Recommended listening: "Cosmic Love" by Florence + The Machine
"Apollo's gift is not prophecy. It is the burden of seeing what cannot be changed."
— Inscription above the Oracle's Chamber, Temple of Apollo, Kyrios
The Temple of Apollo stood on the second tier of Kyrios, between the merchant quarter's sprawling chaos and the pristine marble district where priests grew fat on other people's faith. It was old—older than House Keraunos, older than the Obsidian Throne, older perhaps than the city itself. The stone was golden limestone worn smooth by centuries of suppliants' hands, the columns thick as ancient trees, carved with scenes of Apollo's glory: the slaying of Python, the flaying of Marsyas, the transformation of Daphne into laurel to escape his desire.
The gods' love was always violent. The gods' gifts were always curses.
Thera approached as the sun reached its zenith, when Apollo's power was strongest and the temple courtyard blazed with heat that made the air shimmer like water. She'd spent the morning hours hiding in the ruins of an old granary, washing the oracle's blood from her hands in a rainwater cistern, watching the patrols of city guards search the lower districts with increasing desperation. They were looking for a slave girl in red silk. They weren't looking for the figure who emerged from the shadows wearing a stolen freedman's tunic, her short hair covered by a headscarf, her distinctive features hidden behind the anonymity of poverty.
The city had taught her this: people saw what they expected to see. A slave was invisible until she caused trouble. A freedman was invisible always.
The temple courtyard was crowded despite the heat—or perhaps because of it. Suffering drove people to prayer more reliably than joy ever did. Thera moved through the crush of bodies, past the great bronze brazier where offerings burned with sweet-smelling smoke, past the colonnade where priests in saffron robes sold blessings and prophecies to anyone with coin enough to purchase divine attention. She'd stolen twelve drachma from a drunk in an alley that morning, his throat slit quick and quiet, his body left to be discovered by the rats. It was enough to buy her what she needed.
It had to be enough.
The dying oracle's words had carved themselves into Thera's mind with the permanence of scar tissue: Find Pyratheon. Find the weapon. Find your destiny. But Thera knew nothing of Pyratheon beyond the name—a fallen castle in the mountains of Sunreach, the ancestral seat of House Heliaris, destroyed twenty years ago in the same purge that had slaughtered her family. She needed information. She needed a map. She needed someone who could tell her what the dying woman had meant about Apollo sending her, about prophecy and sun-blessed bloodlines and thrones of storms.
She needed an oracle who was still breathing.
The entrance to the Oracle's Chamber was marked by two bronze doors twenty feet high, embossed with images of the sun in all its aspects: dawn and noon and dusk, summer and winter, the life-giver and the destroyer. A priestess stood guard—young, her face painted white with lead powder and cinnabar, her eyes lined with kohl to mimic Apollo's sun-rays. She looked at Thera with the particular disdain religious functionaries reserved for the obviously poor.
"The Oracle does not see common petitioners without appointment," the priestess said, her voice carrying the musical quality of someone trained to make even cruelty sound divine. "Return in three days with an offering of proper value, and perhaps—"
Thera dropped the twelve drachma on the marble step at the priestess's feet. The coins rang like bells, silver singing against stone.
"I need to see her now," Thera said quietly. "Tell her… tell her it's about the sun's blood."
The priestess's painted face went still. For a moment, Thera thought she'd miscalculated, that the phrase would mean nothing, that she'd just wasted her only currency on a gamble born of desperation. But then the priestess bent, scooped up the coins with hands that trembled slightly, and gestured toward the bronze doors.
"Wait here," she commanded, and disappeared into the temple's interior.
Thera waited, counting her heartbeats, watching the crowd flow around her like water around stone. A merchant argued with a priest over the price of a blessing for his ships. A mother wept at the foot of Apollo's statue, clutching a child too still to be sleeping. An old man with the vacant eyes of someone who'd seen too much stared at nothing, his lips moving in silent prayer or madness.
The city was full of suffering. The gods were full of indifference.
The priestess returned after what felt like an eternity but was probably only minutes. Her expression was unreadable behind its mask of paint and piety.
"The Oracle will see you," she said. "But I warn you—Apollo's gifts are not given lightly. What you learn in that chamber may break you."
"I'm already broken," Thera replied. "I'm just trying to find the pieces."
The priestess's lips twitched—something that might have been sympathy or might have been contempt—and she pulled open one of the bronze doors. "Then may Apollo have mercy on your soul. You'll need it."
The Oracle's Chamber was located deep in the temple's heart, accessed by a spiral staircase that descended into earth and darkness. Thera followed the priestess down, down, down, the air growing thick with incense and something else—something organic and cloying that made her think of funeral pyres and rotting flowers. Oil lamps lined the walls at intervals, their flames dancing in drafts from unseen passages, casting shadows that moved with disturbing independence.
The staircase ended in a circular chamber carved from living rock. The walls were covered in inscriptions—prophecies, Thera realized, thousands of them, carved in alphabets both familiar and strange, some fresh-cut, others worn to near illegibility by time. The ceiling disappeared into darkness overhead, and in the center of the room sat a natural fissure in the stone floor, perhaps three feet wide, from which rose vapors that shimmered in the lamplight like heat-haze or spirits.
The Pythian gases. Thera had heard of them—volcanic exhalations that induced visions, that opened the mind to Apollo's voice. The priests said it was divine inspiration. Physicians said it was poison that damaged the brain. Thera suspected both were true.
The Oracle herself sat on a bronze tripod positioned over the fissure, breathing the vapors, her body swaying with a rhythm that had nothing to do with music. She was younger than Thera had expected—perhaps forty, though her face was lined with the premature aging of prophetic burden. Her hair had gone white, stark against her brown skin, and her eyes were the pale gold of honey held to sunlight. She wore simple white robes, no jewelry, no adornment except for the laurel crown that marked her as Apollo's bride, Apollo's mouthpiece, Apollo's sacrifice.
"Leave us," the Oracle said to the priestess, her voice surprisingly steady for someone breathing hallucinogenic vapor. "What happens here is between this girl and the god."
The priestess bowed and retreated, her footsteps echoing up the spiral stairs until silence fell like a shroud.
The Oracle studied Thera with those unsettling golden eyes, and Thera had the distinct impression of being weighed, measured, found wanting or found worthy—impossible to tell which.
"You carry death on your hands," the Oracle said finally. "Recent death. The blood hasn't dried yet in your soul."
Thera's fingers curled into fists at her sides. "I killed to survive. I'll kill again if necessary."
"Good." The Oracle's smile was terrible—knowing and sad and somehow approving. "The soft don't last long in the games gods play. Come closer, child. Let me see what Apollo has written in your bones."
Thera approached the tripod, fighting the urge to gag as the vapors from the fissure filled her lungs. Her head swam immediately, the chamber tilting at impossible angles, the inscribed prophecies on the walls seeming to writhe and reform into new patterns. She gripped the edge of the tripod to steady herself, and the Oracle reached out, pressing cold fingers to Thera's forehead.
"Yes," the Oracle breathed. "Oh yes, I see you now. The last ember of a burned house. The sun's final daughter. Apollo has been waiting for you, Thera of House Heliaris."
The sound of her name—her real name, her blood name—hit Thera like a physical blow. "How do you—"
"Apollo knows all his children," the Oracle interrupted. "Even those who don't know themselves. Especially those. You want to understand what you are? Very well. Breathe deep, child. Let the god show you what was hidden."
Thera breathed, and the world dissolved.
VISION
She is floating, bodiless, watching a scene unfold twenty years past like theater performed for an audience of ghosts.
Pyratheon burns.
The castle is magnificent even in destruction—golden stone that seems to capture and hold sunlight, towers that climb toward the sky like prayers made architecture, gardens where laurel and olive trees grow in careful geometry around marble fountains. But now the gardens are trampled by soldiers, the fountains run red with blood, and the towers are crowned with smoke instead of banners.
House Keraunos has come to Pyratheon.
In the throne room—circular, domed, with a mosaic ceiling showing Apollo's chariot crossing the heavens—a woman makes her final stand. She is beautiful in the way of nobility that believes beauty is both armor and weapon: high cheekbones, dark eyes, skin like polished wood. She wears armor over her silk gown, and she holds a sword that catches light like captured fire.
Lady Casseia of House Heliaris. Thera's mother.
Around her, the dead and dying. Lord Marcus—her husband, Thera's father—lies sprawled at the foot of the throne, his throat opened from ear to ear. Her sons, barely into manhood, decorate the marble floor like discarded dolls, their blood pooling in the grooves of the mosaic. Her daughters—all but one—hang from the balcony, their small bodies swaying gently in the smoke-filled air.
And facing Lady Casseia, King Alexandros II Keraunos, father of the current king, with a hundred soldiers at his back and the absolute certainty of victory in his eyes.
"You could have lived," Alexandros says, and his voice is almost kind, which makes it worse somehow. "I offered you exile. I offered you mercy."
"You offered slavery dressed as generosity," Casseia replies. Her sword doesn't waver. "We are Apollo's chosen. We don't kneel to storm gods and their petty kings."
"Your pride has killed your family," Alexandros observes. "All because of some ancient prophecy that probably meant nothing at all."
"The prophecy means everything," Casseia counters. "And you know it, or you wouldn't be here, standing in the ashes of my house, murdering children to prevent it."
Something flickers across Alexandros's face—guilt, perhaps, or just impatience. "Where is the infant? The last daughter? My men have searched the castle. She's not here."
Casseia's smile is sharp as broken glass. "You'll never find her. I've sent her where you can't reach, where your storm god's lightning can't strike. And when she comes of age, when Apollo calls her home, she will fulfill the prophecy you fear so much. The throne of storms will fall. The sun will rise. And everything you've built will burn."
"Then I'll kill her when she surfaces," Alexandros says. "I'll kill every girl-child in Astraeon if necessary. The prophecy dies with your bloodline."
"Prophecies don't die," Casseia says. "They wait."
She moves then, fast as thought, her sun-blessed blade aimed for Alexandros's heart. But he's expecting it, and he's Zeus-blessed, and lightning crackles from his fingertips to meet her charge. The sword melts in her hands, molten metal searing her palms, and she screams—a sound of pain and rage and absolute defiance.
The soldiers surge forward. Casseia fights like a cornered lioness, using her burning hands as weapons, clawing at eyes and throats, refusing to die easily. But there are too many. Blades find her ribs, her back, her neck. She falls, and even falling, she's laughing.
"The sun always rises," she whispers with her last breath. "My daughter will come. My daughter will—"
The sword through her throat ends the prophecy mid-word.
The vision shifts, blurs, reformats. Time passes in heartbeats.
A servant girl runs through burning corridors, clutching a bundle to her chest. The bundle is crying—weak, mewling sounds of an infant too young to understand that its world is ending. The girl is young herself, perhaps sixteen, her face streaked with tears and soot.
She reaches the servants' gate, the small postern door that leads to the mountain paths. Guards are there, Keraunos guards, blocking her way.
"Please," the girl begs. "Please, I'm nobody, just a maid, I just want to—"
One of the guards rips the bundle from her arms. The infant—Thera, it's baby Thera, with her mother's dark eyes and her father's serious expression—wails in protest.
"What's this then?" the guard asks, pulling back the blanket. He sees the baby's shoulder, where a brand new marking glows with impossible golden light: a sun sigil, twelve perfect rays in a circle. "Fuck. It's one of them. The blessed."
"Kill it," another guard says. "King's orders. All of them dead."
The servant girl moves. She's not trained in combat, not blessed by any god, not anything special. But she loves this child—has nursed her, sung to her, watched over her since birth. And love, sometimes, is stronger than blessing.
She grabs a fallen sword—too heavy for her, but desperation gives strength—and runs the first guard through. He goes down screaming. She turns, blood-spattered, and the other guards are already moving, but she's faster, fueled by love and terror. She snatches the baby back, tucks her into her tunic, and runs.
The guards give chase. Of course they do.
The vision follows the girl as she flees into the mountains, into the forests, running until her lungs burn and her legs give out. She hides in a cave while soldiers search past, pressing the baby to her chest, muffling its cries with her own body. She stays there for two days, eating nothing, drinking from a trickling stream, until the patrols move on.
Then she continues south, toward the coast, toward Kyrios.
The vision accelerates. Days become hours, hours become minutes. The girl reaches the city, exhausted, starving. She finds a physician in the lower quarter, pays him with the last of her coin to do something terrible: to scar the sun sigil on the baby's shoulder, to mutilate the divine brand until it's unrecognizable. The baby screams. The servant girl weeps.
"She has to disappear," the girl whispers. "They can't find her. They can't know."
The physician does his work with the clinical detachment of someone who's seen too much suffering to feel it anymore. When he's done, the sun sigil is hidden beneath layers of scar tissue, just another mark of a hard life in a hard world.
The girl takes the baby to the slave markets. She sells her—for a pittance, to a Corinthian trader who doesn't ask questions. The girl is sobbing as she hands over the child, pressing one last kiss to her forehead.
"Be strong," the girl whispers. "Be clever. Survive. Your mother died so you could live. Don't let it be for nothing."
And then she walks away.
The vision follows her instead of the baby now. The girl is caught at the city gates the next day—Keraunos agents have been tracking her, patient as death. They take her to the palace dungeons. They ask about the baby. They ask with whips and brands and implements whose names Thera doesn't know but whose purposes are clear.
The girl tells them nothing.
For three days, she tells them nothing.
On the fourth day, they crucify her in the market square. She hangs for hours, dying slowly under Apollo's pitiless sun, and with her last breath, she whispers a name:
"Thera."
The vision ends.
Thera came back to herself gasping, tears streaming down her face, her body shaking so violently she would have collapsed if the Oracle hadn't caught her. The chamber spun around her, the inscribed prophecies blurring together into meaningless glyphs, and she dry-heaved, her stomach trying to expel visions and horror and truth.
"Easy," the Oracle murmured, supporting Thera's weight with surprising strength. "Let it pass. The first true vision is always the hardest."
"She died for me," Thera managed through chattering teeth. "That girl. She saved me and she died and I don't even remember her name."
"Her name was Alethea," the Oracle said gently. "It means truth. She was your nursemaid from birth. And yes, she died so you could live. Many people have died for you, Thera of House Heliaris. Many more will die before your story ends."
Thera looked up at the Oracle, rage and grief warring in her chest. "Why? Why show me that? Why make me see—"
"Because Apollo demands you understand the cost," the Oracle interrupted. "Your mother died for you. Alethea died for you. Your entire house was slaughtered because of what you represent. The prophecy isn't a gift, girl. It's a burden you've been carrying your whole life without knowing it."
"I don't want it," Thera said, her voice breaking. "I don't want any of it. The prophecy, the throne, the—"
"We don't choose our destinies," the Oracle said, and there was steel beneath the gentleness now. "They choose us. The only question is whether we embrace them or run from them. But know this: you cannot hide from prophecy. You cannot escape what Apollo has written. The only choice you have is how you fulfill it."
Thera pushed away from the Oracle, stumbling back until her shoulders hit the curved stone wall. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and she pressed her palms against the cool rock to ground herself. "The dying oracle in the alley. She said I need to find Pyratheon. Find some weapon. What was she talking about?"
The Oracle's expression shifted—something that might have been fear or might have been awe flickering across her features. "The Thyrsus of Kronos. The god-killer. Your mother hid it before the purge, somewhere in Pyratheon's ruins where only Heliaris blood can find it."
"God-killer," Thera repeated flatly. "You're telling me there's a weapon that can kill gods."
"Not kill," the Oracle corrected. "Sever. It severs the divine connection between gods and mortals, strips away blessings, makes the immortal vulnerable. Kronos created it during the Titanomachy, hoping to use it against his children. Zeus destroyed all the god-killers he could find after the war. But Apollo saved one. Hid it. Kept it as insurance against his father's tyranny."
"Why would Apollo arm mortals against himself?"
The Oracle's laugh was bitter. "Because Apollo, unlike his siblings, understands that power unchecked becomes tyranny. He gave House Heliaris guardianship of the Thyrsus to ensure the Olympians couldn't grow too comfortable in their dominion. A reminder that even gods can bleed if mortals are armed with the right weapon."
Thera's mind raced, pieces clicking together with terrible clarity. "That's why Alexandros killed my family. Not just because of the prophecy. Because we were the keepers of something that could threaten the gods themselves. And if I'm Zeus-blessed, if the Keraunos line serves him—"
"Then your very existence is a threat to both king and god," the Oracle finished. "Yes. The prophecy speaks of the sun's child shattering the throne of storms. But it's not metaphor, Thera. You have the potential to literally strip Zeus's blessing from House Keraunos, to render them mortal, to destroy the divine mandate they use to justify their rule."
The implications crashed over Thera like a wave. She'd thought this was about reclaiming a stolen birthright, about avenging her murdered family. But it was bigger than that. Cosmic. The throne wasn't just a seat of political power—it was the anchor point for divine authority over all of Astraeon.
"I'm not strong enough," Thera whispered. "I'm nobody. A slave. I don't even remember how to be noble, how to—"
"You killed three people this morning," the Oracle interrupted, her golden eyes boring into Thera's. "A guard, a merchant, a girl. You poisoned one, strangled another, slit the third's throat. And you did it without hesitation, without mercy, because you needed to survive. Tell me, girl—does that sound like someone who isn't strong enough?"
Thera flinched as if struck. "That was different. That was—"
"That was exactly the strength you'll need," the Oracle said. "Ruthlessness. Determination. The willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone for your goals. Queens aren't crowned with laurels and love songs, Thera. They're crowned with blood and bone and the corpses of everyone who stood in their way."
"I'm not a queen," Thera protested weakly.
"Not yet," the Oracle agreed. "But Apollo sees what you could become. And so do I. The question is: do you have the courage to become it?"
Silence stretched between them, heavy with prophecy and possibility. Thera thought of Lyssa's face, that last expression of betrayal. Thought of Philon's villa burning. Thought of the servant girl—Alethea—dying with Thera's name on her lips.
So many people had sacrificed themselves so Thera could live. Could she do anything less with the life they'd purchased with their blood?
"If I do this," Thera said slowly, "if I find the weapon, if I fulfill this prophecy… what happens to me?"
The Oracle's expression became infinitely sad. "You want the truth? The full truth?"
"Yes."
"You will win," the Oracle said quietly. "You will sit the Obsidian Throne. You will break House Keraunos and shatter Zeus's dominion over Astraeon. The prophecy will be fulfilled."
Relief flooded Thera, so intense it made her dizzy. "Then—"
"But you will become the very thing you sought to destroy," the Oracle continued, and the relief curdled into dread. "The tyrant queen. The oppressor you swore to overthrow. You will sacrifice your allies, betray your lovers, murder your friends. You will sell your soul piece by piece until nothing remains but ambition and ash. And when you finally sit that throne you coveted, when you finally have everything you fought for, you will realize you've lost everything that mattered."
The words landed like blows. Thera shook her head, denial rising in her throat. "No. That's not—I would never—"
"Everyone says that," the Oracle said gently. "Everyone believes they'll be different. That they'll hold onto their humanity while climbing over the bodies it takes to reach power. But power changes people, Thera. Especially people who taste it after a lifetime of powerlessness. You will fall in love with your own myth, with the idea of yourself as savior and liberator. And that love will corrupt you more thoroughly than any curse."
"Then I won't do it," Thera said desperately. "I'll run. I'll leave Kyrios, sail to some other land, live quietly—"
"You can't," the Oracle said. "The prophecy is already in motion. Alexandros knows you exist now. The Sophions have sent word to the palace. By sunset, every agent of the crown will be hunting you. You can run, certainly. But they will find you. They will catch you. And they will execute you in the market square where Alethea died, another forgotten slave, another footnote in history."
"So my choices are become a monster or die a nobody," Thera said bitterly.
"Your choices are embrace your destiny or flee from it," the Oracle corrected. "The outcome is the same either way. But at least if you embrace it, you'll have the satisfaction of watching your enemies burn before the fire consumes you too."
Thera closed her eyes, feeling the weight of prophecy settle over her shoulders like a mantle made of lead. She thought of her mother, standing in that throne room, sword in hand, laughing even as she died. Thought of Alethea, refusing to betray Thera even under torture. Thought of every slave who'd ever dreamed of freedom and died in chains.
She could run. She could hide. She could spend whatever years remained to her looking over her shoulder, waiting for Keraunos agents to find her.
Or she could fight. She could claim the weapon Apollo had hidden. She could become the storm that shattered thrones and broke gods.
She could choose ambition over survival.
"Give me the map to Pyratheon," Thera said, opening her eyes. Her voice was steady now, decision made, die cast. "Tell me how to find the Thyrsus. Tell me everything I need to know to become what the prophecy demands."
The Oracle smiled—sad and proud and terrible. "There's the queen I saw in Apollo's visions. Very well, Thera of House Heliaris. I will give you what you need. But remember this moment. Remember who you were before you chose power. Because by the time your story ends, you won't recognize yourself."
The Oracle rose from her tripod, moving with the careful steps of someone who spent too much time breathing prophetic vapors. She crossed to the chamber wall where a section of stone was carved differently from the rest—a map rendered in relief, showing the mountains of Sunreach, the ruined castle of Pyratheon, and beneath it, in Apollo's sacred script: The weapon waits where the sun sets forever.
"Memorize this," the Oracle instructed. "I cannot let you take it—these chambers are watched by Keraunos spies among the temple staff. But the route is here. See? The northern path through Sunreach, past the burned villages, into the mountains. Pyratheon sits in a valley where the sun sets between two peaks. You'll know it by the golden stone—even in ruins, it still captures light."
Thera studied the map, committing every detail to memory. The path, the landmarks, the warnings carved around the edges in script so old she could barely read it: Beware the curse. Beware the dead. Beware the sun's final gift.
"What curse?" Thera asked.
"Apollo cursed Pyratheon after the massacre," the Oracle explained. "Nothing living can thrive there. The land is barren, the air is poison, and the castle itself is haunted by the ghosts of your family. Most who venture there don't return. And those who do return… changed."
"But I'm Heliaris," Thera said. "Apollo's blood. Surely the curse won't affect me?"
The Oracle's expression was unreadable. "The curse was placed to protect the Thyrsus from grave robbers and Keraunos soldiers. Whether it will recognize you as kin or destroy you as an intruder… that, Apollo has not revealed. You'll have to trust in your birthright."
"I don't trust anything," Thera said flatly. "Especially not gods."
"Wise," the Oracle approved. "Apollo would be pleased. He always preferred clever worshippers to devout ones."
She moved to a small altar in the corner of the chamber, opened a hidden compartment, and withdrew a rolled parchment sealed with wax. "This is a map I've drawn from memory. Less detailed than the wall carving, but portable. Hide it well. If Keraunos agents find you with it—"
"I know," Thera said, taking the parchment and tucking it into her stolen tunic. "I'll be executed as a traitor and a heretic. Same as if they find me without it."
The Oracle placed a hand on Thera's shoulder, her grip surprisingly strong. "One last thing, Thera of House Heliaris. The Thyrsus exacts a price from those who use it. Every time you sever a divine connection, every time you wound a god or strip a blessing, the weapon feeds on your life force. It will age you. Prematurely, drastically. Use it too often, and you'll be ancient before your thirtieth year."
"Is there any other way to fight the gods?" Thera asked.
"No."
"Then I'll pay the price," Thera said. "What's a few years of life compared to freedom?"
The Oracle's laugh was soft and sad. "You still think this is about freedom. Oh, child. You have so much to learn about what you're really fighting for."
Before Thera could ask what she meant, the sound of footsteps echoed from the spiral staircase—multiple footsteps, heavy boots, the jingle of armor. Both women froze.
"They're here," the Oracle whispered, her face going pale. "Keraunos agents. They must have been watching the temple, waiting to see who came asking about Heliaris."
Thera's hand went to the belt knife tucked in her waistband—inadequate against trained soldiers, but better than nothing. "Is there another way out?"
"The catacombs," the Oracle said, moving quickly now, urgency sharpening her movements. She pressed against a section of wall, and a hidden door swung open, revealing a dark passage that smelled of old bones and older secrets. "Follow the left path always. It will take you to the necropolis outside the city walls. From there—"
"What about you?" Thera interrupted. "They'll know you helped me. They'll—"
"They'll kill me," the Oracle said simply. "I know. I've seen it. Apollo showed me my death the day I became his bride. I've been waiting for it for ten years."
The footsteps were closer now, voices shouting orders, the distinctive sound of swords being drawn. Thera met the Oracle's golden eyes, seeing acceptance there, and peace, and something that might have been relief.
"Thank you," Thera said, inadequate but sincere.
"Don't thank me," the Oracle replied. "I've damned you to a fate worse than death. I've set you on a path that ends in ashes and regret. I've—"
The bronze doors to the chamber burst open. Six men in the black and red of House Keraunos flooded in, swords drawn, their leader pointing directly at Thera.
"There! The Heliaris girl! Take her alive!"
Thera ran.
She plunged into the dark passage, heard the Oracle's voice raised behind her in what might have been prayer or defiance or both. Heard the wet sound of steel entering flesh. Heard the Oracle's final words, shouted with the last of her breath:
"The sun always rises, you fools! The dawn cannot be stopped!"
Then the hidden door swung shut, cutting off light and sound, and Thera was alone in darkness, running blind, one hand trailing against the damp stone wall, the other clutching the precious map.
Behind her, muffled by stone and distance, she heard screams. The Oracle's death was not quiet. Was not quick.
Another death for me, Thera thought, bile rising in her throat. Another person sacrificed so I can live.
The guilt threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it down, locked it away in whatever part of her soul still felt things like remorse and grief. Guilt was a luxury. Guilt would get her killed.
She ran through the catacombs, through passages lined with niches where the dead of Kyrios rested in eternal darkness. Bones gleamed white in the faint phosphorescence of cave fungus. The air was thick with the smell of decay and the whisper of things that might have been wind or might have been ghosts.
She took the left path, as the Oracle had instructed. Then the left path again. And again.
Behind her, distant but growing closer, she heard pursuit. The Keraunos agents had found the hidden door, were following her into the dark. Their torchlight flickered on the passage walls, casting dancing shadows that looked like demons.
Thera ran faster, her lungs burning, her legs trembling with exhaustion and terror. She'd been running since dawn—running from Philon's burning villa, running from the dying oracle in the alley, running from the temple guards. She didn't know how much farther she could run before her body simply gave out.
The passage opened suddenly into a larger chamber—a burial vault, she realized, with stone sarcophagi arranged in careful rows, their lids carved with the faces of the wealthy dead. The chamber had three exits, all leading into darkness.
Thera paused, gasping for breath, trying to decide. Left, the Oracle had said. Always left. But which passage was left? They all looked the same in the dark.
Behind her, the voices of her pursuers grew louder. "She came this way! I can see fresh footprints in the dust!"
No time to think. Thera chose the leftmost passage and ran.
The passage twisted, climbed, narrowed until she had to turn sideways to fit through. Her stolen tunic tore on rough stone. Her hands scraped against walls. But the passage was climbing, and climbing meant getting closer to the surface, to escape.
The voices behind her were fainter now—maybe they'd chosen a different passage. Maybe she'd lost them.
The passage ended in a vertical shaft with iron rungs set into the stone, climbing up toward a circle of gray light. Dawn light. Outside.
Thera climbed, her arms screaming with effort, her muscles pushed far past their limits. The iron rungs were slick with moisture and centuries of corrosion, but she forced herself upward, rung by rung, toward freedom.
She emerged into the necropolis—the city of the dead that sprawled outside Kyrios's southern walls. Monuments and mausoleums stretched in every direction, stone and marble tributes to mortality and vanity. The sun was rising, Apollo's chariot cresting the eastern horizon, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold.
Thera collapsed against the nearest tomb, her body shaking with exhaustion, her breath coming in ragged sobs. She'd made it. She'd escaped.
But escape, she knew, was temporary. Alexandros would hunt her. The Keraunos agents would never stop searching. She was marked now, identified, recognized as the prophecy's fulfillment.
She could run. She should run. Sail away from Astraeon, find some distant land where gods and kings and prophecies held no power.
Thera pulled the map from her tunic, unrolled it with trembling hands. The Oracle's neat script marked the path to Pyratheon, to the weapon that could kill gods, to her destiny.
You will become the very thing you sought to destroy, the Oracle had warned.
Thera thought of her mother, laughing as she died. Thought of Alethea, refusing to break under torture. Thought of every slave who'd ever dreamed of freedom and died in chains.
She thought of Lyssa's face, twisted with betrayal and poison.
I'm already a monster, Thera realized. I killed an innocent girl this morning without hesitation. What's one more step into darkness?
She rolled up the map, tucked it away, and stood. Her legs were steady now, her breathing controlled. The exhaustion remained, but beneath it, something harder. Colder.
Determination.
"I choose ambition," Thera whispered to the rising sun, to Apollo's indifferent glory. "I choose power. I choose to become whatever I need to become to sit that throne and watch my enemies burn."
And somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard the Oracle's voice one last time, sad and resigned:
Then may the gods have mercy on your soul. You'll need it.
From the shadow of a nearby mausoleum, a figure watched Thera walk away toward the city gates, toward the roads that led south and west, toward Sunreach and Pyratheon and destiny.
The figure was dressed in nondescript travelers' clothes, but his eyes were sharp as a hunting hawk's, and on his left hand, he wore a silver ring engraved with a thunderbolt—the sign of a Keraunos agent.
Erastos "The Hound" smiled grimly and began to follow.
The hunt was not over.
It had only just begun.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Thank you for continuing Thera's journey into darkness with me.
This chapter was about choices—specifically, the moment Thera chose ambition over safety, power over survival. She could have run. The Oracle gave her the prophecy's full truth, including the warning that she'll become a tyrant. And Thera chose to walk that path anyway.
That's what makes her fascinating to me as a protagonist. She's not naive. She knows where this road leads. And she walks it with open eyes.
Some notes on the worldbuilding:
∙ The Oracle's visions are drawn from historical Greek practices. The Pythian gases at Delphi were real—geological vents that released hydrocarbon fumes with hallucinogenic properties.
∙ The catacombs are inspired by Rome's catacombs, but with Greek elements.
∙ Erastos appears at the end—our first glimpse of the spy who will eventually switch sides. He's hunting Thera, but already, there's a hint of respect in his observation.
QUESTION FOR READERS:
The Oracle warned Thera she'll become a tyrant, and Thera chose power anyway. Is this tragic? Heroic? Understandable? At what point does a justified quest for vengeance become inexcusable tyranny? Where's the line?
Also: how do you feel about characters who make morally gray choices with full knowledge of the consequences? Is Thera more or less sympathetic now that she knows what she'll become?
Drop your thoughts in the comments. These questions will become central as the story progresses.
Next Chapter: Blood & Ash — Thera must escape Kyrios and find the Branded resistance network. She'll meet Leon, the idealistic revolutionary who believes she's a savior. (Spoiler: she's not.)