The first thing he felt was being set down.

  Not dropped—set. Carefully, as if someone were lowering something precious and breakable onto stone.

  Cassor didn’t understand that at first. He wasn’t sure he understood anything. The world had become a blur of cold and nothing and too-bright sky at the summit, his last memory the taste of blood and the way his own scream seemed to tear his throat open.

  Then there had been wind.

  Not the scraping, howling wind of the mountain, but something bigger. Something that wrapped around him like a hand and pulled. Light had swallowed his vision, white and blue and sharp, and then—

  Here.

  He hit something smooth. It didn’t hurt, not like the mountain had. It felt… distant. Like his body had been put somewhere slightly apart from him and was sending muffled complaints through a wall.

  He tried to open his eyes.

  They fluttered uselessly. All he saw were streaks of color—gold, blue, white—smears like paint dragged across glass. Shapes towered above him or around him or both. He couldn’t tell where the ground ended and the ceiling began.

  Voices reached him through thick water.

  “…small,” one said. The tone was male, low, carrying the easy power of someone who never had to raise his voice to be heard. “Too small for that mountain.”

  Another voice, different, lighter, almost amused. “Your mountain, you mean.”

  “Mine,” the first agreed. “It should have killed him.”

  Cassor tried to focus on the sound, tried to pull meaning from it. His mind slid away like his thoughts were struggling to find handholds on wet stone.

  A third voice spoke, quieter. It came from somewhere to his left, maybe farther. Or closer. It was impossible to tell. The world had turned into one echoing room.

  “And yet it did not,” this one said. A woman’s voice—not soft, not harsh. Steady. “That is why he is here.”

  Cassor’s fingers twitched. He wanted to move. To curl in on himself. To do anything that wasn’t lying flat and helpless while giants talked about him.

  His body didn’t listen.

  Someone moved closer. He felt the shift in the air first—a presence leaning over him. A blur of shadow cut across the brightness above his half-open eyes.

  “He is… fragile,” the first voice said. Closer now. Aerion. Cassor knew that voice, even stretched and fraying in his head. “He barely clings to breath.”

  “Fragile things break in interesting ways,” the woman replied.

  If Cassor had been more awake, he might’ve cursed her for that.

  Another presence joined them. He felt the air warm, a subtle thing, like the glow from a nearby hearth. A hand—not touching him, but near—made the hairs on his arms prickle.

  “Oh, look at him,” said a fourth voice. This one sounded younger. Not a child, but younger than the others—a note of quick energy in it, something almost playful. “He’s like a kicked wolf pup.”

  “He’s like a corpse,” someone else said dryly. “A loud corpse. I heard him from three realms away.”

  “I liked the swearing,” the younger voice added. “Had bite.”

  “That was directed at me,” the woman said.

  “And?” The younger voice gave a short laugh. “It was still good.”

  Cassor wanted them to stop talking like he wasn’t there. He wanted to spit something back at them, something with that same bite, to prove he had not been reduced to an object on a floor.

  His tongue refused to move properly.

  The cold beneath him shifted. He realized dimly that whatever he was lying on was not simple stone. It had a strange, faint give to it, like rock that had been carved so smooth and fine it no longer had any bite at all.

  “He is fading,” Aerion said. He sounded… irritated? No, Cassor decided. Not at him. At the situation. “The climb burned through more than I expected.”

  “Then keep him from slipping,” the woman said. “You dragged him here, Sky-Lord. Do not let him unravel on the threshold.”

  “I am not a nurse,” Aerion replied.

  “No,” she said. “You are not. But you are not allowed to break my threads and then drop them wherever you like.”

  A heavy silence followed. Even half-conscious, Cassor felt the weight of it.

  Then a sigh. Aerion’s.

  Warmth pulsed through Cassor’s chest.

  It wasn’t gentle. It pressed into him like a stormfront, a thick, heavy pressure that squeezed his heart and lungs. For a moment, he panicked, thinking this was what dying actually felt like. Then his next breath came easier. It still hurt—but the hurt moved one step away.

  The woman’s voice hummed in thought.

  “That will do.”

  “How long?” Aerion asked.

  “Hard to say,” she replied. “His body is not like the others. It might cling. It might not.”

  “He clung to stone until his nails tore,” a different male voice said from farther away. There was a rough, blunt practicality in the tone. “He’ll live just to spite something.”

  Cassor latched onto that line without meaning to.

  Live just to spite something.

  He would have smiled if he remembered how.

  The world tilted. No, he was moving. Being lifted. Hands slid under him—not human hands. They were too steady, too sure, as if they’d carried hundreds of bodies, thousands, and never dropped one.

  He was weightless for a heartbeat, then cradled in something that felt like air made solid. The hum in the space around him changed, higher and softer, like moving from a hall into a smaller passage.

  Voices faded.

  Light dimmed.

  He sank.

  Consciousness loosened its grip on him like a fist slowly opening.

  Darkness took him again, not as a violent theft but as a slow surrender, like his mind had decided it had fought enough for one day and needed to leave his body to its repairs.

  He didn’t dream.

  If there were images in the dark—a mountain, a city without walls, his father’s eyes, his own hands clawing at stone—they were too scattered to form anything solid. Time slipped past in a way that didn’t feel like time at all.

  When he surfaced again, it was to warmth.

  Not the heavy, suffocating heat of the Red Fields at noon, or the dry oven of Therikon’s training yards. This warmth was contained. Measured. It touched him without burning, like a blanket pulled over someone sleeping.

  He smelled beeswax. Something herbal and sharp. Linen that hadn’t known dirt.

  His eyes opened slowly.

  No blinding light stabbed into them this time. The world resolved in layers: a soft glow, shadows stretched long and still, walls of pale stone, their harsh lines gentled by flickering light.

  He lay in a bed.

  The thought felt almost insulting.

  Not a pallet on a cold floor. Not a sack stuffed with straw that reeked of rot. An actual bed—broad and low, carved from the same smooth stone as the hall but topped with a mattress that gave slightly under his weight, layers of fabric between him and the unyielding base.

  Above him, thick beams crossed the ceiling, their edges softened, etched with faint patterns he couldn’t quite see from where he lay. Four candles rested on tall stands in the corners of the room, their flames steady and bright. The light they cast was gentle, yellow-gold, pooling around him without erasing the shadows completely.

  For a moment, he simply lay there.

  His body… didn’t hurt.

  Not the way it had.

  The deep, ripping agony of the climb was gone. The sharp, stabbing pains had settled into a deep, tired ache, like bruises that had passed their worst. His chest felt tight but not crushed. His breath didn’t tear anymore when it moved through his ribs.

  He blinked, heart beginning to thud faster.

  He pushed down the blanket—careful, small movements at first, as if his limbs might decide to snap off if he moved too quickly.

  Some god had seen fit to give him a shirt. It was plain, unadorned, soft in a way he wasn’t used to. It hung loosely over his frame, the fabric clean against skin that had spent months wrapped in sweat and dirt and the stink of other people’s refuse.

  He lifted his hands.

  They shook, but they obeyed.

  They didn’t look like his.

  The palms were crisscrossed with thin, pale lines, scars already formed where raw flesh had been hours—or days—ago. The worst tears had been closed, but not erased. The skin was ridged, not smooth. His knuckles were still swollen, darkened with old bruises, the kind that came from catching himself against stone again and again.

  He turned his wrists, watching the light slide across them.

  Someone had cleaned the blood away.

  It made him uncomfortable.

  His gaze moved down to his feet. He hesitated, then lifted the blanket further.

  Both feet were wrapped in strips of cloth, neat and tight, the fabric stained faintly dark where old blood had seeped through. The sight made phantom pain crawl up his legs, memories of jagged rock slicing into flesh on every step.

  Even bandaged, they looked… wrong. Thinner than they should be. His legs were all angles now, no softness, like someone had taken extra time carving them from bone and then forgotten muscle.

  His throat closed.

  Therikon had taken weight from him long before the mountain had.

  He covered his feet again.

  His head swam when he tried to sit up. The room tilted, candle flames bending in his vision. He pressed his palms into the bed and waited for the spinning to ease.

  Alone.

  He’d never been truly alone in the slums. There was always noise—shouting, footsteps, arguments, the scrape of boots in the dirt, the clatter of tools, the distant ring of steel on stone. Here, there was only the faint, steady crackle of candles and the slower, softer hum he’d first sensed in the great hall.

  It wasn’t silence. Not really. Just a different kind of noise.

  His heart pounded faster.

  He had no idea how long he’d been here. Hours. Days. The candles gave no clue—they burned steadily, not stubs, not fresh. There was no window to show him a sky, mortal or otherwise.

  Panic, small and sharp, pricked at the back of his mind.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  Pain flared the moment his bandaged feet brushed the cool stone floor. It wasn’t the bright, screaming agony of open wounds, but a deep, throbbing protest that shot up his calves and tried to lodge in his knees.

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  He sucked in a breath through his teeth and froze, waiting to see if his body would collapse.

  It didn’t.

  He let weight settle gradually on his feet, bit by bit. The ache intensified, but it didn’t knock him down.

  “Good,” he muttered under his breath, half-focused, half trying to make his own voice sound normal. “Come on.”

  He pushed himself upright.

  The room felt bigger from up here, though it was small compared to the hall he’d glimpsed before. No furniture besides the bed and a low stone table against the wall with a bowl and a folded cloth on it. Someone had left a jug there too. His stomach lurched as he realized he was thirsty. Not the light, casual thirst of a long day, but the deep dryness of a well almost empty.

  He shuffled over.

  Each step hurt.

  Every time his foot touched the floor, that throbbing ache shot up, echoing through old pain. He moved slowly, body tilted. The candles swayed in his vision again. He clenched his teeth and kept going until he reached the table, bracing himself with both hands.

  The jug was heavier than it looked. His arms trembled as he lifted it.

  Water slid down his throat in cool, blessed gulps. It tasted cleaner than anything he’d drunk in months. No dirt. No metallic tang from rusted pipes. Just water.

  When he set the jug down, he realized his hands were shaking harder, like his body had only just remembered it was supposed to be alive.

  He stayed there a moment, leaning on his arms, head bowed.

  He wasn’t dead.

  He wasn’t on the summit.

  He wasn’t in Therikon.

  He was… somewhere else.

  He thought of the voices he’d heard while drifting. Of Aerion’s rumble. Of the steady woman’s tone. Of the younger, sharper male laugh. Gods. All of them.

  His stomach knotted.

  He could lie down again. He could wait. Maybe someone would come. Maybe they would have answers. Maybe they would decide he was a mistake and throw him back the way he’d come.

  The thought of lying back down made something in him recoil.

  Being horizontal, helpless, waiting—that was how prey lived. How forgotten things remained forgotten. He’d had enough of that.

  He took one more breath. Then, carefully, he turned toward the door.

  It was tall and simple, a single slab of stone with no visible hinges, just a faint groove where it met the wall. A simple metal handle was set at his height, not too high for a boy to reach, as if whoever had designed it expected shorter hands might touch it someday.

  He stared at it longer than he should have.

  He knew nothing about this place. He had no right to wander. If anyone saw him, they might decide he was out of line, overstepping. In Therikon, walking where you weren’t supposed to walk earned you a beating at best.

  But the idea of staying put, waiting like an obedient animal for someone else to decide his next step, twisted in his chest.

  He reached out and pulled.

  The door gave way more easily than he expected, swinging outward on perfectly balanced weight.

  The corridor beyond was dimmer than his room, lit by flickering lamps set into the walls at intervals. The stone here was the same pale, smooth material, but the space felt narrower, more intimate—a vein leading away from the heart of something enormous.

  He stepped through.

  Cool air washed over his face, carrying a mix of scents he didn’t recognize—metal, ozone, something floral and faint, something like hot sand. The hum in the air grew a little louder, threads of sound overlapping.

  He took a step.

  His foot slapped softly against the floor.

  He took another.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going. Away from the bed. Away from not knowing. That was enough, for now.

  The corridor angled gently to the right. He followed it, one hand brushing the wall for balance. His palm slid across perfectly smooth stone, no cracks, no bumps, no evidence it had ever been anything else.

  He rounded a corner.

  And ran straight into a god.

  It wasn’t graceful.

  His forehead collided with something that felt like a wall wrapped in muscle. The impact made his vision flash white and his already protesting body stagger backwards. He threw his hands out to catch himself, but the ache in his palms flared, and for a second he thought his legs would give entirely.

  A hand shot out and grabbed his upper arm, steadying him.

  “Whoa—easy, kid. Easy.”

  The voice was male, young, and very close.

  Cassor blinked furiously, trying to clear his vision. The blurry outline right in front of him resolved slowly into a broad chest covered in dark leather and steel plates, harness straps crossing diagonally. He followed it up to a thick neck, a jaw with a faint scar along the line, a mouth screwed into a mix of surprise and concern.

  The eyes were what set him apart.

  They were bright—not with light, but with energy. Sharp, quick, assessing. A warrior’s eyes. Not distant like Aerion’s, not deep and layered like the woman’s. These eyes were present, very much here, very much focused on him.

  The man’s hair was dark and a little messy, not immaculately styled like a courtier’s. He looked like someone who wrestled for fun and laughed when he got hit.

  The hand on Cassor’s arm loosened but didn’t drop.

  “You shouldn’t be up,” the man said, eyebrows climbing. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  Cassor opened his mouth.

  Nothing articulate came out.

  “I… door,” he managed, nodding vaguely back the way he’d come. “Woke up. No one—” His chest squeezed. “Didn’t want to just… lie there.”

  The man’s expression softened, lines of concern digging in deeper.

  “Of course you didn’t,” he muttered, half to himself. “Sky-Lord and Fate put a boy in a room and assumed he’d stay put. Brilliant.”

  He let out a breath and gave Cassor’s arm a gentle squeeze.

  “Alright,” he said, tone shifting into something more deliberately steady. “First things first. Are you going to fall over if I let go?”

  Cassor blinked at him.

  “No,” he lied automatically.

  One dark eyebrow arched.

  “Try again,” the man said. “Truth this time.”

  Cassor swallowed.

  “…maybe,” he admitted.

  “Better,” the man said. “I’m Kairos.”

  The name dropped into the conversation without ceremony. God of war, Cassor’s mind supplied a heartbeat later, remembering half-whispered temple stories and drunken campfire boasts from soldiers who claimed to feel him on the battlefield.

  This was not how he’d imagined him.

  He’d pictured some towering, scar-covered monster with eyes like empty pits. Not someone who looked like he could be an older brother—if older brothers were carved out of corded muscle and casual danger.

  “And you,” Kairos went on, “are the idiot who tried to wrestle a mountain, yeah?”

  Cassor bristled, just a little.

  “I climbed it,” he said.

  Kairos’s mouth twitched.

  “Right. You climbed it,” he said. “Barefoot. Half-starved. With no gift. Then you screamed at my siblings until you passed out.”

  Cassor’s cheeks burned hot.

  “Stop saying it like that,” he muttered.

  “Why?” Kairos grinned, but it wasn’t mocking. It was… impressed. “It’s impressive. Suicidal, but impressive.”

  Cassor shifted his weight, the throbbing in his feet reminding him of exactly how suicidal it had been.

  “You still shouldn’t be walking,” Kairos said, concern overtaking the humor again. His eyes flicked down, as if he could see through the bandages. “Elethea said you’d be out for another day at least. Aerion said you’d be conscious but stuck to the bed. Neither of them said you’d be trying to go for a stroll.”

  He said their names like they were family, not distant deities. It unsettled Cassor.

  “How long?” Cassor asked quietly.

  Kairos tilted his head. “Since we dragged you up here? Half a day. Maybe a little more. Hard to tell when you’re between ceilings.”

  Half a day.

  It felt like longer. Or shorter. Time had become strange.

  “Does it… always feel like this here?” Cassor asked. It was a stupid question. He knew it as soon as it left his mouth. But he needed to ask something.

  Kairos considered.

  “No,” he said. “You’re wobbly because your body’s still arguing about whether it wants to be alive. This place just… makes the argument louder.”

  He glanced down the corridor, then back at Cassor.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you sitting before you face-plant into something important and I have to explain to Aerion how I broke his new project.”

  “I’m not a project,” Cassor muttered, stung.

  Kairos’s eyes flicked back to him, sharper now.

  “No,” he said. “You’re not. That’s my point.”

  He adjusted his grip, moving from Cassor’s upper arm to hook one of the boy’s arms over his broad shoulder. The motion was practiced, like he’d done it a hundred times for wounded soldiers.

  “Lean on me,” he said. “Don’t be stupid about it.”

  Cassor hesitated.

  He didn’t like leaning on anyone. Not since he’d learned how quickly people stepped away.

  But his legs were starting to shake.

  Reluctantly, he let his weight rest more fully against Kairos’s side.

  The god of war didn’t flinch. If anything, he shifted just enough to bear more of it without making it obvious.

  They started walking.

  The corridor stretched ahead, curving gently. Kairos set a pace that would’ve been nothing for him—slow enough that Cassor could shuffle without feeling like he was being dragged. Every step still hurt, but the warmth soaking through from Kairos’s body dulled it a little.

  “So,” Kairos said after a few moments, tone almost conversational. “What do they call you down there? When they’re not calling you useless.”

  Cassor stiffened.

  “You heard that too?” he said bitterly.

  Kairos snorted.

  “Kid, I’ve heard every way mortals find to call each other worthless,” he said. “You’ve got creative ones, I’ll give your city that. But that’s not what I asked.”

  Cassor swallowed.

  “…Cassor,” he said. “Cassor Varian.”

  “Varian,” Kairos repeated. Something like recognition flickered through his eyes. “That explains the way you stand.”

  Cassor frowned. “How do I stand?”

  “Like you’re waiting to be hit,” Kairos said simply. “But also like you might duck and bite back if you get the chance.”

  Cassor wasn’t sure what to do with that.

  They reached a wider section of the corridor where the wall cut back into a shallow alcove. A low stone bench had been carved there, its surface worn smooth by centuries of use—or maybe never touched at all. It was impossible to tell.

  Kairos guided Cassor down onto it.

  “Sit,” he said. “If you pass out, I’d rather you fall three inches instead of three feet.”

  Cassor dropped onto the bench with less grace than he wanted to admit. His breaths came quicker now, sweat dampening the collar of the too-soft shirt. The effort of walking this far left his limbs trembling.

  “See?” Kairos said. “Out of bed too soon.”

  “I’m fine,” Cassor muttered.

  Kairos gave him a flat look.

  “You’re alive because three gods argued about how dead you’re allowed to be,” he said. “Don’t ruin their work by playing the tough soldier yet. That comes later.”

  Cassor stared at him.

  “Why do you care?” he asked. It came out harsher than he intended, ragged with leftover fear.

  Kairos didn’t seem offended.

  “I came to check on you,” he said, as if it should’ve been obvious. “Aerion asked. Elethea said you were… loud.”

  Cassor flinched at that word.

  “I wanted to see the boy who climbed a mountain without being told to,” Kairos added. “That’s my kind of stupid.”

  Despite himself, Cassor huffed a dry, almost-laugh.

  Kairos’s mouth twitched.

  “There it is,” he said. “You do have more than one expression.”

  Cassor lowered his gaze.

  He wasn’t used to someone talking to him like this. Not like a tool to be measured. Not like a problem to be removed. Like… a person.

  “You should hate me,” Cassor said quietly. “War gods like strong people. Gifted people. I’m…” He swallowed. “I’m nothing.”

  Kairos’s brows knit.

  “Who told you that?” he asked.

  Cassor almost said: everyone.

  He thought of instructors, of other boys in the yard, of his father’s silence, of the way people in Therikon had moved around him like he was an inconvenient stain.

  “Therikon,” he said instead.

  Kairos made a low sound in his throat.

  “Therikon doesn’t know everything,” he said. “It thinks it does, but it doesn’t.”

  His tone made it clear this was not an opinion; it was something he’d proven more than once.

  “Listen to me,” Kairos went on, shifting to crouch in front of Cassor so their eyes were level. It made the god look smaller, less looming, but it didn’t lessen the intensity in his gaze. “Power isn’t just what’s handed to you at seven years old. It’s what you do when no one hands you anything.”

  His eyes flicked to Cassor’s hands, to the scars there.

  “You did more with nothing than most men do with gifts,” he said. “Don’t insult that in front of me.”

  Cassor’s throat tightened.

  Those words echoed what Aerion and Elethea had said, but from Kairos they carried a different weight. Less cosmic, more… battlefield.

  “You really came just to see me?” Cassor asked, skeptical.

  Kairos shrugged.

  “And to make sure you weren’t dead. Aerion’s bad with fragile things. He either forgets they break or assumes they won’t.”

  “You keep calling me fragile,” Cassor said.

  “You keep almost dying,” Kairos countered. “Fix that, and I’ll adjust the language.”

  For a moment, silence settled between them, filled only by distant echoes—a clang from somewhere far above, a burst of laughter from another corridor, the low thrum of power that ran through the bones of the place.

  “What is this place?” Cassor asked finally. “Really.”

  Kairos glanced up at the curved ceiling.

  “Castle Primarch,” he said. “Home. Prison. Workshop. Depends on the mood.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Cassor said.

  “It’s the only one you get today,” Kairos replied without malice. “You’re not ready for the whole thing. Your head’s barely screwed on as it is.”

  Cassor frowned.

  “When will I be?” he asked.

  Kairos smirked.

  “When you can walk from your room to the end of this hall without using my shoulder,” he said. “That’ll be day one.”

  Cassor looked down at his bandaged feet.

  “What if I can’t?” he asked quietly.

  Kairos’s voice lost all trace of joking.

  “You climbed a mountain until you bled out of everything that could bleed,” he said. “You screamed at gods that could’ve crushed you for the insult. You’re sitting in a hall they built, breathing air they gave back to you, asking what happens if you can’t walk.”

  He leaned in a little.

  “Cassor,” he said. “You’re not allowed to fail that small.”

  The words hit something deep inside the boy. Something that had been buried under months of rejection and half a year of being told he was less than nothing. It didn’t heal that part. Didn’t fix it. But it stirred.

  He met Kairos’s gaze again.

  “Why are you being… nice?” Cassor asked, the word strange on his tongue when applied to a god.

  Kairos huffed.

  “I’m not nice,” he said. “I just hate wasting potential. And I hate it when people kick what’s already on the ground.”

  He drummed his fingers once on his knee.

  “Also,” he added, “if you die now, Fate and Sky will mope, and they’re both insufferable when they mope. It’s in everyone’s interest you stay alive.”

  Cassor snorted despite himself.

  It hurt his ribs a little. It was worth it.

  “You should be back in bed,” Kairos said after a moment. “Your body might have tricks left. Let it use them.”

  Cassor looked back the way they’d come. The corridor seemed longer now that he’d already walked it. The idea of retracing his steps made his feet ache in anticipation.

  “I don’t want to go back and just… lie there,” he admitted.

  Kairos nodded slowly.

  “I know,” he said. “So don’t just lie there. Think. Remember. Get angry. Plan. Bed doesn’t mean helpless. It just means horizontal.”

  “It feels like prison,” Cassor said.

  “This entire place is a kind of prison,” Kairos said calmly. “For us, for you, for a dozen things you don’t have names for yet. Might as well be the part of it with a mattress.”

  He stood and offered Cassor his hand.

  “Come on,” he said. “If you’re going to collapse, do it where someone can actually find you.”

  Cassor hesitated. Then he took the hand.

  Kairos pulled him up with care, not yanking, just enough force to get him standing without forcing his weight fully onto his own feet too quickly. Once Cassor was upright, the god moved back to his side, letting him lean again.

  They walked.

  “You’ll see them all eventually,” Kairos said as they moved down the corridor. “Aerion. Elethea. Seraphime. Tharion. The rest. They’re all… interested.”

  Cassor’s stomach twisted.

  “In me?” he asked, disbelieving.

  “In what you become,” Kairos corrected. “Don’t mistake the two. They don’t know you yet. Not really. They know what you did. They know what you yelled. They know you refused to go quietly.”

  He paused.

  “Getting them to know you,” he added, “that part’s on you.”

  “And if I don’t want them to?” Cassor muttered.

  Kairos’s mouth curved.

  “Then make sure they know that too,” he said. “Gods like honesty more than groveling. Most of the time.”

  They reached his door.

  It looked the same, but now it felt different. Less like an exit accidentally taken, more like a line Cassor had crossed and could cross again.

  Kairos opened it with one hand, guiding Cassor in with the other.

  The candles still burned steadily. The bed still waited. It looked smaller now that he’d seen more of the place. But it was his. For now.

  Kairos helped him sit, then eased him back until he was propped against the wall, not lying flat.

  “There,” the war god said. “Compromise. Not lying down. Not wandering the halls like a drunk ghost.”

  Cassor managed a faint smile.

  “You’ll be back?” he asked before he could talk himself out of it.

  Kairos blinked, a little surprised the question was aimed at him and not at the more obviously important gods.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I told Aerion I’d keep an eye on you. He’s bad at that. Too used to looking down from storms. I walk with soldiers. It’s different.”

  He moved toward the door.

  At the threshold, he paused and looked back.

  “Cassor,” he said.

  The boy looked up.

  “You lived,” Kairos said simply. “Don’t waste the fact that you did.”

  Then he stepped out, and the door closed softly behind him.

  Cassor stared at the stone a moment longer, the echo of the god’s words settling around him like another blanket.

  He looked at his hands again. At the scars. At the tremble that still hadn’t fully left them.

  He thought of the mountain. Of the hall. Of Aerion’s confusion. Of Elethea’s eyes. Of Kairos’s grip on his arm, firm and steady.

  He was not home. He was not safe. He was not healed.

  But for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t just trying to survive the next hour.

  He was… somewhere else.

  Somewhere above the world, in a place built by beings he had screamed at, being watched by a god of war who had come to check if he was still breathing.

  Cassor let his head rest back against the wall.

  His body ached. His feet throbbed. Exhaustion settled over him like wet sand.

  He did not close his eyes.

  Not yet.

  He’d climbed a mountain to demand the gods see him.

  They had.

  Now he had to decide what to do with the fact that they had not looked away.