There was no sky where she dwelled.
No sound. No light. No stars.
Only the crushing stillness of eternity.
Here, time did not pass. It pulsed—like an old wound that refused to heal. And memory blurred with dreams.
Her prison was absolute. Her body, soul, and mind were bound at the very heart of Prometheus.
Over time, pain and silence became her only constant. A suffocating pressure that folded her being inward, grinding her awareness.
She learned to listen to silence.
To see without eyes.
To exist in thought, in feeling, in fragments that drifted like smoke through the bedrock of the planet.
Her mind had fractured countless times—splintering, folding, knitting itself back together with ritual precision, again and again. It was not easy. But she was patient.
At first, she could only sense. Fleeting impressions. Echoes of pain and blood from the surface above. But eventually, her will began to stretch. Not her limbs—those were bound. Not her voice—it was sealed. But her presence.
She reached.
Further.
Deeper.
Wider.
Tendrils of awareness slipped through the cracks in her bindings, spreading like mist—watching, listening, remembering.
And slowly, her perception returned. She began to see.
Not the full world. Not yet. But fragments. Patterns. Voices.
The sands of the arena. The bones beneath. The screams of children and monsters.
She had once been sovereign over time and space, walked between dimensions, folded distances like paper. She was a being of terror and serenity, healer and executioner, feared and revered. Her gaze could pierce across galaxies, her steps could bridge worlds. Her presence commanded awe.
Now she was a whisper in the walls of her own tomb.
They had built a world around her tomb. Named it Prometheus. Turned it into a graveyard for the unwanted. A planet forged from her core.
She bore no feelings for those above.
She had seen too many souls come and go.
Children thrown to beasts.
Monsters bred for sport.
Innocents condemned. Criminals exalted.
All of it blurred into the same gray fog of decay.
She pitied them. But only briefly. Indifference was easier.
It started with a ripple—soft, somehow familiar. A small presence disturbed her. She focused on her perception, A child. He was bleeding. Chased. Desperate. Not unusual.
She paused, watched. Out of instinct touched the thread of his life. Just lightly. Barely more than a whisper of power—a breeze in the dark. Just enough to end those who chased him.
He never saw her. But he bowed slightly. Feigned gratitude. Clever boy.
She returned to him again. Not out of pity. Not at first. Curiosity, perhaps. Then… something more.
She watched as the days passed. He didn't cry. He didn't beg. Starved, bruised, expecting to fight and die—something inside him was changing. And in him, in the haunted way he stared into the void, she saw an echo of herself.
When he stepped into the arena for the first time, she watched, she did not plan to help again.
And she saw, He had no fear left. He let go of expectations, was tranquil, at peace.
It wasn't courage. No It was something worse. A terrifying calm. The surrender of hope. The clarity that comes when death no longer matters.
Not many survived their first true despair. Fewer were it like armor.
But she hoped he would. Because, something was awakening in him. It wasn't clean. It wasn't refined. But it was Her clan's…
And Idris felt it—his mind reaching. Touching.
Instinct, raw and untamed, pulling on the same current she once ruled.
When the creature lunged. The world froze.
Dust hung in the air like stars suspended in glass.
He didn't know it. But he had touched time. Unknowingly. Instinctively.
And for a sliver of a moment, their awareness touched.
His mind brushed the edge of the same abyss where she lived.
And she felt it.
She watched as he moved. How he fought. Not with finesse. Not with training.
But with something primal.
When the beast fell and the crowd erupted, Idris lingered.
For the first time in centuries, someone had touched her shadow.
A ghost of a smile passed through her fractured mind.
"Not just a ripple," she thought.
"A crack."
She had found a thread worth watching. Perhaps even one that could pull her from the dark.