Kaelen roared, a sound like tectonic plates grinding together. He hauled himself up, shaking a head crowned with obsidian horns. He was colossal. His scales absorbed the light, matte black and terrifying, heat radiating off him in waves that distorted the air. He smelled of sulfur and pure, unrefined power.
Stuck,his voice roared in my head, a mental shout layered with panic.The form... it’s locked. I can’t compress.
I looked to my left. A mound of earth and fur shifted. Thane, the Bear, shook himself off, sending boulders flying from his coat like fleas. He was the size of a steep hill, his eyes glowing with a soft, earthen brown light that struck a stark contrast to his terrifying bulk. He huffed, the sound vibrating in my chest.
Above us, a screech tore the air. Elias, a Phoenix of turquoise and gold flame, circled erratically, his wingspan trailing embersthat didn't burn the trees but turned the leaves to crystal upon contact.
Aria. A voice resonated in my mind.
I turned.
A wolf, massive enough to swallow a horse whole, stood ten feet away. His fur was a tapestry of browns and greys, bristling with static. Amber eyes, intelligent and terrified, locked onto mine. He smelled of wet musk, old blood, and the sharp tang of wild fear.
I can’t change,Flynn’s voice whined in the bond, high and jagged.The Old Magic has bound me, Pup. I’m stuck in the fur.
I reached out with my flesh hand, burying it in the coarse ruff of his neck. He leaned into my touch, trembling.
"You're not stuck," I soothed, though my own heart was hammering against my reinforced ribs. "The world is just... confused. We need to find a way to calibrate."
Calibrate?Kaelen snarled, his tail lashing out and slicing through a sturdy oak tree as if it were grass.We are beasts, Aria. The Titan’s pulse stripped the glamours. This is what we are.
He spread his wings. They were terrified spans of shadow that blotted out the broken sky, dripping liquid darkness onto the grass.
"We move," I commanded, my voice ringing with that new, metallic harmonic that sounded like a sword being drawn. "We find high ground. We assess."
I started walking, climbing up the lip of the crater. The terrain was a nightmare, a patchwork quilt of realities stitched together by violence. I stepped from soft meadow grass onto polished Olympian marble in a single stride.
We crested the ridge, and I saw it.
The remains of the Sanctorum. The sacred heart of the Citadel, where I had first met them, where they had beenchained for millennia... It lay shattered across a valley, ruins draped over the landscape like dead snakes.
And standing in the shadow of a broken archway was Athena.
She looked small amidst the wreckage. Her armor of woven starlight was cracked, leaking faint luminescence like blood. Her helmet was gone. Her dark hair was plastered to her skull with sweat.
She was staring up at the sky, at the Devourer.
But as the ground shook under Thane’s massive paws, she snapped her head toward us.
Her grey eyes went wide. She raised her spear, the tip glowing with a lethal, blinding white point of god-light.
"You," she breathed. The word carried across the distance, sharp as a blade.
She didn't see her brothers. She didn't see the tragic, broken princes. She saw a Dragon wreathed in black fire, a Wolf dripping shadow, a Bear made of bedrock, and a Phoenix burning the air.
And she saw me. A woman made of flesh and star-metal, glowing with violet veins, leading the apocalypse.
"Abominations," Athena spat, shifting her stance. The air around her hardened, bending to her tactical will. She was hurt, but she was a goddess. She adjusted her grip, calculating the trajectory to put a spear through Kaelen’s eye.
Kaelen roared, a blast of heat that turned the grass to ash in a ten-foot radius. He stepped in front of me, spreading his wings to create a wall of scales.
She is targeting the soft palate,Kaelen analyzed, his predatory instincts overriding his familial ones.I will burn her before she releases.
Flynn dropped low, a growl building in his throat that sounded like a chainsaw idling. Thane slammed his paws intothe earth, shaking the ground, turning the soil into quicksand around the goddess.
"Stand down!" I shouted.
I didn't summon any of the powers of my men.
