Chapter 25 #2
"Faith's leader ordered this. Signed off on murdering my people." His eyes are steady, calm—worse than rage. "They will answer for that with blood. The rest—politics, exposure, public theater—I'll allow. But the head of Faith dies by my hand. That's the cost. That's how this ends."
I don't flinch. I don't argue.
"Okay."
His gaze sharpens.
"Yes, I got it. Aright," I say again. "Exposure first. Collapse of authority. Then you get your kill. Does that work?"
He holds my stare.
"That works."
The scarred man opens his mouth, closes it, glances at Renan—who offers nothing but that blank, careful expression that says this is above my pay grade and I'm enjoying watching you all realize it.
"Orders." Koshin's voice shifts, commanding now. "I want every piece of evidence gathered. Witnesses interviewed. Documentation compiled and ready to distribute. Fast and quiet. Faith doesn't know we're coming until everyone else already knows what they did."
The Discord leaders nod. One by one. Some slow, some reluctant, but they all nod.
"Go."
They go, filing out and throwing glances back at the table—at Koshin, at me. The silver-haired woman pauses at the exit, holds my gaze a beat too long, then disappears.
The door closes.
Three of us left. Renan, Koshin, and the mortal who talked her way into a war council and walked out with her throat intact.
Seris would be proud.
"Renan." Koshin doesn't look at him. "Preparations."
"Yup." Renan stands, and his eyes meet mine. "Try not to do anything stupid while I'm gone."
"That's rich, coming from you."
His smirk turns into a wide, pleasing grin. Then he's gone, and it's just us.
Koshin doesn't move.
I wait. My body is screaming for sleep. My brain is screaming louder.
"Come with me."
He doesn't wait for an answer. Just walks out of the Hollow.
We don't speak on the way back. Through the corridors, up the stairs, past random runners and elites. The familiar route to his chambers—our chambers, I guess, though that still feels wrong to think.
The door closes behind us. I expect him to say something. Explain. Instead he crosses to the far wall—the one I've looked at a hundred times, bare stone, nothing special—and presses his palm flat against it.
A seam appears. Stone sliding back into stone, revealing a narrow doorway I never knew existed.
Of course. Of course there's a secret passage in the bedroom. Of course I've been sleeping ten feet from a hidden door for days and never noticed. This is Discord. Everything is secrets wrapped in lies wrapped in more secrets.
He looks at me. Waiting.
My legs are tired. My whole body is tired. But I stand anyway, and I follow him into the dark.
The staircase is narrow. Stone steps carved through rock—no railing, just darkness and the sound of our footsteps. Koshin moves ahead, silent, and I focus on not falling and try not to think about where we're going.
The air changes as we climb. Colder. Wind now—faint at first, then stronger—and gray light filtering down from above.
The passage opens.
I stop.
We're above the city. Way above—an alcove carved into the cliffside, raw stone, open sky, Discord territory spread out below. Wind hits my face and I can see for miles. Smoke from the fires. Distant House territories rising against the horizon.
Nothing here but stone. Bare walls, bare floor. No furniture, no comfort. Just rock and sky and deliberate silence.
Koshin crosses to the far wall and pulls the blade from his back—the one he always carries, the one I've seen strapped to him since the first day. Jagged. Pale—white, almost. The shape is wrong somehow. Not metal.
He sets it against the stone. Careful. Almost gentle.
My gut tightens. The blade matters. I can feel it matters. I just don't know why yet.
Koshin walks to the edge and sits, legs hanging over nothing, the city a fatal drop below him, his eyes fixed somewhere I can't follow.
I stay where I am. Looking at the blade.
"I've never brought anyone here." His voice is quiet. Wind almost takes it. "Renan knows the door exists. He's never been inside."
I don't have words for that.
So I say nothing. Just stand there, trying to make sense of why I'm here and failing.
"What you did tonight." He still hasn't turned. "In the square. No one does that."
"Yeah, well." My voice comes out rough. "Seemed like a good way to get myself killed. Couldn't resist."
"No one tells me to stop."
"Someone should." The words slip out. "Someone should have been telling you to stop for years. You're a disaster."
He's quiet for a moment. I can't see his face.
"They don't," he says finally. "You did."
I walk forward. Slow. My legs are screaming, but I make them work until I'm a few feet behind him, close enough to see the tension in his shoulders, the way his good hand grips the stone.
"You listened," I say. "That's the part I can't figure."
"No," he says. "You can't."
Wind. Cold on my face, my arms. Smoke from below. Old fires, still burning.
"I'm not a god."
My ears ring. Did he—
"What?"
He turns. Looks at me. His eyes are wrong—not empty now, but full. Too full. Ancient.
"I'm not a god, Iowyn. I never was."
"I don't—that's not—what?"
"The Titans came before the gods." His voice is flat, reciting something he's said before, maybe only to himself. "Cosmic constants. Truth, memory, creation, death. We didn't rule. We simply were. And the younger gods—our children, in a way—wanted something we couldn't give them."
"Worship," I hear myself say. Distant. Like someone else is speaking. "Ambition."
"Movement." His mouth twists. "So they took it."
Titans.
Old stories. Older than the Houses, older than everything—the gods rose from the ashes of—
"You're a Titan."
"The last one." His mouth twists. "As far as anyone needs to know."
He stops. His head tilts slightly, like he's listening to something I can't hear. His eyes flick to the blade against the wall.
"I know," he mutters. "I'm getting there."
I stare at him. "What?"
"Nothing." He shakes his head, refocuses on me. "Koshin the Witness. Titan of Truth. Until they decided truth was too dangerous and turned me into something more... manageable."
My hand finds the wall.
"The rebellion." I'm putting pieces together, fragments of old stories, things I barely remember. "The younger gods led it. They called it—"
"Liberation. Freedom from the old order." His voice has gone rough, scraping. "They hunted us. One by one. My sister. My brothers. Everyone I—"
He stops.
The wind howls. The city glitters below, oblivious.
"Elyr." The name comes out broken. Grief flickering through his face before he shuts it down. "Titan of Memory. She was—she was the only one who—"
Nothing. Just his breathing, harsh in the silence.
"They killed her. Used her spine to forge chains." He looks at the blade against the wall. That wrong, pale blade. "The chains they used to bind me."
The blade. White. Jagged.
Titan bone.
My stomach turns over. "That's—"
"What's left of her. Yes." He's not looking at me anymore. "The chains were made from her body. When I escaped, I took what remained. Reforged it." His hand moves toward the blade, then stops. "The only piece of her I could keep."
I should say something. Offer comfort. Do whatever normal people do when someone tells them they carry their dead companion's spine as a weapon. But my mind is static—wind and his voice and things that rewrite everything I thought I knew.
He's not done.
"When I escaped the binding, I killed everyone who remembered what I was.
Every god who knew the truth." He's looking at the city now, not at me.
"I hunted them for years. When it was over, only the new generation survived.
Gods born into the lie. They think I've always been Discord.
" His laugh is ugly, short. "I let them believe it. "
My legs fold. Right there, on raw stone, a few feet from the edge.
Koshin watches me. Waiting for something. Screaming, maybe. Running.
"You're a Titan." My voice sounds far away. "The Titan of Truth."
"Yes."
"And everyone thinks you're the Mad God of Discord."
"Yes."
"And you've been pretending for—how long?"
"Millennia." … "Longer. I've lost count."
I stare at him. At the sling on his arm. The ash in his hair. The scars on his wrists that suddenly make a different kind of sense—remnants of chains forged from someone he loved.
"Who else knows?"
"One person." He's watching my face, reading something there. "Renan."
"Renan knows you're a Titan?"
"Renan knows everything." Another pause. Longer this time. "There's something else."
Of course there's something else. Why would anything be simple.
"Renan isn't a half-god."
I'm still stuck on Titan, on chains made from her spine. The new words take a second to land.
"What?"
"He's a full god. Has been from the beginning." Koshin's voice is almost gentle now. Almost. "I found him as a child—after the purge, after I finished killing everyone who knew the truth. He was alone. Surrounded by corpses. I asked if he wanted to live." His mouth twitches. "He shrugged."
"That tracks," I hear myself say. "That absolutely tracks."
"He doesn't want to rule. Doesn't want the politics, the responsibility. So he pretends. Stays in my shadow. Lets everyone think he's less than he is."
I'm laughing.
I don't know why. It bubbles up—exhausted, hysterical, completely wrong—and I can't stop it. I press my hands over my mouth and the sound keeps coming.
"The whole foundation of Discord." I choke on the words. "Is two men lying about what they are. In opposite directions."
Koshin's watching me. His expression has gone strange. Soft, almost.
"You're not running."
"Where would I go?" I swipe at my eyes. Wet. From laughing.
I shake my head. "This is—you know how insane this is, right? You have to know."
"Yes."
"A Titan. Pretending to be a god. Running a criminal empire. With a full god pretending to be a half-god as your second-in-command." I gesture at the city. "That's Discord. That's what I stumbled into."
"Yes."
I stop laughing. Wind and cold and the weight of everything he's just told me.
He's looking at me. Still waiting.
I should be terrified.
But I'm tired. So fucking tired.
And the thing is—the thing that makes no sense, the thing I can't explain even to myself—he saved a mother and child tonight. Threw himself over them. Let a building fall on his body so they could live.
That happened. That's true. Whatever else he is—Titan, monster—that's also true.
"Why are you telling me this?"
He doesn't answer right away. The wind picks up, pulls at his clothes, and he's just a shape against the darkening sky.
"Because you earned it." His voice is rough. "Because you stopped me tonight and you were right. Because you sat in a room full of Discord elite and told them how to win a war, and they listened." A pause. "Because you're one of two people who know what I am now."
"And?"
His good hand flexes against the stone. "And I wanted you to know. I don't—" He stops. Starts again. "I wanted you to see."
The blade catches the last light of the dying sky. White bone, jagged edges. Someone he loved, turned into a weapon he can never put down.
I think about the chains. Being bound by the body of the person closest to you. Trapped for decades—longer—with that weight around your wrists, that reminder pressing into your skin every time you move.
I think about carrying that. Every day. For centuries. Alone.
"What was she like?" My voice comes out quieter than I intend. "Elyr."
His whole body changes. Grief flickering through before he shuts it down.
"Gentle." The word scrapes out. "She remembered everything. Every word spoken, every thought conceived. And she was still gentle. She tempered me." He's looking at the blade now. "She reminded me that truth without compassion destroys as much as it reveals."
He pauses. Tilts his head again, that listening posture.
"Yes, I'm telling her." A breath. Almost a laugh, but broken. "I know you like her. You don't have to keep saying it."
The blade sits silent against the stone. White bone catching the last of the light.
I don't have anything to say to that. And honestly, I'm not sure if I should be concerned that he's having a conversation with a dead woman's spine, or if this is just... what grief looks like when you've been carrying it for so long.
So I move. Crawl forward on tired legs, over cold stone, until I'm next to him. At the edge.
I sit down.
My legs dangle over nothing. The city sprawls below—lights, smoke, a thousand lives unfolding in the dark. Wind pulls at my hair, my clothes, the ash still on my skin, and I rest my head on his shoulder.
Koshin goes still beside me.
"You should be running." His voice is barely audible. "I just told you I'm older than every god in this city. That I've killed more people than I can count. That I've been lying about what I am since before your grandmother's grandmother was born."
"Yup"
"Why aren't you?"
Good question. I think about it. Really think, for the first time since I got dragged into his world.
"Because you told me anyway." I look at him—his profile against the darkening sky.
"You didn't have to. No one was forcing you. You just brought me here. To the one place no one's ever been. And you told me the truth. That’s all you have done since I’ve been here.
Told the truth. And that means more to me than… well anything really."
His hand is shaking. I can see it—the tremor in his fingers where they grip the stone.
"That's not—"
"You're the Titan of Truth." I cut him off. "You literally can't lie. And you just gave me the biggest secret you have. Voluntarily. Without asking for anything." A pause. "That means something."
He doesn't respond.
"I'm tired," I say. Because it's true, and I don't have energy to be anything other than honest. "I'm so fucking tired.
And I just found out you are an ancient cosmic entity who carries his dead companion's spine as a weapon.
So I'm going to sit here for a while. And you're going to sit here with me.
And we're not going to talk about it. For a minute. Okay?"
…
Then, very quietly: "Okay."
Koshin the Titan. Renan the hidden god. Discord built on lies that run in both directions.