The Den was broken.

  Where once gods were praised and mortals trembled, now only ruin remained. Shattered pillars. Scorched stone. Ash drifted like snow beneath a sky still bruised from divine wrath. The air was thick with smoke and silence, every breath carrying the taste of something ancient undone.

  And in the center of it all, Darius stood.

  Arms crossed over his broad chest, one boot resting on a cracked fang too large to be mortal. A beast’s horn, long as a war lance, jutted from the rubble—part relic, part monument. He leaned on it like a warlord surveying the last gasp of empire.

  Watching.

  “So this is the storm you’ve been hiding, Athena…”

  His voice rumbled low—like iron dragged across stone, shaped by battle and silence. There was no accusation in it. Just something older. Weightier. Approval? Curiosity? Maybe even fear.

  He stepped forward slowly, his shadow stretching long across the burnt earth. His eyes passed over the smoldering brand on Hiro’s chest, the godmark still pulsing in rhythm with his breath.

  “You said you came for an alliance,” he said. “Or have you already forgotten why you walked into the Den of Beasts?”

  A silence followed, not empty—but expectant.

  The war wasn’t over.

  It was just choosing sides.

  Hiro met his gaze, unflinching.

  “I haven’t forgotten a thing.”

  He stepped closer, every inch of him crackling with the weight of what he’d endured.

  “I bled in your den. I burned in it. If that’s not enough to earn your attention, say it now—and I’ll carve my path without you.”

  Darius didn’t move. But the ghost of a grin touched the corner of his mouth.

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t trust men who beg.”

  Athena said nothing. But the flicker in her eyes wasn’t judgment.

  It was recognition—of thunder, of prophecy, of storms to come.

  “I don’t beg,” Hiro replied. “I build.”

  Behind him, Phinx stirred—wings flexing once, flames trailing in a lazy arc that painted the ash gold.

  No words. Just presence. Just promise.

  Damaric’s boots crunched through the debris, heavy and deliberate.

  His blade hung loose in his grip, chipped at the edge, the steel streaked with ash and dried blood. His armor clanked out of rhythm, like a soldier unsure whether to advance or retreat—each step a betrayal of certainty.

  He stopped just a few feet from Athena, eyes burning with betrayal.

  “This wasn’t the deal.”

  His voice cut through the quiet like a blade.

  “We were supposed to stop a monster—not provoke the gods.”

  “We followed a boy into a pit of gods… and you call it hope. I thought we were saving a kingdom, not declaring war on heaven.”

  He motioned toward the altar of flame and broken stone the Den had become.

  “This whole mission is ash and lies.

  But even as the words left his mouth, something in him faltered. He had seen the boy bleed. Fight. Survive.

  And part of him—traitorous, silent—had believed.”

  Athena didn’t flinch. Her hands remained still, clasped behind her back like a general surveying a battlefield already won.

  She turned her gaze on him slowly—sharp as a spearhead, cool as winter steel.

  “You saw the truth, Damaric. Olympus called me a traitor, and him a heretic. You don’t wear the mark—and yet you’re still here.”

  The weight of her words didn’t shatter him. But it bent something inside.

  Damaric’s jaw clenched. His grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. His breath was loud, uneven, but he said nothing.

  Not because he agreed. Not because he was afraid. But because deep down, beneath the anger and confusion—he knew she had seen farther than he ever dared.

  Athena stepped closer, her voice calm but unwavering.

  “You’re free to leave.” “But if you stay, understand what that means.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She didn’t threaten. She didn’t plead. She simply offered the truth—and waited to see who he would choose to become.

  A soft sound broke the silence—feathers dragging through ash.

  Phinx stepped forward, flame dimmed but not extinguished. The beast’s gaze found Damaric—not with menace, but with memory.

  The memory of the arena. The war they’d survived together.

  Hiro’s voice followed. Low. Steady.

  “You’re right, Damaric. None of this was supposed to happen.”

  “But it did. And now we decide what comes next.”

  He looked up—no plea, no demand. Just truth.

  “You saw what I am. What I’m becoming.”

  “If you can’t follow that… walk away.”

  “But if you can—then help me build something Olympus can’t burn.”

  Hiro walked away from the others—not far, but far enough to breathe without feeling watched.

  The heat from the brand still lingered on his chest, like a whisper from something ancient… something buried. He didn’t press it this time. He just let it throb beneath his skin, like a second heart.

  Phinx followed, quiet. No fire. Just presence.

  His feathers rustled once—quiet as breath—like even he was waiting for the truth.

  Athena approached a moment later. Not in command. In quiet.

  “You shouldn't be alone right now.”

  Hiro didn’t turn.

  “All this time,” he said, voice low.

  “I thought I was like you. Maybe not born from your mind like Zeus—but I assumed my father wasn’t there because that’s how it worked.”

  That silenced the wind between them. Even the ash seemed to pause.

  Athena didn’t answer at first. She stood there, her shadow long beside his.

  He turned now—eyes fierce, tired, searching.

  “Am I Underworld-born? Is that why the Furies didn’t finish me? Why the gods hate me?”

  Athena met his gaze. No denial. No deflection.

  “What matters isn’t where you come from,” she said. “It’s what you do with what’s in you.”

  “Don’t give me a lesson. I want the truth.”

  “Tell me who my father was.”

  A pause. Then:

  “Yes,” she said at last. “Your father was of the Underworld.”

  “It was forbidden. We met in secrecy… and I told myself it would never matter.”

  “But then you came.”

  “So that’s why I was hidden.”

  “To protect me from Olympus… to keep me from the Underworld.”

  It wasn’t a question. Just truth, finally spoken.

  “Is he still alive?”

  Another pause. Longer.

  Athena’s eyes flickered. Not with certainty. But memory.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not anymore.”

  The brand on Hiro’s chest pulsed once—no heat, just presence.

  A whisper of something distant, divine.

  Watching.

  Hiro looked away—not from shame, but from the weight of knowing his story had never really been his.

  Until now.

  Ash whispered across the ruined floor, curling between cracks where divine fire had once split stone.

  Darius stood at the edge of it all—arms folded, one boot braced against a slab of broken fang. His expression gave nothing away, but there was a weight behind his stillness—curiosity sharpened by caution, and something almost like respect. Behind him, a handful of Varnokh warriors waited in silence, more beast than man in the way they loomed.

  Now, as Hiro stepped forward, Darius finally moved.

  “You didn’t win,” he said.

  “You only survived.”

  His eyes flicked to the brand on Hiro’s chest.

  “That thing still glowing means the gods haven’t taken their eyes off of you. And they won’t forget.”

  Hiro didn’t blink.

  “Then let them remember me.”

  Damaric spoke next, voice hard.

  “You saw what happened. The line’s drawn. We need soldiers—beasts who won’t bow.”

  Athena stood beside them, cold and regal.

  “We don’t want loyalty. We want resolve—the kind that doesn’t flinch when the gods start watching.”

  Darius looked at all of them. Eyes sharp. Measuring.

  “Varnokh doesn’t kneel to kings. We kneel to storms.”

  He stepped forward until he stood face-to-face with Hiro.

  “And I’ve seen yours.”

  He extended his arm—wrist bare, scarred from a thousand campaigns.

  For a breath, Hiro hesitated. Not from doubt, but from understanding.

  This wasn’t just an alliance—it was a declaration. He hadn’t earned Olympus.

  But he had earned this.

  Hiro gripped it.

  Where their arms met, a heat sparked—brief and blinding. Not divine... but willed.

  “No thrones. No crowns.”

  “No gods,” Darius replied.

  When they broke the grip, a faint sigil shimmered on Darius’s forearm—jagged, primal, unlike Hiro’s.

  Not a brand.

  A bond.

  Their pact wasn’t made in blood.

  It was made in firelight and the knowledge that war was coming—and they would stand on the front lines of it.

  Behind them, one of the beastmen let out a low, war-drum growl.

  Varnokh had spoken—its voice not in words, but in firelight and fang, like an old prophecy finally stirred awake.

  And for the first time in centuries… it had chosen a side.

  Far from the ash-choked arena floor, seated on a crumbled pillar overlooking the Den, Homiros wrote.

  Not with flair. Not with fanfare.

  Just ink. Scroll. Silence.

  His robes were tattered. His fingers smudged with soot. But his hand didn’t tremble.

  “Let it be recorded…”

  “That Olympus cast judgment.”

  “That the branded did not bow.”

  “And that the world turned… not with thunder, but with fire.”

  He paused.

  Looked down at the boy below—scarred, branded, and somehow still standing.

  Then back to the parchment.

  “The Phoenix King has taken shape.”

  He didn’t say it aloud.

  But the words would outlive them all.

  Deep beneath the weight of earth and flame, the throne of the Underworld stood untouched.

  Hades sat in its center. Cloaked in silence. Crown dim.

  Before him, the Furies knelt—Alecto’s serpents coiled in uneasy reverence, Megaera’s limbs folded sharp as spears, Tisiphone veiled in shadowed ash.

  Floating above them, a flickering stormglow hovered—drawn from Apollo’s mark, still echoing with Hiro’s defiance.

  “The boy bears Olympus’s brand,” Alecto said.

  “But his flame did not come from them.”

  “He commands lightning… yet walks in fire,” Tisiphone added.

  “He is not theirs,” Megaera said.

  “But he could be ours.”

  The throne creaked—just slightly—as Hades lifted his gaze. Slow. Certain.

  “Athena raised him.”

  “But she cannot keep him.”

  “If the heavens cast him out…”

  “Then the Underworld will offer him a crown.”

  The stormlight twisted—blackened at the edges, drawn inward by something older than fate.

  “Let the world see him as heretic,” Hades said, voice low and final.

  “We will shape him as my heir.”

  Velros. Night.

  The inn was quiet, its stone walls breathing the last warmth of the fire.

  Elysia stood before a mirror—bare shoulders wrapped in the dim glow of candlelight.

  She had been staring at her reflection for too long.

  Not at her eyes. Not at her face.

  The mirror didn’t lie.

  But it held her secrets.

  Just to the left of her spine, beneath the sweep of her damp hair…

  A pale glyph shimmered—like a star burned into skin.

  Not flame. Not lightning.

  Something older.

  Her breath hitched.

  She reached back and covered it quickly with her hand—

  as if the mirror might speak.

  The door creaked open behind her.

  “You okay?” Lyessa’s voice, quiet. Watching.

  Elysia didn’t turn. Her hand lingered a second longer.

  She almost lied.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling her robe back up, tying it with care.

  “Just wondering…”

  She finally turned to face her.

  “…what’s taking them so long to get here.”

  Lyessa nodded once. Said nothing.

  The mark blinked once.

  Then vanished beneath the fabric.

  And the mirror said nothing at all.