CHAPTER 27
As mortals aligned their lives with the favor of the gods, shadows grew long in the spaces between allegiance and ambition.
It was there, in corners unseen and words unspoken, that Tenebris Vale descended.
The God of Shadow taught that what is hidden carries power equal to that which is visible, and that loyalty and deception walk hand in hand under the watchful eyes of the divine.
Snippet from “The Book of Natural History” By Priestess Antonella Killoran
The high, polished doors of Elio’s temple were an agonizing frame to the boredom Alaios was about to face.
He stood just inside the massive archway, an anchor of dark attire against the Sun God’s blazing gold and white marble.
He wasn’t supposed to be there; the Council was assembling, and the God of Strife should be in his seat, preparing for the inevitable arguments.
But she was coming, summoned by Elio’s decree, and Alaios found himself unable to wait in the cold formality of the Hall.
He needed to see her, to make sure the previous days before were still real, that she was still his.
He spotted her the moment the black car pulled to a stop.
She looked impossibly beautiful in the flowing white silk dress and soft green shawl, a luminous contrast to the gray, churning sky.
A slow, rare smile, one he only ever seemed to offer her, spread across his face, easing the stern lines around his eyes.
She pulled the thin shawl tighter around her shoulders and, for a fleeting moment, paused beneath the patio, tilting her head back to look at the rain, a gesture of quiet, contemplative grace that pulled at his heart.
Then, his smile vanished.
He saw the man emerge from the shadows; a disheveled figure Lyra instantly stiffened against. Alaios recognized the type—a fanatic, fueled by a delusion of divine purpose.
He had seen thousands of them over the centuries.
The warning was instant, cold, and absolute.
He took a long, fast stride, reaching for the massive door, intending to cut off the fanatic.
Before his hand could touch the metal, he saw the glint.
The silver blade whipped out, and the next moment was a sickening, brutal stillness.
The world froze, silent, for a split second.
Then, with a sudden, deafening roar he didn’t realize came from him, it erupted into a blur of frenzied motion.
The knife plunged into her chest, the force of the strike sending a profound, paralyzing shockwave through Alaios as if the knife had been stabbed into his chest.
Sadness, sharp and immediate, gripped him—a raw pain at the loss of her life, the crushing finality of her human existence.
But it was instantly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of rage.
The fear that the trials would claim her before he could truly prepare her, before he could truly claim her.
The rage was pure, focused, and violent, a physical eruption aimed squarely at the miserable mortal who dared to lay hands on what was his.
He burst through the doors, a storm made manifest.
"NO!" His roar was a tearing sound, a wave of raw power that sent the meticulous priest fleeing backward.
Alaios didn’t run; he blurred, covering the distance in a single, devastating movement.
His gaze, burning with divine, consuming wrath, fell on the mortal.
Tavian, who moments before had been a figure of maniacal conviction, was now a pathetic tableau of terror.
The adrenaline of his fanatical act had instantly dissolved, replaced by the chilling, absolute certainty of divine consequence.
His eyes, seconds ago blazing with delusional purpose, were now impossibly wide, shimmering pools of sheer, raw fear.
The mouth that had just spoken to Lyra was contorted into a silent, perfect ‘O’ of horror, the sound stolen by the sheer, crushing pressure of Alaios’s presence.
It was a mask of perfect, crystalline panic, a mortal soul realizing, too late, that he had not earned the favor of a god, but had summoned the Strife itself.
His fist hit Tavian Creed with the force of a collapsing building.
He wasn’t sure if what hit him was rain, blood, or a mix of both as Tavian fell.
The man didn’t stand a chance. Every ounce of the fury Alaios commanded—the necessary, world-shaping friction, the relentless, uncompromising force of Strife—was channeled into his fists.
They were no longer flesh; they were charged stone, wrapped in crackling, blue-white lightning.
He didn’t see a human; he saw the thing that had stolen her last breath.
He pounded the man’s head, the sound of bone and flesh giving way in a low, wet thud beneath the relentless assault.
Rage consumed him, a blinding, white-hot ecstasy of destruction, until the mortal was nothing more than a ruined, unrecognizable corpse beneath his hands.
A god’s rage is a world-bending force, and this mortal just learned what that meant.
It took the combined, terrified strength of Raios and Rhaziel, who had witnessed the eruption from the Hall, to drag him away. They pulled him, limbs straining, off the pulverized corpse.
Alaios didn’t fight them so much as he simply stopped, the sudden cessation of violence leaving him trembling, the lightning fading from his fists as the sheer, cold reality of the event set in.
He was in the rain, hands stained, his dark clothes soaked, and his eyes, wide and wild, searched the place where she had fallen.
She was gone.
The only evidence she had been there at all was a stain of vibrant, arterial red blooming on the gray pavement, mixing instantly with the cold, steady rainwater—a pool of blood diluted and washed away—and her shawl that she had dropped. Her thin white dress, the knife—all had vanished.
He stooped, his fingers brushing the shawl, the dark, sticky crimson splattered across it. Bringing it to his face, he inhaled deeply, seeking the faint ghost of her scent, the phantom warmth of her presence, but only emptiness met his senses.
The trials had begun. He had hoped they would have more time, weeks, months, years even, to prepare her, to drill the final lessons of the Trials into her.
He had hoped to fill her with so much of his strength that the trial couldn’t touch her.
Now, she was there, alone, without his guidance, in a place he could not follow, facing a test designed to break the strongest of gods themselves.
The Council meeting was already starting when Raios and Rhaziel shoved him into the Great Hall, his soaked state and the lingering scent of ozone and blood a profound, immediate disruption to the meeting.
“This is why I avoid entanglements with mortals; they’re so fragile,” Elio scoffed. “Now, can we please start this meeting?”
Alaios took his seat, the cold marble of the Council chair a grounding contrast to the fire in his veins.
He didn’t look at his peers, who were already whispering, their faces a mix of shock and icy disapproval.
He simply stared at the large, arched window.
His eyes, dark and turbulent, were fixed on the patch of wet pavement where the rain was slowly washing away the last traces of red.
Come back to me, Lyra. Survive this.