They said the gods died long ago. Their bones became mountains. Their blood, the rivers. Their eyes-their silver eyes-passed down to humankind like a curse mistaken for blessings.
Everyone in the empire bore silver eyes.
Everyone except for Ares.
He stood at the edge of the temple courtyard, alone. Morning light fell across his face, casting a strange contrast gold in one eye, a deep and impossible black in other. He kept his head down, but it didn't matter. The children always noticed him.
They always stared.
"Look at him," someone muttered. "The temple wraith."
Another voice-louder,"You still here, freak? Shoul've thrown you off the mountain when they found you."
Ares felt the words like stones in his gut. He clenched his fist inside his sleeves and kept walking. If he ignored them, may be-
A rock struck his shoulder. Another skimmed past his ear.
He stopped.
Slowly, he turned.
A group of boys stood in the courtyard, older than him, stronger, eyes shining silver in the sun. The leader of the group stepped forward-a broad shouldered boy named Kellan, whose father was a priest.
"You think you're speacial?" Kellan sneered.
"Gold and black? That's not gift, that's rot. May be we should carve that eye out and see what bleeds."
Ares's heart thundered in his chest when he heard those words. He wanted to run, to curl in on himself and disappear. But fear wouldn't save him. It never had.
So he starightened.
He let the rob fall slightly l, enough to reveal his mismatched gaze. The golden eye gleamed like fire - but the black one, that was the one that made people hesitate. An eye with no reflection. No light, Just ... Death.
"I think you should back away," Ares said quietly.
His voice didn't tremble, though his legs felt like hollow wood.
Kellan laughed, but there was an edge on it,"Or what? You'll curse me with that demon eye of yours?"
Ares tilted his head, just slightly. "May be. Wnat to find out what it sees when it looks at you?"
The courtyard went still.
Something about the way he said it- calm, cold, too clam for a boy his age- sent a chill through others. They didn't know he was bluffing. That his stomach was coiled in knots. That the black eye, for all it's strangeness had never done anything.
But they didn't know that.
Kellan looked away first. "Y- You're not worth the trouble," he muttered, and turned. The others followed.
Ares stood alone again, the breath he'd been holding now burning in his lungs.
He waited until they were gone before he exhaled and sank to his knees behind the column, pressing his forehead at the cold stone.
He had won.
But it didn't feel like victory.
Cold wing tugged at the hem of Ares's robe as he stood beneath the temple's shadowed arch. Kellan and others were gone - but their words still lingered like bruises.
He let out a shaky breath and raised a hand to his face.
His fingers brushed the skin beneath his left eye - the black one.
It felt no different than the other, but it was like touching a stone that shouldn't exist. A dark thing lodged in light. Cold, alien, wrong.
It had no reflection. It drank light like a well with no bottom. Priests had examined it when he was a baby - poked it, prayed over it, tried to explain it. But there were no records, no prophecies, no mention of black eyes in any divine archieve.
Even the high scribes whispered behind the closed doors:
"There is no such thing."
And yet - there it was. Staring back at him every time he saw his reflection in the polished brass bowls or quiet waters.
Then, there was the other one - the right eye. Golden. Bright. Alive.
A rare thing, even more rarer than anyone admitted.
There had been children born with golden eyes before.
He'd heard the stories. Read the sealed scrolls he wasn't supposed to touch.
None of them lived.
Some died as infants. Others bled from their mouths during their first prayers. One girl sang in the old tongue for three days before her heart burst during a storm. The Empire burned her name from the records. They called it the "Divine Glare" - a fatal flare of god-blood too bright for a mortal body.
But Ares still lived.
Ten winters old, and still breathing. Still walking. Still cursed.
He didn't know what it meant. Only that the golden eye saw things. The runes on the walls sometimes shimmered when he stared at them. Once, during a prayer, he saw the stone bleed - no one else did. No one believed him.
The priests feared his golden eye.
They had no idea what to make of the black one.
And, neither did he.
Was it a punishment? A mark? A prophecy? A mistake?
He clenched his jaw and drew his hood up, shadowing his bith eyes.
One golden - a sun no child should carry.
One black - a void no god ever made.
He turned and vanished into the dark halls of the temple, footsteps silent.
Tonight, he would leave.
He didn't care if the wilds were full of monsters, or if the border was death.
Better to die chasing something real than live praying to the bones of liars.