2025-07-28 10:10:09“We’re going home.”
Ares whispered it like a vow, pressing his lips to Elijah’s hair. The boy clung to him tighter, as if some part of him knew those words weren’t just comfort - they were a promise built on blood.
Mira stood at his side, silent, her hand finding Ares’ without needing to search. The candles flickered across the plaza as families mourned, survivors whispered names onto the memorial wall, and city dust settled like ash after a storm.
But beneath it all, Ares felt it.
The quiet wasn’t peace.
It was a warning.
...
Back in the apartment - what was left of it - the old living room still smelled like soot and rust. Elijah was asleep on a makeshift mattress near the heater. Mira moved through the space like someone reclaiming old territory, her hands brushing across cracked walls, broken frames, and bullet-pocked memories.
Ares stood near the window, staring out at the city that still looked half-drowned in smoke.
“Everything feels... paused,” Mira said behind him.
“It’s because it is.”
“You don’t believe it’s over.”
Ares didn’t answer right away. “We didn’t kill the system. We just cut the head off the serpent. There are still fangs waiting beneath the rubble.”
Mira came to stand beside him. “Then we sharpen our teeth.”
He gave her a tired smile. “That’s what I missed about you.”
“You missed my fury.”
“I missed your fight.”
They stood like that a long moment, the silence stretching between them, not cold... just scarred.
Then there was a knock at the door - three times, sharp, fast.
Ares turned instantly, his body stiffening as instincts surged.
Mira moved to Elijah, shielding him as Ares crossed the floor, pulled the door open.
Reyes stood in the hall, bleeding from the lip, his shirt torn.
“They’re back,” he said.
...
The three of them stood around the busted kitchen table. Reyes dropped a folder down, thick with grainy photos and intercept logs.
Ares flipped through them. Soldiers. Civilians. Symbols scrawled across walls. A black sun over a fractured tower.
“Kestrel?” Ares asked, eyes narrowing.
“Confirmed,” Reyes nodded. “Thought he died two years ago in the Outer Sprawl. He didn’t. He vanished... and started building.”
“Where?”
“Underground. They’re not fighting openly - yet. But they’re testing the edges. Spreading fear. Leaving messages.”
Mira held up one of the photos. A man hung from a scaffold, a sign pinned to his chest.
“Gods fall. Order returns.”
Ares stared at it.
“This isn’t war,” he said. “It’s a message. Psychological warfare. They want people scared before they move.”
“They’re targeting families who supported the rebellion,” Reyes added. “Engineers. Medics. Old sympathizers.”
“Any leads?”
“One,” Reyes said. “An old comms relay near the south station. They’ve been hijacking power cells and encrypted feeds. It’s the only route Kestrel would use to send orders from the Underground.”
Ares stood. “Get your gear. We move in an hour.”
“You sure you want to go yourself?”
“I didn’t survive the Tower just to sit behind meetings. If Kestrel’s testing the city, then I’m the one he’s testing for.”
Reyes smirked. “He’s not ready.”
...
They moved through Lin City’s southern district under cloak and shadow - not as conquerors, but as guardians. The streets bore scars, but there was light now. Civilians walked again. Children played near rubble. But beneath the smiles... eyes watched from windows, waiting to see if the storm would return.
The relay station stood half-buried beneath collapsed tram lines, its steel doors covered in graffiti. Ares approached slowly, Reyes covering his six.
He pressed his ear to the door.
Movement.
He raised three fingers, then moved - quiet as smoke.
The doors creaked open.
Inside, the relay was dim, the walls humming with ancient tech patched together with stolen parts. One man sat at the console, back turned, fingers typing fast. Another stood near the corner, rifle in hand.
Ares struck first - one swift movement, disarming the guard and slamming him into the wall. Reyes grabbed the console tech before he could run, twisting his arm behind his back.
The man screamed.
“We don’t have time for that,” Ares said coldly. “You’re going to tell me where Kestrel is.”
“I don’t know anything!” the tech gasped.
Ares leaned in, voice quiet, dangerous. “You’re running a stolen relay. Spreading insurgent messages. And you expect me to believe this is some coincidence?”
“He... he never shows his face! He sends coordinates. Drops gear. Makes threats. We just follow the scripts!”
“Scripts?”
The man nodded frantically. “He sends speeches. Written lines. We record them with filters - make it sound like him. He doesn’t want to be seen. He wants to be believed.”
Ares let that settle.
Kestrel wasn’t building an army.
He was building a myth.
Reyes grabbed a datapad from the desk. “He’s broadcasting again tonight. Nine p.m. New frequency. Can we trace it?”
The tech hesitated.
Ares stepped forward. “Can you trace it?”
The man swallowed hard. “Yes. But if I do... he’ll know. He always knows.”
“Then you’d better move fast,” Ares said, “before I make you forget how to move at all.”
...
Back at the bunker, Kara waited, arms crossed.
She listened to the report, scanning the files Reyes had extracted.
“He’s not just rebuilding the regime,” she said slowly. “He’s trying to rewrite it. Control the narrative. Cast himself as the return of order after your... chaos.”
Ares didn’t flinch.
“He thinks peace is a void. Something he can fill.”
Mira, who’d arrived with Elijah shortly after, crossed her arms. “And what do you think?”
Ares looked at his son, who sat quietly in the corner, sketching something on a scrap of paper.
“I think peace is a choice,” he said. “And if people see it slipping away again, they’ll cling to anything - even monsters dressed as saviors.”
“So what do we do?” Reyes asked.
Ares looked up, eyes cold, voice steady.
“We pull the mask off Kestrel. In public. Live.”
“Won’t be easy,” Kara warned. “He’s not stupid.”
“No,” Ares said. “But he’s proud.”
Reyes smirked. “And pride gets people killed.”
Ares nodded. “This time, it gets him seen.”
...
That night, Ares stood on the rooftop of the comms tower, wind pressing against him. The city sprawled beneath him - flickering lights, rebuilding streets, laughter in one corner, and silence in others.
He pulled a small recorder from his pocket and spoke into it - not as a general, not as a god.
Just as a man.
“If you’re listening,” he said, “you already know the war ended. But you don’t believe peace will hold. That’s why he sounds so tempting. Kestrel. The shadow with promises.”
He looked out over the city.
“He’s not a savior. He’s a scavenger. He wants your fear. I want your choice.”
He pressed send.
Then he turned and walked back down.
The broadcast would go out in one hour.
And the new war - the one that didn’t bleed, but deceived - would begin.
...
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WHERE DUST SETTLES
“No,” he said. “But it’s beginning.”Elijah didn’t say anything. He just looked out across the river, toward the jagged skyline of Lin City - blackened, bent, but still standing. His small hand clutched Ares’ fingers tighter, not out of fear, but to make sure his father was real.The city was quiet.Not peaceful - just... quiet. The kind of silence that came after screaming. After bullets stopped flying. After people stopped dying. The kind that wasn’t earned but left behind, like a breath held too long.Ares crouched down beside Elijah and looked him in the eye.“You’ll hear people say it’s over,” he murmured. “But truth is, son... endings are easy. What comes next, that’s the hard part.”Elijah nodded slowly, as if he understood more than a child should.Ares ruffled his hair gently, then stood. “Come on. Let’s head back before the soup gets cold.”...The walk back was slow. Not because of Elijah’s pace, but because people stopped Ares every few steps.Not to thank him.Just to loo
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
FATHERS AND FLAMES
Ares didn’t sleep that night.While Mira and Elijah rested in the med-bunker, wrapped in peace they had long been denied, he sat outside beneath the concrete awning, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on the city slowly rebirthing itself. Lin City, for the first time in years, was quiet -not because it was dead, but because it had finally exhaled.His hands were still bloodstained, knuckles split. The fight with Victor Wu had been short, brutal - and necessary. But the victory hadn’t cleansed him. Not really.“You look like a man still waiting for the war to start,” said a voice behind him.Ares didn’t turn. “I’m waiting for the part where it’s actually over.”Reyes stepped into the light, carrying two cups of bitter soldier’s coffee. He handed one over. “You’ve done enough, brother.”“No,” Ares said. “Not yet.”Reyes sat beside him, grimacing as he lowered himself to the cold step. “You’re still thinking about Fallujah.”“Always,” Ares said softly. “Wu showed the footage for a reason. He th
PEACE ISN’T QUIET
“We’re going home.”Ares whispered it like a vow, pressing his lips to Elijah’s hair. The boy clung to him tighter, as if some part of him knew those words weren’t just comfort - they were a promise built on blood.Mira stood at his side, silent, her hand finding Ares’ without needing to search. The candles flickered across the plaza as families mourned, survivors whispered names onto the memorial wall, and city dust settled like ash after a storm.But beneath it all, Ares felt it.The quiet wasn’t peace.It was a warning....Back in the apartment - what was left of it - the old living room still smelled like soot and rust. Elijah was asleep on a makeshift mattress near the heater. Mira moved through the space like someone reclaiming old territory, her hands brushing across cracked walls, broken frames, and bullet-pocked memories.Ares stood near the window, staring out at the city that still looked half-drowned in smoke.“Everything feels... paused,” Mira said behind him.“It’s beca
AFTER THE FALL
Elijah's arms were thin but strong around his father’s neck, as though in the days of sleep his boy had found new purpose - not just survival, but belonging. Ares held him close, his forehead resting gently against the boy’s temple, inhaling the scent of clean linen and warmth.“I missed you,” Elijah whispered.Ares’ voice caught before it could form. He didn’t trust it - too much gravel, too much memory, too much grief packed into syllables. So he simply nodded, hand brushing through his son’s hair.Mira stood nearby, unmoving - arms folded, but not in coldness. She was holding herself together. Her eyes shimmered, not with sadness, but with the fragile tension of a woman who had waited too long to hope.The silence lingered like a sacred thing.Then Elijah spoke again, smaller this time. “Is it really over?”Ares pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. “The war is.”“But the world...?”Ares smiled faintly, brushing a hand along Elijah’s cheek. “The world’s broken, son. But
THE TOWER OF TRUTH
Ares walked through the bleeding edge of the city, where frost kissed shattered glass and the bones of rebellion had not yet been buried. The Oracle Tower loomed ahead - not shining, not proud. Just tall. Empty of soul, but filled with power.The wind howled as if warning him away.He didn’t stop.Every memory pressed in as he neared the gates: the nights in Fallujah when he’d dragged broken brothers through fire, the betrayal that had carved a hole in his chest when Mira married another, the moment he held his son for the first time and realized what kind of man he had to become.Now it all came here - not to win a war, but to end one.Reyes’s voice came through the earpiece. “You’re approaching blind. No active jammers. He wants you seen.”“I know,” Ares muttered. “He’s baiting me.”“Careful. There’s pride... and then there’s suicide.”Ares looked up at the Tower’s blinking apex. “This isn’t pride.”A silent pause. Then Reyes replied, “I believe you. Make it count.”The main doors w
