Vireos - Outer Districts - 03:21 A.M.
The rain came sideways, carried on wind that bit like a blade.
Vireos never slept. Not really. It just pretended. Beneath its chrome-and-concrete skyline, something always buzzed: street vendors hawking soup at 3 A.M., gangs dragging stolen tech through alleyways, neon billboards bleeding through fog like forgotten gods begging to be remembered.
To most, the city was a beast. Beautiful, brutal, alive.
To Theo? It was background noise. Static he'd long learned to ignore.
His hands were black with engine grease as he crouched beside a wrecked grav-car, fingers moving like memory quick, precise, too perfect for someone with "Mechanic" stitched on their rust-red coveralls.
"You're leaking again," he muttered to the machine, half-heartedly.
The car's owner, a lanky kid with twitchy eyes and a synthetic jaw nodded absently, more interested in his reflection on his comm than the fact that his suspension was about to collapse.
Theo tightened the last bolt, tossed the wrench onto the table, and wiped his hands on a rag that did more smearing than cleaning. He'd fixed it in seven minutes flat. He could've done it in two. But humans got suspicious when things happened too fast. And suspicion led to questions. Theo hated questions.
Especially ones like:
"Why don't you bleed?"
"Why don't you age?"
"What are you running from?"
Because he had answers. Just not the kind people lived long after hearing.
The kid drove off without a thanks. Typical.
Theo turned toward the back of the garage, pausing as the air pressure changed. Subtle. Wrong.
Something old was waking up.
He stood perfectly still. Listening. Not with ears with something deeper. Something bone-deep and buried.
And then he felt it.
A thrum in the city's pulse. A disturbance rippling through the leyline that ran beneath Vireos. His instincts coiled. He hadn't felt that kind of pull since
"Don't," he whispered to himself. "Don't go there."
But it was too late. The name pressed against his mind, unspoken but suffocating.
Thaeon.
His true name. His curse. His war.
He took a shaky breath, slammed the garage's shutter closed, and reached for his jacket. The city had changed. Something was calling. And someone someone knew.
03:39 A.M.
Two blocks east, in the glow of a broken street lamp
She walked like a woman who had nothing left to lose.
Soaking wet, blood on her palms, a scroll wrapped in black linen clutched to her chest like a heart that didn't belong to her. Her boots were mismatched. Her eyes were alive.
Theo saw her the moment he stepped outside. She wasn't part of this world. Not anymore. She was marked.
By what, he couldn't yet say.
She looked up. Right at him.
Theo froze.
She shouldn't have seen him. He'd been trained, built to move unnoticed. But her gaze locked on like she'd been waiting.
"You," she said, voice trembling but clear. "You're him."
He shook his head slowly, backing a step.
She stepped forward. "You're Thaeon."
The name hit like a hammer to the chest. The wind stopped. The city breathed in.
"Don't call me that," he said quietly.
"But it's you. I saw you in the flame. I saw you in " She winced. " in the archives beneath the Spire. You were holding a sword made of time and wrath and "
"Stop," he said, louder now. "You've got the wrong person."
"You were a god," she whispered.
He turned away.
"You're needed again."
That's when the first explosion went off.
The blast ripped through the sidewalk, launching Theo and the girl backward in a hail of shrapnel and burning glass.
His ears rang. Smoke filled his nose. Somewhere, an alarm blared.
He rolled, already standing. No wounds. No bleeding. Of course not.
She groaned. Still alive. Not for long if the second wave hit.
Theo ran to her, grabbing her by the collar and pulling her into the alley.
"What the hell was that?" she gasped.
"Not a bomb," he growled. "A summoning."
"A what?"
Before he could answer, the smoke parted and they came through.
Three of them. Tall, faceless, armored in obsidian etched with moving script. Warspawn.
He hadn't seen their kind in centuries.
"Run," he told her.
She didn't move.
"I said run!"
"I'm not leaving without you!" she shouted.
One of the Warspawn lifted a blade. It pulsed with red light.
Theo stepped forward, hand outstretched. His fingers curled into a fist and the nearest streetlamp imploded, shards turning mid-air into a spear that pierced the creature clean through.
He'd moved without thinking. Reflex. Instinct.
Divine.
The girl stared.
"Gods," she whispered. "You're still capable."
He looked at his hands, then at the falling Warspawn. One down. Two more advancing.
He looked at her, voice low: "You want to live?"
She nodded.
"Then shut up and hold on."
He grabbed her. Turned.
And vanished.
03:52 A.M.
Somewhere below the city
They landed hard in an underground corridor, dust choking the air, torchlight flickering like it feared being noticed.
She stumbled back. "How did you ?"
"Don't ask," Theo said, pacing, eyes scanning the walls. "Don't speak. Just breathe."
"Where are we?"
"Old Vireos. Forgotten quarter. The city's bones."
She held out the scroll. "They're after this. You're in it."
He snatched it, unwrapped it. Inside: a sketched figure. Cloaked in flame. Holding a blade of unmake. Eyes like his.
And beneath it, ancient words that pulsed under his skin: When the War God wakes, the world bleeds anew.
"Why me?" he asked. "Why now?"
"I think someone's trying to rewrite the end."
He narrowed his eyes. "What's your name?"
She hesitated. "Sera."
"Lying," he said instantly.
Her face flinched.
"You're not just some random girl with a scroll and a death wish. You were sent."
She looked away.
"I was told… if I found you before the others did, I might live."
"Who told you?"
"Your sister."
That stopped him cold.
"My sister's dead."
Sera shook her head.
"No," she said. "She's alive. And she says you're not done. Not yet."
The voice was unmistakable. Velvet over steel. Familiar, but wrong in its calm.
Theo's body went rigid.
Sera froze.
From the shadows stepped a woman in black and silver armor, dust gathering in her wake like reality rearranged itself to accommodate her.
Her face hadn't aged a day.
"Hello, brother," she said, smile cold as frost. "Still hiding in the dirt?"
Theo stepped in front of Sera without thinking. "You're supposed to be dead."
"I was. Briefly." She shrugged. "Death is such a temporary thing for people like us, don't you think?"
"Why are you here, Lys?" he asked, voice low.
"To stop you from making another mistake." She tilted her head. "And maybe… to remind you of who you are."
"I'm done being that person."
Her eyes flared faintly gold. "You don't get to be done. You were born for war."
He tightened his grip on the scroll. "And look how that turned out."
Sera tried to speak, but Theo raised a hand not now.
Lys turned to her. "You brought it, didn't you? The scroll. The prophecy."
Theo stepped forward. "She doesn't owe you anything."
"Oh, she doesn't even know what she is yet," Lys said, voice smooth and cutting. "You think this is just a mortal girl who stumbled into your orbit?"
Theo's expression shifted.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Lys stepped closer. "Tell me, brother have you looked closely at her eyes? The way she speaks, the way she dreams? Do you really not remember who she is?"
Sera's voice was barely a whisper: "What is she talking about?"
Theo didn't move. Couldn't. Not with that possibility igniting in his chest like a buried sun.
Lys smiled. "She was yours once, wasn't she? Before the Fall. Before you chose peace over power."
"I don't remember "
"She does," Lys cut in. "Somewhere deep. That's why she found you."
Sera backed away. "I… I don't "
"It's coming back to her," Lys said, now speaking to Sera. "Soon, you'll see the visions. The fire. The blade. And when you do, you'll remember what you did to him. And what he did to you."
Theo looked between them, rage coiling in his throat. "Why now, Lys? What do you want?"
"I want you to come back," she said simply. "Because the world is ending. And we can't win without you."
"I'm not going back to the war."
"You never left it."
A blast of energy cracked the ground at their feet. Walls trembled. Stone fractured.
Sera screamed. Theo grabbed her, shielding her with his body as dust rained from the ceiling.
Lys didn't flinch.
"You felt that, didn't you?" she whispered. "It's starting. The other gods are waking. The old ones. The wrong ones."
Theo glared. "And you think I'm your weapon?"
"I think you're the only one strong enough to keep this world standing."
He said nothing.
Lys turned, stepping back into the shadows. "You'll find me when you're ready."
Her voice echoed through the corridor as she disappeared.
"Or when you finally remember what you let her become."
The silence that followed was thick with breath and broken stone.
Sera sat on the ground, shaking. "Who was she?"
Theo didn't answer.
He looked at the scroll in his hands. The figure of flame. The sword of unmake. The words that never stopped echoing:
When the War God wakes, the world bleeds anew.
He looked at Sera. At her eyes.
And he remembered… just a flash. A name. A scream. A kiss before the war ended in ash.
"Myren…"
Her eyes widened.
"You called me that in my dream," she whispered.
Theo's blood ran cold.