From the ether, I watched the scene unfold in the dim wooden hut on Eroden. Two fallen beings, one cast into mortality, one stripped of divinity, stood facing each other beneath a leaking roof and a weak candle flame.
Scourge studied Ellas carefully.
He had seen hatred before. He had created hatred before. But what radiated from Ellas this trembling, burning, suffocating fury was different.Older.Rarer.Almost… divine.
He tilted his head, molten light flickering behind his eyes.
"Tell me," Scourge murmured, voice rough and sharp, "why does a mortal body tremble with hatred worthy of gods?"
Ellas laughed bitterly a sound that cracked like thin glass.
Then he tried to stand straighter.
His spine arched unnaturally. His chest expanded painfully. For a moment, light flickered under his skin faint, golden, broken.
Like a memory of his former form.
His limbs stretched, shaking violently as he attempted to mimic what he once had been pure radiance, golden fire, the will of an ether-being. But the mortal flesh refused him. His bones cracked. His breath faltered. He fell to his knees, gasping.
Scourge watched with fascination not pity.
Ellas raised his head, sweat dripping, voice trembling with rage.
"I was a god," he whispered. "A being of light. A power above creation."
He slammed his fist into the floor, splintering it.
"I was meant to rule. To command. To reshape the universe in my brilliance."
A bitter smile twisted his lips.
"And then He stripped me. Caged me. Cast me into flesh."
Scourge's wings twitched.
He hadn't heard the First's name spoken, but he felt its weight in Ellas's voice the memory of punishment, of humiliation, of divinity ripped apart.
Ellas continued, breath sharp as a blade.
"The universe was to be mine… but He took it. Left me to crawl, to starve, to rot in this doomed shell."
He spat the words like venom.
"And for that, I will burn every star He cherishes."
Scourge's shadow flared like a living flame.
He stepped closer, boots scorching the wooden floor, and crouched before Ellas so their eyes met fallen angel and fallen god.
"You and I share a wound," Scourge said quietly. "Both cast down. Both exiled. Both made less than what we were promised."
Ellas stared back, hatred glowing faintly in his mortal gaze.
"And I," Scourge said, "do not kneel to fate."
He extended a hand dark, burning, trembling with a power that was no longer divine but no less dangerous.
"Join me."
Ellas blinked, confused. "Join… you?"
Scourge nodded slowly.
"Together, we are stronger than the gods above, stronger than the mortals below, stronger than the Elder who cast me out. Stronger than the First who cursed you."
The ember-light in Ellas's chest pulsed.
"What would this alliance be?" he asked.
Scourge's smile widened into something both grim and glorious.
"The Pact of the Fallen."
Ellas stared at his hand dark, clawed, wrapped in ember and shadow.
If he took it, two broken beings would become something new.
Something dangerous.
Something creation was not built to withstand.
Ellas lifted his hand slowly.
Their palms touched.
The hut shook. The ground split. Flames and light erupted around them gold and black intertwined, forming a sigil in the air above their heads.
A brand upon reality itself.
The Pact of the Fallen was forged.
The air stilled. The flames dimmed. The sigil burned itself into existence.
Ellas rose with Scourge's help, breathing heavily.
"Now," Scourge said, "come with me. Return to the Below. There we rebuild your strength. There we begin our ascent."
He raised his hand to tear open a path back to the Below but the fabric of the world ruptured first.
Light exploded outside the hut.
The walls trembled.
The ground pulsed.
And suddenly
Gods stood at the threshold.
Four of them.
Tall. Radiant. Wreathed in the colours of Eroden's sky.
The Sky-Father, with a cloak of storm.The Mother of Stone, her skin carved from the planet's mountains.The River-Soul, shimmering with flowing blue.And the Wild Huntress, her eyes glowing with feral fire.
Their weapons glowed.
Their eyes burned with divine judgment.
"The mortal Ellas," the Sky-Father thundered, "harbours an evil that stains our land."
"And the shadow beside him," whispered the River-Soul, "is not of this world."
"Stand down," growled the Huntress, bow drawn. "Or fall."
The Mother of Stone slammed her staff, shaking the hut. "We protect our planet."
Scourge stepped forward, wings unfurling in raw defiance.
Ellas stood beside him.
The Pact of the Fallen burned above them.
And the first true clash between gods and the fallen was about to begin.