Final Cut
Scene 1 — Bale's Awakening
"Ahhh—Lord Thanatos!"
I jolted upright, grabbing my spear as I spun in a full circle. For a breath I expected shadows. Wings. A crow the size of a house descending out of the sky.
Instead—
Priestess Abi sat nearby, humming softly as if nothing divine had happened.
"Priestess," I demanded, breath still uneven. "Where's Ten?"
My eyes searched the trees, the tents, the river—anywhere the boy might still be pretending he was ordinary.
Abi didn't look surprised.
"His teachers and his father have retrieved him," she said calmly. "You would know best, after all."
Fog clung to my mind.
Then it lifted.
The rabbits.
The river.
The pressure in the air.
Eris holding the boy.
Thanatos stepping forward.
The blessing.
The hand wave.
My stomach tightened.
"By the Gods…" I whispered. "They're real?"
Abi chuckled.
"I see being touched by the divine hasn't raised your intelligence," she said dryly. "I expected more from a blessing that forced you into Demi-Godhood."
My spear slipped from my grasp.
"Demi…" My mouth went dry. "That's what I am now?"
"You survived direct divine attention," she replied. "Be grateful. Most mortals lose their minds long before their bodies adapt."
She rose, picked up the spear, and placed it back into my hands like I was a child who had forgotten what he was holding.
"Be thankful they accept apples as tribute," she continued. "The Prince explained enough during his stay for me to understand the basics of divine affairs."
The Prince.
The title settled heavier than I expected.
"Come," she said. "You will pray. You will give thanks. And you will offer tribute."
I nodded before I really meant to.
The world felt sharper now.
Bigger.
Every sound came in too clearly.
The wind moving through leaves.
Water shifting over stone.
Voices from camp in the distance.
Even the beat of my own pulse sounded too loud, like my body was still trying to understand what it had survived.
I looked down at my hands.
Same scars.
Same calluses.
Same fingers that had spent years carving shafts, pulling bowstrings, cleaning game, mending spear hafts by firelight.
But the world around them had changed.
No—
that wasn't right.
The world had always been this large.
I had just been too small to see it.
Abi turned and started walking without looking back, already certain I would follow.
And I did.
Because there was nothing else to do.
The gods were real.
The Prince had walked among us.
And somehow the part that stayed with me most wasn't the fear.
Not Thanatos.
Not Eris.
Not even the blessing that had shoved my body into Demi-Godhood.
It was simpler than that.
He had let me teach him anyway.
That was the thing I still couldn't fit cleanly inside my head.
Something born that far above me had still stood in the dirt, missed rabbits, accepted peaches, taken correction, and let me tell him when his hands were wrong on a bow.
And somehow, impossibly—
that felt heavier than worship.
Scene 2 — The Heir's Mandate
"Like we discussed before," Father said, "although I cannot give you a Divine Artifact, I can grant you a fragment of the greater frame. Just as I granted you the All Things Evil authority that forms the base of your crown."
I stood in the center of the throne room, surrounded by his subordinates.
The hall was still in the way only Father's spaces could be. Not quiet. Controlled. Every shadow held in place by authority instead of absence. Every gaze turned toward me without anyone being foolish enough to stare openly for long.
"The Seal of True Darkness and these fragments are foundations," Father continued. "Foundations for you to inherit my Domain of All Things Dark. I have already set aside my Domain of the Afterlife and its associated realms."
His voice remained steady.
That was how he always delivered decisions that would change the shape of my life. No spectacle. No warning bells. Just certainty spoken aloud until reality adjusted around it.
"You will spend your remaining two thousand years training under Nyx, as I once did, to understand True Darkness—the same essence that nearly consumed me before I gained dominion over it."
His gaze sharpened.
"Though a Sun was used in your creation, it was a Dark Sun my father prepared as one of his rebirth contingencies. One of many. It would have formed a body aligned with Time. Instead, your mother became the incubator for Death and Sun—refined into Endings."
Juris stood beside Eris, silent as always when he was absorbing more than he intended to say. Eris looked far too comfortable hearing my future spoken like a sentence no one in the room had the power to appeal.
"Once you reach Low Major God rank," Father continued, "Nyx will cast you onto Earth. You will survive alone for ten thousand years."
The throne room grew still in a different way.
Not surprise.
Weight.
Even among gods, some spans of time still landed like threats.
"Nyx," Father said. "Take him."
Darkness formed beneath my feet.
Not ordinary shadow.
Something deeper.
Older.
A hand seized my ankle.
I barely had time to look down before violet eyes met mine from below. Then I was dragged downward—through Tartarus—deeper still.
Pressure tore at me from every side. Not enough to kill. Enough to make it clear I was being taken somewhere that did not care whether I stayed whole in the process.
Then it stopped.
I landed in a void.
No ground.
No sky.
Only darkness.
And eyes opening within it.
Scene 3 — The Book and the Barrier
"Will Ten be okay?" Juris asked quietly.
"No," Father answered. "But that is the point."
Eris rubbed the ring on her finger thoughtfully.
"So this is the only way to safely unseal his memories?"
"If a Sun cannot be swallowed by the void of space," Father replied, "then Darkness has no right to consume the Lord of Darkness."
Juris's Divine Book began flipping pages on its own.
At first the motion looked small.
Then the air warped.
The room tightened.
Ink shivered across the page like the writing had started remembering it was alive.
And then the words came.
"Even without my Divine Sun Key, Madness is my Crown and Truth is my restless maiden! If the Heavens wish to crush me, let them try—but they will be torn apart to drag me to the End."
A ripple of Fate pulled at Juris.
Not metaphorically.
Actually pulled.
The pressure around him twisted as if something beyond the room had noticed what the Book was trying to reveal and reached down on instinct.
Father's domain surged at once.
Dark authority folded around Juris, forming a barrier and dragging him back before the pull could deepen into something worse.
"Do not linger in Ten's matters, Juris," Father said softly. "You are not protected from the madness the Book reveals. Only fragments of universal truth can be digested safely."
Juris's eyes snapped open.
Father's violet gaze glowed faintly, not with emotion, but with the pressure of control being actively maintained.
For a few breaths, no one moved.
Then Eris stepped forward and sealed the Divine Book in Darkness.
The pages stopped.
The room steadied.
The pull receded.
But the damage of the glimpse remained.
Not in the walls.
Not in the hall.
In understanding.
Because some truths, once seen even partially, never returned cleanly to silence.
Far below—
Nyx's realm stirred.
And I began my descent into it.