Chapter Fifty-Five
If one were to delve deep into the ancient scriptures, those forgotten scrolls and dust-veiled tomes, one might begin to uncover the tangled threads that bind the gods to one another.
There is one thread in particular that has always captivated my curiosity.
A truth that time has quietly buried, that most have either overlooked or never truly known.
Hades has a cousin.
Not just any cousin, but the one who stood at his side as the Underworld took shape, who breathed life into Elysium with divine light.
The very god whom the phoenixians and drakonians bow to beneath gilded suns.
The first flame.
The Sun God.
Tabitha Wysteria
Ash knew where Adriana vanished to on certain mornings. He had always let her go without question, but today he followed, for he understood the weight such journeys carried.
Through the marshlands he trailed her, a land he found oddly beautiful despite its decay.
Charred woods that had once burnt now stood reborn, their twisted limbs heavy with moss; crumbling buildings whispered with echoes of enchantments uttered long ago by witches and warlocks whose voices still seemed to haunt the stone.
He saw it all, not merely with his eyes, but through the cursed visions that clung to his soul.
Tabitha Wysteria—Hecate, as the gods named her—had touched him with a peculiar curse. His sight was no gift like that of a Seer, but a tainted thing, steeped in blood magic. Through it, he glimpsed everything: from the world’s first breath to its final sigh.
Adriana, he knew, had been visiting the wall, different sections of it, seeking a way to bring it down.
She possessed godhood, yes, but not enough power to crumble the entire barrier.
Keir could do it, perhaps, but it would likely tear his fragile mortal vessel apart.
So she searched, endlessly, for another way.
Ash watched as she stepped into one of the old wooden boats left behind by witches of a forgotten age. They had once rowed such vessels with spells, gliding over water like ghosts; but Adriana needed no magic, for divinity itself carried her.
Keeping his distance, Ash followed, his own oars dipping soundlessly into the water.
The marshes were steeped in mist, a ceaseless fog curling like pale phantoms across the surface, thickening until sight became little more than a memory.
Still, he rowed, silent and unrelenting, chasing the shadow of a goddess through a drowned and haunted land.
It took them hours to reach this lonely stretch of the wall, likely a section Adriana had never laid eyes upon before.
At first, Ash had wondered why Adriana never travelled on one of the wyverns, creatures trapped in this wretched land as they were.
But in time, the truth had dawned on him.
The goddess never summoned Ayaru, Nisha, or Daku because they were too conspicuous, too likely to draw the eye.
And for reasons she kept close to her chest, Adriana clearly did not wish word of her little excursions finding its way back to him.
She left her boat moored to a skeletal dock, weathered and forgotten, and walked another hour through silence so thick it seemed to breathe. At last, the wall loomed before her, a monstrous spine of stone that cleaved the world, marking where the Kingdom of Ice pressed against its unyielding face.
Ash knew what lay beyond it.
He unsheathed his sword with care and sank low into the shadow of a thicket, his golden eyes fixed on Adriana as she strode along the wall, palm pressed against its cold, unfeeling surface, muttering curses beneath her breath like prayers to a god who would never answer.
Her shoulders stiffened, her body poised as though she sensed the presence on the other side. But before she could react, the wall where her hand rested erupted in a thunderous blast, stone and mortar exploding outward. The force hurled her back like a ragdoll caught in a gale.
Ash twitched forward but hesitated, waiting, watching. Adriana groaned as she sat up among the debris, dust clinging to her dark hair, her wide eyes reflecting the impossible sight before her.
An enormous gap yawned where once the wall had stood. And through it stepped a figure draped in menace, hands wreathed in curling green smoke.
Vera smiled. A predator’s smile, sharp and knowing.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she purred, her voice honeyed and cruel. ‘Was I interrupting something?’
Adriana surged to her feet, her wyverian blade flashing as she drew it. But Vera’s eyes narrowed, a flick of her wrist sending the sword spinning from Adriana’s grip as though it were nothing more than a child’s toy.
‘Honestly,’ the witch scoffed, closing the distance with deliberate, predatory grace. ‘Did you truly think you could harm me with that?’ A chuckle curled from her lips, low and dark. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Adriana shook her head, stumbling back a step, raw fear glimmering in her dark eyes. ‘Why…?’
Vera halted, leaving a deliberate stretch of air between them, her lips curling into something too sharp to be called a smile.
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you doing this?’
Vera tilted her head like a raven assessing a dying creature.
‘Have you been keeping company with mortals so long their weakness has rotted your heart? Has their sentimentality soaked into your bones?’ A brittle laugh snapped from her lips.
‘Or is it that you’ve forgotten what you did to me, what you did to my sister? ’
‘We didn’t—’
‘You didn’t what? Mean it?’ Vera’s teeth flashed, feral and bright, a snarl barely restrained.
‘You abandoned us. All of us. For what? For them? For mortals?’ She glanced aside, a fleeting shadow of sorrow passing like a stormcloud through her purple eyes.
‘You left us behind to dwell here, to become one of them.’
Adriana’s tears spilt freely now, trailing over her cheeks as her voice trembled. ‘No, Eris… it isn’t like that. We couldn’t bear it anymore. We were… too cruel, too broken.’
Vera’s gaze snapped back to her, sorrow evaporating into pure venom. ‘Cruel?’ she echoed. ‘Cruel is walking out on your children without a word. Cruel is hiding from them. Cruel is abandoning them!’
Adriana’s shoulders sagged as she looked down, her sobs quiet and hoarse. ‘Keir and I… we love you all.’
‘You can’t even speak his true name!’ Vera roared, fury spitting from every syllable. ‘That is not his name!’
‘We thought—’
‘I don’t give a damn what you thought, mother.
’ The title was spat like poison. Yet, slowly, Vera’s rage dulled, simmering instead into something far colder.
‘You made your choice. For a century, we clawed at the curse that whore Hecate laid on us, binding us to our realms, barring us from your precious mortal soil. While you and father played house here, safe, hidden.’ She glanced down at her nails, a cruel smirk ghosting her lips.
‘I hope your little life of lies was worth it… hiding from your own children. I must say you are rather good at deceit. My real mother abandoned me but then you came along, married my father and pretended to love me, to care for me, to be the mother I never had. But you abandoned me too. You’re all the same. ’
‘I’m sorry Eris. We didn’t want to leave you. None of you. But there is another way,’ Adriana said, her spine straightening as she summoned every fragment of courage within her. ‘We do not have to live as we once did.’
‘And why not?’ Vera’s lips curved into a cruel smile. ‘What is so wrong with being gods?’
‘We are evil!’ Adriana’s voice cracked, raw and unguarded.
Vera’s purple eyes shimmered with irritation, a glint of something darker beneath. ‘Then let us begin again, mother. Allow me to cleanse this world, and we may build anew upon its ashes.’
‘The mortals have done nothing wrong,’ Adriana whispered, despair softening her words. ‘They must be left in peace, Eris.’
‘We created them,’ Vera snapped, her voice a whip crack of fury. ‘They belong to us.’
Adriana’s shoulders slumped, defeat edging her features.
‘Back home, I cared for nothing but power. My power. My creations, my victories, my hunger to outshine every god who dared stand beside me. But here… here I learnt what it is to love without measure, to be kind without seeking reward, to cherish another simply for the sake of their existence.’
Vera scoffed, venom dripping from the sound. ‘And all of that is worth more to you than your own children?’ She spat on the frozen ground, her face twisting with disgust. ‘So be it. I shall kill you here and now. I’ll send you crawling back home.’
‘Don’t do this, Eris,’ Adriana pleaded, her voice breaking like thin ice.
But Vera was already moving, lifting her hands as coils of green magic spiralled around her fingers like venomous serpents. ‘We could have been a family,’ she whispered, voice trembling with a pain she would never admit, ‘but you… you could never truly love us.’
The blast came before Adriana could answer, a wave of emerald fire slamming into her and throwing her like a broken doll across the ground.
Vera moved with predatory grace, snatching Adriana up by the throat, fingers curling tight into her windpipe. Adriana clawed at her, her black wyverian eyes wide, panic and heartbreak drowning in them as breath fled her lungs.
Ash moved, the choice no longer his to weigh. He sprinted forward, sword in hand, exhaling a low breath over the steel as flames roared to life along its length, molten and hungry for blood.
Vera turned at the sound of his approach, lips curving into a serpent’s smile as she released Adriana, the goddess crumpling to the ground. ‘And look who has come out to play,’ she purred.
Without granting him the mercy of a heartbeat, she hurled a sphere of searing green fire. Ash twisted aside, the heat licking at his cheek as the spell shattered against the earth behind him.
‘Here to rescue my mother, are you?’ Vera’s voice dripped with venomous delight. ‘Tell me, did she ever bother to share with you who she truly is?’
Ash kept his distance, eyes never leaving her, his boots shifting lightly through the frost as he circled. She mirrored him, every movement deliberate, predatory, like a panther ready to strike.
‘Themis,’ Vera continued, purple eyes gleaming with cruel amusement as they slid towards Adriana’s limp form.
‘Themis, goddess of justice. Creator of the valkyrians. The righteous one who dared to keep the gods themselves in line, always crying for justice.’ Her lips twisted into something bitter.
‘And my father? The father of all gods, the most powerful of them all. Yet here they are, hiding like frightened mortals, abandoning their own children to rot.’
Ash’s grip tightened on the hilt of his blade, his golden eyes never once leaving her. He was patient, coiled like a spring.
‘If you kill me,’ Vera whispered, her grin widening, ‘all you’ll manage is to send me back to my realm… and snuff out the real Vera entirely.’
‘I know,’ Ash said, his voice low, steady.
‘And you don’t care?’ she pressed, eyes narrowing.
Ash gave no answer.
‘Fine then,’ Vera sneered, tilting her head in cruel amusement, her beauty twisting into something feral and wicked. ‘Let’s play.’
She lunged.
The impact was a storm. She struck with such violent force that they were both flung backwards, the world spinning before Ash slammed into the earth.
Vera straddled him, her hands curling into claws as she brought them down like hammers.
The ground beneath them cracked, stone splintering like brittle glass.
Ash gritted his teeth, muscles straining as he thrust his sword upward, the flaming steel a barrier between them. Vera only chuckled, her breath a whisper of ice. She blew upon the blade, and the sacred drakonian fire sputtered… then died, leaving cold steel trembling between them.
‘Are you frightened now, little prince?’ Vera hissed, her lips curling into a cruel smile as she gripped the sword’s edge, heedless of the way her own hands split and bled upon the steel. She forced the blade down, pressing its biting edge against Ash’s chest.
Ash strained against her weight, his own palms searing with pain as he gripped the blade to hold it back, skin tearing open beneath the pressure. Blood slicked the hilt and steel alike.
Then, without warning, Vera was hurled from him, her body crashing into the shattered remains of the wall.
Ash lay still for a heartbeat, lungs dragging in ragged gasps, before he surged to his feet.
He ignored the raw agony of his bleeding hands as he lifted his sword again, ready to strike, until he froze.
Standing behind him was Mal Blackburn.
Her amethyst eyes burnt with a dangerous light, her sword angled loosely at her side.
And behind her… an army. Ash’s golden eyes widened as he realised what he was seeing.
An army of souls, summoned from the very earth, spectral warriors clutching ghost-forged blades, their hollow eyes awaiting the command of their princess.
‘Do not dare touch my husband,’ Mal said, her voice a blade in itself.
Then she lunged, swift and merciless.