[Location: Temple of Ares, Mount Olympus]
"Grayfia's seal was not meant to suppress power," Apollo said. "It was meant to preserve."
Silence followed Apollo's words.
Not the hollow quiet that came after rage burned itself out—but the heavy, coiled silence of a battlefield just before the signal horn was raised.
Ares did not speak.
He stood motionless amid fractured marble and screaming runes, his spear planted into the floor, crimson aura no longer exploding outward—but compressing. Folding inward. The wild fury that had torn at Olympus moments ago was gone.
In its place was something far worse.
Control.
"Preserve…" Ares repeated slowly.
The word tasted foul on his tongue.
Preserve implied value. Intention. Forethought.
It implied that the thing he had dismissed as a hollow carcass—a sealed, broken demon prince—had never been discarded at all.
