"What is she talking about?" Hippolyta's voice cut through the forge's thick, smoky air—low, taut, edged with urgency.
Atrius did not answer at once. His gaze was fixed on the stone beneath his boots, lost in a silence heavy as iron. Thought coiled around him, doubt darkening his brow. But when his eyes lifted—when they turned toward the kneeling figure of Agape—the hesitation hardened into something colder. Judgment.
The daemon smiled through her. It was not a smile that belonged to any mortal—too wide, too knowing, twisting the girl's features into a grotesque mask. Then, without warning, her body jerked upward as if pulled by invisible strings, weightless until she slammed into Atrius's waiting palm.
Her black eyes flared, the grin breaking into horror.
Atrius's gaze burned golden, his irises lit like twin suns.
"Wai—"
The plea never reached its end.
Brilliance erupted—raw and searing. Golden fire roared from his hand, a purity that ripped through every false sinew and secret tether the daemon clung to. It burned flesh, spirit, memory, and possession alike, reducing its hold to nothing.
The forge trembled. Hippolyta froze—too slow to shield her eyes, forced to witness. The brilliance swallowed the daemon whole, and within it rose a sound that did not belong in the mortal world: a layered cacophony, a thousand daemonic throats shrieking as one. It tore through the air, filling the chamber like a storm.
And then—silence.
The light withdrew. Atrius stood unmoved, wreathed in the afterglow, his massive frame etched in gold shadow. His face revealed nothing.
From the side, Heracles stirred. He rose from the battered hunk of metal he had been resting upon, his movements slow but steady. His eyes followed the girl's body—Agape—descending as if unseen hands cradled her. She touched the stone floor with impossible gentleness, as though the world itself feared to bruise her.
Heracles strode to her side, pulling the lion's pelt from his shoulders and draping it over her nakedness. Hippolyta broke from her daze, dropping down beside them without hesitation, ignoring the closeness of the demigod.
Her hand trembled as she bent to check for breath. Warm air brushed her fingers. Relief struck her like a tide, spilling out in a shuddering sigh. She brushed damp strands of hair from Agape's brow, her features breaking into an expression of raw tenderness. Her lips parted, whispering words that carried no sound, only gratitude.
Above them, Atrius lingered. His towering frame cast its shadow across the three, but his eyes were elsewhere. Thought consumed him. The daemon's essence had not perished before it was laid bare—stripped of its secrets.
And what he saw within chilled him.
It had not lied.
he was the reason it had inhabited agape's body.
Atrius had glimpsed the reality it came from: a vast, oppressive void without walls, without end. Not silence nor emptiness—only a dark expanse thrumming with stretched screams that pulsed like veins through the air, an ocean of suffering where his sudden light had burned like a wound in the skin of its world. The daemon had no words for what it was. Its existence was hunger and fear, nothing more.
Atrius had expected a servant of She Who Thirsts. This thing was not that. It was something cruder. Stranger. And somehow, that unsettled him more, for it could not corrupt. It fed on corruption. meaning it was never the source of the corruption but perhaps, Atrius himself.
The truth unraveled before him: it had found Agape in her most vulnerable moment, when she awoke and Atrius was absent. It slid into her like a parasite, feeding not by staining her soul further, but by consuming what corruption was already there. Slowly it festered, grew fat on her suffering, and from that corruption it gained a tether to Atrius's psychic presence. Through him it tasted memories, fragments, visions. It grew cunning, formed a crude personality.
Its mannerisms had been peculiar—half the babble of a Tzeentchian trickster, half the lewd cruelty of a Slaaneshi fiend. An amalgam of both, yet belonging to neither.
Its plan was grotesque in its simplicity: to make Agape its vessel, cling to Atrius, drink of him as if from a wellspring. In its eyes he was not mortal. He was a god.
It was only Hippolyta's words—the mention of the mark etched into the prisoner, the symbol now revealed to be the number six, the foul sign of She Who Thirsts—that drew Atrius's attention to the abomination.
Without that, he might have overlooked it.
Thang. Thang. Thang.
His footsteps broke the silence. He crossed the forge without looking at Hippolyta, though her sharp eyes tracked his every move.
He stopped at the bench where his new helm lay waiting. Lifting it, he weighed it in his hands. One last look, then his thumb pressed against the Aquila on its crown. The helm obeyed.
With a hiss, locks disengaged. Plates shifted, sliding open like a steel flower in bloom. Gears clicked, pistons released, revealing the hollow ready to receive him. He lowered it over his head.
Clasp.
The helm sealed. Lenses glowed to life, burning with a deeper red than before. The half-dormant machine-spirit within stirred awake, whispering across his sight in shifting streams of code. Sparks from the braziers, the faint warmth of bodies, sweat cooling against flesh—all outlined in spectral hues.
Thang. Thang. Thang.
He moved toward the broken doorway.
"Where are you going?" Hippolyta's voice followed, commanding but strained with unease.
"Away," Atrius answered, curt and final.
Her jaw tightened. "Away—where? I need answers!" There was a tremor in her voice now, a threat of panic beneath her queenly command.
"I will follow," Heracles rumbled, stepping forward.
"No." Atrius's reply was a blade's edge, sharp, metallic and unyielding.
Heracles halted, arms folding across his chest. His frown deepened, eyes narrowing as he watched the giant's retreating back.
"What of what you promised?" Hippolyta's cry rose after him, hand gesturing helplessly toward Agape's shrouded form. Yet she knew her words spoke not of the girl—they spoke of Poseidon, the deal, the promise to ward Themyscira from the sea god.
Her heart pulled in two directions—toward the wounded girl before her, and toward the giant walking into the dark. Her voice cracked with the weight of it.
Thang.
Atrius stopped at the threshold. His head bowed, heavy with thought.
Thang. Thang. Thang.
Then he moved again, vanishing through the broken doorway into the wind that tore across the night. The shadows closed around him, and the forge was left hollow in his absence.