Chapter 90 – Saga of The One-Eyed God
(Ethan)
The book should not have fit in my hands.
Too thin for a god's scripture. Too plain for a world-breaking artifact. Leather cover, reinforced spine, corners already going soft where my thumbs had worried at them.
The title, though.
That was honest.
SAGA OF THE ONE-EYED GOD
Notes on Machines, Principles, and Other Ways to Anger Reality
He really wrote "anger reality." Of course he did.
I ran my thumb over the letters again.
One-eyed god. He meant himself, obviously. Or maybe not. Maybe he meant whatever watched him when he looked at the sky like it owed him an answer.
Didn't matter.
The important part was underneath.
I opened the cover for the twentieth time.
The first page was… wrong. Beautifully wrong. A tree made of ink and obsession sprawled over the parchment. Branches, sub-branches, roots. Words in tiny neat script: LENSES to MICROSCOPES to GERMS to MEDICINE. GEARS to CLOCKS to AUTOMATA. CHEMISTRY to EXPLOSIVES to GUNS to ARTILLERY to 'DON'T SHOW THIS TO ETHAN YET' (that note was his; I recognised the handwriting).
Everything was connected. Every line had arrows, tiny symbols, warning triangles where he thought I would blow myself up if I skipped steps.
At the top of the page, in small, almost shy script, he'd written:
"This is not a recipe. This is a forest. Do not try to plant all the trees at once."
I had read that sentence eighty times.
It still made something in my chest hurt.
"A forest," I murmured now, tracing the branches. "Roots and branches and… and sub-branches and sub-sub—sub-erynds. No. That's not a unit. Focus."
Front page first.
He'd written a list along the bottom edge, like an index that had mutated:
BOOM-STICKS (early) – see: pressure, metallurgy, chemical basics
ENGINES (simple) – see: heat, expansion, pistons
ENGINES (less simple) – see: rotation, transmission, 'talk to Edward first'
COMPUTERS (eventually) – see: logic gates, switching, electricity, 'you're not allowed to jump here just because it sounds cool'
Computers.
The word still felt like I was chewing gravel and honey at the same time.
"A machine that eats numbers," I whispered, remembering his voice. "Spits out answers. Little switches that are either yes or no, on or off, one or zero, and somehow that makes pictures and words and… and games."
I could see it, almost. Rows of switches, clacking like tiny soldiers, marching in patterns that made sense if you looked from far enough away.
"So if I… if we… no, if I build a small one," I said, "a baby Erynbrain… no, that's a terrible name, keep that, actually, write that down—"
I grabbed a scrap of paper and scribbled ERYNBRAIN v0.0 – no touching until we have stable power.
I stared at it.
Laughed once, a little too high.
"This is fine," I told the empty lab. "This is how sane people behave around books."
The lab disagreed.
It hummed around me. Glass clinked as something condensed, runes crackled faintly on a nearby array. Metal smelled like metal. Mana smelled like not enough sleep.
I went back to the page.
Boring machine.
He'd drawn a little sketch: a cylinder, teeth along one edge, a crank on the side. Below it: BORING MACHINE (for tunnels, not emotions). Underlined.
"And you call me dramatic," I muttered.
Then I read the next note.
'Name to be decided. If left to Ethan, will become something stupid like "Erynd-drill" and I reserve the right to veto.'
I sat in silence.
Very carefully, I closed the book.
Very carefully, I opened it again.
The note was still there.
"Veto this," I whispered. "You one-eyed hypocrite."
I put my finger under the sketch and stabbed the parchment lightly.
"I name you," I declared softly, "the EryMachine."
It felt good in my mouth. Wrong and good. EryMachine. A machine that bores through stone and resistance and the Emperor's taxes. Yes. Perfect.
I scribbled in the margin before I could stop myself:
ALT NAME: EryMachine (pending divine approval, ha)
My hand shook a little.
Not fear.
Excitement.
The good kind. The kind that had sparks at the edges.
"This is bad," I told one of the microscopes. "I haven't even gotten past the front page and I already want to rename half the world."
The microscope didn't answer. Frankly, rude.
I turned the page.
The tree splintered into specifics. CHAPTER 1: PRESSURE. Simple diagrams of barrels and pistons. Notes on air, water, load.
Underneath, in smaller text: 'If Edward is reading this, please stop here and go drink water. If Ethan is reading this, breathe. You can't build all of it in one week.'
"I can try," I muttered.
Then I started reading properly.
At first my brain did what it always did with his notes: snapped lines into place, built scaffolding, filled in the gaps with questions instead of guesses.
If you heat something in a closed space, it pushes harder on the walls.
So if we trap that push, we can use it.
If we use it in a tube, we get guns.
If we use it in a cylinder, we get engines.
If we use it wrong, we get funerals.
Simple. Elegant. Terrifying.
I turned another page.
Diagrams of valves. Springs. Safeties. Each one annotated with little personal comments.
"Don't skip this. I know you. You will want to skip this. Don't."
"If you're smiling, stop. It means you thought of a faster way."
"You are allowed to have fun after you survive."
"You write like you can hear me," I whispered.
Maybe he could.
He'd designed a system that watched people from the inside. Why not me from in here?
Page after page.
Combustion. Gunpowder without ingredients, just behaviour. "Something that wants to be many things at once very quickly." Energy. Heat as motion. Motion as work.
My head buzzed.
My hands twitched whenever I saw an incomplete diagram. I started filling in the margins without thinking. Curved this gear. Tightened that spring. Added a rune here, a mana reservoir there.
Hours passed like they'd been stolen.
At some point, I noticed I was humming.
At another point, I noticed the humming had turned into words.
"Erynd-engine… no, Engine of the One-Eyed… sounds like it eats eyeballs, keep it for later… Eryndine Dynamics, that's a good name for a company, write that, write that—"
I flipped pages faster.
It should have overwhelmed me. It should have knocked me flat, all this knowledge, structured, chained, with warning signs where my instincts screamed go faster, skip, jump.
Instead, it felt like finally being allowed to breathe at the right pressure.
"I am not special," I told the book quietly. "You know that. I am not a genius. I am… I am a bucket. A good bucket. You pour things in, I don't leak. Much. Sometimes. On Tuesdays."
My throat tightened.
"This is the first time," I said, "that someone has filled the bucket correctly."
Words started sticking wrong in my head after that.
"Trans—transistor, trans-witcher, trans–transcendental switch thing—"
I laughed and scratched it out.
"Valve. Start with valve. Call it an Eryn-gate. No, wait, logic gate, locked gate, Erynd-gate. I'm naming all of them after him. This is extremely healthy and normal behaviour, write that down."
I did.
I wrote HEALTHY & NORMAL in the margin and circled it ten times.
Then I drew a tiny tree beside it. Yggdrasil, simplified. One trunk, many branches. Little fruits hanging off it that looked suspiciously like bullets.
"I get it now," I whispered. "You weren't joking. This is a saga. Not yours. Mine."
The room wobbled.
Not literally. My sense of scale did.
The tower, the lab, the underground base, the world—all of it shrank, re-arranged around the idea that these pages were the root of something bigger.
"We could… we will…" I said. "Compressed air pumps. Erynd-lungs. No, that's bad. Pressure engines. Small. Trains? No tracks. Carts that move on their own. Erynd-mobiles. That's terrible. Keep it. Computers later, tiny thinking boxes, Erynbrains, oh, that one's sticking, that one's not leaving, too late—"
I was aware, dimly, that my mouth had started outrunning my thoughts.
Words piled up, stumbled, tripped over each other.
"The Saga of the One-Eyed God," I mumbled. "Starring Ethan 'unpaid intern of divinity' Yggdrasil. No, Jarl. Jarl of… of… of gears. Lord of small angry parts. Saint of safety valves. I should get a hat."
My pen hovered over the page.
Then, in very small letters at the bottom, I wrote:
Thank you.
I stared at it until the letters blurred.
Then I laughed again, because my chest hurt and my face felt hot and my brain was very calmly re-arranging my whole life around this book.
"I am not going mad," I said.
The lab, unhelpfully, remained silent.
"Fine," I muttered. "Then I am going mad productively. Good madness. Cultured insanity. Erynduced psychosis. No. Yes. No."
I snapped the book shut.
The echo of its weight on the bench sounded like a starting gun.
"Right," I said. "Step one: pressure. Step two: valves. Step three: definitely not computers yet, Ethan, you little green disaster."
I could hear his voice saying it.
Which was unfair, because he wasn't here.
"Saga of the One-Eyed God," I whispered again, tasting the title.
Under my breath, almost prayer:
"I will make you proud, you arrogant cyclops."
Then I went to find metal, and springs, and a wall I could blow a hole in carefully.
***
(Olivia)
Erynd walked past her in the palace corridor like a guest who'd gotten lost.
Not like the boy who'd once fallen asleep in her father's study with ink on his cheek and a book open over his chest. Not like the awkward teenager who'd gotten dragged along whenever Lord Viester visited, who'd sat at the end of the long table and tried to disappear into his cup when she'd poked fun at his posture.
Just a man in a dark coat, papers under his arm, moving with purpose that did not include her.
"Lord Milton," Olivia heard herself say.
The word Lord still felt wrong in her mouth, even now.
He stopped mid-step. Turned.
"Your Highness," he said.
Polite. Correct. A small bow, perfectly measured. No warmth. No shared history. Just protocol.
Up close, he looked… older.
Not just taller. Not just scars. There was a flatness in his eyes that hadn't been there before he'd "gone missing."
Before he had died somewhere and come back wrong and twelve and she hadn't been there to see it, only hear the reports afterwards.
"You've changed," she almost said.
Instead she smiled, weakly.
"Welcome back," she managed. "Again. I suppose that's what we say when someone keeps turning up after the Empire writes them off."
A flicker.
The corner of his mouth twitched, as if there was a real answer behind his teeth that he refused to let out.
"I didn't intend to be dramatic," he said. "It… happened."
"You were missing for years, Erynd," she said, voice softer. "That's a little beyond 'happened.'"
His name felt like a stone dropping into water.
He didn't flinch.
That hurt more.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
For a heartbeat, something like the old Erynd peeked through. The one who used to sneak sweets into her room during tedious banquets. The one who'd stood beside her on the balcony during a summer storm and said, very seriously, "I don't think the gods know what they're doing."
Then it was gone.
His gaze slid past her shoulder, toward the end of the corridor. Toward the council chambers. The war rooms. The maps.
He was always looking at maps now.
"Do you have a moment?" Olivia blurted. "For tea. Or… or even just to sit and pretend you're not about to run off to save the world. Again."
He hesitated.
She could see him calculate.
Not in numbers, but in distances. In risks. In how much of himself he could afford to spend on anything not strictly necessary.
"I don't," he said at last. "I'm sorry. There are… things that can't wait. The marches. The reclamation. The Awakened settlements. The cult remnants."
His voice stayed gentle.
The words still landed like a door closing.
"When?" she asked. "Later? Tonight? Tomorrow? I just… Father said you were tired and I should give you space, but every time we send spies or investigators they come back saying you're the one in charge now. Out there. Head of… something. I—"
She stopped.
She hadn't meant to say that much.
His eyes flicked to her face. Something unreadable slid behind them.
"There's no conspiracy against you," he said quietly. "If that's what you're thinking. I'm not… avoiding you."
"You're standing in front of me and telling me you don't have five minutes," she said. "If that's not avoiding, what is it?"
The words came out sharper than she'd intended.
He took it.
Didn't defend himself.
Didn't apologise again, either.
"I'm trying," he said. "To keep as many people alive as possible. That's all."
"That's not all," she said, and hated how her voice wanted to shake. "We grew up together. You used to fall asleep on the carpet in Father's study and drool on his boots. I watched you scrape your knees on the palace steps and complain that the stone was conspiring against you. You disappeared. You came back… like this. You keep walking past me like I'm… like I'm just another person you owe a report to."
He looked at her then.
Really looked.
For a moment, she thought he might say it.
Anything.
That he remembered sitting under the same apple tree with her and Viester while their fathers argued about border policies. That he remembered the time she'd dragged him to the kitchens and made him taste-test the cook's disastrous attempt at "foreign cuisine." That he remembered promising, half a lifetime ago, "When I get my land back, you'll visit and complain about the curtains."
Instead, he said:
"I can't explain everything. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Some of it would just… hurt you for no gain. And I've hurt enough people without meaning to."
The careful distance in his voice was worse than a shouted rejection.
It said: I have already decided who gets to understand me, and you are not on that list.
Olivia's fingers curled into her skirts.
"Do you trust me?" she asked, before she could stop herself.
Silence.
He didn't answer.
He didn't say no.
He didn't say yes.
He let the question hang there, heavy and unanswered, like so many others.
"I have to go," he said at last. "The Emperor is waiting. And then I'm leaving again. There's work to do, and if I stop too long, it all catches up."
He bowed.
Not too low. Not too shallow.
Perfect.
"Take care of yourself, Your Highness," he said.
Then he turned and walked away.
He did not look back.
She watched him until he vanished around the corner.
Her chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the corset.
***
That night she sat in her rooms with the reports spread around her like a crime scene.
Milton. Lord of the reclaimed marches. Field commander. Negotiator with Awakened enclaves. Problem-solver for half the crises the Empire didn't dare admit to publicly.
And there.
A name in the spymaster's neat, dry hand.
Harbard.
She traced the letters.
"Princess," the spymaster had said, the last time they'd spoken about it. "I have a feeling this Harbard person that arrived at Morel and challenged the duke at that time is maybe Erynd."
She'd laughed.
Back then, Erynd had still been… softer. Less aura of "I have seen too much." The idea of him picking a fight under a false name had been ridiculous.
Now, with the reports of cult cells cut down by a masked swordsman, with the timing of Harbard's appearances and disappearances matching Erynd's travels a little too neatly—
It wasn't funny anymore.
"It's not possible," she whispered.
Except it clearly was.
The walls of her room felt too close.
She pushed away from the desk and stood, pacing between the window and the door.
Through the glass, the capital glittered. Lanterns. Runes. The temple's glow.
People out there were sleeping peacefully under a sky that had no idea Erynd existed.
She did.
Too much.
Too little.
He'd been part of her life as long as she could remember. Older boy, occasional tormentor, reluctant play partner when Viester and Father had foisted them together. The one who'd taught her how to cheat at a particular card game and then taken a scolding for her when they'd been caught.
Then he'd vanished.
She'd prayed for him.
Lit candles.
Demanded updates.
Watched Father read the first "missing, presumed dead" report with his mouth a hard line.
She'd mourned.
Quietly, because princesses did not make scenes over non-relatives, no matter how many summers they'd shared.
Then he'd come back. Taller. Sharper. Carrying a weight in his shoulders that hadn't been there before.
She should have been happy.
She was.
And she hated him a little for it.
For dying without telling her.
For living without including her.
For walking past her in corridors with the same calm expression he wore for foreign delegates and generals.
If she was honest—and late at night, alone, she could be—she hated herself more.
For still hoping. For imagining conversations that never happened. For composing little speeches in her head: "Tell me where you went. Tell me what you saw. Tell me why you look at the world like it's… running out." And then saying none of them.
"Maybe he doesn't trust you," a small, ugly voice whispered.
She laughed once, harsh.
"Of course he doesn't," she told the empty room. "I'm a princess. I'm a symbol. I'm… safe in here while he's out there bleeding. Why should he trust me with anything that hurts?"
Her reflection in the window looked back at her: gold circlet, fine dress, eyes red at the edges.
She pressed her forehead to the glass.
"I'm trying," she whispered to a man who wasn't there. "I'm trying to understand. But you're not giving me anything to work with."
The city lights blurred.
She stayed there a long time.
At some point, she slid down until she was sitting on the floor beneath the window, skirts pooled around her, reports scattered, candle burning low.
She thought of Erynd as a boy, sulking because Viester had made him dance with her at some formal event and he'd stepped on her toes six times in a row.
She thought of him now, walking into ruined lands and cult pits and a death wish and not enough sleep.
She did not know which version hurt more.
When the candle finally guttered out, she didn't bother to light another.
She sat in the dark and was very, very small for a while.
Sleep came late and shallow.
When she dreamed, she stood at the edge of a forest she couldn't see the end of, and somewhere inside it a boy with Erynd's voice walked away from her, always just out of sight.
Every time she called his name, the trees swallowed the sound.
***
Hooded People Gathering
The chamber was far below daylight and older than the Empire.
Old prayers had been carved into the stones long before any of the current occupants had been born, back when Helios was only a sun god of an old faith and not a problem for cults who'd chosen different patrons.
The hooded figures stood in a rough circle.
Ritual, habit, or just convenience—it didn't matter. Patterns mattered. Circles mattered.
"Begin," said the one at the head.
Person 1. The leader. First. The title shifted depending on who was speaking, but the weight of attention in the room always settled on them.
"This Milton boy," First said, voice calm as still water. "He is very dangerous."
Person 2 flexed what passed for hands.
From beneath their hood, pale tendrils slid into view. Not quite tentacles, not quite fingers. Too many joints. Skin that looked like it had forgotten what shape it meant to be.
"I agree," Second said. Their voice rasped faintly, like stone over wet bone. "He has taken out many of the outer beings. Efficiently. Annoyingly."
"He should not have that much reach yet," Person 3 said. Their hood turned, the suggestion of spectacles glinting for a moment in the gloom. "He is young. Mortal. Bounded by time and flesh. And yet our cells crumble where he walks."
"Not just him," First said. "Before we do anything, we need to figure out who has taken out most of the cults around the world other than Helios."
The name made several of the candles flicker.
Helios.
Not theirs. Never theirs.
Old faith. Old sun. Old fire.
When Helios's worshipers prayed properly, cult shrines burned from the inside out. Runes cracked. Flesh-constructs screamed. Theirs was a different patron, a different beyond. Helios was an enemy from a different axis entirely.
"We have lost three major gatherings to Helios's little sun-priests," Third said, ticking them off on unseen fingers. "They sing, the sky answers, and our careful work becomes ash. Irritating. But at least predictable."
"The other losses," Second said, tendrils coiling, "are not from Helios. They are from something smaller. Closer. Humanoid. Sword-sized."
"Harbard," said Person 4, almost lazily.
The others turned to look at them.
Fourth always sounded amused. It made people nervous.
"You are too fond of that name," First said.
"I am fond of data," Fourth replied. "Where our outer cells fall quiet, rumours of a masked swordsman appear. No aura that witnesses can feel. No obvious mana. Just speed. Precision. The sort of skill that should require decades of practice and yet seems attached to a shadow that appears and disappears with our recent little…" They tilted their head. "Problems."
"Harbard appears in Morel," Third said. "In the islands. In the desert fringe. Cuts apart rituals. Frees Awakened who should have fallen neatly into our hands. And then vanishes."
"Helios from above, Harbard from below," Second muttered. "Sun and sword. Fire and steel. Both uninvited."
"And both," Third added, "intersect with Milton."
First's fingers tapped the arm of their stone seat. A small, measured sound. The runes carved into the floor pulsed faintly in response, as if the stone itself were listening.
"Elaborate," First said.
"Milton appears in the aftermath," Third said. "Where Helios has burned, where Harbard has cut. He steps into the vacuum. Stabilises the Awakened. Offers them structure. Work. Names. A place to exist that is not under us."
"He steals our raw material," Second hissed. "We work so hard to loosen minds from the world, and he catches them before they fall into our hands."
"He is building something," Fourth said. "An organisation. A network. A… tree."
The word hung in the air with more weight than it should have.
"We do not like trees," Second said.
"No," First agreed. "Trees bind. Trees remember. Old roots are hard to pull up. The last time a 'tree' grew too deep, we had to crack half a continent to kill it."
They all remembered the stories.
Cracks in the earth that still hadn't closed. Seas that tasted wrong. Children born with eyes that saw too much.
"Before we act openly," First said, "we need to know. Who is Helios now? Just an old god with new zealots, or something wearing his name? Who is Harbard? A mask Milton uses? An ally? A rival? Or someone else who has also read ahead in the script?"
Fourth smiled.
The shadow of it cut across their hood.
"Leave that to me," they said. "I have a plan to handle both the Milton boy and the attacker."
Second's tendrils twitched.
"Define 'handle,'" they said.
"Observe," Fourth said. "Pressure. Temptation. A little nudge. I want to see how far Milton bends before he breaks. And whether Harbard snaps first. Helios we can't touch directly—not yet—but we can… test the others around him."
"You nearly broke the city last time you 'tested' an Awakened," Third reminded them. "The old capital still smells wrong when it rains."
"Yes," Fourth said, unconcerned. "And we learned so much. Knowledge has a price. We are already paying. Might as well get our coin's worth."
First considered them.
"We are not ready for a full confrontation," they said finally. "The world is still… soft. The Awakened are still learning what they are. The Empire is still pretending it understands what happened. We wait. We watch. We sharpen."
They lifted their hand.
The runes brightened for a moment, then sank back into muttering.
"But begin your preparations," First added. "Quietly. Threads in the dark. Traps that look like luck. When the time comes, I want Milton facing choices that all lead toward us."
Fourth inclined their head.
"Gladly," they said. "I look forward to seeing what our little tree does when the ground under his roots starts to move."
"And Harbard?" Second asked.
Fourth's smile widened.
"If he is a mask, we will rip it off," they said. "If he is a man, we will break him. If he is something else… then we will learn a new song."
"And Helios?" Third pressed.
First's voice cooled.
"Helios is an old light," they said. "We do not snuff out suns. We move in the shadows they cast. Let his faithful burn the obvious altars for now. When they think the world is clean, we will still be here. Underneath."
The candles went out, one by one.
In the dark, names whispered against stone, too soft for mortal ears.
Milton.
Helios.
Harbard.
Three different problems.
One looming future.
The shadows smiled.