Stone did not settle.

  It listened.

  The last fragments of lantern glass chimed softly as they rolled across the floor, then stilled. Dust drifted down in thin, shimmering threads, catching the dimmed rune-light before fading into nothing. The ribbons that had been strung between pillars hung limp now, their colors dulled, their shimmer gone. Food lay scattered across glowing stone, bread split open, fruit bruised, wine bleeding slowly into cracks that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  No one spoke.

  Not because there was nothing to say.

  Because the room itself was holding its breath.

  Cassor stayed where Seraphime had pulled him, half beneath her arm, her body still angled like a shield. He could feel her heartbeat through the fabric of her sleeve. It was steady. Faster than normal, but not wild. Not panicked.

  That steadiness kept him from shaking.

  His hands were clenched in her robe. He loosened them when he realized, fingers uncurling slowly, as if even that might disturb whatever had passed through the hall.

  Around them, the gods moved in fragments.

  Kairos was the first to break the stillness, pushing up from one knee with a sharp, controlled motion. His eyes cut over the hall, scanning for a target that wasn’t there. His jaw was tight, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords.

  “Again?” he demanded, voice low, as if he could threaten the room into answering.

  Vaelor remained crouched near the hearth, one massive hand pressed flat to the floor. He wasn’t bracing now. He was feeling. His eyes were narrowed, focused somewhere beneath the stone.

  Marion knelt beside a basin that had sloshed half its water onto the floor. The water still trembled, surface rippling faintly as if it remembered being thrown. Marion held both palms down, not touching it, but close. The water obeyed him slowly, calming as if soothed.

  Athelya had not moved from where she’d been knocked sideways in her chair. Her scrolls lay scattered, symbols half-unwritten across the air where they had been interrupted. She stared at the ceiling, pupils tight, lips moving in silent calculation. One hand lifted slightly, as if to call the scrolls back.

  Then she stopped herself.

  Elethea sat very still near the wreckage of the cake, head tilted, eyes unfocused, as though listening to a sound no one else could hear. Her fingers traced small circles against her own palm, slow and repetitive.

  Tharion was still on one knee.

  His palm was flat against the floor, and his eyes were closed.

  He didn’t look like a god of earth in that moment.

  He looked like the earth itself, quiet and heavy and unwilling to be rushed.

  Cassor swallowed.

  His heart was still pounding, but the fear he expected to find didn’t meet him.

  Instead, there was that same warmth beneath his ribs. Not the bright warmth from before, not laughter and light. Something deeper. A steadiness. Like a hand placed between his shoulder blades, keeping him upright.

  It made no sense.

  He should have been terrified.

  He should have been back in Therikon, hearing stone groan under a collapsing building, knowing there would be no one to pull him out. He should have been bracing for a second tremor, a third, the moment it would all come down.

  But his body felt… ready.

  As if it had been waiting for the world to finally do something honest.

  Cassor forced himself to inhale. Held it. Let it out.

  “What… was that?” he asked.

  His own voice sounded too loud.

  No one answered him.

  Kairos’ gaze snapped toward Aerion like a spear.

  Aerion stood near the center of the hall, untouched by the chaos in a way that made Cassor’s skin prickle. It wasn’t that the tremor hadn’t affected him. It had. Cassor had seen it in the way the open sky above them had rippled, in the way the clouds had recoiled and then stilled.

  But Aerion had not fallen.

  He had simply lowered.

  Like something had passed overhead, and he had chosen to duck.

  Now he straightened slowly, carefully, as if standing too quickly might invite whatever had come to return.

  His eyes weren’t on the ruined table.

  They weren’t on the cracked stone.

  They weren’t on Cassor.

  Aerion stared at the far end of the hall, then lifted his gaze upward, beyond ceiling and sky, as if the world above Castle Primarch was not the true height of anything.

  The air around him tightened.

  Not into a storm.

  Into restraint.

  Winds gathered at his shoulders like drawn blades held at peace by sheer discipline.

  “That,” Aerion said quietly, “was not the castle.”

  The temperature shifted.

  Light did not dim as if something blocked it.

  Light withdrew, the way people stepped back when someone important entered a room.

  Cassor felt Seraphime’s arm tighten around him.

  Not fear.

  Recognition.

  He turned his head slightly, looking up at her face.

  Seraphime’s eyes were on Aerion.

  She didn’t look afraid.

  She looked… braced.

  Like a mother who had heard a knock at the door she’d always known would come, someday, and had hoped, foolishly, that “someday” would be later.

  Her mouth parted, then closed.

  Then she spoke, so softly Cassor almost didn’t hear.

  “They felt it,” she said.

  Kairos frowned. “Who is they?”

  Athelya’s gaze snapped to Seraphime, sharp and demanding, like she could slice an answer out of her if she needed to. Marion went still, hands hovering above the water. Even Vaelor lifted his head, brows drawing together.

  Only Tharion didn’t move.

  But Cassor felt the change in him, the way the stone beneath Tharion’s palm seemed to tense.

  Aerion’s expression didn’t change.

  But something behind his eyes went colder.

  “Heard it,” he corrected Seraphime.

  Not unkindly.

  Precisely.

  Seraphime nodded once, as if that single word confirmed what she’d already known.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “They heard it.”

  Cassor’s mouth was dry. “Heard what?”

  No one answered him, not immediately.

  Because the answer wasn’t a sentence.

  It was a realization.

  Athelya’s fingers twitched, almost summoning a spell. She stopped again, teeth grinding as she forced herself into stillness. “The wards didn’t fail,” she said, more to herself than anyone. “If this was an attack, the wards would have screamed first. They didn’t.”

  “They did scream,” Kairos snapped, pointing at the dim runes along the walls. “They screamed plenty.”

  “At the shaking,” Athelya shot back. “Not before. There was no breach. No entry. No hostile signature. It’s…” Her eyes darted up again, tracing invisible equations. “…it’s wrong.”

  Marion’s voice was calm, but there was tension under it. “The water surged as if the world tilted. Not as if something struck us. That’s a difference.”

  Kairos threw his hands up, frustration flashing. “So what? The castle decided to throw itself across the room for fun?”

  Tharion opened his eyes.

  When he spoke, it was quiet. Final.

  “The stone did not break from below,” he said. “It yielded from above.”

  Silence followed that.

  Cassor felt his stomach drop slightly at the words, like his body understood the meaning before his mind did.

  From above.

  Aerion’s gaze remained lifted.

  Seraphime’s hand drifted, almost unconsciously, to Cassor’s shoulder, fingers resting there as if to remind herself he was here. Real. Claimed. Still breathing.

  Elethea finally spoke, voice small in the ruined hall.

  “A thread tightened,” she murmured.

  Athelya’s head snapped toward her. “What did you say?”

  Elethea blinked slowly, as if returning from far away. Her eyes moved, not to Athelya, but to Cassor. To the chair where he had sat. To the space where Seraphime had knelt. To Aerion stepping forward and saying the word son like it belonged in the world.

  “A thread,” Elethea repeated, more certain now. “A claim. It… pulled.”

  Kairos stared at her like she’d started speaking a foreign language. “You’re saying this happened because of… what? Because we said some words?”

  Seraphime’s fingers tightened once on Cassor’s shoulder.

  Not hard.

  Just enough to ground herself.

  “Yes,” Seraphime said softly.

  The word hit the hall like a stone dropped into still water.

  Athelya’s expression shifted, calculation giving way to something rarer.

  Understanding.

  Marion’s face went very still. Vaelor exhaled slowly through his nose.

  Kairos’ mouth opened, then closed again.

  Seraphime looked at Aerion as if asking a question without voicing it.

  Aerion gave the smallest nod.

  “We made a claim,” Seraphime said, and her voice held both pride and unease, like someone speaking a vow aloud and realizing the world had heard it. “We accepted him.”

  Cassor’s throat tightened.

  He looked up at her, confused. “You already did.”

  Seraphime’s eyes softened when she met his. “Yes,” she said, and there was something painful in the gentleness. “We did.”

  Aerion finally lowered his gaze. Not fully. Not to the broken food or the shattered lanterns. To the middle distance, as if looking at a horizon no one else could see.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “And it was acknowledged,” Aerion said.

  The words were quiet.

  But the air seemed to react to them, the hall stretching subtly, as if space itself leaned away to make room.

  Cassor felt it then.

  Not shaking.

  Not pressure.

  A thinning.

  As though the world had become cloth pulled tight over a frame, and somewhere, unseen hands had begun to draw it taut.

  Athelya swallowed, and Cassor realized, suddenly, that her hands were shaking.

  “Who,” she asked carefully, “would acknowledge a claim like that?”

  No one answered.

  Because some answers could not be spoken without inviting them closer.

  Tharion’s palm remained on the stone, and his voice came again, softer than before.

  “It is making space,” he said.

  Cassor’s skin prickled.

  “For what?” Kairos demanded.

  Seraphime didn’t look at Kairos when she answered.

  She looked at the air.

  At the place where it felt longer.

  Where light had stepped back.

  Where the castle seemed to be listening, too.

  “For them,” she whispered.

  Kairos went still.

  Athelya’s breath caught. Marion’s eyes widened just slightly.

  Vaelor straightened, slow and deliberate, as if preparing his body for weight rather than battle.

  Cassor’s mouth was dry again. “Who is them?” he asked, and hated how small he sounded.

  Aerion’s eyes lifted once more, and for the first time since the shaking stopped, something like emotion flickered across his face.

  Not fear.

  Not anger.

  A solemn, unavoidable unease.

  “Mother,” Aerion said.

  Seraphime’s voice joined his, quiet as a prayer.

  “And Father.”

  The hall held its breath again.

  And in the stretched air at the far end of the room, where light avoided touching stone, something began to form.

  Not a doorway.

  Not yet.

  Just a line.

  A seam.

  As if reality itself had been cut, and the cut had finally decided to show.

  Cassor stared at it, warmth steady beneath his ribs, and realized with a sudden, sinking certainty that this was not the end of the night.

  It was only the beginning.

  The seam did not glow.

  It didn’t need to.

  It was visible in the way a wrongness was visible, like a crack in a mirror that didn’t reflect until you looked at it from the corner of your eye. A thin, vertical line where the air refused to behave like air, where light slid away without touching, where distance felt… dishonest.

  Cassor couldn’t stop staring.

  It wasn’t fear that held him. It was the same steadiness under his ribs, that lantern-warm feeling that had survived the tremor and the silence and Aerion’s words. It pulsed now, not brighter, but clearer, like something in him recognized the shape of what was coming even if his mind didn’t have the name for it.

  The gods moved around him again, but carefully now, like every step might make the seam widen.

  Kairos took one step forward, then another, shoulders squared like he could put himself between the line in the air and the rest of them and solve the problem by refusing to move.

  “What do we do?” he demanded, though his voice had changed. Less anger. More urgency. “We just stand here and let it open?”

  Athelya’s eyes were locked on the seam. She wasn’t looking at it like a threat.

  She was looking at it like a theorem that had just proven itself in front of her.

  Her lips moved. Her fingers twitched. Symbols began to form, faint and pale above her palm.

  Then her hand faltered.

  The symbols dissolved like mist.

  She stared at her empty palm with a hard, disbelieving stillness.

  Marion rose slowly, stepping away from the basin. The water finally lay flat again, calm enough to reflect the ruined lantern light, but Marion’s gaze wasn’t on it anymore. He watched the seam the way a sailor watched a horizon when a storm had already decided to arrive.

  Vaelor shifted his weight and rolled his shoulders once, not as preparation for a fight, but as if he were bracing under a load. His expression was steady, but Cassor noticed something that made his stomach tighten.

  Vaelor kept glancing at Cassor.

  Not at the seam.

  At Cassor.

  As if the most fragile thing in the room wasn’t the air splitting open.

  It was the boy who belonged to it now.

  Tharion remained near the center of the hall, hand still pressed to stone. When he finally lifted it, he did so slowly, palm dragging lightly across the floor as though reluctant to break contact.

  “The castle is not resisting,” Tharion said.

  Kairos snapped his head toward him. “Why would it? It’s our home.”

  Tharion’s eyes lifted, calm and heavy. “Because it knows what comes,” he replied.

  That shut Kairos up for a beat.

  Cassor felt Seraphime’s hand tighten on his shoulder again, and then she moved.

  Not toward the seam.

  Toward Aerion.

  Her steps were quiet, careful, as if she was trying not to startle the air. When she reached Aerion, she stopped beside him, close enough that their shoulders were nearly aligned.

  Cassor watched them both and realized something that made his throat go tight.

  They were standing like equals.

  Not like two gods preparing to fight.

  Like two children waiting for parents to arrive.

  Aerion’s gaze stayed fixed on the seam. He didn’t look strained. He didn’t look afraid. The storm in him remained coiled and controlled, a weapon still sheathed.

  But there was a stillness to him that Cassor had only seen once before.

  On the summit.

  When the sky itself had watched.

  “What does it mean?” Marion asked quietly, and Cassor heard the carefulness in his tone, like he was choosing each word so it wouldn’t echo too loudly in whatever space was being made. “To be… acknowledged.”

  Seraphime’s eyes didn’t leave the seam.

  “It means,” she said, voice soft, “that the claim wasn’t only heard by the castle.”

  Athelya swallowed. “We always knew they existed,” she said, as if forcing the words into order might give her something solid to hold. “We’ve read the oldest accounts. The structures. The laws. The foundations…”

  Her voice faltered.

  “But I have never seen—” She stopped. Tried again. “I have never felt them.”

  Elethea spoke without looking at anyone.

  “They don’t come for us,” she murmured.

  Lysandra shifted then, finally moving. She crossed the hall in a smooth glide and came to Cassor’s side, close enough that her presence threaded into the warmth beneath his ribs like a familiar note returning to a song. She didn’t touch him at first. Just stood there.

  Then, quietly, she slid her hand into his.

  Cassor’s fingers tightened around hers automatically.

  He didn’t look at her.

  If he did, he was afraid he’d see something in her face that would make this real.

  Kairos noticed the movement and stepped closer too, placing himself slightly in front of them without thinking. Protective. Unnecessary. Instinctive.

  “Are we in danger?” Cassor asked.

  It came out rougher than he meant. His throat was dry. His body still felt steady, but his mind kept circling the same question like an animal searching for an exit.

  Seraphime turned her head toward him.

  Her expression softened immediately when she met his eyes, and for a moment the hall felt smaller. Not because the seam vanished, but because Seraphime looked at him the way she always did.

  Like he was not a concept.

  Like he was a child.

  “No,” she said gently.

  Cassor frowned. “Then why does everyone look like—”

  He stopped before he could finish.

  Because the phrase that would have come naturally in Therikon was like we’re about to die, and something in him refused to lay that sentence across this moment.

  Seraphime’s mouth curved, faint and sad.

  “Because,” she said quietly, “some things are heavier than danger.”

  Cassor didn’t understand.

  But he nodded anyway.

  The seam in the air shivered.

  Not wider.

  Not brighter.

  Just… aware.

  Like it had heard her.

  Athelya stiffened. “It’s responding to speech,” she whispered.

  “It’s responding to presence,” Aerion corrected, voice low. “We are simply loud enough to notice.”

  Kairos’ hands curled into fists. “Then tell me what to do,” he snapped, frustration leaking through fear he didn’t want to admit. “Give me something I can hit.”

  “You can do nothing,” Seraphime said, and there was no softness in that sentence. Not cruel. Not dismissive. Absolute.

  Kairos stared at her, offended for half a heartbeat, then the offense melted into something else. Helplessness. He swallowed it down.

  Marion took a slow breath. “If they’re coming,” he said, “then why now?”

  That question hung in the hall like a weight.

  Cassor felt Lysandra’s fingers tighten around his.

  Athelya’s gaze flicked to Cassor, then away, as if the answer was too obvious to be comfortable.

  Elethea whispered, almost to herself, “Because the thread was tied.”

  Seraphime’s eyes closed for a brief moment.

  And Cassor understood something, not fully, but enough to make his stomach sink.

  This was because of him.

  Because they had said son.

  Because they had said family.

  Because they had claimed him in a way that wasn’t private.

  It had become part of the world.

  Aerion’s voice was quiet when he spoke again. “We knew,” he said.

  Kairos turned sharply. “You knew?”

  Aerion didn’t look at him. “We knew it would happen eventually.”

  “You mean you expected—” Athelya’s voice cut off, and Cassor heard her force control into it. “You expected this.”

  Seraphime opened her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Not tonight.” A pause. “But yes.”

  Lysandra’s brows drew together. “You’ve seen them before,” she breathed, and it wasn’t an accusation. It was a realization that made her suddenly feel younger than Cassor had ever seen her.

  Aerion’s jaw tightened. “Once,” he said.

  Silence.

  Cassor stared at the seam and tried to imagine Aerion looking small beneath something else. It didn’t fit in his mind. Aerion was the sky. Aerion was storms. Aerion was the ceiling of everything Cassor knew.

  And yet the sky itself had flinched earlier.

  Seraphime squeezed Cassor’s shoulder, a grounding touch. “When they come,” she said, “you will not run. Do you understand?”

  Cassor blinked. “Why would I run?”

  The question came out honest.

  It startled the room more than the tremor had.

  Kairos looked at him like Cassor had grown a second head. Athelya’s mouth parted slightly. Marion’s eyes softened in a way that made Cassor uncomfortable.

  Seraphime stared at him for a long moment.

  Then she smiled. Not bright. Not warm.

  Proud.

  “Good,” she whispered. “Good.”

  The seam trembled again, and this time Cassor felt it in his bones. Not pain. Not fear. A pressure shift, like standing too close to the edge of a cliff and realizing the air behaved differently there.

  Tharion stepped forward, heavy and quiet, and pressed his palm to the stone again.

  The moment he did, the castle responded.

  Not with runes flaring.

  Not with walls rising.

  With stillness.

  As if Castle Primarch itself lowered its head.

  “It is making room,” Tharion said again, voice deeper now. “Not for an enemy.”

  Aerion finally moved.

  He took one slow step toward the seam.

  The younger gods tensed.

  Seraphime didn’t stop him.

  Cassor watched Aerion’s posture change. Not into combat. Not into defense. Into something formal. Measured. Like a soldier standing before a general, not because he feared punishment, but because he understood hierarchy.

  Aerion stopped a few paces from the seam.

  And then, with the hall ruined behind him and a cut in the world in front of him, he lowered his head slightly.

  Not a bow.

  Not submission.

  Acknowledgment.

  Seraphime came to stand beside him, one hand still on Cassor’s shoulder, anchoring the boy even as she faced what was coming.

  The seam widened by the width of a breath.

  Cassor felt Lysandra’s hand tighten in his.

  Light withdrew another step.

  And somewhere in that narrow opening, not yet a doorway but no longer only a line, Cassor caught the faintest trace of something impossible.

  Not magic.

  Not smoke.

  A scent.

  Warm. Familiar. Floral.

  Flowers in stone.

  Cassor’s eyes widened slightly.

  Primarch did not smell like flowers.

  But the dreamscape did.

  He didn’t have time to chase the thought.

  The seam shivered again, wider now, the air bending like cloth pulled taut, and Cassor realized with a sudden clarity that the castle wasn’t bracing anymore.

  It was welcoming.

  And whatever stood on the other side of that cut was close enough now that even the younger gods had gone quiet, their instincts finally catching up to what Aerion and Seraphime had known all along.

  This wasn’t an invasion.

  It was arrival.

  The seam did not burst open.

  It unfolded.

  Like fabric lifted by unseen hands.

  The air parted without sound, without force, without violence. Reality did not resist. It yielded, folding aside in a slow, deliberate motion that made every rune along the walls dim in instinctive deference.

  No wind rushed through.

  No fire flared.

  No thunder cracked.

  The first thing that entered the hall was warmth.

  Not heat.

  Presence.

  It moved across the stone like dawn remembered by rock, touching broken glass and scattered bread and the cracked table as if none of it offended it. The castle exhaled. The ribbons along the pillars stirred gently, color returning to them not in brightness, but in recognition.

  Cassor felt the warmth brush against his skin and his breath steadied instinctively.

  Not because he understood it.

  Because some part of him had been standing in it before.

  A bare foot stepped across the threshold.

  The stone did not crack beneath it.

  It softened.

  The figure that emerged was not blinding.

  She did not glow like a sun.

  She glowed like memory.

  White-gold hair braided loosely down her back, eyes bright and immeasurable, holding kindness without fragility. When she smiled, the cracked stone near the table knit slightly, not repaired, but calmed.

  “The noise,” she sighed, voice warm and amused, surveying the wreckage. “You’ve always been dramatic.”

  The words did not echo.

  They settled.

  Seraphime’s breath left her in a quiet rush.

  “Mother,” she whispered.

  Beside her, Aerion bowed his head fully this time.

  Not deep.

  Not low.

  But unmistakable.

  The younger gods froze.

  Cassor felt Lysandra stiffen beside him, then move.

  She released his hand and stepped forward, graceful even in tension, lowering herself in a smooth bow that was more instinct than thought.

  The Light Primordial laughed softly.

  “Oh, don’t start with that,” she said, waving a hand as if brushing aside dust. “I’ve come to see the child.”

  The warmth shifted toward Cassor.

  Not oppressive.

  Not examining.

  Curious.

  Cassor’s pulse kicked once in his throat.

  Before he could move, the seam widened further.

  Two figures stepped through together.

  One felt like growth mid-breath.

  Green and red and gold threaded through skin that seemed in constant motion, like leaves unfurling and embers cooling all at once. Her eyes were bright, restless, alight with possibility.

  The other was stillness embodied.

  Cloaked in shadow so deep it drank the air around it, eyes dark and patient, not cold, but final. Where he stepped, the stone did not soften.

  It endured.

  Life grinned openly as she took in the hall.

  “Well,” she said, hands on her hips, “he’s bigger than last time.”

  Death tilted his head slightly, gaze settling on Cassor with quiet appraisal.

  “Still breathing,” he observed. “That’s promising.”

  Kairos made a small, involuntary sound in his throat.

  Athelya’s fingers twitched again, but she didn’t attempt a spell this time.

  Marion’s expression was reverent and wary all at once.

  Vaelor lowered his head.

  Tharion bowed fully.

  The Light Primordial’s eyes found Cassor again, and her smile deepened.

  “There he is,” she murmured, as if pleased by something only she could see.

  Cassor swallowed.

  He didn’t bow.

  He didn’t kneel.

  He didn’t know if he should.

  The warmth inside him pulsed once, stronger now, like something tapping at a door he didn’t remember locking.

  Behind the three who had entered, the seam darkened.

  Not with shadow.

  With depth.

  A silhouette filled it before it stepped forward.

  Tall.

  Ancient.

  Hair black as the space between stars, cascading down his back—not hair, not entirely. Shadow bound to him, trailing like a second self unwilling to detach.

  When he moved, the air did not part.

  It followed.

  Not commanded.

  Answered.

  The hall shifted.

  Not smaller.

  Not darker.

  Truer.

  Every god in the room bowed.

  Even Aerion.

  Even Seraphime.

  Cassor felt the warmth under his ribs surge sharply.

  The figure stepped fully into the hall.

  He did not smile.

  He did not frown.

  His face was lined not with age, but with time endured. His eyes held storms and endings and beginnings without urgency.

  He looked at Cassor.

  And for the first time since the seam had appeared, Cassor felt something like disorientation.

  He didn’t know this face.

  He didn’t know this man.

  The warmth inside him faltered.

  Confusion prickled at the base of his skull.

  Who—

  The man’s shadow shifted slightly, curling at his heels.

  Cassor blinked.

  A sound echoed faintly in his mind.

  Not in the hall.

  Inside him.

  A voice.

  Calm.

  Measured.

  Asking—

  Why do you endure?

  Cassor’s breath caught.

  The world tilted, not physically, but inwardly.

  Another fragment:

  You are not small because they say you are.

  A third:

  Stand.

  The warmth under his ribs flared into something incandescent.

  The confusion shattered.

  Not gradually.

  Not softly.

  Like a key turning cleanly in a lock.

  Everything flooded back.

  Nights beneath endless dream-sky.

  Conversations carried on wind that did not belong to Primarch.

  Questions asked without pressure.

  Silence shared without judgment.

  The Light Primordial’s laughter in the distance.

  Life’s restless commentary.

  Death’s quiet, patient observations.

  Noxar’s voice, steady and constant.

  Every lesson.

  Every word.

  Every presence.

  Not new.

  Remembered.

  Cassor inhaled sharply.

  The hall snapped back into focus.

  The man before him was no longer a stranger.

  He was—

  The word settled without effort.

  Grandfather.

  Cassor’s shoulders relaxed.

  A small, familiar smile curved at the corner of his mouth.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  Silence detonated across the hall.

  Life burst into laughter, bright and delighted.

  Death’s eyes narrowed slightly, interested.

  The Light Primordial beamed.

  “I told you he would,” she said lightly.

  The Primarch gods stared at Cassor like the stone had vanished beneath their feet.

  Aerion’s head lifted slowly.

  Seraphime’s hand tightened on Cassor’s shoulder—not possessive. Not restraining.

  Unsteady.

  “You spoke to him,” Aerion said.

  It wasn’t a question.

  Noxar’s shadow shifted once, pleased.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  Seraphime’s voice was softer.

  “For how long?”

  Noxar’s gaze never left Cassor.

  “Since the mountain,” he said.

  Cassor looked between them, bewildered by their expressions.

  “You didn’t know?” he asked.

  No one answered.

  Because in that moment, every god in Castle Primarch understood something they had never considered.

  Cassor had not grown alone beneath their guidance.

  He had been watched.

  Questioned.

  Prepared.

  By hands older than their own.

  And the boy who stood between them now did not look divided.

  He looked complete.