The silence that followed Agouri's crying was heavier than any scream. In that room of horrors, surrounded by the death they themselves had sown, the two boys remained in an embrace—one, a fallen god whose body protested against the power it had channeled; the other, a boy whose soul had just returned to a world of pain.
Outside, the villa was in a state of leaderless chaos. The screams had turned into whispers of panic. With the Kratos family and their chief enforcer dead, the structure of power had collapsed. The guards had fled, and the servants hid, fearing both the intruders and the uncertainty of tomorrow.
Hermes knew that this window of anarchy wouldn't last forever. With an effort that cost him a groan of pain, he pulled away from Agouri, who seemed catatonic, his gaze fixed on nothing. The stab wound in Hermes's shoulder was a sharp, throbbing pain, but it was just another note in the symphony of his agony.
"We need to get out of here," Hermes said, his voice a rasp.
He tore strips from the luxurious tapestry on the wall and, with a skill he didn't know he possessed, cleaned and bandaged his own shoulder, then tended to Agouri's smaller wounds. The boy moved like a puppet, eyes empty, allowing Hermes to guide him.
On their way out, Hermes gathered a few items from the room and stored them in a simple bag, also retrieving from the floor the xiphos he had dropped.
The journey out of the villa was surreal. They walked through bloodstained corridors, past the bodies of guards and masters alike—ghosts in their own tale of vengeance. No one stopped them.
By the stables, still smelling of smoke, Hermes found a frightened horse and hitched it to a simple cart used for transporting supplies. He helped the unresponsive Agouri climb into the back and then took the reins.
However, he didn't head straight for the main road. He wanted to avoid the surviving servants and the occasional guard who might still be around. Guided by an instinct he didn't understand, he drove the cart toward a small hill on the property—a place from which one could see the sea glimmering under the light beginning to break on the horizon. Dawn was coming.
There, he stopped. With the xiphos he had taken from Rinos, he pried a flat stone from the ground. Then, using the sharp tip of the blade, he began to carve—slowly, painfully, but with precision—a single name into its surface.
THESEUS
He planted the stone into the earth—a humble headstone for a boy who deserved a monument.
The sight of his brother's name seemed to stir something in Agouri. He climbed down from the cart, approached the improvised grave, and touched the freshly carved letters.
"He… he wanted to be a hero," Agouri's voice was a broken whisper—the first coherent words he had spoken since the massacre. "Not like Achilles or Heracles. He told me that true heroes were those who protected the weak, because he knew what it was like to feel weak every day. He wanted no one to ever feel as small as he did."
The pain in his voice was palpable. He looked at Hermes, his eyes full of endless sorrow. "And he died. Without ever having the chance."
Leaning against the cart to bear the weight of his wounded body, Hermes looked at the boy and at the grave. For the first time, his words carried no cynicism or detachment.
"Then honor his dream," Hermes said, his voice still hoarse but steady. "His body is here, but the dream doesn't have to die with him. Don't let his death be in vain."
Agouri turned to the horizon, where the sun was rising, painting the sky in orange and purple. He looked at his own hands, still stained, and closed them into fists. A new light—a spark of determination—began to burn in his eyes, driving away the emptiness.
"I will," he said, with a conviction that surprised even himself. He turned to the headstone. "My name… the name they gave me… died in that room, with that monster. I am no longer 'Agouri'."
He touched the carved name one last time.
"From now on, I am Theseus. And I will fulfill his promise."
Hermes nodded slowly. His gaze drifted for a moment to the horizon, as if reflecting on something. A short, sudden smile crossed his face. The cycle of pain had given birth to a new purpose.
"Then you'll have to fight him for that name, when we take it back from Hades."
He said it casually as he climbed back onto the cart and took the reins.
The boy raised his eyebrows in surprise. Had he heard correctly?
The newly named Theseus climbed into the back, his body still weak, but his posture already different.
As the cart rolled away from the hill and the still-smoldering villa, the morning sun lit the dusty road ahead of them. They were two broken figures in a hostile world—one, a fallen god beginning to understand the weight of humanity; the other, a boy who, to survive his past, had just inherited the name and the dream of a hero. Their journey was only beginning.