Elenor spotted Joel near the edge of the village, standing half in shadow where the trees met the open fields. He held a rolled parchment in his gloved hand, one that shimmered faintly with magical seals, and his eyes scanned it with a practiced intensity. His jaw was clenched, shoulders tense. Whatever was written there, it was not routine.
Her heart sank.
Joel was no ordinary scout. The way he carried himself, how he observed the village without drawing attention, how he moved as though expecting ambush at any turn—it all reeked of military precision and something far colder: royal intelligence.
She turned and walked quickly back to her home, not bothering to keep up appearances.
"Devon," she said, breathless as she stepped through the door. Her husband looked up from where he was sitting, fixing a boot strap.
"It's begun."
He nodded as though he had been waiting for her to say those words. Without speaking, he crossed the room to the hearth, rolled aside the woven rug, and pulled up the floorboard beneath it.
The trapdoor let out a low groan as he opened it, revealing a small, dust-lined chest reinforced with brass corners and sealed with a faded, carved sigil.
He opened the chest. Inside lay the pieces of a life long buried—a sword wrapped in black cloth, a badge bearing a crest of two entwined falcons, and a folded cloak of deep forest green.
Elenor moved to his side, watching as he reached inside and wrapped his fingers around the sword hilt.
"Are you certain?" she asked.
"They're already sniffing. And we both know what that means."
She nodded, then turned toward the modest shrine near the window. The small wooden altar was normally adorned with a single stone carving, dedicated to a minor household deity. Today, she knelt before it and removed the protective cover.
This time, she did not pray to one god.
She prayed to all of them.
Her voice was soft but sharp with pleading, calling to any power that would listen. "Please. Please, I don't ask for myself. Just save him. Whoever you are. I don't care if you ask for nothing in return. I don't care if you never speak to me again. Just save my son."
The room grew still.
The candles on the altar dimmed. The flame didn't flicker. It stilled, as though caught in a frozen breath.
Devon, standing near the open chest, stiffened. The sword in his hand grew cold.
At the same moment, the door opened. Marcus stepped inside, a cup of tea in hand, his ever-watchful eyes landing on Devon with immediate concern.
Then the pressure hit.
It wasn't wind. It wasn't light. It wasn't anything tangible.
It was presence.
Something vast passed through the house—through them. A quiet weight settled over their lungs, heavy and silent, like being watched from the depths of an ocean trench. The air tasted of ozone and brine.
Marcus dropped the tea.
Devon's head snapped toward the shrine. "Elenor!"
Both men rushed to her. She was still on her knees, trembling, eyes wide but unfocused.
Devon knelt beside her and gripped her arms. "What was that?"
She looked at him, voice barely above a whisper. "One of them answered. A god. I don't know which one. But it—it didn't even look at me. It just... went. It went to Ross. Like I wasn't even here."
Marcus crouched slowly, as if careful not to provoke something still lingering. His voice was quiet, disbelieving. "It answered... with no price?"
Elenor gave a small nod. "Not a word. Not a sign. It just acted."
Devon helped her to her feet, steadying her as she swayed.
Marcus rubbed a hand through his beard. "Just like the old days," he muttered to Devon, eyes distant. "When you two were young, and strange things followed wherever you went."
Devon managed a thin smile, but it didn't last.
—----------------------------------------
Back in Reina's home, Ross stirred in his sleep.
A faint pulse of blue light shimmered across his skin, like moonlight on the sea. It faded almost instantly, leaving behind only the soft rhythm of his breathing. But the room felt changed, as if some slumbering eye had opened within him.
Reina, seated at her table with an old tome splayed before her, froze mid-sentence.
She had been skimming through accounts of magical resilience and soul durability, desperate for something—anything—that could explain Ross's survival. The page before her described rare, myth-bound anomalies: souls that had once belonged to something else—monsters, heroes, even demigods—tethered to the mortal plane by will alone.
Then she felt it.
The air thickened, tasting faintly of salt and copper. A prickling pressure spread across her skin, not hot, not cold—just deep. Like her blood had remembered something her mind couldn't.
Her gaze snapped to Ross.
The blue light coiled again across his arm, trailing in slow, curling patterns like sea currents winding around ancient stone.
Her breath caught.
She had seen this before.
Earlier that day, she'd skimmed a passage about forgotten gods—a warning from an archivist who had once glimpsed a divine aura not meant for mortals. "A presence like the deep sea: unknowable, immense, and coldly compassionate," it had said. "A god that does not demand worship, for it is beyond want. It rules the Leviathans, the dead-eyed monsters of the abyss, and answers only to power older than time."
The inked words floated in her memory.
Her knees weakened. A tremor ran down her arm. She stumbled back from the table, hand clasping her chest.
"Something is coming," she whispered.
The pressure in the room intensified. It wasn't violent—but it was vast, like a massive wave looming silently overhead, waiting to fall. Not watching. Claiming.
She staggered to the side, bracing herself on a support beam as the weight passed over her—not into her, but past her, through her. Head turned toward Ross. Toward the boy.
And suddenly, she understood.
"The soul that refuses to die..." she whispered. "That's what Marcus meant."
Ross hadn't survived by accident. His soul wasn't clinging by stubbornness or strength.
It remembered.
It remembered being monstrous.
A pulse echoed in the back of her mind, not a sound, but a memory. Tentacles writhing in the deep, ancient eyes watching from beneath storm-split waves, a body unbroken by time or death. Power enough to split islands.
Her mouth opened. A breath escaped with the truth.
"The Kraken didn't die. It was reborn."
And the god who ruled over sea beasts—the silent one, the deep one—had just arrived to greet it.
Not with words.
Not with demands.
But with recognition.
Back at Elenor's house, she sat still and pale, staring down at her trembling hands.
"What kind of god does that?" she whispered, voice hoarse.
Marcus, still watching the altar, answered without turning.
"One that doesn't need worship."