[Oliver’s PoV]

  “You’re just going to watch?”

  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was deep, resonant, furious. It cracked like thunder across the void, shaking the silence that had swallowed Oliver whole.

  He shouldn’t have heard it.

  He shouldn’t have been able to hear anything.

  By all logic, his hearing should have been gone. It should have burned away along with his body, his senses, his life. And yet, the sound reached him, vibrating through the emptiness, through the white haze that had replaced the world.

  Another voice answered, calm but tired.

  “What do you think? We’ve already spent everything we had. Every ounce of power we’ve gathered across the last few centuries is gone.”

  That voice, he knew it.

  Even through the distortion, even through the strange, ethereal tone that made it sound more like a memory than a sound, he recognized it.

  Athena.

  “If I intervene now,” she continued, her voice cold but resigned, “I’ll lose another few millennia before I can reform. I’ve already delayed my return long enough.”

  Another voice joined her, softer, but heavier.

  “I’ll be delayed too,” it said, sorrow threading through the words. “I like the boy. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have sponsored him in the first place. But if I act now, I’ll spend tens of millennia rebuilding myself.”

  Cernunnos.

  Oliver’s mind pulsed with faint recognition. His voice had always carried warmth, sarcasm, and a burning defiance. But now, it was sad.

  They were talking about him.

  Yet, he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. He was drifting in the white void, a fading consciousness caught between existence and oblivion, listening to gods discuss his fate like he was already gone.

  The first voice, the one that had spoken in fury, growled again, the sound shaking the air itself.

  “You. Both of you. Are you just going to sit there? Watch him die?”

  The rage in it was primal, raw, filled with something ancient. It wasn’t Athena. It wasn’t Cernunnos. It was something else, someone angrier.

  “Seriously?” the voice thundered. “After everything? After all this time, he finally stops hiding behind that damned mask. He finally proves to be a warrior, a REAL warrior. Instead of a ghost. He had to face a False Sovereign?”

  The fury echoed through the void, rattling Oliver’s fading awareness.

  He wanted to answer, to ask who they were, what they were, but his voice wouldn’t come. His body no longer existed to command.

  He was a thought, a flicker, a dying spark.

  Athena sighed. “You think I don’t want to help him? He’s the only one who caught my attention and blessing. But this, this is beyond me.”

  Cernunnos spoke next, his tone low, mournful. “The boy’s power wasn’t meant for this. We gave him the fire to survive, not to burn himself alive.”

  The first voice snarled, the air trembling again. “You always say that. You talk about balance, about patience, about rules.”

  “He chose his path,” Athena said quietly. “He knew the risks.”

  The words hung in the void like a curse.

  For a moment, there was silence. The kind that felt infinite.

  "I can't let it end." The voice explained.

  Then Athena spoke again, her tone sharper, colder. “If you go to him, you’ll burn yourself out. You won’t recover. Not in this cycle, maybe not in the next.”

  The first voice laughed in defiance.

  “Then so be it. Let me burn. A warrior doesn't back down.”

  The voice did not calm; it shook the void with wrath.

  “Rise, boy—rise, before Ares. Take my spark and pay the price for my blessing. Prove to me that you're worthy.”

  The command hit him like lightning.

  The words didn’t echo in the air. They struck inside his mind, burning through the fog that had consumed him.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  [You have obtained one point in Myth.]

  [The gods are wishing for your return.]

  [The Warrior grants you a spark of divinity.]

  [You are no longer a Notable Legend.]

  [You have become a Demi-Sovereign.]

  [Your legend will be told henceforth.]

  [The Everburning.]

  [The Phoenix.]

  The [System] spoke.

  The notifications didn’t appear before his eyes, but the words resonated through him like a pulse. They weren’t sound. They weren’t thought. They were the truth.

  He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even feel the heat of the flames that had devoured him. But he could hear, not with his ears, but with his soul.

  At first, there was nothing. No sound, no breath, no thought. Then came the pain.

  A deep, pulsing agony that rolled through him like a tide.

  It started as a dull ache, then grew sharper, more insistent, until it felt as if every nerve in his body was being reborn in fire. His lungs convulsed, his chest burned, his skin screamed as if the flames of Prometheus were still devouring him from the inside out.

  Oliver gasped, or tried to. The air clawed its way back into his lungs, thick and heavy, burning like acid.

  He was alive.

  Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.

  He couldn’t see at first. His vision was a blur of light and shadow, his senses disjointed. He could only feel the way his body was being reconstructed, molecule by molecule, as if the ashes of what he had been were being drawn back together. His flesh knit itself anew, bone and blood and fire intertwining in a grotesque rebirth.

  When his eyes finally cleared, the world came back into focus.

  The battlefield was exactly as he remembered it.

  But the faces around him, those were different.

  Every eye was on him.

  Katherine. Mordred. Alan. Astrid. Even Khan.

  Their expressions were a mixture of shock and disbelief.

  A few of them even looked away, ashamed, as if witnessing something they weren’t meant to see.

  Oliver followed their gaze and froze.

  Most of his clothing was gone, burned away by whatever process had dragged him back from death. Only scraps of his uniform clung to his body, charred and torn. Ash and soot streaked across his pale skin, still glowing with the embers of Prometheus.

  He didn’t care.

  Not yet. Not while the False Sovereign still stood before him.

  The creature’s golden eyes widened, its expression breaking for the first time since the fight began. The black ooze that had once covered its body still hadn’t reformed, leaving patches of pale, almost human flesh exposed beneath the blue and black corruption.

  Its grip on the sword tightened.

  “Impossible,” the Sovereign hissed. Its voice, once steady and godlike, now trembled. The blade that had killed Oliver moments ago hung loosely.

  Oliver exhaled slowly, smoke curling from his lips.

  “They saved you, didn’t they? What did they give you?” The creature asked, its tone a strange mixture of curiosity and disgust.

  Oliver met its stare.

  “A spark,” he said, shrugging lightly.

  The Sovereign’s eyes narrowed. “A spark?”

  “A spark?” he repeated, his golden eyes wide, his face twisting into something unhinged. “A spark? Are you insane? A spark is worth hundreds—no, thousands—of years to a Sovereign!”

  The creature’s voice rose with each word, the sound echoing like thunder through the fractured chamber. His expression warped into a mask of rage, his once-perfect composure disintegrating into madness.

  “Why?” he snarled, his voice breaking. “What do they see in you? Why would they waste divinity on a mortal? They only do this to humiliate me!”

  The Energy radiating from his body began to spiral out of control. The air around him distorted. The remaining patches of ooze on his skin quivered violently, twitching like living things desperate to escape his flesh.

  “How dare they!” the Sovereign screamed, his voice now a guttural roar. “How dare they do this to me!”

  The floor beneath him cracked, spiderweb fractures spreading outward from his feet. The air thickened, heavy and suffocating, vibrating with a low, oppressive hum that made the walls tremble.

  Katherine, Mordred, and the others recoiled, shielding their faces as the pressure intensified. The wounded coughed and gasped, clutching at their throats as the Sovereign’s Energy filled the room like a toxic gas.

  Even the light seemed to warp around him.

  But Oliver didn’t move.

  He stood at the center of the maelstrom, calm, composed.

  He smiled.

  “None of this will work,” Oliver said, his tone almost casual. “I’ve felt stronger surges of Energy than this before.”

  The Sovereign froze for a heartbeat, his head twitching slightly as if he hadn’t heard correctly. Then his lips stretched into a grin that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Then this time, you’ll feel more than that.”

  The black ooze coating his body began to writhe.

  It twisted, coiled, and grew.

  From his arms, his back, his legs, the corrupted substance erupted outward, forming into long tendrils. Each one moved with a will of its own, wriggling through the air like serpents made of liquid night.

  The Sovereign’s voice dropped to a hiss.

  “Let’s see how long that arrogance lasts.”

  The tendrils shot forward.

  They streaked through the air, slicing through stone and metal as they converged on Oliver.

  But Oliver didn’t flinch.

  He moved, not fast, but precisely.

  He stepped to the side, then forward, his movements fluid, effortless. The tendrils missed him by inches, their tips carving through empty space.

  And before the tendrils could recoil, he struck.

  He reached out, his hands closing around two of them mid-swing. The corrupted appendages writhed violently, but he held on tight, his grip unbreakable.

  The Sovereign’s eyes widened.

  Oliver’s smile widened. “The spark wasn’t the only thing I got.”

  In the corner of Oliver’s vision, notifications were flashing.

  [SYSTEM UPDATE DETECTED]

  [King-Level Unlocked]

  [You have reached King-Level.]

  https://discord.gg/dnPYbzN974.

  https://www.patreon.com/c/GCLopes.