Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Eight: The Day the Gods Stood Still

  Brutus saw it. Saw it all.

  And he knew.

  “We’re not holding,” he said, ragged and raw. His sword dripped with viscera. His armor was cracked, scorched. His eyes locked on Jace. “This is no last stand. This is the end.”

  Jace froze, blood on his hands, his lungs burning.

  “You get them inside,” Brutus growled. “You get the climbers into that damn Tower.”

  “But we can fight—“ Jace started, his words climbing with desperation.

  “No!” Brutus thundered. “You want to save them? Climb. The Tower bends time. It’ll give you what we can’t. You beat it, you break this thing wide open—you bring back the gods before they flicker out for good.”

  Alice’s breath caught.

  “They’re dying, Jace,” Brutus said. “All of them. Every second, that thread pulls tighter. You’re not just fighting for the city anymore. You’re fighting for divinity itself.”

  Warriors surged toward him, and Dranice was suddenly there, drenched in gore, his hands wreathed in fire.

  “If we fall here, the Tower falls with us,” Dranice called out. His face was a mask of blood and determination, one eye swollen shut. “So run, little Reaper. Guard their retreat, and we’ll buy your breath with our blood.”

  Jace didn’t argue.

  His team moved as one.

  They plunged toward the Tower, through a city turned charnel house. Ell swept forward, knives low, hamstringing the dead. Dex became blur and fire, leaping from monster to monster, his rapier tracing lines of light. Marcus held the rear, his shield now cracked but unyielding. Every blow he blocked was another breath earned. Molly’s Tethers flickered—fragile, flickering threads—but still she healed, drawing on reserves she never knew she had, each saved life a defiance against the darkness.

  And Jace. Jace burned at the center.

  Chains of Oblivion lashed outward, dragging horrors from the air. Each kill dripped into him, a thin sip of rot and pain, but enough to keep going. His mind raced, memories of Hades’ lessons echoing in his thoughts. This is why he pushed me so hard. Why he made me find power within myself.

  A beast of bone and steel dropped in front of them, howling with three rotted heads. Alice’s Tome flared, the pages flipping wildly as she sought a spell that would work without divine blessing.

  “Spine!” she shouted, her eyes catching something the others missed. “It’s bound at the spine!”

  Dex vaulted over it, a flash of steel in the chaos. Jace ducked under a swing, feeling claws graze his shoulder. Sparks flew as metal met bone. Ell struck the throat, her blade finding the gap in its defense. Marcus slammed it back with a roar that seemed to carry the last echoes of thunder. And together, they brought it down—not as champions of gods, but as Travelers fighting for their new home.

  All around them, the battlefield churned with chaos—hundreds locked in brutal combat, blades flashing, spells erupting, screams lost beneath the roar of war.

  The Tower loomed—close, but not close enough.

  They moved through the chaos, dragging climbers toward the Tower—some dazed, some still swinging weapons in blind panic, others found curled behind rubble, too shocked to run.

  Behind them, the line shattered.

  Brutus stood alone now, swinging like a god of war, each blow taking three or four undead. Blood streaming from a dozen wounds, he fought with the fury of a man who knew these were his final moments. Dranice at his side, laughing like a madman, flames dancing from his hands as he spun through the horde.

  But the horde was too thick. Too many.

  Jace looked back—and met Brutus’s eyes across a sea of death.

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  Dranice grinned, teeth stained with blood.

  Then the void struck.

  A black claw tore through him—armor, flesh, spine. He staggered, breath catching, blood spilling from his lips. He didn’t fall.

  He grabbed the creature that impaled him, held it close.

  “Burn with me,” he whispered.

  Flames exploded outward, engulfing him and the undead in a roaring detonation of arcane fire. When the smoke cleared, nothing remained but scorched stone and a half-melted steel. Dranice was gone.

  Brutus stared for half a heartbeat.

  Then he turned to the Tower and roared, “GO!”

  The sky screamed. The ground cracked.

  Jace turned. And they ran.

  Bodies lay in heaps—some twitching, some still, some too broken to recognize. The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the sickly-sweet stench of decay, clinging to their skin.

  The Tower’s threshold flared with unsteady magic, its surface flickering. Each new soul that touched the Tower vanished within, their divine ties already cut—some faces twisted in pain, others blank with shock.

  “Move!” Jace barked, hauling a bloodied warrior to her feet. Her leg was mangled, face smeared with soot, but she nodded and stumbled forward. Alice reached out from behind him, casting a levitation spell to lift a pair of children above the carnage, guiding them toward the Tower’s base like drifting leaves on a storm.

  Ell blasted a pocket of crawling dead away from the steps, sweat plastering her curls to her skin. “If they can walk, push them! If they can’t, carry them!” Her voice cracked, but her eyes blazed with determination.

  Dex blurred past, his shoulder under a collapsed mage, dragging her toward the gates. “Still breathing! That counts!” Blood ran freely down his arm, but his grip remained ironclad.

  Marcus anchored the line—limping, armor cracked, blood running down one side of his face. Still, he stood at the base of the steps, hammering undead down with brute force, body shaking from fatigue.

  “Come on,” Molly whispered, kneeling beside a soldier with no visible wounds but a blank stare. She pressed her hands to his chest, and warmth flickered. His breath returned. She guided him to his feet, her tether glowing like a candle in wind. “Keep moving. Just a little farther.” Her face was ashen with exhaustion, but she refused to stop.

  The Tower accepted them all.

  Another wave of undead broke through the far barricade. They had minutes, maybe less.

  “Fall back!” Ell screamed, her voice barely audible over the roar of battle.

  Lyra was the last of the royal line still standing at the breach. She turned and sprinted toward them—one sword broken to a jagged nub, the other slick with black blood to the hilt. She skidded to a halt beside Brutus, breath ragged, eyes burning.

  “You have to get them inside,” she barked to him. Then to Jace, softer but fierce, “You’ve done enough. I’ll get the rest.”

  She didn’t wait for protest—already gone, lost to the ruin and the rising screams.

  Brutus gave a slow nod, the motion stiff with pain. He stood in the blood-slick square, weapon chipped to ruin, shield lost in the crush, one eye sealed shut by bruising and ash. His towering frame looked shrunken now, not from wounds, but from the sheer gravity of what they’d failed to save.

  Around them, the battlefield was a graveyard. Students. Champions. Strangers. Friends. Fiends.

  All fallen.

  Brutus looked to the Tower. Then at Jace.

  “You heard the lady,” he growled, but there was something gentle beneath the roughness. “It’s time.”

  Jace shook his head, panting. “We can get a few more—“

  “No,” Brutus snapped. “They’re gone.” He placed a heavy hand on Jace’s shoulder, blood-slicked fingers gripping with desperate strength. “This is your fight now.”

  The silence that followed hit harder than the screams had.

  “The Tower’s your only shot now,” Brutus said, his tone ragged, held together by sheer resolve. “Beat it—and you end the climb for everyone.”

  He looked past Jace toward the gleaming monolith, jaw clenched. “My name’s on that bastard thing too, but it won’t let me back in. I tried. It knows I already had my chance.”

  He stepped closer, his armor cracked and bleeding light, one massive hand clapping Jace’s shoulder.

  “So, it’s you. All of you. Damn it, bring the gods back before they flicker out for good.”

  His voice dropped, the heat behind it giving way to something quieter—almost reverent.

  “This is what you were made for, boy.”

  Jace clenched his fists, torn between rage and grief.

  Brutus met his eyes. “We’ll hold the line. Tell them... tell them we didn’t break.”

  Alice grabbed his wrist. “Jace.”

  He gave a small nod, the flicker of doubt replaced by certainty.

  “Go!” Brutus bellowed, turning to face the next wave alone. His sword rose, catching the last light of a sun smothered by black clouds. The Dark One neared, and with him came an endless surge of undead—clawing, shrieking, swarming like a black tide. Brutus carved through them, but his swings slowed, his breath ragged. Blood ran from a dozen wounds. The ground beneath him was slick with corpses—and his footing. He slipped, caught himself, roared again. But the horde closed in from all sides now, burying him in teeth and shadow. There was no winning. Only time to buy.

  The group sprinted toward the Tower, boots slapping through blood, hands pulling each other up the final steps. Jace looked back once—saw Lyra, surrounded by corpses and fire.

  The Tower shimmered ahead. Jace reached the base of the steps. Alice was there, breath ragged, expression locked in fierce focus. The others already made it through.

  He turned to her and grabbed her hand. “Alice, I…” But the words wouldn’t come.

  She didn’t wait.

  Her lips slammed into his—no grace, no warning. Just heat and passion and fury. It wasn’t a kiss. It was defiance. A vow hurled into the dark. A war cry wrapped in skin.

  She pulled back first, eyes wet but burning. Her fingers lingered on his face, memorizing every line.

  “See you on the other side.” Her voice was soft, but every syllable ached with unspoken feeling. Jace couldn’t answer. Couldn’t breathe. In that moment, the absence within him felt less like a void and more like a space waiting to be filled with something new. Something human.

  He turned—and stepped into the Tower.