Bonus Chapter
JOREN
I was asleep.
Which means I was innocent. And because I was innocent, the universe chose violence.
Something slammed hard enough to rattle my window, vibrate the floor, and make my candle snuff itself out in what I can only assume was self-preservation.
I shot upright in bed.
“…No,” I whispered. “Absolutely not. I’ve been asleep for…”
I squinted at the dark.
“…forty minutes.”
Another THUNK hit so deep the stones hummed.
I threw off my blankets, jammed my feet into my boots, grabbed my cloak, cursed the gods in alphabetical order, and stomped into the hallway.
Static prickled against my skin. The air felt wrong, coiled, humming like a spell winding itself too tight.
This was not weather, this was Atlas-level disaster energy, and I was not paid enough for this. I shoved open the outer door to the courtyard, and the universe greeted me by slapping a fish into my face.
A full-grown river fish.
Right across the cheek.
It slid down my jaw, flopped onto the stones, and accepted death the way I was beginning to envy.
I stared at it.
It stared at nothing, because it was extremely dead.
“…No,” I said again, quieter, more afraid.
A second fish hit the stones beside me.
Then a third.
Then the night sky opened like someone had overturned the entire river straight onto my head.
“OH, COME ON!” I shouted at absolutely everything. “I LITERALLY JUST WOKE UP!”
Fish rained mercilessly.
Wet, slippery projectiles slapping into puddles and each other with deranged enthusiasm. The courtyard became a writhing carpet of aquatic corpses and future therapy bills.
Water rose around my boots.
A trout bounced off my knee.
Something large smacked a guard across the back of the head.
“This is not my job,” I told the gods.
The gods disagreed by dropping a carp onto my shoulder. Before I could fully process my suffering, a massive cracking sound split the courtyard, the same one that had woken me.
Lightning speared down from a twisted knot of clouds, slammed into the ancient sycamore, and split it cleanly in half.
Wood shrieked.
Embers hissed.
Branches rained down.
Something big hit the upper branches with a catastrophic splintering crunch. I stumbled forward, blinking rain out of my eyes.
Then I saw it.
A boat.
A whole, very wet, very misplaced fishing skiff was now jammed sideways into the broken tree, dripping river water like it was deeply ashamed of its life choices.
“I woke up because of that,” I whispered in horror. “The BOAT.”
I stared at it. It sat crookedly in the branches like it regretted its own existence.
And I… regretted mine.
The bushes rustled. A soft, eerie clucking broke the air.
I turned.
A chicken emerged, not a normal chicken.
Not even a moderately disturbed chicken.
No, this chicken looked like it had been electrocuted, resurrected, and then haunted by its own ghost. Its feathers stuck out like it had wandered through a storm made of pure chaos, its eyes were too wide. And they were locked on me.
We made eye contact.
Immediate, mutual hatred.
“Don’t,” I warned it.
The chicken took one step. I backed up.
It blinked once.
Then CHARGED.
“NONONO—!”
I dodged, slipped on a fish and nearly broke my spine trying not to die.
The chicken slammed into my shin, flapped directly into my face, and then, with malicious precision, latched onto my bootlace.
“LET. GO.”
It did not.
We tugged.
It tugged harder.
I tugged with the desperation of a man fighting for his life.
“You lightning-fried little DEMON…”
My boot slipped off my foot and went flying. A majestic arc of humiliation landing somewhere in the darkness with a splash.
The chicken, triumphant, screeched into the rain.
I stared at my bare, soggy sock. Then at the chicken and then the sky.
“Why,” I asked the gods, “do you hate me personally?”
Something screamed.
Long.
Haunted.
Existential.
I froze, tilting my head up. There on the roof, the highest roof, was a goat. It was silhouetted in lightning, rain cascading off its horns. Its eyes glowing white like it had witnessed cosmic horrors and was now considering a career in prophecy.
It stared directly at me.
And screamed again.
At me. Specifically, at me.
“Oh sure,” I muttered. “Join in. Why not. Everyone else is having a breakdown.”
Lightning cracked again, this time hitting the western wall. Stone split open with a deafening boom. Chunks of masonry tumbled down and barely missed killing me.
I inhaled through my teeth.
“No,” I said, voice shaking. “Nope. I’m done. We’re done. There is no version of this where I handle it alone.”
I splashed my way to the kitchens and found a produce basket. Then I began collecting fish like a man gathering evidence for a divine trial.
A guard stared at me in mute horror.
If anyone asked, I had reached Acceptance.
The goat screamed again from above, unwavering.
“I hear you!” I yelled up at it. “YOU ARE NOT HELPING!”
My one remaining boot squelched with every step, my sock made noises I will never emotionally recover from. The fish sloshed in the basket like they were mocking me.
By the time the sky began to lighten, I had, lost a boot, fought a chicken, witnessed a boat launched into a tree, been assaulted by airborne seafood, possibly traumatized a goat, and survived structural damage to the castle.
I was one hour older and fifty years closer to death.
Dawn gold bled into the courtyard. Guards avoided looking at me. My sock had reached the “fully saturated despair” stage.
“This,” I told the fish in my basket, “is officially above my pay grade.”
I turned toward Atlas’s wing, dragging myself through the corridor. I left puddles, fish juice, and trauma in my wake.
I stopped at his door as sunlight crept across the hall, lifted my fist, took one breath and knocked like a man announcing an apocalypse.
And you know the rest.