The night stretched long and cold, broken only by the sound of crackling fire and the faint rasp of metal scraping bone.
Ahn sat near the flames, turning the Jackal's Fang in his hand.
The blade hummed with a pulse that wasn't his.
Delilah stood a few feet away, staring at nothing. Her eyes were ringed with darkness, veins faintly visible beneath her skin. The serpent's corruption still lingered in her blood.
"You haven't said a word," Ahn said finally, voice calm. "That's unlike you."
Delilah didn't answer.
"You freed me," he continued, leaning back against a broken wall. "Risked everything. Yet you look like someone who lost."
Her eyes flicked toward him. "I followed orders."
"Orders," Ahn repeated, rolling the word around like it tasted wrong. "From a god who hides in the dark. Do you even know what you've done?"
Delilah's jaw tightened. "Apophis gave me purpose."
He smiled faintly, the firelight catching the blood on his cheek. "No. He gave you chains. You're the same as before only now, you don't even realize it."
She turned, glaring. "You think I wanted this?"
"I think you wanted to matter," he said softly. "You wanted to stop being someone's pawn. Pharaoh. Empire. Gods. It's all the same game. But you picked a new master, and he wrapped himself around your spine."
Delilah's breath hitched. For a second, her pupils flickered human again before dark light bled back in.
"Don't fight it," Ahn murmured. "Let it in. You can't kill chaos. You become it."
He stood, stepping closer until the glow of the Jackal's Fang reflected in her eyes. "Apophis told you to free me. He didn't tell you what happens next."
Delilah's voice was small. "What happens next?"
Ahn's grin widened. "We rewrite the order. Pharaoh thinks his little army of children can fix the world. We'll show him what chaos looks like when it smiles."
He handed her the dagger. Her fingers trembled as she took it, the metal searing faint black marks into her palm.
"Keep it," he said. "You'll need it when they come."
Delilah frowned. "Who?"
Ahn looked toward the horizon where the first light was rising. "The ones who think they're chosen. The ones who think they can stop gods."
He stepped past her, stretching his arms wide, as if welcoming the coming dawn.
His laugh echoed across the ruins low, cold, and certain.
"Let them come. I want to see how long the sun lasts."
The torches along the walls guttered in the draft, smoke curling toward the ceiling's painted gods that never answered.
Alexander stood near the marble column, hands clasped behind his back. His eyes stayed fixed on Baron's burned reflection in the polished floor.
"You should stop saying things like that," Alexander said quietly. "Father has ears everywhere."
Baron finally looked up. His lip split when he smiled. "Let him listen. Maybe it'll remind him what it feels like to bleed."
Alexander's expression hardened. "You think you're the only one who's bled for him?"
Baron snorted, limping toward the wall where his shattered armor lay piled. "You're the crown prince. You bleed words, not wounds."
"I bled my brother," Alexander said.
Baron froze mid-step.
Alexander's voice stayed level, almost calm. "He disobeyed an order. I carried out the execution myself. So don't talk to me about loyalty or pain."
The hall went silent except for the faint hum of the divine conduits running beneath the marble. Baron lowered himself onto the step, every motion stiff, mechanical.
"What did he do?" Baron asked.
"He questioned Father," Alexander replied. "Like you did."
Baron barked a dry laugh. "Then I'll keep my mouth shut."
"You won't," Alexander said. "You've never known how."
Baron picked up one of his gauntlets, turning it in his hand. The metal was warped from lightning, half-melted. "You ever think maybe he's wrong?"
"Every day," Alexander said softly. "And every day I remember what happens to those who say it out loud."
He stepped closer, voice lowering. "Father keeps you alive for one reason. The scar. He's using you to track that boy."
Baron's fingers twitched. "Magnolia."
"Yes. He can sense Ra's light through you now. You're bait, Baron. A tether. When that link burns again, the armies will move."
Baron looked up sharply. "And you're telling me this because?"
"Because I don't want to see another loyal soldier die for a lie."
Baron studied him. For once, there was no arrogance, no fear, only exhaustion in Alexander's voice, the kind that came from obeying a man like Nero too long.
"You think your pity helps me?" Baron asked.
"No," Alexander said. "But it might save you."
He turned to leave.
Baron's voice stopped him. "You think he can be beaten?"
Alexander paused at the doorway. "Father?"
"No," Baron said. "The boy."
Alexander looked back, eyes faintly lit by the torches. "If Ra chose him, then yes. And that's why Father will never stop hunting him."
Baron leaned back against the wall, the faint gold light pulsing under his skin again. "Then maybe I'll kill him before Father does."
"Or die trying," Alexander said.
Baron's grin was faint, almost human. "At least that would mean I finally chose for myself."
Alexander didn't answer. He walked away, the echo of his boots fading into the corridors.
When he was gone, Baron looked down at his hand. The lightning still crawled under his veins, faint but alive.
He pressed his palm against the floor, and the air filled with the scent of ozone.
"Feel that, sun-boy?" he murmured. "I'm coming."
Outside, thunder rolled over the Greek coast.
The climb was silent.
Alexander carried no torch. The pale light from the palace towers below was enough to mark the steps carved into the black cliff. Each one was old, smooth from centuries of kings walking the same path to speak with the dead they'd buried.
At the top, the air thinned. The stars looked close enough to touch.
The necropolis stretched before him, a hundred stone coffins arranged in a half circle, each bearing a divine mark. Names long erased by time. Beyond them, at the farthest ledge, stood a single grave separate from the rest.
That was his brother's.
Alexander stopped there. The tomb was simple. No markings, no scripture, only the imperial seal, half cracked, like someone had tried to destroy it once.
He crouched down, brushing the dust away with his hand. His fingers came away gray.
"You're still up here alone," he said quietly. "Father said you didn't deserve a place among the divines. Said mercy would dishonor the gods."
The wind stirred, dry and cold.
"I told him I'd do it." His voice faltered. "That I'd carry out the order. You remember? You laughed. Said I wouldn't be able to look you in the eye when the time came."
He looked down. "You were right."
The memory crawled up from the dark, uninvited, the night of the execution.
The chamber had been quiet except for the hum of the divine restraints. His brother, unarmed, kneeling, still smiling. The gold cuffs around his wrists glowed faintly, dimming each time he exhaled.
"You don't have to," his brother had said.
"I do," Alexander answered, hand steady on the hilt.
"Then do it fast."
Alexander hadn't. He'd hesitated, long enough for his brother to lift his head and look at him, that same quiet gaze that had always seen too much. Then Nero's voice came from behind the glass, low and cold.
"Do not fail me, Alexander."
The sword went through clean. One motion. One breath.
His brother never screamed. He only whispered, "I forgive you."
When the light left his eyes, Alexander had dropped the blade.
He'd carried the body himself to the necropolis, past the shrines, past the carved halls, until dawn. He buried him here, alone.
Now, years later, his fingers pressed against the same stone.
"I still hear you sometimes," he murmured. "In the council chamber. In the silence before Father speaks. You ask if I'm proud of what I've become."
He laughed once, dry and short. "I'm not."
He sat back, the wind lifting the edges of his cloak.
"Father says order is salvation. That gods only respect power. But all I see are graves. The more he builds, the emptier it gets."
He looked up toward the faint glow of lightning miles away, the storm over the palace where Baron was still recovering.
"I think it's starting again," Alexander whispered. "Different names. Same hunger. Baron will burn himself for vengeance. Father will burn the world for control. And me? I already burned you."
His hand slid over the cracked imperial seal.
"I don't ask for forgiveness anymore," he said quietly. "Only that you stay silent when I follow."
He stood, straightened his cloak, and glanced back once more.
The stars reflected faintly in his eyes. "I'll end him, brother. One way or another. I'll end him."
Then he turned and walked down the steps, leaving the grave under the open sky.
The wind shifted again, faint and low like laughter, or a sigh.
By the time Alexander reached the lower halls, the palace was half-asleep.
The torches burned low. The marble corridors whispered with cold air and the faint hum of divine current beneath the floors.
He moved quietly. Habit, not fear. He had learned long ago that Nero never truly slept.
As he passed the corridor leading to the sanctum, voices drifted through the open door.
Cassius's laughter. Gaius's voice, sharper, bored. And beneath them Nero's.
Alexander slowed, stepping into the shadowed archway
Inside, the sanctum was alive.
The walls glowed faintly with blue runes. At the center, suspended by silver chains, hung a massive glass cylinder filled with golden fluid. Within it floated a human form, motionless, faceless, and burning faintly from within.
The twins stood on either side of the chamber, each holding a conduit cable feeding power into the construct. Sparks crawled across their arms, reflected in their identical grins.
Cassius tilted his head. "Almost stable this time."
"Almost," Gaius said, pressing a rune that sent a ripple through the liquid. The figure inside twitched once, its body spasming against the restraints.
A low, broken sound escaped the cylinder, half gasp, half scream.
Nero stood before it, hands clasped behind his back. His crown pulsed with light in rhythm to the being's agony.
"Do you hear that?" Nero asked softly. "That is the sound of divinity being rewritten."
Cassius grinned wider. "You think this one will survive longer than the last?"
"It doesn't need to survive," Nero said. "It needs to contain."
Alexander stepped closer to the doorway, heart hammering.
Inside the cylinder, the figure's features flickered, a boy's face for a second, then a blur of light. Nero's voice deepened.
"This one carries a spark of the sun. A trace of Ra's power stolen from the battlefield." He raised a hand. "Baron's scar gave us enough energy to begin the process."
The twins looked at each other. Cassius whispered, "So it's true. You're building your own god."
Nero smiled faintly. "No. I'm building perfection."
Gaius frowned. "And if it breaks?"
"Then we build another," Nero said. "Until creation learns obedience."
The figure inside the glass jerked violently. Cracks spidered across the surface. The golden fluid darkened.
Cassius stepped back, laughing. "Still rejects you. Even stolen light won't serve."
Nero turned his head slowly toward him. "Everything serves, Cassius. Even failure."
He lifted his hand again. The air around the cylinder trembled. The being inside screamed once, then dissolved into pure light, sucked into a black sigil that appeared in Nero's palm. When it was gone, the glass hung empty, the fluid evaporating into mist.
Alexander pressed his back to the wall, jaw tight.
The Emperor turned toward the twins, calm as ever. "Prepare another vessel. Stronger material. Double the restraints. And fetch the remaining shards from the Ra incident. We'll begin again by dawn."
Cassius bowed mockingly. "As you command, my Emperor."
The brothers turned to leave, chatting casually as they passed the doorway.
Alexander didn't move until their footsteps vanished.
Inside the sanctum, Nero still stood before the smoking cylinder, hand glowing faintly from the absorbed energy.
He spoke softly, almost to himself. "Order will be born from chaos. Even if I must carve it from the bones of gods."
Alexander watched him in silence, the same thought running through his mind.
You've gone too far.
Then he turned and left, his steps quiet, eyes hard.
The sky outside was shifting from black to gray. The first light of dawn slipped across the marble floor, cold and thin.
Alexander didn't stop walking until the glow disappeared behind him.