The world had grown unfamiliar.
Ten years had passed since dawn forgot how to rise.
Where once the sky blushed with warmth at morning's edge, now twilight lingered with an eternal almost-night. Crops withered without rhythm. Birds lost their songs. Children were born under stars instead of sun, and their eyes looked too old too early.
Even time, once so firm and certain, now stumbled.
The seasons came out of order. Winters froze in summer. Springs arrived too soon, or never at all. No one knew how old they were anymore. No one wanted to count.
But in the East, where the land was still scorched with memory, something stirred.
On the ruins of Eos's castle, once a palace woven of cloudlight and skyfire there grew a tree unlike any other. Towering and silver-veined, its trunk twisted like strands of gold spun by grief. It rose from the broken stone where she had fallen, roots curling through shattered marble like fingers through ash.
And at its summit, held in a cradle of coiled branches, bloomed a single, swollen flower.
It had pulsed with a strange heartbeat for a decade.
Until now.
The petals split with a sound like thunder muffled by velvet. A wave of golden mist burst outward, blanketing the sky, illuminating the dead soil with brief, impossible warmth.
From within that, flower curled like a child inside the promise of grief came a boy.
Naked. Shivering. Alive.
Tithonus.
Not the withered husk he had once become, but young again, no more than sixteen in appearance. Skin smooth, limbs strong, hair the shade of sun-kissed bronze. But in his chest, where once a dagger had pierced him through, there remained the hilt of that blade: Aetherfang.
Its metal no longer glowed. It pulsed.
He opened his eyes. They were the color of dusk.
And he remembered everything.
Her smile. Her scream. The final kiss. The end of everything.
His fingers touched the hilt. Slowly, reverently, he drew the dagger from his own chest.
It left no wound.
Only silence.
Until-
"I wondered when the flower would finally bloom."
The voice came from the edge of the ruins. It was neither kind nor cruel. Just inevitable.
He turned. There stood a woman cloaked in black, silver-threaded robes trailing behind her like moonlight spilled on stone. Her face was pale, sharp, ancient, yet oddly untouched. Her eyes shimmered like torches caught in deep water.
She stood between shadows. Between realities.
"Hecate," he said. Or perhaps remembered.
She inclined her head. "Once. And still."
He looked at the dagger. "What is this?"
"That," she said, stepping forward, "is Aetherfang. Forged before time had breath. It is the only blade that can kill a god."
He flinched. She continued.
"When a god is slain with it, the dagger takes on their essence ,their domain, their truth. It drinks divinity like wine. It remembers. Eos… when she took her own life and yours with it, she bound her very soul into that blade."
Tithonus looked down at the weapon. It had changed. No longer a simple dagger, it had lengthened into something between a short sword and a scepter. The hilt coiled like rays of the sun. Its blade shimmered with dawnlight… and sorrow.
"But then why am I…?" he started.
"Alive?" Hecate smiled. "Mortal?"
She raised a hand, and a circle of runes flared to life in the air between them.
"She used her remaining power to burn away the curse. Chronion's decree was unmade—by love, and by sacrifice. You are mortal now, Tithonus. Truly. No longer a suffering ghost. You were reborn as yourself."
He felt the wind for the first time, truly felt it. And his breath caught.
"But there is a cost."
Hecate turned, and the sky above them flickered.
"You see it, don't you? The world is stuck. The sun moves, yes–but the sky does not follow. Without Eos, the heavens do not turn. Day has no will. Light has no herald."
"People are suffering," she added, voice lower now. "The gods try to help the mortals, but they are distant, fragmented, and proud. Without a goddess of the dawn, the world will not heal."
Tithonus looked away. "So what do you want from me?"
"The blade," she said.
He turned sharply.
She held up a hand. "Not stolen. Not demanded. The choice is yours."
She walked slowly around him, voice echoing like a ritual.
"If the dagger is returned to the Council of Immortals, the essence of Eos can be used to create a new dawn–a new goddess, born not from fire and stars, but from purpose. She will be able to restore what was lost."
Tithonus said nothing.
"But," Hecate whispered, closer now, "Eos used her final breath to shield you. Her power is fading. The gods will soon see your rebirth as theft. As a threat. If you do not act soon, they will act first."
Tithonus clenched the weapon. "Why me?"
"Because you were loved more than the world."
She stepped back.
"The sky is waiting. The Council is waiting."
The air around him grew strange, charged.
"But the dagger is yours. The choice is yours."
She faded like moonlight before a storm.
And Tithonus found himself no longer on the ground but standing in a vast hall carved of stars and silence.
The Council of Immortals sat in a perfect circle, thrones of fire and void and sea and sky, eyes glowing, unreadable. At the center of them all was a single pillar of golden light.
And he stood beneath it.
Mortal.
Alone.
Holding the only weapon that could kill them all.