I heard the portal close behind me, not like a door slamming shut, not like a gate locking behind a prisoner but like a whisper ceasing mid-sentence, like breath halting on the cusp of confession. Soft, final, certain like a dying breath.
The air didn't tremble when it vanished. It was as if the world in its entirety except just me forgot that something unnatural had been there.
It would have been so very easy to vanish into the air, to reach out with thought and twist space around me, threading home from one point in existence to another like tugging on a stray string. I could have returned to my doorstep in less than the time it takes for a person to take a breath. I could have but I didn't. I wanted to think, kinda to relax and this early when the streets of L.A were not as they would be in hours, walking felt like the best option to do so.
So I walked.
Los Angeles in winter did not feel like a city. The morning sky had the color of forgotten Polaroids, pale blues fading at the edges, sunlight diluted by smog that carried the echoes of engines and burning hope.
The palms leaned like old men nodding off during church sermons, proud and tired. Pavement still steamed in places, refusing the season's lie of cold. Christmas decorations clung to storefronts when they were not necessary anymore. Neon buzzed, sharp and ugly, spilling color into puddles. This city felt as if it was a bruise made of light.
Beside me, Thalia slept, nestled in my arms, her breath faint and fragile against my collarbone. She was weightless in my arms, and yet heavier than what she had been in my memories. I did not know what she was dreaming of while sleeping. I just hoped it was a kind one, a happy one. That was the least that she deserved after everything she had gone through.
I twisted atoms around us through the use of adaptive material synthesis, not like a weaver but like a surgeon, precise and deliberate. Invisibility was simple. Ensuring we could not be seen was basic. Photons were rearranged. But I knew better than to stop there. I bent sound, rerouted smell, unraveled the microscopic trace of our presence. We were not just unseen. if anything, it would be as if we unhappened.
Better safe than sorry. It better be overkill than not doing anything, even more so with my daughter sleeping in my arms
We passed billboards arranged like tombstones in a graveyard. And one of them, wide, ugly, shining with the leprous glow of televised fiction,spoke of me without saying my name.
"Natural Gas Explosion Devastates Alexander's Island."
The words rolled like bad theatre. Dramatic. Hollow. False.
The screen flickered with images of ruin, what remained of the island: a fractured mass of stone, half-swallowed by the sea. Chasms where land had once laughed under sunlight. Ash blooming like rotten flowers.
And I smiled.
Because it looked as I knew it would like a god's wrath. As if a blade forged from the spine of a mountain had been swung down by a hand drunk with fury. Which, in a way, it had. Slash Emperor,the black blade, the anti-divine weapon I had brought to bring a deity low had sung through the air like an aria of unmaking. I kinda was still salty about the fact that I missed Hecate. At least, all of this resulted in having Thalia back.
Even then, Olympus had dressed it all up in a scene worthy of the theatre, in a bad one.
Even then, Gas leaks? Really? That was the lie they chose? They could've said a meteor, or a naval bombing, or something else But no, gas. I thought I was reincarnated in the Percy Jackson Universe, not the Nasuverse.
And why? Because they knew nothing. I was sure that Hecate would make sure that the gods would not know more than the normal people. It was in her interest. More than that, if Olympus knew, truly knew—that their beloved Hecate had dueled me in secret and almost lost her immortal life for it even though it should not have been possible, Zeus, that petty roach-god with thunder for morals, would have had my face plastered on every screen, carved into schoolbooks, whispered in nursery rhymes under the label of "Public Menace Number One."
So I smiled wider.
Still, with Thalia back, caution would be the meal and the meat. I would take no chances. Not with her. Hecate had lent me aid, yes but trusting her was like trusting a loaded gun not to fire. Useful, dangerous, unpredictable. Even allies had limits. And gods? Gods had expiration dates for their promises especially Greek ones.
My bodyguards didn't see me approach with me still being concealed.
My home stood waiting in Hancock Park. The façade hadn't changed, white stone, black ironwork like scorched lace. Nothing seemed to have changed since I left to fight against Hecate but within, I saw something… unexpected.
I stepped in. Silent.
And then I froze, not because of danger. Because said expect proved itself true. It was not the bad kind of unexpected.
Beryl, my sister, was embracing Elpida.
Elpida. The artificial girl, the homunculus I had created. The one who wore my features like borrowed glass. The one meant to retrieve Thalia. The one I no longer needed to.
Beryl clung to her like she might vanish, her arms not tight but careful, trembling like someone holding a sparrow made of flame. "Be careful," she said barely more than breath, soft as guilt.
She hadn't seen me. Of course she hadn't. But Elpida had. Her eyes flicked toward me, no wider than a blink but it was enough. Even with atoms twisted, it's as if she could sense the ripple made by my presence.
It seemed that had made her very well.
Standing like that, in the arms of my sister, she didn't feel or look like a thing, a tool but a person.
And that thought didn't repulse me. It comforted me, in a way I hadn't expected. She had a mind. A will. A self.
I would not deactivate her. Whatever came next, she deserved a path. A future. Maybe not the one I had designed for her but then, was there anything more humans to break all free of what others expected from u, designed for us to do?
And Beryl… she sounded like a mother, like when she had when she had been caring for me when I was younger, before Lance.
Not the woman Thalia had hated, that I had seen as a pale shadow of what my sister once was. Not the woman who once had hurt the ones she had loved because of a dream, not the woman who sometimes seemed afraid to breathe in my presence as if it would be enough for me to have enough of her, not like the woman who thought and acted as if she was damned and wasn't sure she deserved redemption. But a woman who remembered what it meant to care. It had been years since I saw her wear concern like this, concern in such a motherly way. It didn't fit, not yet. But it could. Maybe.
But Thalia had suffered under her hand. Too often. Too cruelly. I did not know if forgiveness would ever be a flavor Thalia could taste again. Or if she even wanted to. I wouldn't blame her.
I hoped for healing. But I would not let hope blind me.
If Beryl proved a thorn again, I'd cut the rose, stem and all.
This time, I would raise Thalia. I already had, in many ways. The role of caretaker wasn't something Beryl would probably hold anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe she could become more again. But that depended on Thalia. Not on blood. Not on me. Not on guilt. Not on her.
I walked toward them. Carefully. With precision.
And then, I let the veil fall.
Sound returned to me. Presence returned to me. I became real to the world again.
Beryl's head snapped up, eyes locking on me like someone seeing a ghost in the flesh. Her mouth parted. Her gaze dropped to the sleeping form in my arms, and her expression dear God it cracked open.
Not just shock. Not just relief.
Reverence.
As if she'd prayed to something she didn't believe in and received an answer anyway. As if the universe had, for one reckless moment, been kind.
Tears welled. But she didn't sob. She didn't move. She whispered, as if daring to speak too loud would tear the moment like wet paper.
"You came back. You found her."
I smiled. Not a grin. Not triumph. Just… warmth. The kind of warmth that's never loud. The kind that burns without light.
"I told you, didn't I?" I said. "I told you I'd bring her home."
And for that moment, just that one there was no Olympus. No schemes. No gods.
Only a brother. A sister. And a sleeping girl who deserved a world better than the one we'd been born into.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had laid her down gently, carefully, almost ceremonial… Her breath had steadied, a soft rhythm like the tide brushing the edge of a forgotten shore. She hadn't stirred. Not even when I smoothed her hair out of her face, not even when I whispered her name, as if to remind her that this place, however unfamiliar it might first appear, knew her.
Thalia was in bed. And she was safe.
That was what mattered.
The house, my house, had never been meant for more than me. When I'd bought it, I hadn't thought about guest rooms, shared walls, or whether the sun hit the eastern windows just right in the morning. I hadn't thought about how footsteps would sound on the hallway tiles, or how voices would carry if the walls were thin. I hadn't thought at all.
It had simply been a roof.
And yet, now? The spare rooms had grown into small blessings, folded into the day like unexpected coins in an old coat pocket. More and more, I found myself grateful for every door, every hallway. A home too large for one man, yes, but just enough for what I had become.
For who I had chosen to protect.
I'd abused Adaptive Material Synthesis. That much was undeniable. I had used the star I carried inside my mind to all its potential, using it to recreate, to draw memories into reality. To reconstruct the old bedroom Thalia had once claimed as hers in my old apartment, back when she still lived under my care. When I had not had to give up on her.
The sheets, the soft blue hue of the walls, the angle of the desk down to the little scuff marks on the floor where her chair had always bumped into the baseboard.
I'd recreated everything.
Because familiarity, I thought, mattered.
Familiarity was stability and this was one of the most important things she needed.
Because even now, after everything I'd done to bring her back, she deserved the comfort of something that remembered her, something that seemed as if it hadn't forgotten the shape of her presence. Her room and mine shared a wall. It was a deliberate choice, and not one I regretted. If anything happened, if her breathing changed, if a nightmare clawed its way out of the past and reached for her, I'd be there.
No more failing her.
I took a sip of the coffee.
It was strong, a little bitter, but not bad. Beryl had made it while I was putting Thalia to bed. Her own mug sat half-drained in front of her. She held it with both hands like it was a lifeline. The way she looked at me reminded me of a stray waiting to be kicked. Or adopted.
It was honestly hard to tell what was more accurate.
Elpida stood to my left.
Not sitting. Of course not.
She stood like an obelisk, some mute protector carved by an unseen artist.
"You can sit, you know," I said aloud, even if the thought had crossed my mind a hundred times already.
"I think it best I remain like this," she answered, her tone perfectly balanced between machine precision and something human enough to bleed.
I didn't argue.
If I told her to sit, she would. She would obey like a soldier to their general, like a puppet to its strings, like an angel to God. But what was the point? My goal wasn't to become what I despised.
To tear down Olympus only to raise another mountain of chains?
No.
My war was against the gods. Against those who bent mortals into shapes they never asked for. Against the divine hands that treated human lives like little stories in a bored mind's diary.
It would be hypocrisy, plain and sharp, to twist Elpida's will because I could. She may have been born in a lab, sculpted from bloodless ambition and high theory but she still was human even if artificial. And that was all that mattered. She was human. Maybe not in the way the world would have deemed right, true, but then again, neither was I anymore.
"You look different," Beryl said softly.
Her voice wasn't accusatory. It was small. The kind of voice that used to ask permission before knocking on my door.
"I know," I replied, letting the self-deprecation creep in like smoke. "It wasn't a choice. But if I didn't look like this, if I wasn't changed… I don't think I would have survived Hecate. This version of me is the only one that gets to talk to you again."
When I spoke her name—Hecate—the room shifted. Not literally. Not in a way any normal person could explain.
But something watched.
Or rather, something stopped pretending it wasn't watching.
For less than two seconds. Maybe even less than one. But that second could've stretched forever.
And when it passed, the silence that followed was too clean.
Beryl's grip on her mug had turned her knuckles white.
Elpida had tilted her head slightly, searching the room for something invisible but hostile.
Proof enough.
She was listening.
Always.
"She was the one I fought," I said, the weight of it pulling each syllable down like stone dropped into a well. "I didn't expect to survive. Honestly? I was aiming for mutual destruction. Things just… didn't go the way I thought they would."
"I'm sorry," Beryl whispered. "Alex… I'm so sorry. None of this would've happened if I hadn't… If I'd listened to you and Thalia. If I'd been a better sister. A better mother. You wouldn't have needed to hurt, to change like this."
"Maybe," I said gently. "But what's done is done. All that matters now is moving forward. And as much as I hate to admit it… without her, I wouldn't have been able to bring Thalia back. At least not without backlash."
Elpida tilted her head. "Creator," she said again with that word I hated, a splinter beneath the skin, true but wrong "If I am not overstepping, may I know how?"
I didn't let the grimace reach my face.
I was her creator. But I didn't want that word. I wasn't a god. I wasn't like them.
"We made an alliance of sorts. She was… interested in my magic. Obsessed, maybe. She wanted to observe it, study it. In exchange, she gave me her vow to assist me to see my goal realized. And to prove good faith, she let me bring Thalia back home. We created a construct, one that made it seem like she never left."
Beryl frowned. "Do you think we can trust her?"
I laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was absurd.
"She's a deity, a goddess. Trust doesn't apply. But I do trust her interest in my magic. And more than that? She betrayed her own pantheon to help me. That means she has something to lose if this goes public."
"Still," I added, "we'll need to prepare our own contingencies."
"So," Beryl asked, "what happens now? I want to make things right with Thalia, Alex, I do. But I don't know if I even deserve to try. I may want to—but she might not. And…"
She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
I placed my hand over her wrist. She flinched, just slightly but didn't pull away.
"The important part is that you try. That you give your all to show you've changed. What comes after… that's up to her. But at least you'll know you did something."
Elpida broke in, clinical and composed. "Creator. While the goddess's magic shields us from detection by divine means, if mundane eyes observe Thalia, her hair, her eyes, her name then the illusion unravels."
"You're not wrong," I muttered. "We'll need to do something about that."
I sighed. "Another headache."
I tried to raise my cup again.
But I never drank.
Because a voice stopped me cold.
"What is she doing here?!"
I turned.
Thalia stood in the hallway, her frame small but shaking, her eyes blazing. Not with heat but with hurt.
Her stare skewered Beryl.
Then it turned to me.
And it shattered me.
There was something raw there wounds torn open again. Her voice cracked around the edges like a mirror struck too many times.
"You were going to leave me with her again, weren't you? Like last time? You lied to me again, Uncle Alex?"
The coffee cup was forgotten.
I stood. Slowly. Carefully. Like I was approaching a wounded animal, or a dream I didn't want to end.
I dropped to one knee.
"I promise, Thalia. I'm never leaving you again. I won't give up. I won't let you stay with her unless you want to. Just… don't cry. You know I'm the real crybaby between us. You cry, then I cry, and then it's just a mess. Pretty ridiculous, right?"
She blinked, and the tears spilled over—but there was a watery smile.
"Yeah. Ridiculous."
Then, softer. Almost too soft to hear.
"I woke up alone. And I thought… none of this was real. I know I'm supposed to be a big girl, not act like a baby. But… can you stay with me?"
"There's nothing more I'd rather do."
I held out my hand.
She took it.
"Let's go to your room," I said.
We walked.
Behind me, I heard it.
Not a word. Not a sob. Just the sound of tears.
Falling.
From the woman who'd once seen as my second mother, that Thalia would probably never forgive, never call Mom.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thalia was back under the covers, swaddled in softness, wrapped in the kind of warmth that didn't just come from fabric. The pyjamas she wore weren't the tattered scraps she'd been found in they were new, conjured through the silent use of my adaptive material synthesis, stitched from the memory of what she once had liked to wear. Blue, her favorite color, patterned with tiny silver stars.
I sat on the edge of her bed, watching the way her fingers curled into the blanket, like she was afraid it might dissolve if she didn't hold on tight.
She shouldn't have to be afraid of things disappearing.
I cleared my throat.
"Once upon a time," I began, my voice dipping into the old rhythm, the one I hadn't used in years, not since him, not since Zeus ripped the words from my throat with his bullshit and everything else "there was a very grumpy cloud named Nimbus."
Thalia's eyes, wide and wary, flicked up to mine.
"Nimbus wasn't just any cloud. Oh no. He was the grumpiest cloud in the whole sky. Every time the other clouds tried to play, floating here, drifting there, Nimbus would just huff and puff and turn a thunderous shade of gray."
A tiny crease formed between her brows. "Why was he grumpy?"
"Because," I said, leaning in conspiratorially, "he was convinced the sun was stealing his spot. Every morning, there it was, hogging the sky, shining away like it owned the place. And Nimbus? He'd grumble, 'That's my blue up there! Mine!'"
A flicker of amusement. "Clouds don't own the sky."
"Tell that to Nimbus."
She giggled.
The sound was a fragile thing, like glass chimes in a storm, but it was there and it was all that mattered.
So I kept going.
The story spiraled, Nimbus, in his fury, tried to blot out the sun, puffing himself up bigger and darker until he'd swallowed the whole horizon. But then the birds complained ("We can't see to fly!"), the flowers wilted ("We need the sun to dance!"), and worst of all, the children couldn't play outside.
"So," I said, "a very small, very brave ladybug named Lulu marched right up to Nimbus, well, floated up, because ladybugs can't march on clouds and said, 'Excuse me, Mr. Thunderface, but you're being a jerk."
Thalia gasped. "She didn't!"
"She did."
Lulu, it turned out, had a plan. If Nimbus wanted the sky to himself so badly, fine but he had to entertain everyone while he did it. No more moping. No more gloom. He had to perform.
"So Nimbus, grumbling the whole time, started shaping himself into silly things, a sheep, a boat, a grumpy dragonand before he knew it, the kids below were laughing, pointing, shouting, 'Do another one!' And the sun? It just winked at him and kept shining, because it didn't care who thought they owned the sky. It knew the truth, the sky was big enough for everyone."
Thalia was grinning now, the kind of grin that lit up her whole face, that made her look seven instead of seventy in a child's body.
Then, like a candle snuffed, her smile faltered.
"Uncle Alex," she whispered, "all of this is real, right? I'm back with you? This isn't some god or monster playing sick games with me?"
I reached for her hand, folding her small fingers into mine. "This is real, Thalia. Sometimes, dreams can be real too."
She chewed her lip. "Can I ask you something? Do you promise not to get mad?"
"Yes, I promise." I extended my pinky. "Pinky swear."
She hooked hers around it, tight as a vow.
"Why did you leave?" Her voice was so small. "Had I done anything wrong?"
The words were a knife to the ribs.
"You did nothing wrong, princess. Nothing." My thumb brushed over her knuckles. "I wanted to see you. I tried. Through my sister, through judges, through every means I had. Nothing worked. Even though I hated Lance, I tried with him. It only made things worse." A muscle in my jaw twitched. "I don't remember what happened, but I know he used magic, something, to mess with my mind."
It was not something I liked to think about but I knew that it had happened and I dreaded what happened while I was under it.
Her face paled. Horror flickered in her eyes, the kind no child should ever know.
"I didn't want to break my promise to you. When I said it, I meant it. But things went sideways. It doesn't change that I should've tried even more, that I needed to—"
"No!" She lunged forward, cutting me off. "You did try. You were the only one who did! He told me you didn't want to see me anymore, and I didn't want to believe him, because all he and she ever did was lie."
She didn't say their names. She didn't have to.
Beryl. Zeus.
The way she spat the words like it was poison, like it was the worst thing a person could be, made something in my chest twist.
"I should've realized something was wrong," she muttered, fists clenching. "I should've never doubted you. I should've never believed his lies, just like Beryl did."
Not Mom. Not Mother.
Beryl.
A name, not a title. A stranger, not family.
I expected this, still. I swallowed the ache I felt for my sister. "Hey," I said softly, cupping her cheek. "None of that matters anymore, Thal. You're home. That's all that counts. What's better? Thinking about the past, or thinking about all the good things coming?"
She sniffed. "The good things."
I ruffled her hair. "Clever girl."
"You're messing with my hair," she grumbled, but there was no heat in it. No attempt to bat me away.
"Speaking of hair," she said, eyeing me, "why did you change yours? Your eyes, too."
"Wasn't the plan. Just happened after decking a goddess."
Her eyes went round. "For real for real?"
I laughed. "Yes, for real for real."
"It gives you another look," she mused.
"Good or bad?"
"Different." Her fingers plucked at the blanket. "That's why I thought it wasn't you at first. Sorry again for attacking you."
"Don't worry about that, Thalia."
The words lingered between us.
Different.
A thought crystallized.
If my changed appearance had made me unrecognizable to her at first, then why couldn't the same work in reverse?
Thalia had Zeus's hair, Zeus's eyes but the rest? The slope of her nose, the shape of her smile? That was Beryl. And Beryl looked enough like me that strangers had often mistaken Thalia for my daughter even before.
Elpida, crafted from alchemy and my own genes, was proof enough she could've been Thalia's older sister.
A plan took shape.
But before I could voice it, I needed her to want it too. If she didn't want to, I would find something else.
"Thalia," I said carefully, "can I talk to you about something important?"
She stiffened, sensing the shift in tone.
"To bring you back, I had to make sure monsters and gods think I never took you. But if rumors start about a Thalia living with me, they'll realize the truth." I took a breath. "It won't happen, though, if they don't think you're here even though you will be. All of that to say..."
My pulse hammered.
"I want to adopt you."
For a heartbeat, the world stopped.
Thalia froze. Her breath hitched. Her eyes went so wide I could see the whites around the blue.
My own heart thundered louder than it had facing Hecate.
"You don't have to accept," I rushed on. "You can say no, and I won't take it badly. I'll find another way, so don't—"
She launched at me.
"I stabbed you! I doubted you! I believed him when he lied about you!" Her words tumbled out in a frantic, wet rush. "I'm scared I'm like them, but even then I want you to be my dad! I always wanted you to be my dad. I want you to adopt me! I'll be the best daughter. I'll do everything right—"
I caught her against my chest, cradling the back of her head. "Even if you were the worst person in this world," I murmured into her hair, "I'd still be proud of you, Thalia. You don't need to do anything for me to love you. Now or ever."
She shuddered. A sob broke loose, muffled against my shoulder.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it—
"I always wanted to tell you this. I love you, Dad."
And just like that, the dam broke.
Tears streaked down my cheeks. Truly, I was nothing else but a crybaby.
I pressed a kiss to her temple.
"I love you too, Thalia."
This is the end of the first arc, hope y'all liked it. Sorry for taking so long to post. I had to be honest written since last time I posted the next chapters to be put here and on my patreon but health reasons with other things made sure that even though I could have, I didn't post. Anyways, don't hesitate to tell me in the comments why you liked or didn't like or didn't understand. I'm a comment whore which means that the more there is, the more people are interested, the faster I write and post.
PS: I got a p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 with two more chapters for this story that together make at least 13000 words. With less than 5$, you have access to everything I write in a month. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to read more or support me or for any other reason Like ReplyReport Reactions:EyeSeeYou, Kiden, Addlcove and 315 othersAllen1996Jun 13, 2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Eternal recurrence of break and remake NewView contentJun 18, 2025Add bookmark#1,692Allen1996Versed in the lewd.The only thing that mattered right now was getting used to it all, to my body that had changed and what better more dependable way of doing such other than hitting a deity in the face.
I didn't completely summon my armour. After all, what would be the point in trying to test the limits of my body, especially in a kinda controlled environment?
She was the first to attack, something dark, glinting and feeling so much more alive than it should be surged toward me, moving through shadows, angles and patterns that looked alien.
There were no near and distance crossed it seemed because the moment it had appeared, it was as if it had reversed cause and effect, switched beginning and ending.
Dark blue lit up under the heel of my feet with a flicker of a thought. The spear-like clawed hand was where I was standing seconds ago and I could not help but think that if I had been just a few seconds late, my head would have been opened and spilling its contents like a forcefully ripped open pomegranate.
My left hand moved, matter rearranging itself at the tip of a finger before I made it all twist turning it into an antithesis of itself turning everything and I truly meant everything in the direction of the finger into literal nothing.
My gaze hadn't left the one of Hecate at any moment while this had happened. All of it had happened in a hundredth of a breath.
A smile, a satisfied one that I could only call twisted had crept up on her features, had bloomed on her face and I wondered if I would have seen the same thing if I had looked into a mirror not that it would matter.
The goddess had been so kind to begin. What kind of dance partner would I have been if I didn't reciprocate?
My finger was still pointed in the direction I had blasted the thing she had summoned. There was no point in stopping especially with the fact that she was not the only one capable of learning.
Antimatter surged like a plague from her side, the structure she was standing on, one the size of a building began to disappear as if it was a drawing being gommaged by the world.
It struck against what looked like an amethyst barrier, the thing flickering like fading indigo flames all around her before she opened her palm, the nothing, the anti matter I had released on her coming to life, taking shape, the one of a owl before changing in a bat and again in a snake that crawled around her shoulder, the head leaning in her hands as if it was the only source of warmth in the world.
My eyes and the stars inside my mind allowed me to understand immediately what had happened.
I controlled matter through adaptive material synthesis. In a sense, what I was doing was pure matter manipulation.
What she was doing on her side though was using magic and using telekinesis through it and through this telekinesis react and alter what I had unleashed.
Scary.
No other words were fitting in my opinion that could describe her faithfully. I would bet everything I held dear that most gods would be unable to do half of what she did so quickly.
The goddess gave a pat to the construct literallymade of antimatter before she made it fade, its body disappearing akin to an inverse snowfall.
"You copied my portal spell and modified it, making it more compact and smaller and through it, you released your attack."
I didn't blink at the sound of her voice whispering in my ear. The Goddess wasn't where she had been standing, the structure I had mostly destroyed, the remnants still existing due to the shield of the goddess finally beginning to fall and crumble as if finally realising what had happened.
I gave a glance in the direction from which her voice had come.
"You don't disappoint at all Alexander."
The Goddess was leaning on my left arm as if we were the best of friends.
"What can I say," I told her, activating my reinforcement spell all over my body, everything becoming so impossibly sharp, colours I had never seen blooming in my vision, molecules becoming visible, as easy to discern as things the size of quarters, the heat of my body illuminating the corner of my vision and so many other things that felt overwhelming, that I knew would have made the past me brain leak by his facial orifices.
I ignored all of it and moved, the sole of my armour litting up again to make me faster, helping my balance shift correctly, my right fist moving toward her head.
The goddess ducked under it, constructs of magic blooming between the two of us at her will.
I acknowledged them and didn't stop, adaptive material synthesis coming to life at my will exact replicas made of Necrodermis strucking, clashing, breaking hers, making her back off, a push of her left feet sending her away in a jump, the distance of a football field put between us by this simple movement.
Maybe it would have been perfect if I had not followed, taking two steps to cross the new distance between us, rock and ground turning incandescent, as if they were the beginning of a bonfire.
My knee smashed into her arms that she had raised to protect her face, the World around us turning to madness, everything pushed away.
She moved the moment after we had made contact, her hand closing around my leg before she made herself fall hard, my leg still in her grip, her body pivoting to throw me down as if she was a WWE wrestler and I in this instance the victim.
I didn't try to stop her. No instead, I directed my attention at the ground that was still being pushed by our first clash but I guess not fast enough to make sure that I would crash against plasma.
I grasped at it and made it surge, overexciting the atoms, at the same time erecting a thin like barrier all over my body and made it all turn into a fiery hell.
You would have expected that it would have done anything right? That it would have made her let go of my leg, that it would have turned her into someone looking like an unfortunate Women accused of being a witch in Salem which now that I thought about it might not be unfortunate in this universe with the supernatural existing and me literally fighting against the Goddess of magic.
Things to look up later.
A lance that seemed to be made of Vanta black surged toward me. I leaned on the side, the exploding and overheated matter around me acting almost as if it was a physical support allowing me to push against it.
The Lance missed, strands of hair cut on the corner of my vision before the spear came back again, moving back like a guillotine.
I grabbed it in one hand and it honestly felt as if I was holding an iron rod and that moment by moment while touching it, it only became worse, the heat spreading like a virus.
I could feel it in my veins.
I disregarded the pain, acknowledging its existence but not allowing it in any case to slow me down, to stop me. I had learnt for a long time, since my first life that no matter what, pain meant that you were still fighting, that things no matter how bad they were hadn't yet ended, that you were still alive.
If the goddess didn't want to let go, who was I to refuse her?
Better, why wouldn't I give her a favour? Why wouldn't I bring her closer?
I couldn't see her clearly even with my enhanced view almost as if there were static on a screen, white and black lines to blind me yet it didn't mean much, it didn't matter because more than seeing her, I could feel her.
My other leg moved to cross with the other, to skirt around a form that was clearly hers before I pulled.
The spear in my melting hand only made it easier allowing me to keep my balance through the Goddess.
I pointed forward again, anti divine runes coming to life into sparks of gold, shimmering and moving, dancing before dragging themselves akin to being trapped in a vortex in the palm of my hand before firing as a pillar of gold the moment the face of the goddess appeared in my vision.
She didn't blink almost as if it was something that she had expected, the shield of before flaring up again due to the golden pillar that was millimetres away from savaging her face, the shield holding for what seemed to be a moment before shattering with a sound akin to a church's bell, the pillar of gold impossibly curved, deflected only for a portal to appear at my will in its direction, the pillar rushing back from above in a shower of gold, almost like a new dawn.
Black came to life and moved, something akin to a blade but not almost as if it had been made by something with a different idea of the concept that was a sword bisected it into pieces, the remnants of it falling like curtains made of gold exactly in the way that I needed.
I felt my smile widen even more as the world around me twisted and i reappeared at the side of the goddess among the curtain of gold and overheated atoms giving life to plasma, a sword, the blade I originally had made, the plasma one appeared in my right hand as if it had never been out of it, the spells of reinforcement and alteration from the Nasuverse blooming into it, knowledge of the C'tan star in my mind changing it to something truly alien, something worthy of an existence being called Star god and that was before I made it even better with the reinforcement.
I struck, something hastily created by the goddess coming undone on the passage of my ignited blade, a line of dark purple appearing at the place I had not even touched yet because the weapon had allowed only one result, the certainty that I would strike true and thus even though I had not finished, not touched her yet, she still was struck.
The line spread, dark metallic veins blooming on the skin of her arm, going down and up her arm.
I blinked and the head of her spear was already at my neck threatening to bite into my flesh, the arm I had struck out, severed and only the flicks of gold ichor on the tip of the blade of her weapon, so little, almost missing as if the cut was so clean that there were no chances in any possible way for something bleeding after its touch, microscopic flick of gold that I could only see due to my vision told me that the goddess had at the same time gotten rid of her arm as she was attacking me.
I didn't have time to move, at least in any way that would allow me to dodge. She had been fast, too fast so I didn't.
No, instead, I faded, in and out of the world this time on her other side. My eyes rose to meet the ones of the goddess, surprise and delight in full bloom in her eyes.
She probably had realised or begun to do so at least what I had just done. I gave her a wink before striking again, her spear almost teleporting with how fast it moved, green lines slowly but surely spreading all over its form, the strike that should have at least gauged an eye even if I had not touched her directly due to the mechanisms of my weapons and the stars in my mind only drew a gold line from the corner of an eye to the right side of her face to the tip of one of her ear before ending with strands of hair severed.
I didn't wait to see what she would do, how she would react, fading again in and out of the world, reappearing this time above her, my feet taking support on the still falling golden curtain almost as if the world was reversed, up becoming down for me and down becoming up which is why I lashed up, toward the top of her head.
Her spear moved again and the moment it had moved, I had already moved too, the strike happening after I was gone and just like the first time made lesser by her spear.
I moved, this time not in and out but forward, through the world, one strike turning into seven strikes due to the way I moved, 7 becoming 49, 49 becoming 196.
She blocked this time the seven strike, deflected the 49, was turned into a golden mess of meat, bones and sinews yet the remnants of her face were still smiling, smiling in a literal bloody way before my next strike, the 197 one was dodged.
So, she had reproduced it, didn't she? I thought as the tip of a spear appeared instants away from my left eye.
I moved in and out and through the world to dodge and like I had expected, she followed me.
We flickered and clashed and weaved against each other more flashes of dark blue and purple than living things, intertwined like two strands of weaves being violently interlocked.
I realised after a moment that we both had stopped attacking each other, moving together through the world in flicker, more ghosts than anything, both looking too real and unreal like something in three dimensions trying to act as such in a 2D one.
I watched as the goddess peered at her own form. "You modified the spell again. You turned it into something akin to a hook, no, a tether, one connected to the world around us through your magic, your presence, your spells."
In other words, I had plagiarised the hell out of the Hiraishin at least in concept. The variation of portals I had learn to make through watching Hecate were portals that needed only three things, knowing their way the spell worked in itself, power and destination.
The power part didn't need to be explained. The destination was where you intended to go, and open the portal to.
Now when it came to the why and how of the spells, it was needed to understand that magic in itself was a tale, that it was something fantastical.
Magic worked because you believed it did. Of course, there were limits because had it been the case, I would not have needed to save Alabaster, to heal his dad. It was more akin to painting or writing something than pure reality warping unless you had fuck you level of power.
My variant of the Hiraishin took all of what preceded from the way Hecate's portals worked to not tell the world go there, open portal there but that instead, everywhere my magic had touched, I had been present was a giant portal with a fixed point as the epicentre.
"Never liked to disappoint," I told the goddess as I began to ready myself for another round.
She smiled at me before attacking again.
I smiled at her and made frost and rhyme explode from her eyeballs.
At the same time, I slammed her with constructs, pillars of black that struck her and disappeared with her on the horizon.
I knew that at best, it would just give me a moment but a moment was all that I needed to take it up a notch.
This may have begun with the goal of making us test new things, get used to how different we were now, her less, me different but now, it would be a lie to admit that I wasn't having fun!
I inhaled the heat that bloomed in the Carian underworld, all of it, tasted it on my tongue as metal tang, and exhaled into the darkness a sheet of absolute zero that spread like spilt mercury across shattered basalt.
Absolute zero was the point where all motion stopped, where each atom was locked in place, no heat left to transfer, no energy left to burn. I had fashioned it through adaptive material synthesis and the C'tan star in my mind coaxing quantum fields to collapse thermodynamic motion, weaving a net that trapped each particle in perfect stillness.
I painted the world around me in frost so dense that the air turning into plasma solidified in place. Crystalline spines soared from the ground, jagged and gleaming. The broken pillars became statues of ice, each one an echo of the last blow I had struck. Every breath of air crystallised in front of my face, forming a new horizon of shards.
I stepped forward; each armored footstep sent a wave of cold burrowing into the stone. Frost crept over shape after shape until the great arches above and around me of this empty underworld solidified into towering walls of ivory.
I willed it, and a wall of frost blossomed before Hecate, rippling outward like waves on a dark pond until it dwarfed the Statue of Liberty, an avalanche of cold that could swallow entire cities of glass and steel. She did not flinch. Stood atop a spire of obsidian, one hand rested casually on her hip while the other gripped her spear; violet runes snaked along its shaft as the frosty barrier advanced.
"You showed me so many new things," she cried, her voice jubilant, as though this were the greatest moment of her existence. "You learned from me! Now I will show you that I have learned as well!"
The head of her spear blazed with light, brighter, moment by moment, until it first turned inky black, reminiscent of my Slash Emperor, and then shifted to a deep, burning crimson.
In this world devoid of life and soul, dead in every sense, a scarlet sun rose, banishing frost and silence, defying absolute zero: a death goddess refusing entropy, birthing life instead of death.
"Do you see what you have given me, Alexander? I may once have been lesser, but meeting you has made me so much more! Perhaps you were right when you spoke of divinity!"
I should have been wary, terrified even beneath that crimson sun, of the catastrophe I knew she was going to unleash.
Before this world, before all the horrors and wonders in it, humanity was still nothing. Just apes pretending to be more, lying to themselves so well that those lies became dreams. And those dreams? They became truth.
We lied to ourselves, and because we lied to each other, we forged dreams that drove us to survive, to adapt, to change—until our lies became truth.
We were lesser, deceitful creatures—but mutable, unlike the gods who deemed themselves superior. And that mutability, that capacity for change, made humanity infinitely more precious in my eyes than any immortal pantheon.
This world, penned by Riordan, was static: the same myths and tales endlessly retold, at best rearranged; no triumph, no lesson belonged truly to humankind. It mirrored its creators, the gods, unmoving in their eternal natures.
But what if I could improve this world not only by elevating humanity, but by making the world itself more human? By transforming the gods, the rare few who might heed reason, like Prometheus, who once championed us?
I still did not trust Hecate. Yet I could not deny that, as she claimed, meeting me had diminished her, and simultaneously made her far greater. She was changing, adapting. She was becoming, in a sense, more human. When I looked at her now with the help of my anti-divine star, with the knowledge of my C'tan star, I saw not a goddess of death, but a goddess of life.
She had used the magic she had seen from me to become, to do something no deity should be able to do, willingly change into a role beyond her natural scope, doing it without being warped, changed negatively.
This was literally game breaking. I was sure that immortals in this world would kill for that. It meant more power, more versatility. It meant possibly becoming omnipotent. I was sure that a deity with this spell could push enough to in a way no longer count anymore as a god in the little sense but a God with a great g.
She had mastered the same trick Alabaster discovered by studying the anti-divine runes on the warding chain I gave him for protection. More than that, I recognised strands of my own anti-divine spells and matrices, the very magic that forged the Slash Emperor, woven into her power. If my sorceries opposed the divine spectrum, hers were their perfect inverse.
That was change in all its glory! That was nothing but humanity, nothing but the capacity of rising from the muck, from the worst, to see the fragility and cruelty of the world and spit, snarl against it!
Was I truly going to let a goddess show more proof of humanity than me? Was I going to flag behind her, not being able to catch up to her? Was I truly going to do nothing?!
Hell no!
Who the hell did you think I was?!
I was going to topple Olympus, to change this world whether it liked it or not! I will make this world better no matter what!
I will make a world where my daughter would never feel unsafe, unloved and what was a star before my dreams?!
What was a star before a man?!
I dug my feet into the ground. I could dodge, I could do so many things similar yet what would be the point of it all if I didn't push myself beyond?!
What would be the point if I could not adapt, not be strong enough to tank the attack of a weakened goddess when I wanted to win against all the heavens?!
The world around me was slowly as if I was watching a video that was in slow motion burning, turning back into the fiery hell it was when I turned this world into a literal frozen hell scape.
The goddess was hundreds of miles away yet I could perfectly see her as if she was just before me and I knew it was the Same with her, that she could see that I had no intention to dodge, the challenge in my eyes.
She saw it all and gave something that seemed close to an acknowledgement, as if she was recognizing my intentions and because of such, answered in the only way that fit, that would be appropriate, with her giving her all, with her going even beyond!
A point of light blinked into existence above us, a singularity of scarlet and gold, pulsing with the heartbeat of gods. It bled magic, haemorrhaged destruction. Not fire. Not plasma. Something worse. A promise of obliteration, condensed into a sun.
The sun grew, stretching across the sky like a pupil dilating in divine horror. It blotted out everything, the frozen ruins, the shattered underworld around us, even the ache in my bones. A crimson star, birthed in defiance of what should be, a crimson star of life born from death, one radiating finality.
I use my reinforcement spell on myself, the one I gained from the nasuverse but this time, it was controlled. No, it was wild and violent and because of this wrecked me completely breaking bones, splitting flesh, setting my nerves alight with white-hot pain.
It hurt.
It hurt so much and a vast part of me only wanted it to stop. My senses only made everything worse, making every drop of agony perfectly slow and clear to my mind.
It hurt just like all things that were truly worthy to be reached. A spell from the alchemical star in my mind healed everything leaving behind only phantom pain.
I took a deep breath and broke myself again.
I broke.
I healed.
I broke again.
The spell was activated again.
It became, it felt like a never-ending cycle of torment. It made me feel as if I was in hell.
I didn't do this because I suddenly became a masochist or anything the like. I didn't do this because I had gone crazy. I did this because it was the only way to push my limits as quickly as possible.
It was because the human body, even the modified one I had now like all things forged in reality's crucible could be said to learn through violence.
Muscles don't grow because you lift. They grow because they tear. Every time you exert force, you create microscopic ruptures in the muscle fibers, myofibrils, to be precise. They split, rip, cry out in the form of the exhaustion you can feel buzzing beneath your skin after a strenuous activity. The immune system swoops in next, like a battalion of masochistic engineers, not to rebuild what was but to overcompensate. Satellite cells, muscle stem cells fuse to the damaged fibers, thickening them, reinforcing them. Not restoring. Reinventing. In a way, it's not healing but evolution.
Bones? Kinda the same. When they're stressed, when you leap from heights no human should survive, when you do something stupid with your cousin and in consequence, the bones bend. Microfractures. Macrofractures. Invisible hairline tears. Osteoblasts rush in, laying down new layers of mineralised collagen. Stronger. Denser. The architecture changes.
Even the skin could be in a way be said to be similar. Cut it, burn it, freeze it and if you survive, it thickens, reshapes. Keratinocytes rise to the surface, building up the barrier. Melanocytes darken it. Collagen weaves itself anew in the dermis like a mad god with too many needles and not enough time. Scar tissue forms. Ugly. Useful.
It was a good thing that I was a cheater. I used adaptive material synthesis, the knowledge of the human body from my Alchemy star, I used the knowledge of the C'tan due to how my biological changes had been influenced by it.
I used the alteration spell I got from the different stars coming from the Nasuverse, I used the theory of everything from my fourth magic so that all of them will work together even beyond harmony.
I used them all so that I could force an acceptable result. I hijacked the dance of regeneration and turned it into an orchestra I conducted by will alone.
Ten times. That's how many times I tore myself apart not by accident, not because of Hecate's blows but because I chose to.
I didn't heal. I rewrote. All the stars in my mind, cast at the atomic level and even beyond turned regeneration into controlled evolution. Muscles didn't just repair. They fused tighter, denser, more efficient. Every actin and myosin filament realigned like military formations in perfect discipline. My bones made of Necrodermis didn't just restore themselves, they regrew stronger, with crystalline precision, with density that I knew could mock the tectonic plates beneath the Earth.
Each iteration wasn't a reset. It was stacked gain.
Exponential.
Not linear. Not even logarithmic. Exponential. Why? Because with each cycle, my body adapted faster, learned deeper.
By the tenth time, I could feel the difference in the pressure of the air around me—because I could move fast enough to fold it. I clenched my fist and felt the gravity ripple, the ground bent.
If before I could physically sink islands. Now? I probably could rip continental shelves from the Earth's spine and send them screaming into orbit.
If before I could move at a relativistic speed. Now? I could probably move faster than the nervous system was ever meant to perceive, move fast enough to try to race light itself.
I didn't invoke any spell. No reinforcement spell this time. No Slash Emperor. No blade, no incantation, no clever alchemy.
Just my fists. Just my will.
Just me.
I saw her ascend, rise as if the heavens of this dead world were calling her to come to them. I could feel her gaze. I could feel her excitement turn into caution as she looked at me and the fact that I wasn't using or activating any spell.
"Are you insane, Alexander?" I heard her voice in my mind. It wasn't mockery. It was a concern. It was a fear for my safety.
"I'm not," I told her. "Nothing had ever been clearer! Don't hesitate! It would be an insult to both of us!"
She unleashed it.
The sun fell.
No, it roared down, like a judgment cast from the bones of reality. It wasn't descending. It was consuming. Every molecule of atmosphere between us and it turned into lightning. The pressure cracked tectonic plates. The sound alone wasn't sound anymore, it was a force, a presence, a living scream that sought to erase everything.
I didn't run.
I couldn't.
This was it. This was my gospel. My rebellion. My refusal to break.
So I screamed back. Not with words. With action.
I punched the sun.
My first blow landed and I felt my arm break, flesh combusting, nerves flaring like dying stars. But the impact rippled. The very air bent. The pressure wave cracked mountains behind me. The world cried out, and I punched again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Every strike shattered more of me. Skin tore like paper. Bones snapped. Blood boiled in my veins. But I didn't stop. Because what would be the point? What's the value of strength if it's never tested against the impossible?
What's the point of a dream if it can't burn brighter than the sun?
"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!" I howled, voice cracking as I slammed both fists into the star. "THEN BURN HOTTER!"
And it did.
The light intensified. My skin vaporised. My ribs exploded inward. My legs twisted at impossible angles just to hold the stance. Every atom of my being begged me to stop.
But I didn't.
Because this was who I was.
I was human.
I was nothing more than human.
And if the gods, if the world wanted to test me with suns, then the only valid response that I would give them would be to punch them into black holes.
I leapt. Not away, into it. I dove headfirst into the falling catastrophe with my fists cocked back and every ounce of hatred, love, grief, and hope I ever held blazing in my chest.
I screamed.
I broke.
I soldiered on.
I punched.
My blows landed on matter and magic and divinity.
And it cracked.
Above me, the sun bled. A fissure of white ripped down its core like a scream in light. It was almost like a howl, not in pain, but in denial.
Because I wasn't supposed to win.
Because humans don't punch stars.
But I did because who the hell decided otherwise?!
I drove my right fist straight into the core. No reinforcement spell, no reality-breaking star in my soul, no scrap of my alchemical knowledge, only pure guts and dreams, only will.
To add to the blow.
The feedback turned my nervous system into molten glass. My bones liquefied. My heart burst and reformed and burst again. And still, I punched.
And in that moment, I saw it.
The image burned into my brain like a truth too big for mortal minds.
Not Hecate.
Not the sun.
Me.
Almost like more of an idea than a living thing.
More will than anything.
More the desire for change than anything.
More a refusal to yield than anything.
More human than I've ever been.
It was as if I was I wasn't punching a weapon anymore.
I was punching godhood itself.
And godhood flinched.
The star detonated.
But not outward.
Inward.
Like a neutron scream folding into singularity. Like a divine absolute surrendering to entropy.
The sun died screaming.
And I remained.
Smoke. Fire. Silence.
I stood in a crater half a continent wide, steam hissing from every pore, my arms ruined and twitching, my chest a torn tapestry of crimson and gold. But I was standing.
Hecate hovered in the sky, eyes wide, not in fear.
In awe.
I wasn't the only one hurt. I could see Hecate's shoulder almost as if it had been broken, cut, and ruptured at the same time. I saw her follow my gaze and fall on what I was focusing on.
Some kind of backlash from her magic maybe.
She looked as if she was surprised, as if it was something incredible and inconceivable. I could almost read her thoughts as her spear and she fell, blazing like Icarus once did. She fell before me, only on one knee to her honour.
There was like a waiting, a respite phase between the two of us that bloomed at this moment. What she did has taken a lot from her and what I had to do in return also took a lot.
Our gazes locked in. Two gazes met that reflected the same thing, the desire to be better.
My gaze travelled away from her to our surroundings, to the world that seemed to be both time-reversed and going forward.
Everywhere I looked, the Carian underworld stirred: arches still stuck in mid-collapse, pillars that seemed to look alive and desperately trying to bring broken spines back together, and rivers of crystallised flame crept over the black stone like living things.
My body burned with what felt like pure ecstasy in my veins; every pore felt alive, singing with unseen tongues and dancing to it in a savage bloody ball. I closed my eyes and felt my bones knitting where fractures had formed. In the same heartbeat, I knew without even looking that the same was happening to Hecate's flesh, that it was reforming from the wound that was scorched into her shoulder. I opened my eyes to what I thought being confirmed, dark veins pulsing with residual violet light. We were wounded, deeply so yet gloriously alive.
I opened my eyes. She lifted one hand. Violet ink spilled from her fingertips and traced sigils in mid-air. Those sigils cracked open the ground beneath me; basalt pillars burst upward around me to impale my feet. I felt the heat of their emergence, the spray of dust on my tongue, and I smiled. I had the shape of a halberd forming around my right hand, around the hilt of my plasma weapon. It spun from the atoms of fractured pillars through adaptive material synthesis.
I kicked off the wall of basalt before it reached full form, vaulting backward as the halberd reshaped into a cannon.
My cannon roared with over-fissioned hydrogen and spat them at her, each pellet screaming like a meteor, trailing a tail akin to the last moments of a dying star. She sidestepped through shadows, her cloak unraveling into tentacles of living ink that braided around each one of them and that seemed to devour, drink, and absorb until nothing remained but the dark void of her clothes.
Between us, the ground bubbled like soup, quartz rivers evaporating under stray plasma scorch marks and reforming into spiky crystal stalagmites. I raised my left hand and drew from the anti-divine star in my mind, the new investment allowing me to do so much more.
The divine just by its name implied something that was almighty, superior, supreme, at the apex. Divinity in itself meant superiority, worship. It meant being able to make the world bend in every way possible.
Wasn't it only logic then something that was deemed anti-divine could only be such if it was able to break that order brought by divinity?
Didn't it mean that only something equal or stronger than something deemed divine could be called anti-divine?
Didn't it mean that I should be able to do what the impossible itself would consider impossible?
The fourth magic came to life, its mechanisms with the upgrade I had made just before the fight allowing me in tandem with my anti-divine star to cheat even worse than a filthy one.
Through them, I released a pulse of paradoxical causality. That pulse flickered outward and folded Hecate's next thought of escape back into her mind before she even articulated it. Her eyes widened for a moment as if she had realised what I was doing. It was no problem. She had made the error of giving me enough time.
Normally, causality works like a straight line: causehappens first (e.g., I throw a rock), then effectfollows (the window breaks).
Paradoxical causality, the new ability given to me by my anti-divine star bent that line into a loop or a knot.
It could be said that it allowed an effect or the sequence of events to become impossible to pin down.
In a way, it was only fitting that what made the noble phantasm of one of the deadliest god slayer in the Nasuverse so deadly would be among the anti-divine stars coming from that universe.
I unleashed twin torrents of fusion lasers through my palms, wide beams of white fire burning the shadows into retreat. They cut the spiked quartz into glowing dust. I felt the recoil in my arms, the tug of Necrodermis inside my marrow, the chemical tang of ionised air in my nose.
She responded by weaving gravity around herself, each photon of my lasers bending away like frightened moths. Then she extended her arm and hurled that gravity back at me in a spear of black light. I caught it in my chest and let it drive me backward through the underworld, smashing through columns again and again and again and again as though they were paper, until I came to rest halfway down a molten cliff.
Spear lodged where my heart should be. I tasted pain, and I tasted exhilaration. I forged my will into the surrounding atoms. I felt quartz bending, obsidian liquefying, and basalt forming into a staircase beneath my palms. Without moving my body, I surged upward like a spire of living rock before jumping up, the staircase the height of a cathedral in three strides, and at the top I found her again.
She had formed a sphere of ink-shadow between her hands, each twisted filament alive with divine authority. That sphere pulsed and grew until it swallowed half the surrounding area in darkness.
I grinned and did the only thing that was to be done, push.
I pressed my palms together and drew every scrap of matter around me into a single, spiraling filament of carbon steel. That filament wrapped itself in energy drawn from the world around me and spun faster than thought, until it glowed white-hot and cut a ring around her sphere of shadow. The ring's edges liquefied the air into plasma, and the noise shook the underworld like a war horn.
She whispered an incantation and a thousand mirror-fragments snapped into being around her. Each fragment was a reflection of her sphere and a focus for her energy. They rose above the plasma river we were standing in and formed a halo that pulsed with indigo and black veins.
I felt the anti-divine and the C'tan stars in my mind unveil even more, dissecting each shard's divine waveform, calculating countermeasures. In an instant, I replaced one mirror, disguised as a perfect reflection, with a construct of antimatter. That mirror shattered, and its antimatter core erupted in a flash that drove the other shards backward like fleeing ravens.
She staggered under the blast but recovered in a breath. Her arm shot forward and ripped gravity from the depths, sending a chasm opening beneath me. I plummeted through breaking stone and searing heat, falling as though into infinity.
Thousands of fragments of rock and metal hurtled past me in a nanosecond ballet of might and ruin. I spun within that hailstorm and assembled a wing-like lattice of supercooled crystal atoms along my back. Those wings cut through the falling debris, steering me upward even as the chasm yawned beneath me.
Above me, I saw Hecate stepping across the shattered rim, robes trailing shards of darkness that clung to the air. She raised her staff, one that seemed carved from living night, and struck the ground. The underworld quaked. Pillars tore themselves from the earth before being bathed in blue fires and launched at me like javelins.
I raised a shield of Necrodermis, knitted from still falling drops of my blood and the Necrodermis in my body acting like my bones. Each pillar shattered against it, exploding into bullets of obsidian that ricocheted off and buried themselves in the distant horizon.
I stabbed a finger into the ground and drew up molten quartz from the depths. It burst through the floor and formed a tidal wave of molten crystal behind me. I rode that wave toward her as though crossing an ocean of flame. I slapped my hand against her gravity staff and ripped its staff-head into a thousand splinters of violet ink that drifted away on invisible winds.
She snarled and reached into her robes, drawing out a wound in space that spilled antithesis energy, nothingness that devoured light and matter alike. That wound blossomed like a black rose behind her. I felt the vacuum tug at more than my flesh, more than my body and all the molecules making it, something threatening to unravel me beyond atom by atom, beyond the soul.
I clenched my teeth and summoned paradoxical causality again. I sent a command that the thing before me had been destroyed before it had been unleashed. The wound recoiled as though slapped, compressing into a narrow line that vanished in a puff of inverted snow.
The goddess didn't allow my act to make her idle, to be on the back foot.
I felt her fist collide with my ribs in a burst of agony so intense it felt like a thousand broken bones clamoring for attention all at once, and in that single breath I shoved back with every ounce of muscle, driving her spine backward until vertebrae cracked beneath my palm, yet before I even registered the pain searing through my own forearm I was already inside her guard, elbow smashing into her solar plexus in a rain of blows so rapid they became a single, composite strike that shattered cartilage and ruptured flesh.
Then she was inside me, fist colliding with heart in a millisecond so dense it seemed to stretch eternity: a piston of bone grinding my sternum, a spray of ichor staining the air, each droplet hanging like frozen embers before gravity slowly began to grasp them. I twisted, ribs creaking like old timber, and with every twist I felt six hundred rib fragments grind against my lungs; I poured my will into those fragments and they rearranged themselves into living steel that sang with each heartbeat.
Before I could gasp for air she was upon me again, clawed fingers slashing my side; wet rips of flesh announced each cut, muscle fibers peeling like rotten bark, and still I met her with bone and tendon, my fist driving through her cheek, cracking molars like brittle rock, yet I saw her lips part in triumph even as ichor peppered my face.
She was enjoying it just like me.
In the space of a nanosecond, no longer than the echo of a single gunshot, we traded a thousand strikes: fists whistling through air like bullets, legs sweeping cartilage from bone, shoulders smashed into shoulders with the force of meteor fragments, spines colliding in a tangle of ribs. My jaw snapped shut around the bridge of her nose and I tasted copper and ink; she bit into my tongue and I tasted nothing but white fire.
Every collision reverberated through the underworld, a concussive drumbeat broken down into its constituent pulses until time itself trembled. I felt my arm dislocate as she leveraged my shoulder against her hip; in the same heartbeat, I drove my knee into her sternum, compressing lungs into shattered glass. Blood spurted from her throat in a geyser of violence; I felt the spray splash across my chest, each droplet burning like acid, and I let it burn until I could no longer feel anything but the relentless momentum hurtling us forward.
We hurtled through columns and dark terraces, bodies colliding with rock in a blur of gore and dust. One moment she was above me, teeth bared and bearing down; the next I had seized her hair in one hand and her arm in the other, wrenching flesh from bone until tendon snapped with a sound like tearing linen. Yet even as I did I felt bones of Necrodermis in my own hand fracture, splinters working through my palm, and still I held on, still I squeezed until each shard of her arm ground to powder beneath my fingers.
Then she was free, launching herself backwards with a spring of ripped muscle, landing on my chest and driving her elbow into my throat. I tasted blood in my mouth again; I felt a crack in my windpipe as my ribs caved inward. In that collapse I summoned every broken scrap of metal in my bones and shot it outward in a wave of kinetic shards that tore through her stomach, splintered her spine, and still she heaved herself upright, viscera knitting in a flicker of violet regeneration.
Our next clash spanned two pillars and half the crumbling floor. I threw a right hook that carved a crescent moon out of her jaw; she answered by catching my neck in one hand and compressing it like a vice. Each vertebra compressed until it compressed no more; I tasted bone dust on my tongue. In that moment of what felt like near death, I tunneled into the paradox loops folding around my skull and reversed the strike, sending the hollow of her wrist plunging into her own throat. She gagged, blood coating her fingers, and I staggered back, chest heaving.
Time fractured once again. Our bodies moved so fast that we became afterimages of ourselves, each image bleeding into the next: fist into face, face into fist, ribs into knee, knee into ribs, a thousand and one wounds inflicted and healed in the span of a heartbeat. Flesh pulsed, bones reformed, blood spilled and vanished, as though the underworld itself acted as surgeon and grave.
I understood, knew without a doubt that each cut refined us, each crack of bone forged us anew. She lunged, body low and whirling, and we became a cyclone of limbs. My knuckles planted in her kidneys and exploded outward, sending tremors through her flesh; she spun me by the neck, spun me so fast that my organs unspooled like thread, then she caught me by the ankle and slammed me headfirst into the floor.
I tasted rock in my mouth. Stars, no, pulsars flared behind my eyelids. In that fraught instant, I channeled every broken shard in my mind: adaptive synthesis reshaped the fractures into swords of living light that shot from my fists; paradoxical causality through anti-divinity aligned my next strike to land before I even decided to throw it. A fist of hyperdense Necrodermis superposed on each other in the form of a claw closed around her throat and I drove it forward.
She gasped, skin crinkling under my grip, but she used the momentum of my strike to hurl us both upward. We flew through the underworld as though launched from a catapult, colliding with a fractured arch in midair. Arches collapsed under our impact; we fell through collapsing ignited stone with the speed of a hurricane's eye.
Yet in free fall we did not stop. We struck each other five hundred times before our boots even touched ground: elbows to collarbones, knees to faces, shoulders into groins, every inch of flesh and bone exchanged in a savage symphony of violence. Each time I cracked a bone she regenerated it; each time she flayed my skin I knit it back.
Finally, we crashed into fire akin to being thrown in the core of a star, the one that had come and was still coming into existence due to how fast we had brown moving. The wall of plasma threw us apart and we smashed back together at its far bank. Our clothes were gone, our hair ash, and we stood panting while they came back as if time was reversing around us, among the steam and broken columns with our wounds fresh and new, blood and ichor glistening on scars that slowly but surely faded.
I raised my fist. I saw her raise her hand. We were two bodies held together by violence, each strike a baptism of pain, each wound a testament to our endless dance. And then we smiled, bloody and wild, and leapt at each other again.
We clashed again. Our fists met with a crack that split air and reality, a broken radio broadcast of explosions and screaming steel. My fist buried itself in her stomach, rib plates shredding, but her hand burst through my chest in return, nails like diamond needles piercing my heart. We both staggered, blood hissing where flesh met flesh, and for a breath we tasted each other's life.
I felt her divine power almost like an imprint on my heart and I grabbed, held it as if there was nothing more real and fed it to my anti-divine star, to the beginning of what could be called a ritual, a formula. My wound stung in pure agony as if I was melting from the inside and at the same time, a rake was painfully, slowly and sadistically being dragged on them
We clashed again.
With a roar, I struck her in the throat and knocked her head back.
She fell across two collapsing pillars. Black cracks spidered across her skin, and violet light sputtered like a dying forge. Yet she raised her hand and her hand turned into a scythe of midnight. She slashed the air and carved a rib out of my side. I heard it snap like candy. My lungs filled with molten ash.