My brain stuttered, trying to process. "You're just... giving it to us?"
"Not quite." He opened the case, and a gold signet ring lay inside, ancient, with symbols I didn't recognize carved into the metal. "First, let me tell you a story. It is a simple story, with only two endings."
He closed the case, and the soft click echoed too loudly in the sudden quiet.
"There was once a boy who lived in a cage. It was a cold, unfriendly place where he hungered, and bled, and knew loneliness unlike any other. And then, one day, he was free of that cage. It cost him everything he held dear, but still… The boy was free to disappear into the ether. Tell me why, then, you want so badly to get back into your cage, Lorenzo?”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t want to go back into any cages.”
“No?” He crossed one knee over the other. “Is the Pantheon not just another cage? A big, powerful cage, but a cage nonetheless. You realize that if you collect all three seals and challenge Minos, if you somehow win, that’s all you’re getting. A ticket back into the Pantheon at whatever level you occupied before. Nothing changes.”
I looked at Rafael, really looked at him. The crease between his eyebrows had deepened.
I shook my head. "It's not about the Pantheon."
"Then what is it about?" Hades leaned forward. "Because if you don't know why you're fighting, you will lose. Constantine knows exactly why he fights. He fights for power, for control, for his vision of order. What do you fight for?"
The question hung in the air like smoke.
I thought about seven-year-old me, gripping those rusty bars until my hands bled. I thought about kids somewhere right now, learning the same lessons I'd learned. That screaming didn't help. That mercy was weakness. That they'd never be anything but weapons.
"I fight so other kids don't have to live in cages," I said quietly. "So they get a choice I never got."
Hades studied me for a long moment. Then he turned to Rafael. "And you, Father Oliveira? What do you fight for?"
Rafael's hand tightened on my shoulder. "The same thing."
"Is that all?" Hades' voice was gentle, but the question cut deep. "You would die for children you've never met, in a place you've never seen, for a cause that isn't even yours?"
"It is my cause," Rafael said firmly. "My signature is on the checks that kept those schools running."
Hades sat back. "Good. Then perhaps you are ready to hear your options.” He paused briefly, considering each of us. "I can give you new identities. Clean documents, clean histories. You could vanish like morning mist. Constantine would never find you. You could live quietly, peacefully, die old in your beds surrounded by the small comforts of ordinary men."
I swallowed and looked at Rafael, trying to gauge his reactions.
"It would be a good life," Hades continued. "There is no shame in choosing peace after so much violence. Many would call it wisdom."
He turned to Rafael. "You, Father Oliveira, could return to the Church under a different name. Serve in a parish somewhere far from Constantine's reach. Help people. Be the priest you were meant to be, before all of this."
Rafael leaned forward and licked his lips.
"But," Hades said quietly, and the word carried weight, "you cannot be together. New identities mean new lives, lived separately. You would never see each other again. No contact, no visits, no way to find each other even if you wanted to. That is the price of safety."
My nails bit into my palms. Never see Rafael again? I couldn't imagine it. I didn't want to. The very idea was offensive.
"The second path is much more difficult." Hades's voice hardened. "There is a school in Alaska. Project Icarus facility. Fifteen to twenty children are being trained there as weapons. Constantine's prized project." His jaw clenched. "In my country, we have a saying: the childwho is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. Constantine is raising children who will burn the world, and he calls it training."
The room temperature dropped ten degrees.
I was suddenly seven years old again, shivering in dirty underwear while José circled the cage. The bars were rusty and sharp where I gripped them. My knuckles bled from trying to bend metal that wouldn't bend. The other kids watched from their cages, their eyes already dead, already knowing what I was about to learn.
You don't get to leave. You don't get to be normal. This is what you are now.
José had smiled when he dragged me to the barrel. Smiled when he shoved my head under. Smiled when I came up choking and screaming. Smiled when he did it again. And again. And again. Until I stopped screaming. Until I learned to hold my breath. Until survival became the only language I understood.
Those kids in Alaska were learning the same lesson right now.
They were me, trapped in that moment before José broke something fundamental inside me.
