**Chapter 35**
The hammer struck true with his skill intact, pounding not the flesh but the one within. When the star-iron head met the staff of transit, the world didn't explode in fireworks or thunder. It bent ever so slightly, and that bend echoed everywhere, ending it then and there.
For the first time since Hermez claimed the staff, it met real resistance.
The shockwave rolled outward in a perfect, silent ring. Snow that had survived the earlier carnage flattened in an instant. Ice beneath their feet cracked in fractal patterns but made no sound. The wind itself seemed to pause, as if the battlefield had decided, as one won and one lost.
One suspended second.
Then the staff cracked.
Not a clean snap. Not dramatic. Just thin fractures racing along the twin serpents' spines, like lightning veins crawling through marble. Divine metal shouldn't fracture like that. It did anyway.
Hermez's eyes widened—James's eyes, but not James's expression.
"NOO!!!"
Aron didn't roar. Didn't curse. Didn't even raise his voice. He simply leaned into the hammer, shoulders rolling forward, weight shifting the way a man shifts when he's done talking and starts working.
His weapon, his treasure that would make him a hero, a true god amongst gods, had been damaged. But alas, he had lost the weapon and gradually started to lose his vessel as well.
"What did you do? What did you do to me?" he questioned, lying unmoving in the crater. The floor gave way in layered, muffled explosions of ice. Shards flew upward then hung, suspended in the shock cone, before gravity remembered its job.
"I told you," Aron said, voice low and even, golden aura steady like a pilot light that refuses to go out. "It's over."
The hammer flared again, not with borrowed karma this time, but with something older. Older than the gods themselves. The weapon knew its bearer.
Hermez felt the shift like a hook in his gut.
The artifact wasn't answering him anymore. Not to mention his borrowed body—after taking that hit, something had cleaved inside him, parting him and the body, leaving cracks that spiderwebbed faster. He could only twitch, but Aron didn't even allow that. He pinned Hermez beneath the hammer's haft, the crossbar pressed across his throat. No more vanishing between moments. No more laughing at physics. Just a god in a failing body, breathing hard through James's lungs.
The speed was gone.
The arrogance was gone.
Only cold calculation remained.
He laughed anyway. Almost fondly.
"You think destroying the conduit ends this? Destroying your herald and damaging my artifact will end this, immortal?"
Aron ignored those words as he pressed the haft down a fraction harder, making him squeal in his own arrogance. He took the shaft from his broken hands.
"No!" Hermez screamed. "That's mine!"
"Give me Peter," Aron simply said.
Hermez smiled with James's mouth, crooked and all-knowing. "Haaa, trying to play games with me, huh? Okay, immortal, you win. I will give back your herald…"
He paused. Deliberately. Let the words hang.
"But first…" His gaze slid to the hammer. "Give me my treasure back. Return it. Or I will end his life."
Aron didn't blink.
"Kill him?" he repeated, flat.
Hermez's eyes glowed a faint, venomous yellow.
"Do not test me. You know I can reach him. My children are already tearing him apart, and with one squeeze—"
Aron's grip tightened until the leather wrap creaked.
"If I see even a single fresh wound on Peter," he said, calm as someone reading a weather report, "I break the weapon. Smash it down with my hammer."
Hermez went still.
The hammer hummed faintly in Aron's grasp, resonating with his words—words that remembered Eden's forges and the first oaths sworn on star-iron.
"You cannot break it," Hermez said. But the confidence sounded thinner now.
Aron's face didn't change.
"Try me."
For the first time, real hesitation moved behind those borrowed eyes. Hermez studied him. Measured the man standing over him. Weighed the gamble.
He had already miscalculated once today. He would not do it twice.
The children were still taking care of Peter, yes. But killing the boy now would gain nothing. The staff was gone—the only weapon that could give him the attention he needed from his father—and James's body was failing fast.
He had thrown everything at the immortal, but for some reason, even with his karma so low, even with low health, ribs cracked, blood freezing on his coat, he still stood unbroken. He couldn't help but acknowledge the warnings the big three had given.
That intensity of unwavering attack at the last pinch of a second. Hermez exhaled slowly through James's nose.
"You have grown more reckless than the rumours entailed," he said.
"I've grown tired," Aron corrected.
Silence stretched between them, cold and heavy. Then Hermez lifted both hands slowly, palms open.
"Very well, immortal. I will see you again."
The aura around James's body flickered violently, like a bad signal cutting out. For one split second his pupils flashed pure green—James's green, not the god's yellow.
Then Hermez withdrew.
Not in smoke. Not in lightning. Not in any theatrical display. The divine presence simply peeled away, a shadow detaching from flesh. The golden hue drained from James's veins like ink running off paper. The oppressive weight in the air lifted. The temperature ticked up a fraction, as though the world had been holding its breath and finally exhaled.
James collapsed.
Aron caught him before he hit the ice. Finally Hermez was gone. For now. But Aron felt his nerves.
James wasn't breathing. For a moment. Then he coughed, wet, ragged. Blood flecked his lips, steaming in the cold. Another inhale, shallower than it should be.
His eyes fluttered open. Green. Fully green. No yellow left. "My lord…" A whisper. Aron lowered him carefully onto the snow.
"You…" James muttered, voice cracked. "You hesitated."
Aron's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "You asked me to kill you. How could I?"
That faint but commanding voice of his soothed James. He didn't know what, but he knew his lord had changed—maybe for the better. He gave a faint, broken laugh that turned into a cough.
"Yeah… that was stupid."
His chest shuddered. Something was wrong. Aron saw it immediately.
James's divinity wasn't stabilizing. It was leaking. Thin strands of golden-white energy bled from the hairline cracks in his skin, evaporating into the freezing air like breath on a window. The cost of possession. The cost of the miracle overdraw. The cost of letting a god ride him like a stolen horse until the legs gave out.
James felt it too.
"I can't… hold it," he said quietly.
Aron understood. Without intervention, James wouldn't die. He would diminish. Fade back to mortal. Broken. Empty. A husk wearing the face of someone who used to be more. So Aron knelt fully, knees cracking ice.
"Look at me," he ordered.
James obeyed, eyes clearing for a second.
Aron placed his palm over James's chest, right over the sternum.
"By blood and bond," he began, voice low.
James's eyes widened slightly.
"My lord…?"
"I failed you once," Aron said. "Not again."
Golden light pooled beneath them, spreading outward in a perfect circle. Runes ignited along the edges—old runes, the kind carved into Eden's gates before the first war. Aron didn't know if doing it twice on the same individual would cause any effects, but he didn't have time. It was do or die, and with his high stats, he knew it would save James from collapsing.
So he started it again—a herald ritual.
"You are my herald," Aron declared. The words carried layered authority, echoing faintly off the ice walls. "Bound by oath. Bound by will."
The glyph pulsed.
James felt something tug, deep, in the place where the soul meets the spine.
Aron's status screen flared in his own vision. He didn't hesitate.
[Herald Authority Activated]
[Stat Partition Enabled]
[Transfer Ratio: 18%]
Aron's strength dipped. Speed shaved. Durability thinned. Even though it was temporary, the weakness seeped in as the surge flowed into James.
As he felt it—the overwhelming surge of strength and divinity from his lord, and also the depth of his low karma—
The cracks in James's skin began to seal, not perfectly, not cleanly, but enough to stop the leak. His aura reformed, weaker than before, flickering ever so slightly. The ritual burned out slowly, runes fading to dull gold then to nothing.
Aron exhaled through his nose. James lay still for a long moment, having no words to say.
Then he took a steady breath.
"…This… my lord, what happened in the hundred years?" he muttered again, softer this time.
Aron leaned back on his heels.
"Nothing much, James. I just survived the end."
James had so many questions—how? Why? Where? When?—but Aron suddenly collapsed onto the dwarfed snow.
"My lor—"
"It's okay. Just… a bit tired." He said with his golden eyes watching the sky, heaving a breath of relief. The realization dawned on him. He had saved him. He had saved the one who was fated to die. He didn't know what would happen after, but he wanted to change the ending of this story and felt like he had fulfilled the necessary first step.
Aron turned to James, who was just looking at him. "Stop staring," he said.
"…I'm sorry. I just can't believe you are just… back in our lives." He replied. "Not saying I don't like it… I'm glad you are back, my lord."
Aron huffed, his breathing visible in the sheer cold. "You are glad, Khorn is glad, but I don't know if your other brothers and sisters will be."
"Khorn already told you about the betrayal, I guess."
"Not him. Elyon. She didn't have the will. Our same old Khorn. Trying to bear all the weight by herself," Aron said.
James also sat beside Aron, his back slumped, feeling relaxed after a long, long while. "Yeah… she hasn't changed. Unlike me, my lord. I'm sorr—"
"It should be me who's sorry," Aron interjected. "Don't disrespect my apology by apologizing yourself."
James had thought he had changed, but some parts were still the same—rigid and stern like before. It made him smile. He closed his eyes. Opened them again, clearer. "Then I will say the truth, my lord. They got to him," he said quietly.
Aron didn't need to ask who.
"The eldest."
James nodded, barely.
"The gods whispered to him. Fed him doubt. Fed him pride. Told him only you could fix everything. That only you were strong enough to hold us together."
Aron listened in silence.
"That's why I came to Greenland," James went on. "I wasn't looking for you at first. I was looking for that staff. That treasure."
His gaze flicked weakly toward the golden dust still settling on the snow.
"I thought if I had enough power… if I was strong enough… I could face him. Drag him back to us, and drag everyone else."
His jaw tightened.
"But I failed. Miserably."
Aron didn't interrupt.
"I kept losing ground. Losing control. Slowly." James's voice dropped. "I thought if I killed you… maybe I'd stop caring."
Snow began falling again—soft, steady, covering craters like a bandage.
Aron placed a hand on James's shoulder. Not gentle. Just there.
"You did your best."
James gave a faint, bitter smile.
"Not good enough."
"It was enough."
James's breathing evened out.
"You're going to talk to him?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
James closed his eyes.
"…Then reunite us."
Aron didn't answer with words.
He simply nodded.
…
Meanwhile, Khorn stood at the edge of a volcanic ridge, fire veins still flickering beneath cracked obsidian skin. Heat rolled off her in waves that melted snow before it could land.
She felt the shift when Hermez retreated—sharp, like a string cut. Relief. Brief.
Then her communicator flared. An encrypted channel she hadn't touched in decades. She stared at the blinking rune for two heartbeats.
Then answered.
A distorted face appeared in projection, blurred, masked in Olympian static.
Theo.
"You shouldn't be contacting me," Khorn said immediately.
"I don't have time," Theo snapped. "He can't hear me. I tried."
"Tried who?"
"Lord Aron… Something's blocking divine channels around him. Something thick."
Khorn's jaw tightened. "What is it?"
Theo's voice dropped. "The children of Hermez are mobilizing."
Khorn went still. "How many?"
"All of them." The projection flickered violently, static eating the edges.
"They're coming to Greenland."
The line died. Khorn looked toward the horizon—the horizon where she had to leave. This war was still not finished.
Just paused. She exhaled slowly, breath steaming red in the cold. "My lord," she murmured to the distant sky, "we don't have long."