"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.
