The crack was small at first barely visible, running like a hairline fracture through the marble floor beneath Marcus’s feet. But Marcus felt it the moment it formed. Judgment was not meant to bend. Not meant to hesitate. And yet something had shifted.Eryndor froze and just for a heartbeat.That was all Marcus needed he drew in a breath so deep it burned, pulling not only on his divine strength but on something older—rawer. The bond. The promise. The vow he had never spoken aloud but had lived by since the moment Diana stepped into his life.Light surged through the chains binding him not the cold gold of Judgment.Something warmer and fiercer.The chains screamed Eryndor’s eyes widened as fractures raced along the glowing restraints. “Impossible,” he breathed. “You cannot override divine decree.”Marcus lifted his head, eyes blazing. “Watch me.”With a roar that shook the temple walls, he tore free.The chains shattered into fragments of fading light, raining to the floor like broke

They did not wait for dawn Marcus knew better than to give Judgment time to recalibrate. Enemies who observed instead of attacking were the most dangerous kind they learned, adjusted, perfected. Whatever restraint Judgment had shown in the courtyard would not last.By the time the last embers of night faded from the sky, they were already moving.The road Marcus chose was not marked on any map.It cut through scorched valleys and half-forgotten battlefields where the earth still remembered war. Broken weapons jutted from the ground like ribs. Old banners lay buried beneath ash and time. Diana felt it the moment they crossed the threshold—this land resonated with Marcus in a way that made her chest tighten.“This place remembers you,” she murmured.Marcus didn’t deny it. “Judgment was forged here. Before it was an order… it was a doctrine.”Xavier adjusted the strap of his shield. “You’re saying this is where they decided gods needed leashes.”“Yes,” Marcus said. “And where they learne

Judgment arrived without fire that was the first thing Diana noticed as the light on the horizon grew closer. There was no thunder, no tearing of the sky, no violence in its descent. The air did not burn. It did not scream. It simply made room as if the world itself understood it had no authority to resist.The light resolved into form slowly, deliberately. Three figures descended from the heavens, their feet never touching the ground until the very last moment. When they did, the earth did not crack. It stilled.Everything had stilled down and the wind had died. The distant cries of survivors fell silent. Even the faint hum of the sealed crucible beneath the ground seemed to withdraw, retreating into a careful quiet.Diana felt it in her bones as the Judgment was not here to fight.It was here to decide.Marcus shifted beside her, his posture instinctively defensive despite knowing how useless that instinct might be. His spear remained at his side, unraised. Not in surrender but in

The world no longer resembled the one that had existed before the war.Skies that once shifted gently between dawn and dusk now burned with slow-moving storms of silver and ash. Mountains lay split open like old wounds, their cores glowing faintly where divine power had struck too deeply. The sea itself had retreated in places, as if frightened, leaving behind glassed shores and broken temples that whispered of forgotten prayers.At the center of it all stood the Citadel of Accord what remained of it.Marcus leaned heavily on his spear as he surveyed the ruin. The God of War had known battle all his existence, but this… this was something else. This was not conquest or glory or rage it was survival. The kind of survival that stripped even gods down to their barest of truths.Behind him, Diana knelt beside the fallen, her hands glowing faintly as she sealed wounds that refused to close on their own. Each act of healing cost her more than she let anyone see. The Key within her stirred

The sky above the fractured realm no longer resembled anything born of nature. It moved like a living thing layers of cloud folding in on themselves, light bleeding through the seams as if the heavens had been wounded and never healed. Below it, the battlefield stretched in long scars of broken stone and burned earth, marked by the remains of divine constructs and fallen immortals. Silence had returned, but it was not peace. It was the kind of stillness that followed a scream too large for the world to contain.Marcus stood at the edge of the ruin, his spear resting against his shoulder, his armor dulled by ash and old blood. The God of War had fought through centuries of conflict, through betrayals, divine purges, and the slow erosion of belief—but this war had taken something from him that no other ever had. It had made him afraid of what came after.Behind him, Diana knelt at the center of the sealing circle.The romantic seal still glowed faintly beneath her feet, a complex lattic