Kephalaio Èna
Tzoumerka Mountains – Lykoudis House
Aethos
Someone called out to me from the dark.
The voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere, bouncing around the void like it couldn't decide where it belonged. I had no idea how I'd gotten here. No memory of falling asleep or walking into this place. Just this gut feeling—heavy and cold—that something really bad was about to happen.
Like I'd been through this before. Multiple times.
And I was right.
A pinpoint of light flickered above my head. It grew slowly, swelling until I could make out its full shape—a massive sphere, planet-sized, hanging in the black sky like a diseased moon. Pale yellow, wrinkled skin stretched across its surface. For half a second, I thought maybe I could use it as a landmark. Find my way home.
Then it moved.
The sphere quivered, rotating with agonizing slowness to reveal its other side. My blood turned to ice.
Carved into the surface was a mouth. Enormous. Barbed. Grinning with teeth that shouldn't exist and lips that curled with malicious joy. The thing was delighted to see me.
I didn't think. My legs just moved, pumping hard against ground I couldn't see. But running didn't matter. The earth vanished beneath my feet and suddenly I was falling—no, not falling. Rising. Pulled toward that gaping maw like gravity had reversed itself just to feed me to this thing.
It laughed. A sound that vibrated through my bones.
"It's a dream. Wake up."
My sister's voice cut through the terror. Aeir. Sharp and clear.
"Please. Wake up."
It's a dream.
Right. Just a dream.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the mouth loomed closer, filling my entire field of vision. I chanted it like a prayer: "It's a dream. It's a dream... it's a dream."
The jaws snapped shut around me. Darkness swallowed everything.
Then—I woke up.
The orange glow of the wall lamp burned into my retinas. Its dull warmth was uncomfortable but real, and that was enough to ground me. Mother—Eurydice—stood at my bedside with Aeir right behind her. Both wore the same expression: worried, afraid, resigned.
Mother pressed her palm against my forehead, checking for fever.
"Do you feel unwell?"
I took stock of my body. Nothing hurt exactly, but something felt off. "A little."
"Your stomach? Your head?"
How was I supposed to explain this feeling? Like something was crawling under my skin, warning me.
"Neither," I said quietly. "I just... feel like something bad is coming."
Their eyes met over my head. That look said everything: Not again.
Most families would laugh this off. Tell their kid to stop being dramatic, that nightmares aren't real. But mine couldn't afford that luxury. Because for whatever reason, my dreams had a nasty habit of coming true.
The first time it happened, I was ten. I told my parents a falling star would destroy the city that night. They could've ignored me. Should've, probably. But Father believed me. At sunset, he loaded us onto a boat and sailed us away from the harbor.
At midnight, fire streaked across the sky. A meteor hit dead center of the city. The flames consumed everything—buildings, people, screams. We watched from the water as ash choked the heavens and the city we'd called home became a graveyard.
After that, we moved to the mountains. Away from cities, away from crowds, away from the chaos of civilization. We hunted game, traded with temples and traveling merchants for supplies, and kept to ourselves. Father was away doing one of those supply runs right now.
Aeir set a plate down on the small table by my bed—roasted fish and wheat bread. My stomach growled. I'd been checking traps all day and completely missed dinner.
"When you're done eating," Aeir said flatly, "tell us what you saw."
Mother frowned at her phrasing. She always insisted on calling them dreams, never visions or prophecies. Like using the wrong word might make them more real. I never understood the distinction, but I didn't argue.
The food was good. Better than good—the fish was perfectly seasoned, spicy and sweet, and the bread was fresh enough to still be warm. It was almost obscene, eating this well while people in the cities starved. Maybe Father was right about those places being full of lazy people who'd forgotten how to survive.
Mother's voice pulled me from my thoughts. Soft but firm, the way she always spoke when she wanted us to really listen.
"Sleep brings rest and solace—and sometimes, the strange beauty of dreams. Some are good, some bad, some from worlds far from ours. We're fortunate when the bad ones never come to pass." She paused, her eyes holding mine. "But if they do... we must face them with courage."
I nodded, hoping she was right. Hoping this time the dream would stay just a dream.
Aeir suddenly turned toward the door, her gaze sharpening. "Father will arrive in an hour."
I didn't question it. Aeir's gifts had always been different from mine—harder to define, stronger, more mysterious. When she said something would happen, it did. Every time.
I described the dream to them. The wrinkled yellow moon, the barbed mouth, the sensation of falling upward into those teeth. When I finished, silence filled the room like a heavy blanket.
Mother kissed my forehead and left to prepare for Father's return. Aeir stayed.
We sat together in the quiet. She moved behind me without a word, her fingers working through my braid until my hair fell loose. Then she started braiding it again—slow, methodical, soothing.
"Will you go tonight?" she whispered.
"Go where?"
"The pond. Will we go?"
"Yes... when they're asleep."
Her fingers moved through my hair with practiced ease, and I felt myself relaxing despite everything. My eyelids grew heavy. Just before sleep took me, I caught a glimpse of her eyes in the lamplight—grey, flecked with gold.
Beautiful and strange.
I woke to darkness.
The house was silent. Too silent. The lamps were all out, and the air felt wrong—charged with something I couldn't name.
Then I heard voices from outside.
"Child of Oranus. It is time for you to leave your home and begin your journey to godhood. Your father awaits your presence above the heavens."
My heart hammered in my chest. I crept toward the door, peering through the wooden frame into the yard.
Mother and Father knelt in the dirt before... something.
It wasn't human.
The figure towered over them, tall enough that its head nearly brushed the roof of our house. Its body was made of translucent crystal—I could see inside it. A pulsing heart, a glowing brain, veins like rivers of light flowing through its chest. It wore only a girdle of white feathers around its waist and a small crown that moved as if caught in wind that didn't exist. Its legs were shaped like a bull's—powerful, inhuman—but the rest of its body was elegant, almost feminine.
Terrible and beautiful in equal measure.
"Theron."
Aeir's voice made me jump. She stood beside me, but she hadn't been there a second ago. How did she always know where I was?
A sudden pressure washed over me, like static electricity crawling across my skin. Something vast and powerful was looking at me. Through me.
The being's golden eyes found mine. I couldn't hide anymore.
I stepped out into the yard, heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst. My parents looked stricken, confused, like they couldn't understand how I'd woken up.
But Aeir—Aeir had changed.
The left side of her body was barely human anymore. Half her hair glowed with brilliant white light, floating in the air like it was underwater. The skin on that side shimmered with tiny crystals embedded in her flesh. And beneath her left eye, another eye had opened—golden and burning.
The transformation was horrifying. Mesmerizing. I wanted to reach out and touch her, claim her somehow. Part of me knew that was wrong, but the feeling was so intense it hurt.
And from the way she looked at me, I think she felt it too.
The being smiled—a terrible, beautiful expression.
"This is a messenger from the gods," Aeir said calmly, like this was normal. Like she hadn't just transformed into something else. "It says I must follow it to meet my true father."
Mother's face went pale. Father looked like he'd been punched in the gut.
Aeir was a god-child.
But if we were twins... what did that make me?
The messenger's voice rang out across the yard, serene and absolute, like it was reading from a script written before time began:
"When your mother first conceived, the king came to her. The memory was taken, but what remained was two children growing side by side. Twins, yes. But of different natures." It gestured to Aeir, then to me. "One mortal... the other eternal."
I clenched my fists, trembling with something I couldn't name—rage, confusion, fear, all of it tangled together.
"This is messed up."