My song became a weapon. It was a jagged, angry frequency that met Hera’s quiet head-on. The air between my bubble andher storm screamed, tearing, visible ripples of distortion warring for dominance.
Elias gasped, his heart restarting. He looked at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe, before his focus returned to his work, his hands beginning to weave the light once more.
Holding the line was costing me everything. The golden crack in my neck was a river now, divinity pouring from me in a wasteful, brilliant torrent. The dead runes on my arm felt like holes in my soul. I was burning out, my light a flickering candle against her hurricane. I knew, with a cold certainty that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with fact, that I could hold this for minutes.
And Elias needed hours.
The ground of our island shuddered as Thane leaped across the gap, landing with a ground-shaking impact. He stood before me and Elias, a living wall. "They're pushing too hard," he said, his voice a low growl. "Kaelen is pinned down. Flynn is being swarmed."
I looked past his shoulder. It was true. Kaelen was dueling three hollows at once on a rapidly shrinking island. Flynn was a grey blur trapped in a vortex of grasping, static hands.
We were losing.
It is over,Hera’s voice declared, triumphant.The age of mortals is done. The age of Olympus is eternal.
And as she spoke, the quiet intensified. My song, my defiant, desperate scream, was being swallowed. The bubble of reality around us shrank, the smell of my memories fading, replaced by the sterile, paper-scent of erasure.
Elias gasped again. The light of his weaving flickered, on the verge of extinguishing completely.
Was this it? Was this how it ended? Not with a bang, but with a slow, suffocating silence? After everything we had foughtthrough, every hell we had survived? To be erased because her will was stronger than mine?
No. I would not let her win. Not like this. There had to be another way.
NINETEEN
Aria
There has to be another way.
The thought was a flicker of hope, but to Hera, it must have been a gaping wound. A moment of doubt. An opening.
She struck.
The assault wasn't physical. It was a psychic implosion. The noise of the battle, Kaelen’s distant roar, Thane’s defiant grunt, the shriek of the Devourer’s quiet—it all vanished. The pressure on my mind didn’t just cease; it reversed, sucking me inward. The world dissolved not into darkness, but into a blinding, featureless white.
Then, senses returned. All at once.
The first was smell. Not the sterile paper-scent of erasure, but the rich, yeasty perfume of baking bread, the sweet, heady fragrance of blooming jasmine, and the clean, earthy scent of damp soil after a summer rain.
The second was touch. Not the sharp, cold bite of obsidian, but the impossible softness of thick, cool grass under my bare feet. A gentle breeze, warm and real, ghosted across my skin, carrying with it the feeling of a sun I had never truly appreciated.
I opened my eyes.
The grey, churning non-sky was gone. Above me was a sky of impossible, brilliant blue, dotted with lazy, cotton-white clouds. I stood in a valley, lush and green, cradled by mountains that were whole and majestic, their peaks crowned with snow, not ruin. Olympus. But an Olympus that had never fallen, never broken.
My hands flew to my neck. My fingers met soft, warm, uninterrupted skin. The golden crack was gone.
I looked at my left arm.
It was flesh.
Pale, yes, traced with the fine blue lines of my veins, but utterly, beautifully mortal. There were no runes. No star-metal. Just me.
"There you are."
The voice was a low, familiar rumble, but stripped of the subsonic threat of the dragon. Kaelen stood a few feet away, leaning against the trunk of a flowering apple tree. He was just a man. A breathtakingly handsome man, yes, dressed in simple linen trousers and a loose tunic, but his eyes held no molten gold, no vertical pupils. They were just a warm, deep brown. He held out a hand, and his smile was easy, unburdened.
"I was worried you'd wander off," he said.
