AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tears continued to wet my face down to my chin, the tortures from the hooks numbed by my mind wanting to cave in on itself.
“Well, shewilllive,” Amun taunted. I couldn’t help but be pricked by hope, knowing that it was a trick of the tongue. “Her punishment is now yours. She’s been granted immortality to suffer for her insolence.”
As if to prove his point, Khepria appeared again, her face etched in horror, her hand reaching for mine when the chains pierced her skin once again. The blood exploded from her shoulder when she let out a blood curdling scream that tore at my soul. I could not look at her—the shame I felt for causing all of this was as more unbearable than my curse.
“Please,” my voice trembled. “I beg of you let her go in peace. Her lesson has been learned. She will never return. I beg of you!” The tears I shed disintegrate from the sun's intense rays.
Amun watched with a straight face as Khepria cried out with an energy I didn’t think was possible.
"You cannot break us!" Khepria declared, her voice filled with defiance. "We may be immortal and under this torment, but we are not powerless! We will endure, and we will find a way to overcome your cruelty," she said with a finality that rivaled the arrogance of a god.
Amun’s anger boiled over. "You think you can defy the gods? You think your mortal heart can overcome the power of gods? You are nothing!"
Her words seeped into my soul the longer I witnessed her inner strength. I couldn’t let them do this to us. She was mine and mine alone. The hooks dropped me from unfathomable heights, slamming me into the floor before the gods. With a groan, I got to my feet, my new resolve unyielding. The chains pulled me again, ascending to the sky at lightning speeds. The sun's heat continued to scorch our bodies, but she refused to let it break her spirits and I followed her lead.
We were united in our resistance to the gods’ goal in breaking our spirits, determined to prove that even in the face of divine punishment, there was strength in this mortal spirit.
“I will never lose what made me mortal—,” she grimaced as she once again reached out to me. “—a heart.”
We were transported from the throne room and brought back to where it all started for me. Khepria’s tears glistened against the radiation of the flames as she began to take a step, pulling the sun with a strength I had never witnessed.
What was driving her?
The skies thundered and roared as Amun’s voice broke through. His fury wrapped itself around our throats, threatening to suffocate us. The living inferno on our backs scorched and melted our skin as the essence of existence shook. Blinded by the licking flames, a brighter light made from the aether flashed and Amun was gone, leaving behind a void that could be felt as if he sucked part of space with him upon his exit.
I looked over at Khepria in disbelief, our bodies battered and scorched—but our spirits unbroken.
“This was not your punishment to bear, and now you are to suffer an eternity with me,” I croaked. Anger, guilt, and shame coursed through me but most of all… a strange sense of something else entirely solidifying us as one more than our earthly act of consummation.
“An eternity with you is all I desire, you are the love I never thought I could find.” She grimaced as the sun beat upon her.
“How many people can honestly say—” she coughed in pain and I reached for her, finally able to touch her. She gave me a soft smile and I was at a loss for words. Who was this woman before me? Surely she had a god’s blood inside of her. “That their love fell from the heavens?”
She let out a small giggle that constricted my chest in ways the hooks never could, before the chain dug further into her shoulder a single, silent tear fell from her eye. She grabbed the hot chain and with me marched forward without complaint.
We carried the punishment in unison, bound to each other by more than any mortal or god’s understanding. We were no longer merely immortals, but warriors—united in our defiance against the gods. And together, we would forge our own path, determined to find a way to free ourselves from the chains of divine punishment.
When her body was engulfed in flames, she turned to me with a smile. "I love you," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of the inferno.
As I watched her body disintegrate into ash, I hung my head in shame, unable to move under the weight of my guilt once she was away from me. The burden was too heavy to bear. All my self doubts slammed into me with full force without her here to ground me.
I had allowed a mortal to be punished because of my transgressions, my defiance against Amun.The pain of my failure gnawed at my soul, filling me with a profound sense of remorse.
In the minutes that followed, I wandered aimlessly, my heart heavy with grief and regret. The world around me seemed to lose its color, its vibrancy fading into a dull and lifeless existence. I sought solace in solitude, retreating to the depths of my own despair.
But just as I was about to succumb to the unbearable torment, her voice cut through the haze—a voice that refused to accept defeat.
"No!"
My breathing was labored as my heart ramped up to a rapid pace for another reason entirely. My soul called out—cried out to hers as she reappeared beside me.
"You will not break either of us!” she roared with strain as she took a step beside me. Renewed, I clenched my jaw and stepped with her. “We may be immortal, but we possess a strength that you cannot comprehend!"
I blinked away the tears, my vision clearing as I tried to make sense of her words, my own body continuing to succumb to the inferno on my back.
If I thought Amun was done with watching us as amusement from his throne, I was wrong. Heliox’s flames whipped and snapped around us as a blinding light flashed. Amun’s expression was twisted with anger, his eyes narrowing at the sight of her.
"You dare, mortal?" he snarled.
