The Return Of the God Of War

FIRE IN THE BLOOD

The rain returned just before dawn.

Ares stood alone at the old training field behind the Eastern Barracks. Not the sleek combat simulators they used now - this was dirt and grit, sandbags and rusted goalposts, where men once learned to bleed before they learned to lead. He held a wooden training sword in one hand, the other flexing and clenching like he could still feel the weight of Wu’s final blow in his wrist.

Across from him stood Hawk, stripped to the waist, scarred and silent, watching.

The silence between them wasn’t hostile. It was history.

“You sure about this?” Hawk finally asked, voice rough.

Ares nodded once. “I need to feel it. Not just the win. The weight of it. Otherwise... I carry it like a ghost.”

Hawk didn’t question that. He simply stepped forward, raising his own dull-edged blade.

The first clash was clean - a simple strike-and-parry. Then another. Then Ares stepped into the second blow, letting it scrape past his ribs as he turned and drove his shoulder into Hawk’s chest. They went down hard, sand kicking up, elbows jabbing, training swords forgotten.

They grappled like old dogs - not to hurt, but to remember. Every grunt, every slap of flesh against dirt, every scar reopened not out of vengeance, but recognition.

After minutes that stretched into something deeper than time, Hawk shoved him off, breathing hard, face smeared with sweat and sand.

“You’ve still got war in your bones,” Hawk muttered.

“I don’t want it,” Ares replied, collapsing backward into the dirt, eyes fixed on the slowly brightening sky. “But I think... I always will.”

Footsteps crunched toward them. Reyes.

“You two done playing caveman or should I give you both a timeout?”

Hawk barked a laugh. Ares sat up.

“We’re done,” he said. “Now we begin.”

Reyes tossed a canteen to him and sat cross-legged beside them. “Monk’s organizing the rebuild teams. Engineers from the east are arriving by noon. Mira’s coordinating temporary housing zones with Kara. We’ll be operational within a week... but leadership’s waiting on your word.”

“I’m not leading anything,” Ares said quickly, too quickly. “Not officially.”

Reyes studied him. “You can’t pull back into the shadows, Ares. Not after this.”

“I’m not hiding. But I won’t become the new face of another regime. I didn’t climb that tower to crown myself king.”

“Then what do you call this?” Hawk asked, gesturing to the horizon. Smoke still hung over Lin City, but now it mixed with steam from morning kitchens, the slow return of normal life. “This isn’t peace yet. It’s just silence. Without structure... the noise comes back.”

Ares didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t have one.

That afternoon, he walked the perimeter of the makeshift recovery zone where displaced families now lived in converted train stations and half-gutted apartment complexes. Children ran barefoot through muddy courtyards, their laughter wild and untrained. An old woman handed him a bowl of steaming porridge without asking his name.

“You look like you’ve known hunger,” she said, pressing the bowl into his hands. “Eat. We feed our own here.”

He took it.

He sat.

And for the first time since the Oracle Tower fell, Ares didn’t feel like a weapon waiting to be unsheathed. He felt... human.

Mira found him an hour later.

She stood behind him for a long moment before speaking. “You’re avoiding the platform.”

“I’m not avoiding anything,” he murmured.

“You’re not speaking. To the city. To the people.”

“They don’t need speeches. They need time.”

“They need closure,” Mira said gently. “And you’re the only one who can give it to them.”

Ares stared into the bowl, then set it aside. “I don’t know how to be what they need.”

Mira stepped closer. “That’s the difference between you and the men who used to sit in towers. They believed they always knew. You’re allowed to be unsure, Ares. Just don’t be absent.”

He looked up at her.

Time had not dimmed her. She was still the storm - fierce, knowing, full of ache and fury and light. And still, somehow, she looked at him like he was more than the wreckage he carried.

“Where’s Elijah?” he asked quietly.

“With Kara,” she said. “He’s still tired. But stronger every hour. He keeps asking when you’ll come back.”

Ares swallowed.

“I never left,” he said.

But I could’ve lost everything...

That evening, Ares returned to the Resistance Hall - now repurposed as a provisional parliament.

He stepped up to the old war table, now cleared of battle maps and stacked instead with reconstruction plans, citizen proposals, city-wide demands for justice and reform. The same hands that once crushed revolts were now reaching out for a new order.

Monk stood near the back, arms folded. He said nothing, but nodded once when Ares looked at him.

Reyes handed him a datapad.

“Speech upload. Five minutes tops. Live feed starts when you’re ready.”

Ares stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. He didn’t touch it.

Instead, he looked up at the cam -feed and began to speak.

“I’m not going to give you promises. I’ve broken too many of those in my life. And I’m not here to offer hope like it’s candy from a parade.”

He exhaled slowly.

“But I stood on blood-soaked streets. I buried men I trained beside. I fought the man who tried to turn this city into his throne... and I survived. Not because I was the strongest - but because I refused to stay silent.”

He stepped back from the console.

“I am not your ruler. I am not your savior. I’m your mirror. Your proof. That what was broken can rise. That what was silenced can scream.”

He paused.

“And I will not let this city fall again. Not to war. Not to fear. And not to men who believe power is owed to them.”

The feed cut.

The room was quiet.

Monk was the first to nod.

Then Reyes clapped once. Then twice.

Then the room erupted - not in thunder, but in a quiet, rising energy. A new kind of momentum.

Ares stepped down from the platform.

He didn’t need applause. He needed action.

The next morning, he stood by the river with Elijah.

The boy’s fingers wrapped around his, small and firm.

“Is it over, Dad?” Elijah asked.

Ares looked at the city’s silhouette across the water - cranes swinging, smoke rising, towers fractured but upright.

“No,” he said. “But it’s beginning.”

They stood in silence, the river whispering between them.

Behind them, life was moving again.

Ahead... a new chapter waited.