The first thing he heard was the wind—not the howling kind that tore through mountains, but the soft kind, filtered through ancient stone and paper-thin curtains. It carried the scent of pine resin, dry parchment, and rain-soaked moss.
Ithan opened his eyes. The ceiling above was familiar: curved oak beams, blackened with age, carved with the faded etchings of the Ravenmarch sigil—a sword through the wing of a falling bird. He blinked, slow and uncertain. His body ached as if he'd been melted down and reforged.
He was in his room at the building Helen had rented for their stay in Ravenmarch. The sheets beneath him were rough but warm. His hands, bandaged. His torso, wrapped in a lattice of reinforced fabric laced with healing runes. The aether inside him barely flickered—but it was there.
He shifted slightly, pain grinding through every joint like rusted iron, and winced. The movement stirred the ember of his awareness, and with it came memory. The Forge collapsing. Anipather's fading words. The petal of light. The Revelation. He drew a shallow breath. It wasn't a dream. The door creaked open.
A familiar silhouette entered — cloaked in shadow, tall and grim, the fur-collared armor catching the candlelight. Helen of Themyskira. Her expression unreadable, save for the tension in her jaw.
"You're awake," Helen said.
Ithan tried to sit up, but she crossed the room in two strides and pressed a firm hand against his chest.
"Don't be stupid," she added, her voice gentler this time. "Your ribs are still more powder than bone. You're lucky to be breathing."
He exhaled slowly, lips cracked and dry. "Lyra... Doran... Are they—?"
"They're fine," Helen said before he could finish. She turned toward the door just as it creaked open. Two figures stepped in. Lyra's eyes lit up the moment she saw him. She ran across the room, Doran trailing behind.
"Ithan! You're alive—I thought you'd never wake up!" she cried, gripping the edge of his bed.
"I told you he'd be fine," Doran said with mock confidence.
Lyra turned on him with a glare. "Yeah, right. You said he was probably dead!"
The boy's freshly shaved face made his embarrassment all the more obvious. Ithan couldn't help but laugh, though the motion sent pain shooting through his ribs. He winced, drawing a sharp breath.
"You should take it easy," Helen said, her tone firm again. "I don't know many Mystiques who survive a fall like that. Your body's still catching up."
"Thank you," Ithan murmured.
Helen shrugged lightly. "A deal's a deal."
Then she placed a hand on each of the kids' shoulders, guiding them toward the door. "Let him rest. He'll need his strength for what's coming."
Lyra grinned. "Oh—you mean that?"
Helen allowed herself a small smile. "Exactly."
"What do you mean?" Ithan asked, trying to push himself up again, but the pain forced him back down.
"Don't worry," Helen said, pausing at the doorway. "It's all going to get better from here." She closed the door behind her, leaving him in silence.
Days passed. Ithan's wounds healed faster than they should have, his Mysteries knitting his body back together from within. Soon, he was standing again, carefully unwinding the last of the bandages.
His reflection in the mirror stopped him cold. Scars mapped his body—slashes from blades, gouges from Daimon claws, blackened burns that crossed old wounds. And new ones—marks born from his advancement in Resonance. Each scar was a testament to survival, each burn a reminder of the fire that refused to die.
He touched one of the newer scars along his collarbone and thought of the past few days.
Helen had told him everything. How the Dionian raiding party had fallen. How Governor Lucius Varro had declared that the Ashborn—the winner of the Eagle Parade Hunt—had single-handedly thwarted the invasion.
The city had crowned him a hero. Now, his face was plastered across the three inner rings of Ravenmarch, painted and praised by people who'd never seen him bleed. He stared at his reflection a moment longer. The hero in the mirror felt like a stranger.
Over the next few days, as his wounds knitted and the ache in his ribs dulled to a steady throb, Ithan found his thoughts drifting back to Anipather. The man's last words echoed like an ember refusing to die—his conviction, his obsession with becoming a hero.
Ithan had told him he didn't care for his ideals, and that much had been true. Even now, the thought of Anipather's twisted philosophy left a bitter taste in his mouth. He hadn't fought the man to challenge his beliefs. He hadn't fought him for any lofty reason at all. He'd fought to keep a promise.
The promise he made to Larson. To bring justice for Volos.
He'd done that. The Forge had fallen. The raiders were gone. The dead were avenged.
But now that the dust had settled, the silence felt heavier than before.
He sat by the window that evening, watching the rain trickle down the glass, Ravenmarch's spires hazed in the mist. Lyra's laughter drifted up faintly from the courtyard below, followed by Doran's teasing retorts, their voices cutting through the dreary weather like tiny sparks of warmth. Helen's shadow moved in the hall once or twice—her steps purposeful, her presence always on the edge of something larger, something pulling her elsewhere.
The world was still moving. But where did he fit in it now?
If he stayed with the Red Jaguar, it meant stepping into Helen's world—the Imperium's tangled politics, the crisis that was swallowing half the continent. Diana Arkanis's name came up often in hushed tones and coded messages, always followed by the word war.
He could stay. Help them. Keep fighting. But the thought made his chest tighten. He'd spent half his life chasing Daimons through the Ashen Fields and along the Iron March, living by the pulse of danger and the thrill of survival. That life had been simple—bloody, lonely, but honest. It didn't pretend to be noble.
His reflection in the window wavered in the rainlight, and for a moment, he saw Sophia's face in place of his own—her gentle smile, the way her eyes had brightened when she'd called him a hero.
He had tried to live up to that once. Tried and failed. Now, when he'd finally done something that was selfish, the world was calling him a hero. Statues, stories, praise—none of it felt real. None of it felt like him. He pressed a hand against the faint burn mark over his chest, feeling the slow pulse beneath. And yet, a part of him couldn't stop wondering whether, somewhere out there, Sophia would've smiled at him again—just once—if she saw what he'd done.
If Sophia were alive, would she call him a hero? The question sat in Ithan's chest like a stone, cold and immovable. He turned it over, watched the edges with the same careful indifference he used to count coins. When doubt crowded in, he folded it away with the only steady rule Larson had ever drilled into him: take the coin, finish the job. That was the work. That was the oath. In the ledger of his life, that was what he had written himself to be—a mercenary, nothing more.
****
The Black Trident cut a silver path through the Inner Sea, its prow throwing up sharp wakes that hissed and vanished beneath the keel. Morning came from the west, the sun a pale coin rising over a bruised horizon—Theseus watched it with the hard, private grief of a man who'd lost a country and kept the loss to himself.
They'd crossed the Mare Thalassion and were closing on the Aurelion League's waters, the coastlines of their refuge shrinking and sharpening against the sky. Days had stolen the edges of his world since Nova Roma's banners had risen where his kingdom had once stood. The thought of home—smoked ruins and familiar faces—tugged at him, then recoiled. He had buried Lysandra the night before, letting her body go to the sea in the only way that felt right. The memory of her slipping beneath the dark, the salt pulling at his hands, was a wound that would not close.
Theseus walked with the slow, controlled tread of someone who had learned to carry storms inside. He crossed the deck and ducked beneath the awning into his cabin. Enzo and Caspian rose from the map-strewn table; their silhouettes were outlined by the thin light that found its way in.
"Captain," Caspian said, voice flat as a snapped sail.
"Theseus," Enzo added, eyes already moving over the charts as if they could unmake the headlines written in the sea.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, tasted metal and salt. "We'll reach the harbor by dusk," he said. "I don't intend to linger." The words came low, each one weighed. "We sail to Aurelion's capital. We warn the confederacy—get them to see what Nova Roma is doing. We must recruit mercenary bands, gather allies. If we want our home back, we have to make others care enough to help."
Enzo's jaw tightened. "They won't give us men for sentiment. They'll ask for coin, for proof, for guarantees."
"Then we give them coin and proof," Theseus said. He set his palms on the map as if pinning the future into place. "We'll show them the scars Nova Roma left. We'll show them what happens when the empire sets its sights on a coast." He looked up, the storm in his sea-gray eyes alight with something like purpose. "We have to survive. We have to strike back. Anything less is being forgotten alive."
Caspian exchanged a glance with Enzo, then nodded once. "Then we make them listen."
Outside, the Black Trident slipped on, taking them toward a city that might shelter them or swallow them whole. Theseus folded his grief into the business of revenge the way a captain folds charts—neatly, precisely, with no room for ragged edges.
Just you wait, Valeria Dravon Severina, Theseus thought, fingers white on the rail. I will come for you—and for your wretched Empire.
****
Diana stood at the high arched window of the governor's palace, her reflection ghosting faintly against the glass. Below her, the palace courtyard had come alive with quiet motion—scribes carrying scrolls between offices, servants sweeping away the ashes of banners that once bore Valcion's crest, guards in her livery patrolling the marble corridors with the disciplined silence of a new order. The palace no longer stank of fear or decadence; it smelled of ink, steel, oil, and purpose.
Days had passed since she had seized the governor's seat. The echo of that act still lingered in the stone—an aftertaste of authority she couldn't afford to savor. The Imperium had noticed.
Two letters sat on her desk, one still open beside the steaming cup of herbal wine she'd forgotten to drink. The first bore the crimson wax seal of the Emperor himself—a formal summons from the Senate, demanding her immediate return to the capital to explain her "unauthorized intervention." The phrasing alone made her lips tighten. The second letter, the one she held now, was written in ciphered ink and carried no seal at all.
It was the kind that only her people sent. She unfolded it again, reading the lines that had already branded themselves into her mind. Reports of burned fleets. The downfall of the Pelagia Kingdom. Sightings of banners bearing the solar sigil of the Solar Dominion. When she'd first read it, she'd felt the familiar shiver of her second Mystery stir—a low, inner pull, like the sea drawing back before a storm. The threat wasn't distant. It was already moving.
Diana folded the letter carefully, turning from the window to face the two men waiting behind her. Kallus lounged in his chair, arms crossed, eyes flicking toward the ceiling with visible irritation. Benji sat beside him, more composed but clearly amused by his companion's restlessness.
Diana raised an eyebrow. "What is it, Kallus?"
"Nothing," he muttered.
"He's sulking," Benji said with a smirk. "Still mad he missed the fight in Ravenmarch."
Kallus grunted. "Ashborn got to take on the Blue Orca's captain. Now they're calling him a hero." He leaned forward, expression sour. "While I was stuck here fighting total weaklings."
Diana's gaze softened, though only slightly. "Ashborn," she echoed. "Yes, I've heard plenty about him. Helen said he was reckless but effective." She moved to the table, running her fingers along the rim of her untouched cup. "I'm glad she managed to recruit him to our cause. But now that he's gotten what he wanted… I wonder if he'll stay."
Kallus let out a short, incredulous laugh. "Of course he will."
Diana tilted her head. "What makes you so sure?"
"He's a mercenary," Kallus said simply. "Like me. He made a contract with Helen. Until it's broken or fulfilled, he'll see it through. That's how our kind works."
Benji scratched at his beard. "Wasn't the deal just to help him save those kids? If that's done, then technically, the contract's over."
"Maybe," Kallus admitted, tapping his fingers against his knee. "But I doubt the Ashborn's the type to walk away after that. He's got something to prove. Men like him—once they start chasing a cause—they keep fighting long after the contract's cold."
Diana considered that, her eyes distant again. "Then let's hope you're right," she said. "Because for the Imperium to survive what's coming out of the Thalassion, we're going to need every blade we can trust—and every fire that's willing to burn for us."
Outside, thunder rolled far over the sea—as if the world itself was answering her, closer this time, crawling over the horizon like the breath of something vast and ancient waking from slumber. The sea wind pressed against the palace walls, carrying with it the scent of iron and rain. Diana stood in silence, her thoughts threading through the letter still warm in her hand.
Far beyond the palace, the world was shifting. Old powers stirred beneath marble thrones and forgotten temples. Empires that once swore fealty to the divine now bent to newer names—heroes, conquerors, Mystiques who wielded the secrets of flame and storm as if they were birthrights. In every city, a rumor was born, a whisper of men and women who broke their limits and reached upward toward the heavens that had long since fallen silent. And it seems that the world, desperate for order amidst the ruin, began to believe again.
From the streets of Ravenmarch to the drowned coasts of Pelagia, from the Iron March to the halls of the Imperium, something old was ending—and something older still was beginning to take shape. The skies no longer belonged to the distant pantheons of myth but to those who dared to climb high enough to claim them.
In the coming age, divinity would not descend from above. It would rise from the blood, the flame, the ashes, and the will of mortals. And somewhere, far beyond the stormlight, the new gods began to wake.