"Ambrose warned you not to interfere."
Dara's voice lashed through the aether, calm as storm pressure just before it cracked. He didn't look. He didn't need to. The moment Acheron's godsign flared inside the circle's edge, just one flicker of his cursed final-fate power and Dara's attention tore from Kingu.
And that was all it took for the ancient seal to falter.
The moment broke.
Roots snapped. Runes fractured. The ground bled smoke.
And the fury that rose inside Dara outmatched even Kingu's.
He didn't speak again. He charged.
Wind split around him as he shot toward the Atlantean god with the speed of chaos bound to form. Acheron barely had time to shift stance before Dara's punch collided with his ribs, hard enough to send him skidding backward across fractured marble.
Acheron landed on one knee, staff braced, cloak frayed. "You think I came here to ruin your work?"
Dara advanced, each step calling thunder down in his wake. "You think I care why you're here?"
The Talimosin flared in Acheron's grip, casting runes of light in the air. He raised it just in time to block Dara's second strike, but the blow still rattled his bones.
"You know what your presence costs?" Dara snarled. "You carry finality like a plague. You cursed my bloodline on a whim. Because your pride got bruised."
Acheron's mouth tightened. "That was an accident."
"Tell that to my grand daughter," Dara roared. "Or better, drag her corpse here and explain why her blood greased a prophecy you never meant to cast!"
Lightning fractured the battlefield, wild and unbound. The circle holding Kingu faltered again.
Acheron braced. "Nick wasn't supposed to turn Dark-Hunter. I thought—"
"You thought?" Dara's fists glowed red now, embers rising from cracked knuckles. "You thought?! You damned a child to die before he lived. You murdered his mother by accident. You turned a boy into a weapon, because you couldn't hold your own rage in check!"
He struck again. This time Acheron retaliated, staff swinging wide, but Dara ducked it and slammed his palm into the staff's center. Sparks flew as it cracked at the midpoint.
"You don't get to play protector and executioner, Apostolos," Dara hissed.
"You don't get to pretend you were there," Acheron snapped. "I was. I saw what Nick became. The Malachai blood is poison."
"Then you should've helped him control it, not sealed his fate! You, the final fate, could've rewritten it."
"I tried to protect him!"
"By killing him early?" Dara slammed him into the altar's base. "By erasing his family? By taking the one woman who loved him unconditionally and shattering her so you wouldn't have to answer for your own arrogance?"
Acheron's eyes burned red now. "You don't know what it's like to hold the thread of every future and not pull the wrong one!"
"I know what it's like to be a father," Dara growled. "To have a child's fate twisted because a god wanted to prove he knew best."
They stood locked, neither giving way.
"You failed him," Dara whispered.
Acheron didn't answer. The silence said enough.
"You cursed him to die at twenty-four," Dara's voice softened. "And when the daimon came… when that rogue wore a Dark-Hunter's face and knocked on her door… she answered."
The wind dropped.
Dara's words now sliced cleaner than fists. "She answered because she trusted you. Because her son trusted you. You didn't just seal his fate, Acheron. You burned every bridge he had left."
Acheron's grip on the staff trembled.
"He died that night. Not when his heart stopped but when his faith did. You did that."
"I tried to make it right."
Dara looked him dead in the eye.
"You don't make right what you destroy. You rebuild it. Brick by brick. Or you leave it the hell alone."
Acheron's mouth opened. Dara didn't wait. His next punch broke the ground under them.
The Talimosin clattered away. Acheron collapsed onto all fours, breath ragged.
"You're lucky," Dara muttered. "If Nick wasn't still alive, I'd have ended you. Braith be damned!"
Acheron met his gaze, pain in every line of his face.
"You think I haven't wanted to punish myself for what happened to her?" he rasped. "You think I don't relive it?"
"Good," Dara roared. "Then remember it every time you try to fix something you helped break."
"Your interference gave him the opening," Dara growled.
"I didn't mean to—"
The seal pulsed. Once. Like a dying star gasping in reverse.
Gir's scythe shook in his grip. Tahazu's knuckles cracked around Gorehowl. Ninim's next breath came shallow, weighted. Namuš's blade sparked on the stone.
No one spoke.
Even Kingu paused as if amused.
Then came a blinding column of light that knifed through the cracked chamber ceiling. Then another. Space ruptured behind it like the world was exhaling in relief and dread.
Jaden appeared first.
No flare. No dramatics. Just there, stepping into the ruin like he'd always belonged to it. Shadows curled around his boots but never touched him. His eyes flicked across the devastation: fractured seals, cursed sigils bleeding smoke, a furious god of nature strangling the air in wrath.
Then came Nick. Unbothered. Hands in pockets. He stepped out of the fold with all the casual apathy of a guy arriving late to a movie he already saw.
Behind him shimmered golden light, warm but sharp. The Āšû‑Šarru stepped out of the rift wearing a dark cloak like the others, the hood drawn back to reveal familiar golden-amber eyes and a face not seen since the end of an age. She moved without flourish, no ethereal glow. Only purpose. Warbringer rested in her grip, calm as moonlight over battlefields. Her gaze darted first to Dara, then to Acheron, narrowing. "This is escalating quickly."
Savitar was the last to breach the fold, flung in like the universe refused to let him stay uninvolved. His cloak snapped in the wind as he landed hard, gaze sweeping the battlefield. When he caught sight of Dara's blade at Acheron's throat, something cold slid behind his eyes.
"Damn it, Dara," he muttered, voice low and taut. "You always aim for the ones I'm still trying to keep breathing."
Nick surveyed the ruins, then the bloody smear Dara was making of Acheron. "Didn't I specifically say not to interfere?"
Acheron, pinned beneath a scythe wrought from blood-forged steel and coiling stormroots, glared at him. "You're enjoying this."
"Little bit," Nick admitted.
The Āšû‑Šarru moved to intervene, horror tightening her mouth. "You said they would stop if we—"
"I said wait," Nick said. "Acheron's hard to kill. Let my great grandfather work through some things."
She growled and pinched his ear. "Fix it. Now."
Nick yelped. "Damn, wife, I need that ear!"
Jaden chuckled softly. "Might want to do as she says, Malachai."
Nick sighed and snapped his fingers.
An invisible power that held Dara immobile.
The storm-wrapped scion of wrath halted mid-blow, suspended like a statue forged from thunder.
Acheron sagged backward, breath rattling in his chest. "You... froze him?"
"No," Nick muttered. "I gave him a five-second cooldown. You're welcome."
Acheron sat up slowly, wiped blood off his mouth. "This wasn't about the seal."
"You think?" Nick jabbed a finger toward the wrecked altar. "You screwed up. You cursed my life. And because of that, my mother died."
Acheron said nothing.
Dara's body trembled as Nick loosened his choke hold, his scythe trembling an inch from Acheron's heart. Golden light slid between them. The Āšû‑Šarru stepped in, pressed a hand to Dara's chest.
"That's enough," she whispered.
His shoulders dropped.
The chamber exhaled and Kingu screamed.
The earth twisted. A vortex of molten gold and black shadow tore open beneath the remnants of the sarcophagus. From its depths rose him—not fully formed, but no longer inert. Kingu towered half-bound in light and poison, a god halfway birthed into a world that had long forgotten how to bury him properly.
He laughed.
"Oh look," he hissed, voice echoing in twelve dead languages. "The children of rebellion arrive. Kalosum mongrels. Malachai's mutts. False gods playing with dirt and names."
Jaden rolled up his sleeves. "You talk too much."
He stepped into the circle. Symbols flared. Kalosum runes, as old as the source goddess's first scream. Warbringer followed, her glow stitching the rift in magic like threads of silence.
The Šarru-Gir flanked him, one knee down, Abzu's Fang driven into a burning leyline where Kingu's essence leaked rage into the crust of the world.
Beside them, Ninim spun her arm-blade, still wreathed in stormwind and yokai sigils until it sliced clean through the etheric coils wrapping around Kingu's rearing form. "Hold the southern line!" she snapped, her voice raw. "He's not down yet!"
Tahazu stood opposite her, Gorehowl and Bane chained at the wrist like twin beasts. Their axeheads pulsed with green fire, carving runes of suppression with every swing.
Then came Namuš, slipping in beside Gir without a word, his sword drawing arc-light through air already stretched thin by power. He lifted his left hand and stopped time for a heartbeat, just long enough to reinforce a fraying sigil beneath Ninim's stance.
Savitar descended last. No sarcasm, no glibness now. His eyes burned pure white as he slammed his hands into the center, sending out a shockwave that harmonized the seal's rhythm.
And still Kingu fought.
Reality cracked.
A split-second vision flared across the sky. Atlantis breaking apart, its towers drowning beneath the weight of its pride; Babylon burning, kings screaming from within gold-crusted tombs; the earth bleeding smoke and cinder, volcanoes erupting across time.
The seal pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
Jaden's eyes flared crimson. "You lost your war when the source chaos goddess drowned in her own fury. You lost your throne when she bound your name."
"Yet here I rise," Kingu bellowed, his body a storm of broken prophecy, "fed by plague and fire, by mortal despair and divine neglect—"
"You rise," Nick said, stepping forward, "because we weren't paying attention."
He lifted his hand. Malachai glyphs snaked up his arm, jagged, pulsing with restraint. But beneath them, golden runes, Kalosum sigils glimmered quietly. "That's on us."
"Not anymore," whispered the Āšû Šarru as she joined the seal's edge, cloak flaring as if alive. Her voice wasn't a command.
It was a verdict.
She lifted her palm. Her power braided with Jaden's, with Nick's. Then, with a sudden roar from all corners, the Šarras struck down in perfect unison. Blade, axe, spell, wind, and fate.
The seal slammed shut.
Light howled. Kingu's form fractured into ash and memory. His scream vanished mid-note.
Silence fell like a blade.
The earth stilled.
Only the rasp of breath and the hum of settling runes remained.
Jaden wiped his hands on his coat. "Well. That sucked."
Nick rubbed his temples. "This is why I hate holidays."
Dara hadn't moved.
The storm around him hadn't, either.
The air still reeked of ozone and scorched pride. His scythe rested at his side now, but his fingers never left the grip. Not even as Acheron straightened, shoulders bruised, cloak torn, the war staff still clutched like a shield he couldn't justify anymore.
Nick stepped in between them, slowly, like someone defusing a bomb that hadn't decided if it wanted to go off again.
"You," he pointed at Acheron, "owe him an apology."
Acheron's jaw flexed. No sound came out. The words lodged like stones in his throat.
The Āšû Šarru, still breathless from sealing Kingu, elbowed him, not gently.
"Now."
Acheron exhaled, hard. "I'm—"
"Louder," Dara snapped, voice low but venom-laced. "Or I carve it into your ribs and make sure every soul you've failed reads it there."
Ninim didn't even flinch. Neither did Tahazu. Even Gir made no move to calm Dara down. No one did. They all knew better.
Acheron's expression twisted. His pride was a bleeding thing between his teeth.
"I'm sorry," he growled.
Dara scoffed. "That wasn't penance. That was punctuation."
Nick crossed his arms. "And with feeling, please. This man kept a whole prison realm of cursed gods from spilling into the cosmos because you decided to ignore basic instructions. The least you can do is not sound like a toddler forced to say sorry to a broken toy."
Acheron's staff hit the ground with a hollow clunk. He glared at Nick, then back at Dara, and finally said, through clenched teeth and the taste of regret:
"Fine. I'm sorry I cursed your line. I'm sorry I let your granddaughter die. I'm sorry I ignored warnings, interfered where I shouldn't, and got my face punched into another plane by an angry blood-god with a scythe. Happy?"
Dara's eyes narrowed. The storm behind him crackled once, the sky threatening to fracture.
"Not yet," he muttered. "But I will be."
Acheron wisely said nothing more.
Nick clapped his hands once. "Great. That's close enough to progress for this group."
Tahazu sheathed his axes. "Is now the part we drink, or kill each other again?"
Nick nudged Jaden. "Tell me you recorded that."
Jaden raised a brow. "You think I'm Savitar?"
A shimmer lit the air.
Savitar stepped through, slower than usual, sunglasses perched low like a man who'd seen too much and preferred the dark. "No need," he muttered. "I don't record family disputes. I already hear them echo across timelines."
Acheron didn't look at him. Neither did Dara. The tension was still bruising the air.
Savitar sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"You two done trying to break reality with your egos?" He didn't wait for an answer.
"Good. Because if Kingu stirs again, I'm not holding the leash this time. I'm dragging everyone into the pit with me."
Nick collapsed onto the broken step of the ruined seal chamber like a man a thousand years older than he looked. "Next time y'all ignore my warnings, I'm bringing popcorn and letting you all die."
He looked around at the group of myth-made monsters, half-deities, full disasters, and shook his head.
Then pulled a small black flask from his coat. Took a long drink.
"Well," he muttered, voice dry as apocalypse dust, "happy goddamn New Year."
END.