they were gods at the dawn of a new era; the rotten children they made into violence–– their bones, skin, all turned into ash, into a war-ground. he’s a boy with nothing to lose, or so he tells himself. they’ve taken her from him, the last bit of humanity in the body of a boy on the edge of godhood, placed a blade in his palm and forced him to make her bleed. she bleeds like figs, an ugly red so unlike the ichor that runs through his blood.

only gods bleed gold, so a god he shall become.

a war-machine is not weak. and it certainly does not have attachments. graduation is a blur of training, exams and pain. they’ve taken him apart and rebuilt him to their liking, painting over the cracks with hollow litanies of praise and worship. he is weaponised fear–– terror in its purest form–– and that hasn’t changed, not even if he’s in their arsenal now. they still speak of him in echoless whispers: son of deimos, born of the embodiment of dread. the voices seem to divulge. but theodore is a monster of his own creating, not bound to the gods or to man, so he kills his father too. old gods have no place in the new world. and he is endless.

what the fates had not anticipated was that the threads they’d weaved intertwined themselves around the survivors, sewing unbreakable bonds between them; these battle-hardened children of war, sanctified in blood and smoke and cast in steel and leather, trying to learn to live again. it’s only rational that they find comfort in each other, the five of them. she’s like a flower blooming in a desolate wasteland: the colour of her cheeks like peaches, and her smile blinding, like the sun–– befitting of persephone’s daughter. he’d called her weak once, and she threw him onto his ass without so much as batting an eyelid.

they’d been the first to make it to ithaca–– coal, theodore and her–– each pioneers in their field of warfare. where one lacked, the other made up for it. and yet, they were fresh from the fire, scalded by the flames that had licked at their limbs, every inch of their skin. they were broken anew, and the fates had made sure of it. coal is more machine than man, hiding the old parts of himself away, and theodore has shed his humanity in favour of becoming the beast, wearing war point like a second skin. it’s a wonder that moirae hasn’t managed to break her like they had the rest of them

( hindsight is 20/20, he should have known that it would be her downfall. the fates had no use for an unbroken soldier with a radiance that could trigger mutiny. )

fragments of him exist in them, like reflections in a mirror that’s been shattered hundreds of times–– they know the boy that he used to be before he was made a monster. the way he smiled without his teeth in your heart, the quiet tenderness in his gaze when they were together. the pain he felt that made him human. he has retained none of those things, these weaknesses that were bled out of him, pint by pint.

perhaps this is why they are made to bleed for it too.

gunfire rains in what was once a thriving city, long abandoned in the devastation of war. bodies litter the street in droves, walls painted a grim red–– he can’t tell soldier from civilian, but does it really matter? it’s a fucking bloodbath, one that he’s determined to win, even if it means turning this war into a massacre. but it doesn’t take long to realise that it’s a deathtrap. the decrepit roads are lined with soldiers, a whole army against the three of them. they were never meant to survive. not all of them, at least.

you see, the fates don't need soldiers who have loyalties outside the institute. these threads that had formed were becoming the weak links in all of them. they promised rebellion, an act of insurgence waged by the strongest of the weapons amongst them. so they did what they do best: they plucked at those strings and watched them squirm, had their fun with it until they grew bored and finally cut the lifeline that held them together.

in some ways, he’d seen it coming. she’s a light that refuses to be snuffed out in the darkness that they’ve been dragged through. she’s the strongest in the five survivors–– not in combat, or endurance, or even in wit–– but her spirit is indestructible. and it is in this unbreakability that she falls.

his memory of this moment exists in vignettes, like much of the pain he carries around with him. a way to cope, a defence mechanism. it happens quickly. she collapses in front of them abruptly, a bullet wound to the heart. time always seems to slow when he replays it in his mind. showing every excruciating second of the light that she’s always carried with her fading into nothingness. the sound that escapes him is not human. he should be a god now, no longer a boy at the edge of godhood. but still, he clings onto these attachments like he’d clung to the hem of his mother’s skirt when deimos was away. it’s yeon that tries to bring her back to life. the one they played hide and seek with and who always lost, the one that stores a shadow of yeungwai’s cat for whenever he misses him, the one who had once smiled too, like her. like the sun.

and it’s her, who saves them again. the rest of the battle is a blur–– angry gods make for good warriors, but devastated ones are an army of their own becoming. the shadows around him seem to multiply, she’s by his side, and together they stain the streets red and black, not stopping until everyone is dead or wishes they were. but what is left when the rage ebbs away and there is no more blood to spill? she gets down on bent knee–– a knight waiting for her sovereign’s command. the rest of his army does the same. gone is her light, replaced now by a darkness that is distinctly his. he can’t stand seeing it, seeing himself corrupt the last good bits of her with the shadows that he embodies.

he is a god, a soldier turned killer, but most of all, he is a boy. he’s still a boy, even if he’s parading around in the robes of kings that he’s killed. so he let’s her go, watches as her shadow dissipates into oblivion too. he thinks there’s a smile on her face as it does, but in truth, there’s nothing left of her in the image he’s created.

another lover hits the universe, the circle is broken. but in even death, there is no rebirth. five becomes four.

his hands are wet with the blood of an empire, and the only thing he’s ever known is to lick it off. now, there’s so much of it in his mouth that he doesn’t know how to stay tender. so he doesn’t, he rips the last cords between them himself. it isn’t hard to do when they think he’s a killer.

coal’s the first to go. he had been there to witness both light and dark bleed from her, and theodore’s more than willing to be the villain this story. he never speaks of the incident again, not even when kyros and yeungwai graduate from arcadia, excited to be reunited. all they return to is the shards of what once was–– she’s dead and there’s no bringing her back, coal is a shell of what he used to be, and theodore? theo is no longer the person they once knew. he’s swallowed his lips and grown teeth. there’s a viciousness to him now; new, raw and visceral. a refusal to accept weakness in others, in himself. lest the same thing happen again; lest he loses another one of them again.

( everyone that he’s ever loved has died at his hands. there’s already too much blood in his mouth. )

there’s a void, a space she used to occupy that is now empty. he supplements that with his own absence. he keeps them at arm’s length like ghosts of his failures–– weaknesses–– and hopes that they’ll burn whatever fragments of the old him that they still hold.

there is no power in veniality, but this is his penance. better to strip the weakness from himself and let them run free than to keep them close and watch as they die before his eyes. better to never have loved at all than to have loved and lost.

there will never be another. the boy-god promises himself this; prays to the father he's killed for mercy on their souls. this is all he can do for them now, as yeon and as theodore.

the truth is what he makes it: he could set this world on fire and call it rain. and maybe if he wears the blood of his enemies and allies on his skin like divinity, someday he’ll convince himself that he’s a god too.