All Chapters of DEVOUR THE GODS: They had all the power. He took it: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
41 chapters
Chapter 1: The Nothing
The fire mage's fist connected with my jaw before I saw it coming.I hit the cobblestones hard, tasting copper and rain. Above me, Damien Cross stood silhouetted against the academy's golden windows, flames dancing between his fingers like trained pets."Stay down, Thorne." His voice carried that particular brand of pity reserved for broken things. "You don't belong here anymore."I spat blood and pushed myself up. My hands scraped against wet stone, finding purchase in the grooves worn by centuries of boots much more important than mine. The expulsion notice crumpled in my coat pocket, edges dissolving in the downpour."I just want to watch," I said. My tongue probed a loose tooth. "From outside the gates. I'm not bothering anyone.""You're bothering me." Damien's flames grew brighter, casting orange shadows across his perfect face. Behind him, other students gathered at the windows. Watching. Always watching when someone like me got reminded of their place. "The ceremony's for peopl
Chapter 2: First Blood
I woke up choking on flowers.Vines erupted from my throat, green and vital, forcing their way between my teeth. I rolled off the mattress, clawing at my mouth, tearing leaves that dissolved into smoke the moment they left my body. My fingers came away clean. No blood. No vegetation. Just the phantom sensation of roots growing through my lungs.The locket burned against my chest.I yanked it away from my skin. The metal had fused to the chain somehow, and the chain had become part of me. I could see where it disappeared into my flesh at the base of my neck, no seam or clasp visible. Like it had always been there. Like I'd been born wearing it.Sunlight slanted through my apartment window. Late morning, maybe early afternoon. I'd lost hours. The last thing I remembered was Mrs. Chen's face, pale and shocked, her hand pressed to her chest as I stumbled away from the chapel.I looked down at my hands.Black veins traced across my right palm, spreading from where I'd first touched the cry
Chapter 3: The Hunter's Thread
The sirens stopped two blocks away.I pressed against the window, watching blue light wash over the buildings. Three Council carriages, each pulled by constructs that looked like horses made of solidified lightning. Fast. Expensive. Reserved for high-priority threats.They thought I was worth the expense. That should have terrified me.Instead, I felt validated.The carriages stopped in front of my building. Guards emerged, six of them, wearing the silver and black uniforms of Council enforcement. Combat mages, all of them. Their hands glowed with various colors. Fire. Lightning. Force manipulation. They'd brought enough power to level the entire block if necessary.Behind them, Marcus Venn stepped down from the lead carriage.Even from four stories up, I could see the electricity dancing across his shoulders. Arcs of white-blue light that made the air around him shimmer. He was angry. More than angry. His father had lost his power to my grandmother. Now history was repeating itself,
Chapter 4: The Undercity
The darkness swallowed me whole.Twenty steps down and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The iron door clanged shut behind me, cutting off the last rays of surface light. Just me and the suffocating black and the voices in the locket whispering directions I couldn't quite understand.I raised my right hand. Lightning crackled across my palm, illuminating the tunnel in stuttering blue-white flashes. The walls were old stone, older than anything on the surface. Pre-Council construction, back when the city was a fraction of its current size. Before magical architecture allowed buildings to grow upward instead of just outward.They'd buried this place and built on top of it. Out of sight, out of mind. Perfect for people who didn't officially exist.Perfect for me now.The tunnel stretched ahead, sloping downward at a gentle angle. Side passages branched off every thirty feet or so, leading deeper into the labyrinth. Water dripped somewhere nearby, a constant percussion that echo
Chapter 5: The Test
I didn't sleep.Couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw their faces. Mrs. Chen clutching her chest. The thread-mage collapsing. Marcus screaming. Elena crying on her mansion floor.The voices didn't help. They whispered through the darkness, layering over each other until individual words became meaningless and only the hunger remained clear.More. Always more. Never enough. NEVER.I traced the black veins on my arms. They'd spread past my elbows now, branching like tree roots seeking nutrients. When I pressed against them, they pulsed. Warm. Alive. Not quite part of me but not separate either.The locket had merged with my sternum. I could feel it there, fused to bone, its crystal heart beating in rhythm with my own. Sometimes I couldn't tell where I ended and it began.Footsteps approached my cell. Multiple sets. Armed, judging by the metallic clinks.I stood and faced the bars.Silas appeared first, flanked by four others. Three men, one woman. All carrying weapons. All radiat
Chapter 6: The Descent
Dawn didn't exist in the Undercity.I woke to the same darkness I'd fallen asleep in, measured time only by the ache in my bones and the spread of corruption across my skin. The black veins had reached my chin during the night. I could see them in the fragment of broken mirror someone had left in my cell. Dark lines crawling up my jaw like fingers trying to cover my mouth.Soon they'd reach my eyes. Then my brain. Then whatever remained of Kael Thorne would disappear, and only the hunger would be left.Days. Maybe hours.Footsteps approached. Single set. Light. Controlled.Isadora appeared at the bars. Her neck was wrapped in clean bandages now, and she moved without the fluid grace I'd seen yesterday. The Hollow had damaged something vital. She'd live, but she'd never move the same way again."Silas wants you," she said. Her voice was hoarse, damaged. "Says you're going down today.""How's Vex?""Broken ribs. Concussion. He'll recover." She studied me through the bars. "You saved my
Chapter 7: The Old Prison
The shapeshifting magic felt different from the others.It wasn't just power. It was knowledge. Understanding of how bodies worked at a fundamental level. How bones connected. How muscles contracted. How skin stretched and reformed. The serpent woman had spent decades mastering it, and now all that expertise lived inside me.I could feel my own corruption more clearly now. See how the black veins were restructuring my cardiovascular system. Replacing human tissue with something else. Something designed to channel stolen magic more efficiently.The locket wasn't killing me. It was remaking me.The distinction mattered less with each passing hour.I walked for what felt like half a day. The tunnel narrowed, widened, twisted back on itself. No logic to the path. Just following the natural fault lines in the rock. My torches burned down one by one. Eventually, I switched to the chemical lights. They cast everything in sickly green that made the shadows dance wrong.The temperature dropped
Chapter 8: The Heart of the Deep
The light was wrong.Not fire. Not magical illumination. Not anything that should exist in nature. It pulsed like a heartbeat, casting shadows that moved independently of their sources. Colors shifted through spectrums that hurt to look at. Wavelengths my eyes weren't designed to process.I approached slowly. The tunnel had opened into a chamber so vast I couldn't see the far wall. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above. The floor was smooth. Polished. Not by tools but by time and something else. Something that had worn the stone down through contact over centuries.In the center of the chamber stood the source of the light.A structure. Maybe twenty feet tall. Crystalline. Geometric. Impossible angles that seemed to fold back on themselves. It looked organic and artificial simultaneously. Like something that had grown according to mathematical principles no human understood.The old magic.I felt it from fifty feet away. Power that made my stolen abilities feel like candle flame
Chapter 9: The Choice
Three hours remaining.I could feel the corruption spreading through my skull now. Not just surface veins anymore. Deeper. Touching the edges of my brain. Each pulse brought a moment of clarity followed by fog. Thoughts that weren't quite mine whispered at the periphery. The locket's hunger bleeding into my own consciousness until I couldn't distinguish between them.I stood and approached the structure again. Needed answers before the decision made itself."The serpent woman," I said. "The healer who transformed. Did she come here? Did you change her?""YES. FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO. SHE ARRIVED DYING. BURNED OUT FROM SAVING TOO MANY LIVES. I OFFERED THE SAME CHOICE I OFFER YOU. SHE ACCEPTED.""She seemed miserable.""SHE LIVED. THAT WAS WHAT SHE WANTED. SURVIVAL AT ANY COST. I DELIVERED EXACTLY WHAT SHE ASKED FOR." The structure's light dimmed slightly. "HUMANS NEVER SPECIFY CORRECTLY. THEY SAY THEY WANT TO LIVE FOREVER. THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT ETERNITY. THEY SAY THEY WANT POWER. THEN FEAR
Chapter 10: Transformation
The pain was beyond description.Not physical. Not entirely. It existed in the space between flesh and consciousness. Between what I was and what I was becoming. Every cell in my body screaming as the structure unmade me at a molecular level and rebuilt something new from the pieces.I couldn't scream. My throat had stopped working. Couldn't move. My muscles had liquified. Couldn't think. My brain was being rewritten in real time.All I could do was endure.The structure's light poured into me through every pore. Through my eyes. Through my mouth. Through the locket fused to my chest. It filled me until there was no room left for anything else. No room for doubt. No room for fear. No room for Kael Thorne.Just transformation.Just change.Just becoming.Time lost meaning. Seconds felt like years. Years compressed into heartbeats. The chamber around me dissolved. Or maybe I dissolved. Hard to tell when your sense of self was being systematically disassembled.I saw things. Visions. Mem