The world split open.
The instant the blade pierced the ground, the scars along my wrists ignited, pain tearing through me so fierce it stole my breath entirely. Lightning exploded outward in a blinding surge, not striking down from the sky, but ripping up from the earth itself as though the land had finally snapped under the strain. The force of it threw me backward, slamming me into the dirt as light tore across the battlefield in a roaring wave.
The Typhon screamed.
The sound was monstrous and layered with a thousand other voices as the darkness was torn from him violently. Ripped free in thick, writhing streams that clawed at the air as though alive. His serpents convulsed, their bodies thrashing wildly as shadows peeled away from scale and flesh alike, evaporating into nothing with a sound like a great, collective sigh.
Across the battlefield, it happened everywhere at once.
Darkness tore free of bodies mid-strike, mid-flight, mid-scream. Harpies plummeted from the sky as the shadow fled their wings. Human-shaped forms collapsed where they stood, weapons slipping from suddenly lifeless hands. Creatures both great and small convulsed once before falling still, the black corruption streaming out of them in violent bursts before dissolving into the air.
The lightning did not discriminate.
It swept across the land in a relentless tide, burning through every thread of darkness it touched, ripping it from flesh without mercy. The war ended not in victory cries or clashing steel, but in the sound of bodies hitting the ground, one after another, until even that faded into silence.
The Typhon staggered.
Stripped of what animated him, what bound his impossible form together, he collapsed in on himself, wings folding awkwardly as his massive body crashed into the earth with a force that sent shockwaves rippling outward. Stone shattered. Serpents went slack, their bodies slumping lifelessly across the ground as the last of the darkness fled.
Then there was nothing.
No roar. No clash of weapons. No screams of death.
Just the crackle of dying lightning and the smell of burning and blood hanging heavy in the air.
I lay there gasping, my body shaking uncontrollably as the pain slowly receded, leaving behind a hollow, ringing emptiness that pressed in from all sides. My ears rang so loudly it drowned out my own ragged breathing. My limbs felt distant, unresponsive, as though they no longer belonged to me.
When I finally forced myself to sit up, the battlefield was unrecognizable. The fog had now cleared. Bodies were everywhere, strewn across scorched earth beneath a sky suddenly too bright and wide. The darkness was gone.Completely. Not a single thread of it lingered in the air or clung to the fallen.
I had done it.
But this wasn’t a triumph. There was no surge of relief or joy, no sense of rightness to cling to. Just the knowledge that I had ended it the only way I could.
My hands trembled as I pushed myself to my feet, legs unsteady beneath me. I didn’t look at the Typhon again. I couldn’t.
Because somewhere beyond this silence, beyond this terrible stillness, there was only one thing that mattered.
“Atlas!”I shouted, running and grabbing the dagger from the earth as I went. A blade that released back into my ownership with ease.
My ears rang as I ran, a high-pitched whine that blurred the edges of the world, turning everything distant and unreal. Ash drifted down in lazy spirals, settling over bodies and broken weapons alike, softening the devastation into something almost peaceful if I didn’t look too closely.
I didn’t look at all.
My boots pounded against scorched earth as I tore toward the castle, legs shaking, heart hammering so hard it hurt. The battlefield was still now, too still, the kind of quiet that rang louder than any war cry. Fallen soldiers lay everywhere, human-shaped forms and mythic bodies tangled together in death, their final moments frozen in the aftermath of the lightning’s passage.
This was my fault.
The thought tried to take hold but I shoved it down with ruthless focus. There would be time for that later. If I survived what came next.If Atlas survived.
The castle gates stood open, blackened by fire, and the bodies of guards sprawled across the threshold where they had fallen defending it. No one moved to stop me. No one even looked upas I sprinted past, their attention fixed inward, toward whatever violence still echoed within those walls.
I crossed the threshold at a run.
Heat washed over me immediately, the air inside was thick with smoke and the scent of burning stone. Fire licked at the edges of carved archways, blackening gold inlays and turning intricate designs into warped shadows that stretched and twisted as I passed. My boots struck marble slick with blood, and I nearly went down before catching myself and forcing my pace faster still.
Even in this state, the castle was beautiful.
But I barely noticed.
