The armored beast slammed into Tharos like a falling boulder.Fire exploded around them as the two forces collided. Villagers ran, screaming and dragging their children behind burning houses, but the sound didn’t reach Tharos anymore. His ears rang with something else, sounds like, drums, metal, war cries, memories that didn’t belong to a simple village boy.The creature slashed again, but Tharos moved faster this time. His arm shot up, catching the beast’s wrist in his grip. The monster snarled and tried to yank free, but Tharos held on.His fingers dug into the creature’s flesh, hard, too hard for any mortal.The beast’s eyes widened.Tharos squeezed until the creature’s bones cracked loudly, and the beast howled in rage. It swung its other arm, claws slicing toward Tharos’ throat.Tharos ducked low, twisted, and drove his shoulder into the monster’s chest. The force sent the beast stumbling backward, its heavy armor scraping against the burning ground.Tharos’ lungs burned.His wou

The night should have been quiet after the Hunter’s death.It wasn’t.The forest around Tharos trembled, the leaves shivering as if the wind carried fear itself. The air felt charged, heavy, pulsing with unseen power. It pressed on his skin, crawled down his spine, made his blood throb with warning.He stood over the Hunter’s broken body, breathing hard, still trying to steady the storm inside him.God of War.The words kept repeating in his head, burning, twisting, fitting and not fitting all at once.He looked down at his hands, trembling slightly, glowing with the faintest gold under the blood.That same gold that flashed in his memories.That same gold that terrified the gods.He swallowed, jaw tight.He didn’t understand it fully yet, but he knew this: the power inside him was waking fast.Too fast.And now something else had arrived.He turned his head slowly toward the direction of the flare, a bolt of crimson light that had sliced across the sky like a wound.It came from the

The forest was ruined.Trees lay snapped like broken bones. The smell of burned earth clung to the air. Smoke curled upward from the crater Seraxis had blasted into the ground. Everything was quiet now, too quiet. Even the birds had vanished.Tharos stood in the middle of the wreckage, breathing hard, sweat dripping down his spine. His hand, burned moments ago by divine light, was already healing. Flesh knitting back together. Bone warming as it reset.Lyra watched him with a mix of awe and fear. She didn’t bother to hide it.“Tharos,” she whispered. “You healed from a god’s attack. That’s… insane.”He didn’t answer. His eyes remained on the crater, jaw clenched tight, thoughts twisting like a storm.Seraxis was gone.But his threat wasn’t.The pantheon will come.Not one god.Not one hunter.Not one warning.All of them.The rage that lived in Tharos’s chest, the ancient, buried thing, twisted harder.Lyra stepped closer. “We should move. Others will feel that blast.”He finally look

The first creature hit the ground like a collapsing star.Its claws carved trenches through the stone as it screeched, sharp, metallic, wrong. Its body was a twisting mesh of divine bone and corrupted shadow, shifting in and out of shape as if it had never decided what it wanted to be.Lyra choked back a curse. “That’s not a god.”“No,” Tharos said, voice low. “It’s something they made.”More of them fell from the tearing sky, dozens, then hundreds, spiraling downward, shrieking as their bodies warped in midair.The ground trembled under the swarm.Tharos planted his foot forward. “Stay behind me.”Lyra muttered, "This is not happening”But the creatures lunged first.Three rushed in at once. Tharos moved faster.He grabbed the first by its skull, crushed it under his boot, and hurled the second into the third so hard they shattered against the cliff wall. Their bodies dissolved into black dust and crimson sparks.Lyra darted in beside him, blades flashing, slicing through the joints

The forest swallowed the last echo of their footsteps as Tharos and Lyra pushed deeper into the northern wilds. The air grew colder, sharper, like the land itself was holding its breath. Needle-thin branches clawed overhead, blotting out the final scraps of dusk.Tharos slowed.Something inside him shifted.A memory, no, not a memory, a wound, cracked open beneath his ribs.A whisper slid through his skull like a heated blade.“Awaken, Heir of Ash.”Tharos staggered. His breath catch­ed, turning to frost in the air. Lyra turned sharply.“Tharos? What’s wrong?”He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His heart slammed against his chest like it was trying to escape.The voice grew louder. Heavy. Ancient.“You wander half-born…Power locked…Truth sealed…”Tharos’s knees hit the forest floor.His vision ruptured into red light.Lyra lunged toward him. “Tharos!”But the ground itself reacted first, shuddering, cracking, pulsing with a deep tremor that rolled outward like something buried miles beneat