The moment Acheron crossed into the fragment fold, the air clamped down like a vice. Every step forward dragged resistance, as if the atmosphere itself questioned his right to move. He caught the scent of scorched copper. Faint undertones of decay threaded through the silence.
His fingers closed around the staff at his side. Seven feet long, straight as judgment, the shaft bore Atlantean sigils carved in thin silver lines that spiraled toward the twin-emblem at the crown. Gold and silver fused into a sunburst. The mark of the Talimosin. Acheron had never named the staff. It didn't need one. It had been etched into his soul at birth.
He didn't call on its power yet. It waited with the patience of the sea.
Time didn't move here. It waited.
Stone shimmered in impossible geometry around him. A corridor built from memory, not matter. Ruins bled through the walls like bruises under skin. Too many timelines layered at once. Too many histories buried in each step.
Acheron exhaled slowly. This was no battlefield.
It was a reckoning.
"A time-locked corridor?" He asked aloud.
His voice didn't echo. It sank.
A ripple peeled across the corridor's surface, and from the far end, a figure stepped forward with casual precision.
"Would you have preferred a blood circle? I had one. But this felt more civilized."
Namuš stepped out of the distortion like it had parted for him. His shoulders rolled with ease, but Acheron knew better. Power coiled at his feet. The air shimmered near his skin. Not heat, but presence. Like the pressure before a storm no god could outrun.
"You shouldn't be here," The daeve general said. His voice carried that even cadence that always preceded a brutal strike.
"Neither should you," Acheron replied. "But here we are."
Namuš's palm lifted.
Magic flared, not spoken, just released.
Acheron's staff swung into position. The wards along its length flared bright as it intercepted the blow. The impact sent the corridor shuddering, and a residual wave of energy peeled away the illusion for a breathless second, revealing scorched ruins beneath.
Namuš smiled faintly. "Atlantean stability. Pretty. But ineffective."
Acheron didn't answer. Instead, he stepped forward, staff spinning once with the precision of a war-veteran's prayer. The sigils pulsed in sequence.
Namuš responded in kind. His sword unraveled into view, called from the space between thought and fury. A long, cruel-edged weapon forged in a forgotten divine forge, its black blade shimmered with blood-red script that crawled across the metal like serpents. Ashk'tar was no mere relic, it was a covenant. An oath sealed in fire and blood, dangerous even in stillness. Their weapons met.
Steel rang against staff imbued with the strength of a sunken realm. Acheron twisted his grip, driving the runed shaft low to catch the undercut. Sparks flared and skittered across the corridor as sigils collided.
Acheron hadn't changed. Still calm. Still self-righteous. Still convinced he knew better than everyone else, even when drowning in his own grief.
Namuš circled him slowly. "You and your pro-humanity shadow soldiers keep showing up where you're not supposed to be. I've tried giving you leeway. Our Uma Šarru gave you orders."
"I don't take orders from children," Acheron snapped.
Namuš's eyes lit. "And that's your problem, isn't it?"
He stepped closer. "Ambrose isn't a child anymore. He hasn't been for a long time. But you keep treating him like he's the scared little boy from New Orleans. Because if he's still that, you don't have to own what you did."
Acheron's jaw twitched. The corridor pulsed. The air got colder.
"Careful," Acheron said. "You're walking a line."
"I built the line," Namuš growled. "And I buried bodies on both sides of it."
Acheron's patience frayed. Namuš had always known where to cut with words. He wasn't violent by impulse. He was surgical. Every phrase flayed a truth you didn't want spoken aloud.
He took a breath and let it burn through the center of his chest. "I know Nick's changed," he said, quieter now. "I've seen it. I'm not blind."
"Then stop acting like it."
"I'm not trying to control him. I'm trying to protect him."
"From what?" Namuš leaned in. "His own evolution?"
Acheron didn't respond.
"You know why we're all so loyal to him?" Namuš asked. "Because he did what you never could. He looked at the legacy he inherited and said, 'Fine. I'll use it, but it won't use me.' He owns his darkness, Coz. Doesn't hide behind prophecy or apology."
"I've buried loved ones who said that before falling," Acheron replied. "I don't want him to be next."
Namuš paused. For a brief second, something old and worn passed across his face.
"So have I," he said. "But you don't get to save someone by standing in their way. That's not protection. That's fear."
The corridor was listening. Echoing back their truths. Testing the weight of what might come next. That was the danger of time-magic. It didn't just trap. It mirrored.
And Acheron was full of mirrored fractures.
He didn't hate the him. Not exactly. But he hated what he represented.
The Atlantean god had been a symbol of hope for too long. A legacy, tragedy and warning. The Dark Hunters leaned on him like a crutch, forgetting he was still imperfect. Still flawed. Still choosing.
And Acheron kept choosing wrong.
"You think we're the threat," Namuš said. "That the Šarras are unstable. Monsters. You're half-right."
He raised a hand. Light flickered, showing images of Dara wading through carnage, Ninim covered in yokai blood, Tahazu standing atop a pile of severed limbs.
"We are monsters," Namuš said. "But we were built for war. This war. And we chose him. Not because of prophecy but because of proof."
Acheron's throat tightened. The images weren't new. He'd seen their destruction before. Fought similar battles firsthand. Dara had once nearly leveled the Persian Empire over a single insult.
But it wasn't the violence that disturbed him. It was the loyalty behind it.
Monsters didn't follow weak kings. They followed those they believed in.
And Nick? Nick had turned monsters into believers.
Acheron shifted. "You trust him that much?"
"No," Namuš said. "I trust him more."
Acheron twisted, countering with a side-staff flick that would've cut through most shields. Namuš pivoted, letting it graze his cloak. Sparks fell like dying stars.
"You think I don't know what's at stake?" Acheron snapped. "I see the fractures. I see what Nick is becoming."
"You see pieces," Namuš shot back. "You don't see him."
Another clash. This time Acheron struck low. The staff caught Namuš at the ribs, but it didn't cut. It slid off. His skin was humming with sigils that pulsed like blood-stained circuitry.
Acheron stepped back, eyeing him.
"You warded yourself before summoning me."
"No," Namuš replied. "I am the ward."
He launched himself forward again. Their weapons collided in a blinding crescent of blue and red. The sound wasn't a clash.
It was a warning.
But Namuš was already on him.
Steel rang out. Not Atlantean—older. Forged from battlefields where gods bled.
Acheron blocked high, their weapons grinding with a flash of kinetic force that split the floor beneath them. The corridor groaned.
And then Acheron stopped holding back.
His right hand pulsed with raw Atlantean force, drawn from a well he rarely touched. Black flame burst from his palm, racing along the floor in a jagged crack of power.
Namuš didn't dodge.
He walked through it.
His left gauntlet flared green as it absorbed the impact. Runes shimmered along his arms, ancient Primal and Malphas magic fused into something unholy.
"You're not just Atlantean," Namuš said. "And you know it."
Acheron's teeth ground together.
"Charonte blood. Chthonian theft. Atlantean body. You've spent so long being everyone else's scapegoat you've forgotten what it means to choose."
"I chose to protect them."
"No," Namuš growled. "You chose control."
The corridor pulsed. A final time-lock warning. The seal was beginning to crack. This conversation had limits.
Acheron closed the distance between them by a step. Just enough. "If he falls," he said. "I will stop him."
Namuš didn't flinch. "And if you interfere again," he said. "The others won't talk. They'll cut."
He meant it. Namuš didn't bluff. His warning was cold. Flat. True.
He didn't want to see Acheron fall. They were cousins, technically. Bound by bloodlines older than memory. He remembered when Acheron used to laugh. Really laugh.
But that man was gone. Replaced by a creature so afraid of losing more that he kept grasping at control like it could replace faith.
"You've become what they made you," Namuš said, turning. "Predictable. Protective. Power bound."
They collided mid-corridor. Floor shattered. Wall fractals collapsed and reassembled around them. One punch from Acheron threw Namuš into the far wall. The Šarru bounced off and landed hard, then grinned.
"Been waiting for that."
He rushed again.
Fist met jaw. Blade met bracer. Sparks tore across the ceiling.
Acheron felt his bones vibrate from the impact. His Atlantean side screamed. But the part of him that had always been more guardian than god—the one that came from Styxx's stolen legacy—thrived in this.
He'd always hated what he was. But he'd never hated fighting. Then the pressure hit them. Not from the corridor.
From beneath it.
A pulse tore through the corridor. Not from them. From deeper, older strata. The staff in Acheron's hand vibrated once. Not with resonance—but alarm. Beneath their feet, something ancient pressed against the fold.
Acheron and Namuš both froze.
Then Gir's voice thundered through their minds like a blade cracking sky.
"Evacuate. Now. Trap confirmed. Not our Ašû-Šarru. Not even a simulacrum. It's Kingu. He's stirring. Dara and I are initiating counterseal. All Šarras regroup. I repeat, regroup."
Acheron's breath hitched.
Not Neria Belami then. Not even bait meant to look like her.
Just a name.
Kingu.
The Atlantean god stepped back, raising the staff to read its runes. The topmost glyph had turned black. Even his grandmother's sigil—once a steady, pulsing crimson—dimmed.
Namuš lowered his sword, its edge flickering with unease.
Acheron clenched his fists.
The air rippled. A pulse of hate, ancient and vengeful, rolled across the corridor like breath from a sealed tomb. It passed through the folds of their magic, testing them, weighing them, wanting out.
The seal was rupturing.
And Dara and Gir were the only barrier left between Kingu and the world.
Namuš turned toward the corridor's fractured edge, his voice no longer confrontational.
"They're already holding the line."
Acheron didn't answer. He stared at the writhing patterns on the corridor floor. Old runes. And something else.
Primordial fury.
Namuš's voice shifted. Quieter. But sharper. "Now do you see why we don't tolerate interference?"
Acheron didn't nod. But he didn't fight either. He turned to face the exit forming beside them, his silhouette dark against the collapsing corridor. "Let's go," he said.
Namuš was already moving.
And as they vanished into the fracture, the corridor of echoes finally shattered behind them.