The ruin behind him smoldered, the final breath of a forgotten god curling upward into the canopy like incense offered to a sky that no longer cared.
Kael emerged from the stone maw just as twilight thickened, bathing the forest in bruised purple and copper. Blood from his wounds clung to him like war paint, drying in serpentine trails across his arms and face. The Shard at his chest pulsed faintly under his torn shirt, its glow subdued… sated, for now.
Ahead—through the thinning trees—he heard voices.
Familiar.
Ragged.
Pained.
He crested a ridge of broken roots and found them.
The demigods.
Half their number lay slumped in the grass, wrapped in crude bandages, faces pale from blood loss and broken bones. Two of them—the twins who'd flanked the leader earlier—tended a third, her leg twisted unnaturally beneath her. The leader himself, the bronze-clad son of Ares, leaned against a tree, his arm held in a splint fashioned from shield shards.
Their heads turned as Kael stepped into view.
The forest quieted.
The tension was a drawn bowstring.
One of them—the youngest, a son of Hermes by the look of his eyes—scrambled for his blade.
Kael didn't stop walking.
He passed them like they weren't there. A godslayer cutting through wounded predators.
"Hold!" the leader barked, pushing off the tree. He winced, teeth gritted. "You again…"
Kael didn't respond. His gaze was fixed ahead, on the trail leading back toward Havenwyck. Each of his steps was measured. Heavy. Purposeful.
"You disappeared into that ruin and left us to die," the demigod snapped.
Kael paused at that—just for a heartbeat. Then he turned his head slightly, just enough for the edge of his profile to show, cast in the dying light.
"You ambushed me," he said, voice flat. "You lost."
"You could've helped—"
"I didn't come here to help you."
The leader's face twisted. "You have no honor."
Kael turned fully now, his gray eyes void of fury or cruelty—just... absence.
"I'm not a son of Olympus," he said. "Your codes mean nothing to me."
One of the injured demigods, the twin with the burned arm, coughed. "You fight like something born of Tartarus…"
Kael's expression didn't shift. But a bitter laugh rose in his throat, sharp and colorless. "You're not wrong."
The leader stepped forward, fury overriding caution. "What are you?"
Kael stepped toward him—slowly. The firelight caught his face: a mixture of soot, dried blood, and quiet ruin.
"I'm what's left when gods forget their debts and men are too weak to collect them."
He reached into his cloak and tossed something forward.
It landed with a heavy thud in the dirt.
A small bag—filled with bandages, bitter-smelling herbs, and powdered silverroot.
A silence settled over the grove.
The youngest reached for it tentatively.
Kael was already walking again.
One of the twins called after him, voice hoarse: "Why spare us now?"
Kael didn't turn.
"I don't kill things that already know they're dying."
And with that, he vanished into the woods again, a ghost cut from storm clouds and sacrifice.
Behind him, the demigods sat in stunned quiet.
Not grateful.
Not angry.
Just afraid.
Not of Kael's power—but of how inhuman a fellow human could be.
The woods closed behind him, trees arching like ancient ribs over a path worn only by ghosts. Kael walked in silence. The kind of silence that pressed against the ears—not peace, but pressure. The Shard's pulse had dimmed to a faint echo in his chest, but the fire of battle still burned under his skin, each heartbeat thrumming against half-healed wounds.
By the time the first spires of Havenwyck peeked through the dense canopy, night had fully claimed the land. The mansion rose from the dark earth like a monument to secrets—its silhouette jagged and regal, bathed in moonlight and moss.
Kael approached the front gate, pushing it open with his shoulder. The wrought iron groaned in protest, as if reluctant to allow even him entry. He passed through the courtyard without pause, boots scuffing the gravel, breath misting in the chill.
Inside, Havenwyck welcomed him not with warmth but with memory.
Flickering lamps lit the lower halls. The portraits lining the corridor seemed to watch his return with quiet judgment—painted gods, lost kings, and nameless ancestors whose gazes had always followed him just a beat too long.
He moved through them like a shadow retracing old steps.
In the washroom, Kael stripped off what remained of his tunic—charred, torn, clinging to dried blood. The wound in his side, from the god's sunfire spear, pulsed angrily. He poured a tin flask of medicinal alcohol over it without ceremony.
He did not scream.
Steam rose from the gash, the flesh hissing in protest. His jaw clenched. He grabbed a half-ripped cloth from the shelf and pressed it to the wound, binding it with practiced motion. This wasn't the first time. It wouldn't be the last.
Scars crisscrossed his torso like a language of its own.
After tending to his injuries, Kael walked the halls with purpose, the echo of his footsteps mixing with the groan of old floorboards and wind pressing against the high glass windows. His destination was the mansion's western wing—long sealed, but not to him.
He stopped before a door carved with constellations—an imitation of the same stars that had guided him to the ruins.
The Library of Echoes.
Kael placed his palm to the door. The Shard pulsed once beneath his skin, and the lock clicked softly open.
The door creaked.
The air inside was dry and cold, scented with dust, vellum, and faint ozone—like a storm long-passed but not forgotten. Shelves towered into shadow, filled with tomes bound in cracked leather and faded cloth. Some whispered when you touched them. Others wept ink.
He didn't need to search long.
The book sat where he'd left it—on a pedestal of bone wood beneath a frozen oil lamp that had never once flickered.
It was massive. Bound in gray leather the color of storm clouds, with no title on the spine. Just a sigil: the mark of the One Who Denied the Sky.
Kael opened it carefully.
The pages breathed—literally. They shifted under his fingers like lungs exhaling parchment. Each word on the page shimmered faintly, etched in a language not dead but dreaming.
He turned to the marked passage—the one that had sent him to the ruins, to the god, to the compass now resting in his cloak.
There it was.
A crude sketch of the star glass compass. Below it, scrawled in sharp, uneven script:"When fire is conquered by frost and light is broken by memory, the path shall uncoil. The needle points not north—but inward."
Kael read the words again. And again.
His fingers trembled slightly, not with fear—but with the weight of recognition. He'd read them before. Long ago. In another life.
The pages turned themselves, revealing new entries—ones that hadn't been there when he first discovered the book. The ink was fresh. Wet.
Maps. Glyphs. Names.
Arashiel.Tammuz.Ymir.Nyame.Enenra.
Kael's breath caught.
These were not just fragments.
They were anchors.
Remnants of the divine war. Beings whose essence had been buried, chained, or bound—each tied to a different shard of the Aegis.
And the compass… was drawing him to the next.
He closed the book slowly, running his hand over its leather cover. It throbbed faintly with heat, like a resting heart.
He stood in the silent library, wounded, half-shadowed by flickering candlelight, his reflection barely recognizable in the dark window glass beyond.
He had become something else.
Not mortal.
Not divine.
But necessary.
The journey hadn't ended in the ruin. It had barely begun.
Kael turned and left the library behind, the book clutched in one hand and the compass in the other. Tomorrow, the hunt would resume.
But tonight, he would once again visit the tomb of The One Who Denied theSky