During the seven years Chaos was taken to the Underworld, Selene lost herself to grief.
At first, she cried.
Then she prayed.
Then, when prayers gave her no answer, she began searching for anything that might.
She visited churches, prayer houses, old shrines, Buddhist temples, holy grounds, and places no respectable woman of her status should have been seen entering. She knelt before priests, monks, prophets, fortune tellers, and spellcasters, begging each of them to tell her the same thing.
That her son would return.
That Chaos was alive.
That the Underworld would not swallow him whole.
She made donations large enough to build schools, feed villages, restore temples, and fund charities whose names she barely remembered. She gave money to every good cause placed before her, as though goodness could be purchased in exchange for mercy.
But nothing changed.
No vision helped her. No prayer soothed her.
No god answered.
Selene returned each time emptier than before. At night, the mansion became familiar with her screams.
She cried out in her sleep, calling Chaos's name over and over until the maids rushed in, only to find her sitting upright in bed, trembling, her hands searching the sheets for a child who was no longer there.
Several doctors were brought in.
Physicians.
Specialists.
Private consultants who were paid enough to speak gently and leave quietly.
None could find a sickness in her body. But everyone could see the sickness in her mind.
Eventually, they gave Caesar the only explanation they could.
Madam Riegrow was suffering from a severe mental collapse brought on by the absence of her child.
Caesar listened.
Then he grew tired.
There was nothing useful to be done with a wife who screamed, prayed, wept, and rotted in grief. So he gave up on fixing her and ordered that she be managed instead.
Maids were assigned to her day and night.
Selene was not allowed to leave the mansion.
Then, as her condition worsened, she was not allowed to leave her room.
Caesar would not risk her wandering the streets like a madwoman with the Riegrow name attached to her. So he confined her to her chambers, where she could be dressed, fed, watched, and kept out of sight.
Seven years passed that way.
Seven years of Selene waiting for a son the Underworld had taken.
Seven years of a mother slowly becoming a ghost.
On the day Chaos returned, Selene was sitting by the window.
Her eyes were fixed on the world beyond the glass, but there was no life in her gaze. In her hand, she held a small silver horse, delicately carved and worn at the edges from years of being touched.
It belonged to Chaos. It was the only thing she never let go of. The toy stayed in her hand like a final thread tying her to the child she had lost.
Downstairs, the mansion erupted into movement.
The young master had returned even tho they had no idea where he had been all those years.
After seven years, Chaos Riegrow had come home.
The servants lined up to receive him. Guards stood in rolls.
But Chaos ignored them all. He did not stop for greetings.
He walked into the mansion, then broke into a run.
Up the stairs.
Straight to his mother's room.
When he reached the door, he pushed it open without knocking.
The room was quiet.
Selene sat by the window, her back to him, still gazing outside as though nothing in the world could reach her.
Chaos stopped in the doorway.
For seven years, he had survived because he had been taught not to hesitate. He had killed, bled, endured, and returned with a soul sharpened into something dangerous.
But at the sight of his mother, he became a boy again.
"Mother…"
His voice came out softer than he intended.
Selene did not turn.
It was as if she had not heard him at all.
Chaos stepped into the room slowly.
Each footstep felt heavier than the last.
He moved closer until he stood only a short distance from her, then lowered himself carefully beside her chair.
"Mother," he called again.
Still nothing.
His throat tightened. He reached out and touched her hand.
"Mum…"
This time, Selene blinked.
Slowly, she tore her gaze away from the window and looked down at him.
Chaos held his breath.
For one fragile second, hope rose inside him. Then he saw her eyes.
Selene tilted her head slightly. "Who are you?" she asked.
The words struck him harder than any blade ever had. Chaos went still.
For seven years, he had imagined this moment.
Sometimes, during nights in the Underworld when sleep refused to come, he had pictured returning to her. He had imagined her running to him again, holding him the way she had the day he was dragged away.
He had imagined her crying.
Laughing.
Calling him her boy.
He had survived, in part, because somewhere in the darkness of that place, his mother had existed as a reason to come back.
And now she was looking at him like a stranger.
His hands trembled.
Had he changed that much?
Had seven years carved so much from him that even his own mother could not see what remained?
Chaos gently took her hands in his and raised them to his face, pressing her fingers against his cheeks as if touch alone could remind her.
"Mama, eto ya, tvoy syn." he said, his voice breaking as tears filled his eyes.
[Mother, it's me. Your son.]
Selene stared at him.
Her eyes fluttered.
For a moment, something seemed to move behind them. She leaned closer and lifted one hand and gently parted his hair, studying his face as though searching for a memory beneath his skin.
Then she smiled.
Chaos felt his heart crack open with hope.
But the smile was wrong.
He knew it immediately, but refused to believe it.
Selene's fingers brushed his hair once more. "My son, you say?" she murmured.
Chaos nodded quickly. "Yes. Yes, Mother. It's me."
Selene's smile remained. Then she said, almost tenderly. "But my son is dead."
Chaos stumbled back.
The room tilted.
For a moment, he could not hear anything, not his own breathing, not the movement beyond the door, not the distant sounds of the mansion that had once been home.
Only her words.
My son is dead.
Selene turned back toward the window, still holding the silver horse in her hand.
And Chaos stood before his mother and felt himself break in a way no weapon had ever managed.
___________________________
"What did you do to her?" Chaos's voice tore through Caesar's office before the door had fully slammed shut behind him.
Caesar had only just returned home.
He stood behind his desk, calm as ever, removing his gloves with maddening patience while his son stood before him like something barely holding itself together.
The Underworld had taken many things from Chaos, especially his ability to endure pain without flinching.
But Selene had always been the one place where all of that training became useless. For seven years he had killed and survived with one thought buried beneath every brutal lesson.
Return to his mother.
And now she looked at him as though he were a stranger.
Caesar looked up at him. "I did nothing, boy." His voice was unbothered. Nothing ever seemed to touch him. "Your mother went mad by her own hands."
Chaos's jaw tightened. "She was not like that when I left."
"No," Caesar said. "She was not."
"She was not anything like that," Chaos snapped. "You did this."
Caesar sighed, as though the accusation bored him.
"Selene will be all right. You are home now. That is what matters."
"No." The word came out low.
Chaos stepped forward and gripped the edge of Caesar's desk. His fingers tightened so violently around the polished wood that it seemed it might crack beneath his hands.
"What matters," he said, each word bitten out through barely restrained rage, "is that you fix my mother and give her back to me."
Caesar's expression didn't change.
Chaos leaned closer. "That was the deal."
The deal.
Seven years ago, before the Underworld swallowed him, Caesar had made him a promise.
Prove yourself worthy.
And Selene would be freed.
That promise had carried Chaos through hell. He had survived because Caesar promised him his mother. Not the empire. Not power.
Selene.
And now he had come home to find her mind broken. Chaos could not accept it.
He would not.
Caesar's eyes hardened. "Do not forget your place, Adrian."
The name struck the room sharply.
Adrian.
The name only Caesar used.
But the boy who had once feared Caesar was gone.
Chaos laughed bitterly. "Damn it all."
Caesar's face darkened.
"I will not rule your empire, old man," Chaos said. "You went against our accord."
Caesar stood slowly. "Careful."
But Chaos was no longer listening and he was certainly no longer afraid.
He released the desk and turned, rage moving through him like fire under skin. Without another word, he stormed out of Caesar's office, leaving the door shaking behind him.
For the next few days, Chaos demanded answers.
The maids who had been assigned to Selene spoke carefully at first. They feared Caesar. They feared the truth. They feared the young master too, though he had not raised a hand against them.
Piece by piece, they told him what had happened after he was taken.
Chaos listened without moving. Every word entered him like a blade.
But one piece of information destroyed him more than the rest.
He learnt that Selene had buried him.
At some point, grief had swallowed her so completely that she stopped waiting for his return and decided he was dead. She had ordered a grave to be dug. A casket had been lowered into the earth and his name had been engraved on stone.
After that, she visited the grave from time to time, carrying the little silver horse in her hands, speaking to the earth as if the child beneath it could hear her.
Chaos found the grave himself. It stood in a quiet part of the estate, beneath a tree that cast thin, trembling shadows across the grass. The stone was clean. Too clean. The earth around it had been tended. Flowers, old and new, lay near the base.
For a long moment, Chaos stood before it.
Then his eyes lowered to the name carved into the stone.
His name.
His grave.
His death, written before he had been allowed to return.
Something inside him went silent.
He had survived seven years in the Underworld.
He had killed to come home.
He had crawled out of hell because he believed his mother was waiting on the other side.
But Selene had not waited. Grief had taken her mind, and in that madness, she had done what the Underworld failed to do.
She had killed and buried him before he was even dead.
Chaos lowered himself slowly before the grave, his gloved hand hovering over the engraved letters.
For the first time since returning home, he did not feel rage.
He felt nothing at all.
Now, standing before his own grave, Chaos understood.
The boy who had left this house seven years ago truly was dead.
His mother had buried him.
And the thing that came back in his place had no reason left to be gentle.