm you can come back to if your new power forgets what it means to be human."
Jin's question came next — simple, precise. "What about Mother? What elements can she wield?"
Tishara threw back her head and laughed, a sound like thrown coin. "Naoko uses all elements," she said. "Any you can conceive, she can call. She is a god-slayer, a breaker of sky. She is beyond common categorization. You cannot handle her blessings — she has passed the place we stand. She is not merely a destruction god or a death god now; she is a force that breaks existence's law."
Jin's crimson eyes narrowed with an odd mixture of awe and calculation. "If Mother is that powerful," he asked quietly, "how can the world survive her presence without tearing itself apart with her power?"
Sion's answer came like a tide's whisper and a threat. "Because she restrains it," she said. "She is beyond existence's rules — her aura is subdued by her will. She is not trapped by the laws of being; she simply slows her pulse so the world doesn't hear the hammer. She does not hurt things unless she means to. She has achieved what few can: to be no one's enemy until she chooses otherwise. Her will alone could topple thrones. Gods avoid her because she is ruin made inevitable."
Jin's smile stayed, sardonic and bright. "Is there anyone who can match her, then?"
Elizabeth considered the question, the lines of age and compassion folding across her face. When she spoke it was with careful honesty. "There are—those who might equal her in certain ways," she said. "But Naoko has the Destruction element fused with the god-heart of Eburneo. She has become paradox: not simply a god of ruin or death, but an entropy beyond classification. A duel with someone of equal level would become an unending collapse or an endless war. Power at that scale does not resolve; it consumes. Naoko stands at the apex. Even those who could challenge her would find the fight without end."
Tishara nodded, adding the bluntness she favored. "You could fight her forever and never win. And if someone did reach her plane, they would likely only hasten the fall of everything. She is not meant to be matched; she is meant to be the thing that ends matches."
Jin absorbed the weight of their words like a student at the foot of a mountain. He let the silence collect and stretch and then leaned back, the corner of his mouth lifting in the private humor that had become his armor.
"So," he said softly, "teach me then. I'll take life, shadow, death, the void, and the sea. Teach me to hold the machine-energy without losing myself. If Mother is summit and storm, then I will learn the foothills and the weather and not collapse when the wind changes."
Elizabeth reached out and placed a warm, tremulous hand on his shoulder; the touch was small but anchored. "We will teach you," she promised. "Not to break the world, but to stand in it."
Tishara reached out and touched the tip of his glove with a finger that briefly shimmered, as if shadow had kissed leather. "And I will teach you how to take death like a tool," she said. "Not for cruelty, but as a craftsman's knife."
Sion smiled, eyes wet for reasons she did not name aloud. "And I will teach you where the tides sleep," she said. "So when the storm comes, you will remember how to float."
The hall listened, and the runes in the pillars thrummed a slow reminder: knowledge is power, and power asks for balance. Outside, Rotchy's obsidian spires kept their silent vigil, and the crescent above the gate watched the slow plotting of fate beneath it. In that hush, family stitched a fragile plan: elements to be given, lessons to be taught, a boy to be shaped — not into a weapon only, but into a man who might one day choose what kind of ruin he wished to be.
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heat: Thank you very much for reading
What do you think of the story so far? Is it good?
Should I speed things up?