PREVIOUSLY-
Then his gaze sharpened.
He scanned the room—splintered pews, steam, blood, the scent of lead and salt hanging thick in the air.
"…Where's Medusa?"
Lira blinked. Her head turned. So did Nyx's.
The far end of the temple was empty.
Medusa—
Gone.
Not even a whisper of her presence remained.
--x—
The far end of the temple — where the offering brazier had burned — now lay open to the elements. Curtains flapped against broken columns. The stone floor was cracked, slick with seawater and dark streaks that weren't oil.
No footprints. No whisper of cloth. No serpents.
Only silence.
"No…" Lira murmured. "No, no, she—"
And then—
CREAK.
A shadow slipped through the broken doorway.
Poseidon emerged, wet footprints sizzling on the marble, sea brine dripping from his robes.
His lips stretched into a grotesque smile—too wide, too calm. That same smug curl sat on his face like a crown of mockery.
He was untouched. Unbothered.
And he looked directly at Sigmund.
"You just don't know when to die, do you?"
His voice rolled like deep water under a storm—mocking, but not loud. Confident. Inevitable.
Sigmund gritted his teeth and stood tall despite the pain.
"Still standing,"
Poseidon said, chuckling softly.
"How charming."
He tilted his head, cracking his neck.
"What?"
From the shattered oculus above, a lance of white light struck the centre of the temple — not warm, not divine. Cold, commanded. Judgment incarnate.
The goddess had come.
Athena descended like a blade from the sky, her form resolving mid-air — helmed and armoured, eyes carved from moonlight, spear in hand.
Her cloak trailed feathers and fire, and her expression was not shocked.
It was furious.
"You have defiled my sanctum, brother."
Poseidon scoffed, shaking water from his hands.
"Your sanctum has lovely views. You should leave the doors open more often."
"This was not yours to take."
"She is mortal,"
He said, voice low, dangerous.
"And so is her virtue."
Athena's hand curled around her spear.
Then — from the darkness — a shape moved.
She stepped forward.
Medusa.
Her robes were torn. Her hair clung to her shoulders in wet tangles. She walked slowly, eyes lowered, blood on her legs, trembling. The sacred necklace of Athena, once pristine, now lay in halves around her neck.
Lira gasped.
Sigmund stepped forward, but Nyx growled — not at Poseidon, not at Athena — but at the wind now turning sharp and heavy.
"Medusa,"
Athena said, voice like chiselled granite,
"Do you deny it?"
Medusa looked up.
Her lip bled. Her gaze did not.
"I… I was faithful."
Athena's eyes narrowed. Her grip did not loosen.
"Yet you allowed a god into my house. You brought shame into this place of silence and service."
"He forced me," Medusa whispered.
"He came unbidden—"
"You did not stop him."
"I—I couldn't!"
Her voice cracked — and with it, so did something deeper. The hope, the trust, the illusion that justice would arrive if she simply spoke the truth.
But Athena did not flinch. Her face remained carved of iron and moonstone.
"Then you are no longer mine."
A light began to rise behind the goddess — not bright, but harsh. Lashing. Serpentine. Divine judgment.
Lira stepped forward.
"Wait—she didn't do anything wrong! You know that! He—"
Athena did not look at her.
Sigmund's wires lashed out—only for his arms to freeze mid-air, gripped by unseen force. His mouth opened, but no sound came.
"You dare intervene in divine law?" Athena asked.
"You speak of right and wrong, as if mortals understood purity?"
"She was loyal," Lira choked.
"You abandoned her!"
A pause. Athena's gaze flicked to Medusa.
"Then let her wear her loyalty forever."
And with a voice that echoed through bone, the goddess spoke a single word:
"See."
Medusa screamed.
Not a cry of pain — a cry of transformation. Her legs buckled, her hair writhed, and from her scalp burst forth the first serpent — glistening, furious, alive.
Her eyes burned gold.
Her skin split like drying clay.
Her voice died in her throat.
Lira screamed. Sigmund ripped through the divine binding too late.
And when the glow faded—
Where Medusa stood now stood a figure coiled in shadow, beauty warped into curse, her gaze a death sentence.
Nyx whimpered and lowered his head.
Athena turned.
"Let no man look upon her without paying the price."
And then she vanished — in wind, in light, in law.
"Hahaha!"
Laughter echoed, cruel and thunderous, rolling through the ruined temple like a breaking tide.
It was Poseidon.
"See?" he roared, eyes wild.
"See what your precious goddess amounts to? A statue. A silence. A myth!"
The mirth in his voice twisted into mockery, then into something venomous. His shoulders shook with laughter that no longer sounded sane.
"HAH—AHAHA—HAHAA!"
SWISH!
A blade of mercury screamed through the air.
CLANG!
It was intercepted mid-flight — a spear of glittering ice deflected the strike, sending shards skating across the flooded stone.
Poseidon's head turned slowly toward the source.
"How can you call yourself a god?"
Lira's voice rang out, trembling with fury. Her arms outstretched, mercury curling around her like stormy ribbons.
"Do you even deserve that title? Or have you just stolen it like everything else?"
Poseidon's smile faltered. His eyes dimmed with slow, smouldering rage.
"I've had enough of you mortals and your self-righteous barking."
The trident in his hand began to glow — blue lightning crackling down the shaft.
"Let me introduce something older than your screams."
TAP.
He struck the ground with the trident.
SPLASH!
The temple floor erupted — water blasted upward like a volcanic geyser, crashing into the ceiling. The mist swallowed everything.
"Lira! Save Medusa!"
Sigmund's voice cut through the chaos. He lunged toward a toppled pew, grabbing hold for balance.
CLACK!
Lira didn't hesitate. Her mercury pulsed—then solidified around Medusa in a smooth, cocoon-like shell of lead. Protective. Unyielding.
"Okay!"
She cried, vanishing into the mist.
The water churned violently. From within, a shape stirred — massive, multi-limbed, seething with ancient hunger.
Tentacles breached the water's surface.
A kraken.
Its silhouette loomed through the fog — a mountain of rage, a beast older than the temple itself. Its eyes glowed like submerged lanterns.
"Attack!"
Sigmund hurled a shattered pew like a javelin. The broken wood splintered against the creature's face.
"HEY!"
A different voice answered — loud, annoyed, and utterly unbothered.
"Who the hell's interrupting my lunch!?"
The mist curled away just enough to reveal a figure perched atop the kraken's skull.
Sigmund's eyes widened.
"…Theo?"
A pause.
"Sig?"
Lira blinked.
The fog thinned — and the surreal scene came into view.
A boy — crimson hair tousled, crimson eyes glowing — sat casually atop the beast like it was a chair. One leg dangling, the other resting on the kraken's horned ridge.
In one hand: a skewer of roasted tentacle, still steaming.
Beside him, perched like a grotesque kitchen assistant, an orange vulture gnawed thoughtfully on what remained of the kraken's skull — bone and brain glistening under its beak.
Theo looked down, blinking.
"Oh. You guys look awful."
SOMEWHERE ELSE-
A marble platform drifted across an infinite black sky — a sliver of sanctity in the heart of nothingness. There was no up or down, only starlight that didn't twinkle and a silence too perfect to be natural.
Skaleg stood upon that platform — bone-white and still — his cloak fluttering despite the absence of wind.
Before him loomed, a throne carved from pale stone and threaded with celestial veins of gold. It faced away from him. Only a glimpse of white hair spilled over the high backrest.
"My lord."
Skaleg bowed, voice soft as dust.
There was a pause — a long one.
Then, a voice answered. Calm. Deep. Disarmingly human.
"What happened?"
Skaleg raised his head. His hollow eyes flickered.
"My lord… even though you entrusted me with the great task of mentoring—"
His skeletal fists clenched at his sides, the joints creaking faintly.
"I must confess. I am not fit for it."
The figure on the throne did not turn. His silence was the kind that invited truth, not judgment.
"Why?"
The word fell like a stone into still water.
Skaleg straightened his posture, forcing himself to speak plainly — not like a general, not like a scholar — but like a man seeking to be understood.
"Because I have never known how to give."
His voice trembled.
"I have pursued knowledge, yes — but always for myself. To deepen my own power. To answer my own questions. Never to guide. Never to pass anything down."
A soft scraping sound echoed as the figure rose from the throne. He was still turned away, his white cloak sweeping behind him like starlight folded into fabric.
"Skaleg," he said quietly.
"Of all my generals, you are the wisest."
"But—!"
Skaleg stepped forward, the protest instinctive.
"Wisdom,"
The figure continued, unshaken,
"Is not measured by how much you know… but by how much you are willing to share."
Skaleg faltered.
"You fear that your flaws disqualify you."
The man turned now, finally, and though his face was obscured in shadow, his voice carried warmth.
"But perfection was never a requirement."
A pause.
"Mistakes are allowed, Skaleg."
"That's the price of trying."
And in the depthless space around them, something softened — not the light, not the stars, but Skaleg himself.
He lowered his head.
"My lord,"
"Please let me fight you. Once."
The figure mused,
"Hahaha!"
His white coat morphed into deep blue robes. White hair spilled like waves from the hood. The figure turned, face hidden behind the hood.
He wore a long, high-collared robe of deep cobalt and midnight blue, its layered silk shifting with each movement like moonlight on water.
Silver runes had been embroidered along the cuffs and hem, glowing faintly with dormant mana.
A mithril-linked belt hovered just above his waist, and a sleeveless back-panel of star-cloth trailed behind him, speckled with threads that shimmered like distant constellations.
His dark storm-leather boots muffled every step, and enchanted rings gleamed beneath the flared sleeves.
"Come at me."
The figure smirked.
Then-
It began in the place where no stars turned.
Above a floor of obsidian glass, where memories of dying suns flickered in fractured light, two figures stood—one robed in flowing cobalt, the other a husk wrapped in bone and silence.
Skaleg did not breathe. The sockets beneath his crown of rusted thorns were empty, but death itself seemed to peer out from within.
His presence withered space. No wind stirred. No light dared ripple.
Opposite him, the figure raised his chin.
Blue light bled from the veins of his robe. The silver runes along his sleeves flared as if remembering war.
He took a single step forward—and the echo of it rang like thunder across the dead void. His violet focus pulsed once at his throat. Once was enough.
Skaleg extended a single hand. From his palm rose a ring of blackened vertebrae, spinning fast. Words older than language hissed between his skeletal fingers.
Then—
Clash.
The sky tore. A scythe-shaped bolt of death-magic screamed toward the figure, trailing glyphs that moaned as they burned through the air.
The silhouette didn't flinch. He raised two fingers, and the bolt froze mid-flight. A ripple of time-magic bent space around it. Then he whispered.
"Return."
The bolt inverted. It streaked back at Skaleg with doubled force.
The necromancer god didn't move.
A thousand arms burst from beneath his robes—sinewed, rotted, spectral—intercepting the bolt in a fan of withered palms.
It exploded into dust, not light. Skaleg walked forward, leaving ghost-ash in his wake.
The man raised his hand to the sky.
The stars obeyed.
Cosmic light lanced downward—sapphire spears that struck the void, warping gravity into curved mirrors. Lightning followed, but not of storm or sky—Divine Lightning, forged from judgment and flame.
Skaleg raised his staff—a crooked thing made from a titan's spine—and turned the bolts aside. They struck the ground and bled souls instead of sparks.
Wailing spirits clawed at the man's legs, dragging him toward the abyss.
The figure lifted his boot. It crackled with Runefrost, and he stomped.
A shockwave of white-cold erupted. The souls froze mid-scream, shattered into drifting motes.
The shockwave reached Skaleg—who split in two like smoke—and reformed instantly behind the boy.
"Master, don't hold back,"
He rasped, voice dry as bone-dust.
The man turned just as the skeletal god's fingers plunged forward.
Too slow.
A sphere of prismatic shields nested around him, each layer shaped by a different magic—earth, wind, fire, blood, shadow, sun.
Skaleg's hands punched through five before the sixth reflected his own death-magic.
It burned him. Not his bones, but the core of his necromantic divinity.
The elder lich staggered back.
The figure pressed forward.
His fingers curled. The space between them warped—then erupted with a blazing phoenix of pure mana, shrieking as it dove at the god.
Skaleg clapped. Thunder didn't follow—a grave bell did.
The phoenix turned to bone mid-flight, then shattered.
The man grimaced. He snapped his hand sideways, and the floor inverted—gravity reversed.
Skaleg floated upward with an amused snarl, bones cracking in all the wrong directions. He extended his arms and summoned a legion of forgotten kings; their skeletal forms still clad in rusted crowns and grave-dusted robes.
They fell like meteors toward him.
The young man spun, robes flaring. Twelve glyphs lit the air in a circle around him, forming a rotating ring of layered magics. Fire to wind. Wind to water. Water to time. Each blink wove a new spell.
A tidal wall of molten glass rose from the void and caught the kings mid-descent. They screamed in a dozen languages before being consumed.
"You're not the only one who commands death,"
The man muttered.
He drew in breath—and the air became pure mana, glowing with threads of raw spell-matter. He held it. Held it until his eyes turned white and violet fire poured from his mouth.
When he exhaled, a beam of condensed omnimagic—pure will forged through a dozen elements—lanced toward Skaleg.
The lich-God dove, cloak unravelling into a swarm of soul-wasps that scattered and reformed him behind the man.
Too close now.
The figure whirled, eyes wide—but Skaleg was already inside his guard.
The god's hand struck his chest. Not physically—spiritually.
The figure choked as his heart skipped.
Then again.
Then stopped.
His aura flickered.
Skaleg leaned close, hissing like a tomb's breath,
"It's over, master."
For one heartbeat, the figure flinched.
Then—a burst of golden light cracked the void.
He rose.
Eyes blazing, blood trickling from his lip, the man stood again, his hands wreathed in a storm of converged forces—divine, infernal, celestial, abyssal.
He whispered the name of the first flame, and a sword of starfire ignited in his hand.
Skaleg saw it and halted.
"…Impossible."
The figure raised the blade.
"No necromancers today."
He struck.
And the space split.