I don't remember the last time I slept.
Not really. My body would collapse on the slab they called a bed, my eyes shutting from exhaustion, but rest never came. The mountain hummed, a deep subterranean groan that made the stone walls vibrate like a drum. The sound crawled into my skull until silence felt like a forgotten thing.
Kael should've listened to me.
"Wait," I'd told him. "Wait until they are exhausted and tired of fighting the Titans and then betray them and stab them in the back."
But Kael was a fool. He'd always been far too hot headed. He had convinced me to help, and the rest followed because what else could we do? He dragged us into turning against them before we were ready, and now—he was dead. Dead and probably already destroyed by the stomach acid of that serpent.
And what about me?
Imprisoned in Tartarus, stuck in this small cell until I am released or I die.
The cells of Tartarus were carved into the heart of a hollow mountain. The walls bled with veins of obsidian, slick with condensation that never dried. The bars—if you could call them that—were black Adamantine twisted with a black-gray alloy the guards named Necro-steel. With those bars, no matter what I did, there was no way to break free.
My cell was small. A stone bed. A tattered cloth blanket. A single torch outside the bars, its flame never burning out. No windows, no cracks. Just me and the humming mountain.
And my thoughts.
Gods, my thoughts.
At first, I tried to keep count of the days. Scratches on the wall with a shard of stone I'd broken off the bed. But time doesn't flow in Tartarus. The torches never dimmed. The humming never changed. You could scratch until the walls were smooth as glass and still not know if it was the first day or the hundredth.
So I stopped.
And when I stopped, the silence inside my head began to rot.
I sat on the edge of the slab, my hands trembling, nails chewed bloody. My body itched with a rage I couldn't use. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Olympus—gleaming, untouchable, arrogant. I saw their faces. Zeus with his smug thunderclap smile. Hera's cold calculation. Even Hades, that bastard was the reason that I was going to rot in here.
I wanted to tear their throats out with my teeth.
"If only you had been stronger and maybe I would have still been alive," a voice whispered.
I froze. My breath hitched.
The cell was empty. Always empty. Just stone and steel and the torch fire. But the voice—it was so familiar it made my stomach twist.
"Kael?" I whispered.
No answer. Only the hum of the mountain.
I pressed my fists against my temples. I'm losing it. That had to be it. A trick of memory. My brother was gone, and grief was eating my mind from the inside out.
But then came the laugh.
Soft. Mocking.
I jerked my head up, and there he was—standing in the far corner of the cell, half-shrouded in smoke. His shape was there, the broad shoulders, the sharp jaw I knew better than my own reflection. His eyes glowed faintly, like coals buried under ash. And his grin—gods, that grin—spread too wide, too sharp.
"You look like shit," he said.
My chest constricted. I stumbled back until my spine hit the cold wall. "No. You're dead."
He tilted his head. "Maybe. Maybe not." He stepped closer, smoke trailing from his arms like veins unraveling into the air. "You always were the cautious one, Cael. The one who told me to wait, to watch, to plan. And look where that got you."
I wanted to rush him, to grab him by the throat and demand answers, but fear rooted me in place. My heart hammered, torn between rage and the sick ache of seeing his face again.
"You're not real," I said, though the words scraped out were weak, hollow.
Kael's shadowed face tilted, lips curling into something sharp. His voice was a low purr, but it slithered through the cell like smoke. "Oh, I'm real enough. Real enough to talk. Real enough to remind you… you failed me. If you had been stronger with your domains, if you hadn't broken so easily, we could have won."
My teeth clenched. "You died, brother. That isn't winning."
He laughed—quiet, bitter. The sound echoed wrong, like it came from every corner of the cell. "Do you truly think so, dear brother?"
The air thickened, pressing in. My knees buckled, and for a heartbeat I heard the thunder of wings, the furnace-heat breath of something vast just beyond the stone.
I spat into the shadows, though my mouth was dust. "You're mad."
"Mad?" His eyes flared, burning like coals, smoke curling from them in long, clawed fingers that brushed my face. "Madness is what the gods name power when they cannot tame it."
He leaned close, whispering now, every word slicing deeper. "Do you even know how I birthed dragons? How did I bend those beasts to my will? I did not conjure them from nothing. I was given the power, Cael. From an outer being. A hunger that waits beyond gods and titans. A thing called…" His smile widened, cruel. "…the Great Devourer."
The name struck me like ice through the gut. My heart stuttered. I had never heard it spoken before—yet it rang with something older than Titans, older than Chaos itself. A buried terror, scraped out of a nightmare.
"You're lying," I growled, shoving at the smoke that was his chest. My hands passed through nothing, only ash and chill.
He chuckled, a hollow, rotting sound. "Believe what you like. But you feel it, don't you? The gnawing. The whisper. That question digging at the edge of your skull: What would you give? What would you trade to see Olympus burn?"
My mouth opened—then shut.
Because I had thought about it. I had dreamed it in this cell. To claw open my own chest, tear away everything I was, if it meant vengeance on those smug thrones.
Kael saw the hesitation. His grin split wider, teeth too sharp, too many.
"I gave up my very soul," he whispered, and his voice slipped inside my ears like a knife. "And it was worth it. I am more now than I ever was. More than even gods can imagine." His burning eyes locked on mine, and I couldn't look away. "So tell me, Cael… what will you sacrifice?"
The mountain's hum deepened, resonating like a heartbeat through the stone. My throat burned. I wanted to deny him, to scream he was a liar, a ghost, a trick of my madness. But I saw Olympus in flames behind my eyes, their laughter gone, their thrones splintered.
And the words slipped out before I could stop them.
"I'll give everything."
Kael's grin split ear to ear, wrong, monstrous. His laugh erupted, booming and broken, making the torchlight stutter and the shadows crawl. Smoke gushed from his body, pouring across the cell like a tide. I clawed at the air, choking, my vision drowning in black.
And then—silence.
No hum. No torch. No breath.
When I opened my eyes, the cell was gone.
I was standing in a void.
Darkness stretched forever, a hollow nothingness without floor or ceiling. My feet found purchase on invisible ground, but the space felt… wrong. Like being trapped in a dream that wasn't mine.
Vast. Blinding. Twin suns gone mad—pupils vertical and molten gold, burning holes straight through my soul. They did not blink. They did not move. They simply were, endless and inevitable, and in their gaze, the universe itself felt fragile.
The air shuddered. My body convulsed as if the weight of the firmament itself pressed upon me. My ribs screamed. My lungs shriveled. My bones groaned beneath the immensity of him.
And then it spoke.
Not sound. Not voice. A shuddering reverberation that clawed down my spine, splitting marrow, tearing thought, boiling the blood in my veins. The words were not heard but felt—scratched into the cage of my skull, etched into the soft meat of my mind.
"To think another insect dares to kneel where Kael once crawled…" the being hissed, every syllable a serrated hook.
The vibration tore through me, and I collapsed, my knees striking stone. My throat worked for air, ragged, broken.
"W–who are you?" I forced out, each word jagged as glass.
The void tightened. And though no mouth stretched across those burning suns, I felt him smile—until suddenly, the darkness split open.
Mouths.
Hundreds. Thousands. Millions.
They bloomed across the endless black, gnashing and snapping in a frenzy. Each one filled with jagged predator's teeth, rows upon rows, overlapping, grinding, salivating with hunger. Some were the size of mountains, others no larger than a fingertip, yet all identical in their cruelty—gaping maws carved from the abyss itself.
Their laughter wasn't sound, but a tearing—an eruption of noise like flesh being ripped from bone, echoing from every direction at once. My skin crawled. My mind convulsed.
And then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.
Only the burning eyes remained, unblinking, eternal.
And I wished, desperately, that they had stayed closed.
"Who am I? Child, names are nothing. Titles are toys for gods who fear to be forgotten. But you…" The light flared, scorching the edges of my vision. "…you may call me the Great Devourer. For I am the hunger beneath all things. The gnawing void in the bones of creation. I am what gods dread in the silence."
The words hollowed me out, left me trembling, shaking. Whispers of his name slithered in my mind—tales dismissed as madness, spoken only by the broken. But here he was. Real. Endless. A nightmare carved into existence.
"You spoke to Kael," I rasped. "You gave him your power."
The gold eyes narrowed, cruel fire smoldering within them.
"He wasted what was mine, smeared filth across the gift I bestowed. He dared call the crap he made dragons!. And so when that beautiful serpent ate him and his dragon, I let him be crushed and consumed alive in that beast's stomach. Tell me are you going to be a waste like him?"
A ribbon of black smoke coiled between those suns, twisting into Kael's laughing face—before it split, shrieked, and was torn apart.
My stomach turned, but my jaw clenched. "No my lord! I will do whatever you need, let's become of use to your will! Take anything that you want from me!"
The darkness trembled with delight.
"Oh but remember that you already promised something to me." The words curled through me, claws sinking into thought, ripping open my soul. He rifled through my memories like scraps in a midden—the gods' laughter, my brother's betrayal, the stink of chains biting flesh. And he fed. Oh gods, he fed.
"Such venom," he whispered, savoring the taste. "Such hatred. You are ripe, little Cael. You reek of vengeance, of rot yearning to bloom. And I will help you."
My body shook, but I croaked, "How?"
The eyes blazed, and the void filled with vision—wings spanning continents, scales harder than stone, teeth made to chew the marrow of mountains. Fire licked the air, though no flame was there, and I felt my skin blister.
"Your brother played with mere toys. But I…" The void quaked, trembled with unholy glee. "…I will birth a true dragon. A beast born of my hunger. It will be released in your world and led to hunt down and kill the gods. When the Olympians are dead, I shall grant you permission to rule as King of Greece until the day comes when I arrive to consume the world."
I swallowed hard, voice breaking. "Thank you, Milord."
The answer slid into me like a dagger.
"Don't thank me yet as I will need one of the Olympian goddesses to birth my monster."
My breath froze.
"Who?" I asked.
The Devourer's laughter split the world. A sound like stone screaming, like bones ground into sand.
"Why not go with the most beautiful, Hera."
"It can't be done—"
"SILENCE!" The word flayed me raw, stripped thought to ash. "You speak of limits. I am without them. I am a cosmic outer deity that consumes all in my path, though this wretched world denies me yet, my will bleeds through cracks in the world. My greatest prophets has already snuck into Olympus and taken her blood."
"I will unmake all that stand against me," the Devourer said, and each word slammed through me like falling mountains. "I will hollow their thrones, blacken their temples, and strip their names from the tongues of mortals. And you, Cael… if you so truly want to be one of my prophets... prove yourself or I will consume and take all that you have promised me."
"I will do my best…" My voice shook, broken, but sure. "O Great One."
The void roared its approval, shaking the marrow of the world.
"So be it. My hunger returns. And you, little Cael, shall bare my teeth."
The eyes suddenly blinked shut. The void collapsed.
I gasped awake on cold stone, lungs heaving fire. The torch outside my cell flickered green, the mountain groaned, and the walls pressed in.
I touched my arms. No scars, no marks, no scales sprouting from my flesh. Just the same battered body, trembling in the dim light.
I pressed my palms to my face, dragging them down slowly. The skin felt strange, too tight, too thin. My breath rattled in my throat.
Was I truly going mad?
Time bled. Minutes, hours, years—I couldn't tell. The mountain's hum throbbed steady in the stone, a lullaby for the damned. My heartbeat slowed, though unease still twisted in my gut like a knife that would not stop turning.
Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe Kael's voice had been nothing more than a fever of grief, a mirage conjured to comfort me with promises of revenge I would never taste.
I almost believed it.
Until the air shifted.
The torch outside guttered, its flame shrinking, strangled, shadows thickening like tar. And from that blackness, something stepped forth.
A figure. Tall. Wrapped in a cloak of heavy, dark fur, the edges ragged with frost. The hood was pulled low, shadowing the face. He moved slowly, each step deliberate, each one striking the stone with the weight of a hammer-blow.
I sat up, my breath caught in my throat, my body already retreating though I hadn't willed it.
He stopped before the gate. The flicker of torchlight caught on fragments of his features—angular cheekbones, the lines of an ageless face etched in patience and loss. A glint of something metallic near his temple. His hood cast the rest in darkness, though I thought I saw a strip of pale linen wrapped around his left eye.
The man raised a gloved hand. His fingers traced shapes in the air, movements both harsh and delicate, as though carving symbols into invisible skin. Light sparked from his fingertips—faint, sickly pale. The runes hung there for an instant, glowing with an unearthly shimmer before seeping into the bars.
Adamantine groaned. The Necro-steel shuddered, its scream like distant iron breaking. Then silence.
The door swung open without a sound.
I scrambled backward until the stone pressed against my spine, heart jackhammering against my ribs. My mouth went dry. "Who the fuck are you?"
The man didn't answer. His silence was heavier than any word. He stepped into the cell with measured stillness—the stillness of one who had watched the world too long, too carefully.
Then, from beneath his cloak, he drew a blade.
A curved dagger, runes etched deep into its shimmering edge. Its hilt was carved from pale, porous bone—ancient, worn smooth by countless hands. The air around it seemed to recoil, whispering in pain.
Ice flooded my veins.
"What are you doing?" My voice cracked. My palms splayed against the wall behind me as though I could crawl into the stone itself. "Answer me!"
At last, he spoke.
His voice was deep. Not loud, but heavy, weighted with centuries, with sorrow that felt older than the mountain, older than gods.
"You really talk too much."
The words rang like iron. My stomach lurched. My mouth went dry.
He tilted his hooded head, and the torchlight caught on the edge of that bandaged eye. He stepped closer. The blade glinted.
"I don't even understand why the Great One would choose someone like you," he murmured, "try not to disappoint us"
The dagger flashed down. I twisted, lunging forward in panic, my hands grasping for anything. My fingers tore at his hood, ripping cloth aside. The bandages shifted, loosened—sliding from his face.
For a heartbeat, I stared.
His left eye was not an eye at all. It was a gaping hollow, a void within flesh, rimmed in ragged scars. But deeper still… deeper… there was movement. Something writhed inside, as though it was a pit of serpents.
My vision swam. For a single, endless instant, I thought I saw it—scales, fangs, slitted eyes—something pressed against the other side, straining to come through.
I screamed.
The man's hand snapped up, yanking the bandage back over the wound, tying it tight in one swift motion. His face was once more cloaked in shadow.
I collapsed against the wall, panting, chest burning, throat raw. My eyes darted to the dagger still in his hand.
He raised it, calm, inevitable.
And this time, when the blade came down, there was no avoiding it.
Cold steel kissed my throat.
And the world went dark.