The blade slipped through Caelum's chest with a sound like thunder cracking through the sky.
But it wasn't blood that poured from the wound.
It was light—twisting, screaming, impossibly old light. A torrent of divine energy unfurled from the gash, not gold or white or shadow, but something deeper. Something wrong. Like the silence before the world was born. Like the howl of stars dying.
"No," Caelum whispered, eyes wide. Not in pain. In horror.
And then—he smiled.
Too late.
Athena tried to pull the blade free, but the handle seared against her palm. The weapon pulsed, alive, veins of ancient language crawling up the steel. The divine symbols she'd forged herself now unraveled, burning with knowledge no god should ever possess.
The earth cracked. The realm trembled.
And then the throne room split open—vertically, like the world itself had been ripped down the spine.
A rift yawned wide behind Caelum's body, swallowing him whole. Not with death. With return.
