Consciousness returned like a slow, oily tide.First, the pain—a dull, all-consuming ache in every muscle, with sharp stabs marking broken ribs and poorly healed wounds.Then, the cold—the cold of bare stone against his skin.And finally, the darkness—absolute, impenetrable darkness, not merely the absence of light but a physical, suffocating presence.
Hermes was in a solitary cell, a hole somewhere beneath the villa. There were no windows, no cracks. Time lost all meaning. Days and nights bled into an endless cycle of agony and half-consciousness. The torture was not only physical—it was deprivation. Sometimes a small tin cup of water would be pushed through a slot at the base of the door. Other times, a piece of moldy bread. The intervals were irregular, designed to break his sense of reality, to erase the very concept of "tomorrow."
One of the guards, chosen to embody his torment, would spend hours in the room beating, burning, and soaking him.His name was Saulo.
At first, Hermes almost felt a grudging respect for his torturer, thinking him less vile than the other members of the household.
Whenever Saulo came, he did his work, and when it was done, he left without a word.
It seemed like he was simply following orders. But after several sessions, Hermes began to suspect the man enjoyed his duties more than he should.
When the beatings ended, silence would reign in that little chamber, and Hermes would be left alone with the sound of his own guilt.
In that darkness, his mind became his worst enemy. He relived the punch, the sickening sound, the shocked face of the Lady. He relived Geryon's smile, the lashes, the fall from Olympus.But above all, he clung to the image of Theseus and Agouri.Had his desperate act saved them? Had the Lady's order been stopped? Or had his fury only sealed their fate more quickly? The uncertainty was a worm gnawing at his sanity.
He could not tell if weeks or months had passed when, one day, the door opened again and the torturer entered—this time not with the whip.
The light was a violent assault on Hermes, a white blade that blinded him and forced him to curl up, groaning. A silhouette framed itself against the glare. It was Phylo.
"Stand," the administrator's voice was the same as ever—cold and efficient.
Hermes tried, but his legs gave way. He was emaciated, a skeletal figure covered in filth and scars. His long, tangled white hair hung over a face that was little more than skin stretched over bone.
Two guards seized him by the arms, dragging him from darkness into daylight. He squeezed his eyes shut, trembling.
"The olive harvest is near, and we are short of hands for the press," Phylo explained, without a trace of emotion. "Lady Kratos, in her infinite generosity, has decided your time of penance is over. Remember your place, and perhaps you will continue to be of use."
It was not forgiveness. It was pragmatism. He was not a person—he was a tool being taken out of storage.
They took him to the slaves' baths, and this time, the water was less a humiliation and more a painful shock to his raw skin. They dressed him in the coarsest rags and assigned him the hardest labor—hauling heavy baskets of olives from the groves to the press, a repetitive, brutal job under the scorching sun.
The other slaves avoided him, their gazes a mix of fear and resentment. He was the one who had dared strike at a master. A contagious disease no one wanted to catch. But Hermes did not care. His eyes searched the estate, looking for one face.
He found it at the end of the second day. Agouri was coming out of the stables, carrying a bucket. He was no longer the Young Lord's personal attendant; his tunic was the same as that of a common servant. But the most drastic change was in his face. The vibrant energy, the mischievous smile, the light in his eyes… all gone. In their place was a vacant, mechanical look.
"Agouri!" Hermes called, his voice hoarse.
The boy stopped but did not fully turn. His body stiffened.
"What happened?" Hermes asked, stepping closer. "Theseus… is he all right? Are you all right?"
Agouri finally looked at him, and his eyes held neither friendship nor anger—only a hollow, bone-deep weariness.
"Theseus is dead," he said, the words falling like stones.
Hermes felt a tightness in his chest. "How?"
"He got worse after… they took you." Agouri's voice was monotone, stripped of life. "The Lady was furious. The Young Lord said he could no longer be seen helping us. The healer was no longer allowed to use the necessary herbs. The special food stopped coming. Theseus… he lost hope. And then he… faded, wasting away day by day."
The weight of those words crushed Hermes. He had been the catalyst for the tragedy.
"We had a chance!" Agouri's voice finally cracked, a spark of pain and accusation flaring in his emptiness. "He was going to help us! The Young Lord was going to heal him! But you and your damn rage… you ruined everything! You killed him, Hermes."
Agouri turned and walked away, leaving Hermes standing in the middle of the courtyard, the weight of guilt settling over him like a leaden shroud. He believed it. Every word. His selfishness had stolen Theseus's only chance.
He remembered the foolish promise he had made. He saw the boy's face in his mind. He thought of the waste of such a death. He thought of mortal fragility—something he, a god of thousands of years, had never experienced so closely.
He felt like a plague. Wherever he went, disaster followed like a shadow.
He had killed Apollo. And now, because of him, Theseus was dead. A chill ran through him at the thought of the other two left behind in that dust-choked hell. What had happened to Seneca and Agatha? Had they survived? Or had his brief presence in their lives also been, for them, a death sentence? The uncertainty was yet another weight upon his already crushed soul—another echo of his failure.
No tears came to his face, but the emptiness rooted itself in his heart.
Guilt.
The following weeks were a blur of meaningless labor. Hermes became an automaton. He carried baskets, ate, slept. The fury was gone, replaced by a desert of remorse and despair. His spirit—the last remnant of the god he had been—was finally fading.
During this time, he discovered something that made him smile faintly. His torturer was mute. The Lady had cut out his tongue years earlier, when he had first arrived as a servant—just like Hermes. He never learned exactly why, but it seemed to have something to do with Lord Kratos.
The realization brought a hopeless smile to Hermes's face.
The other servants still looked at him and Agouri the same way they always had—with contempt—but now, there was something more: satisfaction. They wore smiles that confirmed their belief that the three of them had gotten what they deserved.
Hermes no longer cared about anything. He worked and survived mechanically. His weight was returning to normal. They needed him strong for certain tasks, but he was always kept under watch, due to his "violent" behavior.
One night, as he was returning to the slave dormitory, his path took him past the villa's west wing, where the family's quarters were. He kept his head down, as always. But a sound made him stop.
It came from the Young Lord's chambers.
It wasn't loud. It was crying. A sharp, muffled sob, quickly stifled—as if someone had clamped a hand over the mouth of the one who wept.
Hermes froze. The sound was strange, out of place in the story he had accepted.
Then, he heard the Young Lord's voice, muted by the wooden door. The tone was low, urgent.
"Come on, don't cry…"
It was a whisper. Hermes couldn't tell if it carried gentle comfort or restrained impatience. Before he could hear more, the door opened slightly and a servant hurried out, his face pale and frightened. He didn't notice Hermes in the shadows and vanished down the corridor.
In his haste, something small and white slipped from the fold of his tunic, landing silently on the dark marble.
Hermes waited until the servant's footsteps had faded completely. Curiosity—a force he thought long dead within him—compelled him to leave the shadows. He crouched and picked up the object. It was a piece of fine linen, the kind nobles used to wipe their hands during meals. But this one was stained with something dark red.
He brought it to his nose. The scent was faint—a mix of lavender's floral perfume and something metallic. It could have been spilled wine. Or it could have been blood.
Hermes stood there in the darkness, the cloth in hand. The muffled crying. The Young Lord's ambiguous voice. The stained cloth. Agouri's story about Theseus's death… nothing fit. The version of events that had crushed him with guilt now seemed incomplete, fragile. A small seed of doubt had been planted in the desert of his soul—a poisonous, terrible doubt that made him question everything.
What had really happened while he was locked away in the dark?The investigation of a darker truth had become his new and only purpose.