Final Cut
Scene 1 — Six Full Moons
"Inhale. Pull the arrow. Steady my focus."
I watched the green-furred rabbit as its ears twitched.
"Exhale slowly… release."
The arrow flew.
The rabbit dodged at the last second and vanished into the bushes. My arrow buried itself in the dirt where it had been a breath earlier.
"Getting better," Bale said with a grin. "But you're still letting your desire to strike trigger its instincts. Rabbits are perfect training. A man who can't hunt can't eat—that's our tribe's way."
He stepped up beside me and patted my back like missing on purpose was somehow an achievement.
"Thankfully, as mortals, we have thousands of years to master our craft. As long as we don't die, we live long enough to grow, hunt, and provide."
Six full moons had passed since I started training with him.
Their measure of time was simple. A full moon marked a month. Twelve full moons marked a year.
My internal clock as a god had no need for that.
I was already over seven thousand years old. Only three thousand short of Father's plan to send me into the Main World. Yet here I was, missing rabbits while a mortal hunter praised my failure like it was progress worth protecting.
"You keep saying my desire is ruining it," I said, frowning at the bushes where the rabbit had escaped. "What exactly is that? This is getting annoying, Bale."
He chuckled, beard shifting as he crouched beside me.
"That irritation? That hunger to strike? When it becomes killing, we call it bloodlust. When it becomes wanting something too much, we call it greed."
He plucked my bow gently from my hand, then returned it.
"Even animals feel it. Rabbits feel it when wolves stalk them. We feel it when we enter a god's domain. The moment before something deadly moves."
That part landed harder than the rest.
Because I knew exactly what he meant.
The pressure before a snake god lunged.
The way mortals stiffened before divine attention settled on them.
The change in the air before something stronger chose to act.
Bale rested a hand on my head, easy as always.
"You have to empty yourself. See the rabbit the moment you first look at it. But when you choose to strike, stop focusing on it. That's my method."
He smiled in that dangerous way hunters did when explaining something simple that still got people killed every year.
"Tree?"
"Tree," I replied, grabbing my arrows and forcing myself to calm down before I did something unreasonable.
So I turned toward the tree Bale had marked out for frustration and fired until my breathing smoothed out again.
Scene 2 — Priestess Abi
"Priestess Abi, I need to speak with you."
Bale entered the tent, and I followed behind him.
The inside smelled like ash, dried herbs, old leather, and apples left too long at offering. Priestess Abi stood before the shrine in prayer, and Bale slowed for half a step when his eyes landed on Lord Hades's image. Something in his expression shifted—brief, questioning, gone almost as fast as it came.
"If your child had a follower," Abi said softly, still facing the shrine, "would you not report to the father about the son?"
Then she turned toward us like nothing unusual had been said.
"Speak freely, Bale. What troubles you?"
He hesitated.
That alone told me this mattered.
Bale usually spoke like a man who had already decided the shape of his thoughts before giving them to other people. Now he looked like he was trying to say something carefully enough not to sound foolish.
"I was hoping for your approval to take the boy to the next tribe," he said. "Let them see him for themselves."
Abi's gaze shifted to me for a moment.
Knowingly.
Not surprised. Not doubtful. Just patient.
That was the thing about Abi. She carried herself like she knew more than everyone around her and had already decided how much of it the rest of us were allowed to keep.
"I was hoping to widen the search," Bale continued. "Let them hear first accounts. Confirm what he is before others decide it for us."
Abi shook her head gently.
"That won't be necessary. Word has already reached us. The pathfinders have located his teacher."
I didn't think much about that part.
It sounded like mortals doing what mortals always did. Carrying word, tracking people, spreading stories faster than they should.
Bale stiffened slightly, though.
So it mattered more to him than it did to me.
Abi folded her hands again before the shrine.
"Finish his training. Make his stay valuable. He will surely bless your efforts."
Bale bowed his head. "Thank you, Priestess."
She returned to prayer as if that settled the matter.
In a way, it did.
We stepped back outside into the evening light. Bale didn't speak right away. He looked out over the camp, over the hunters scraping hides, mending bindings, checking spearheads, moving through ordinary labor with the same steadiness I had started associating with this world.
Finally, he exhaled.
"Well," he said, "that answers that."
I bit into an apple and looked up at him. "You were going to parade me between tribes?"
"Introduce," he corrected.
"That sounds worse."
He barked a laugh.
"Maybe. But you've got a mark priests praise, instincts that don't fit any child I've met, and a habit of learning too quickly right after pretending not to understand. Somebody was going to ask questions eventually."
That was fair.
I still didn't like it.
Bale glanced down at me. "Does your teacher beat you?"
I looked at him.
He looked back.
Then I answered honestly enough to matter. "Only the ones who like me."
He muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer and started walking again.
I followed.
Scene 3 — The Fifth Rabbit
"That's the fifth rabbit today."
Bale held one up while I tied the others to my waist.
We stood near the river that fed into the roaring waterfall below. Mist rose off the drop in cold sheets, catching the twin sunlight and breaking it into scattered brightness across the rocks. The whole place felt alive in the way this Minor World often did—less like scenery, more like structure still deciding what it wanted to become.
I had finally started getting it.
Not perfection.
Not mastery.
But the first honest step toward control.
See the rabbit.
Empty the strike.
Let the body move without shoving the desire ahead of it.
It was irritating how well Bale's method worked once I stopped fighting the lesson itself.
I felt them before I saw them.
Two pairs of eyes.
The second one made me freeze.
"Bale," I said slowly, "remember when you said you wanted to meet your god?"
He scratched his beard. "Yeah. Why?"
"This is where you found me," he continued, still oblivious. "Funny, isn't it? To think you'd finish your coming-of-age hunt here. Let's take apples back too."
I backed up.
Into something solid.
I tried to bolt.
I was lifted effortlessly.
Thanatos stepped forward from the shadows in his mortal form, calm as ever. Beside him stood Eris, already smiling like this was the best part of her day.
Bale dropped to his knees so fast the rabbits nearly slipped from my waist.
The divine pressure hit him a breath later.
Not enough to kill.
More than enough to remind a mortal body what godhood really meant.
"Hey, Eris," I said casually while hanging in the air. "How's the Underworld? Is Juris learning a lot?"
"Oh, Juris is doing wonderfully, Lord Ten," Eris replied sweetly. "But someone has been skipping lessons for nearly two years. We have much to catch up on."
She reached down and unhooked the rabbits from my waist.
"I'll take these as a peace offering. Styx and I haven't had rabbit in ages."
Bale was almost trembling beside us.
Not just fear.
Reverence.
Shock.
The horrible realization that he had spent months training something his gods had never once lost sight of.
His eyes flicked once toward me, then toward Thanatos, then lower still, like Abi's little oddities were finally catching up to him in pieces he had not known how to arrange before now.
"If you're taking me," I protested, "at least give him something. I was having fun hunting. You could've waited until after my trial."
I stuck my tongue out.
Eris smacked me lightly.
Thanatos lifted one hand.
A faint blessing descended on Bale like cool pressure settling into bone and blood. His body locked up for a breath, then he fainted outright, overwhelmed by even that measured touch.
I looked down at him.
"At least that's something."
Thanatos's gaze remained steady. "Let us return home, Young Lord. Lord Hades has been thoroughly entertained by your adventures."
That was somehow worse than Father being angry.
Shadows swallowed us.
The river vanished.
The waterfall vanished.
The twin suns disappeared above us as the Minor World folded away behind Underworld darkness.
And just like that—
my hunt was over.