Chapter 3 The God Beneath the Stone

Titus didn't ask questions-not at first. He fed her, gave her a cloak, pointed her toward a blade left over from the last war and said, "If you want to live, swing it like you mean to make the gods cry."

Cassia didn't need training. She needed focus.

Her hands remembered ritual, not war-but her soul had shifted. It wasn't the muscle that made her dangerous now. It was the rage. Cold. Precision-forged. Wrapped in divine whispers.

Each night she dreamed of fire. Of marble cracking under her touch. Of Marcus bleeding beneath a sky full of crows.

And always-Velarion.

"I gave you power, child of ruin. Now use it."

The ruins where she had awoken called to her again.

Titus followed.

"I don't like this," he said, standing at the edge of the forgotten temple. "Gods don't give gifts. They make trades."

"I already paid the price," she replied. "My name. My life. My heart."

He tilted his head. "Then what's left to lose?"

She didn't answer. She stepped onto the altar. The vines coiled lovingly around her ankles. The runes on her arms pulsed to life-like ink rising through skin.

Stone slid aside. A stairway revealed.

Titus cursed behind her. "This isn't a temple. It's a tomb."

"No," she whispered.

"It's a doorway."

They descended into Velarion's shrine, where the air tasted like ash and memory. Statues lined the walls-gods with no names, lovers bound in stone, thrones cracked by time.

And in the center: a mirror of obsidian.

Cassia approached. Her reflection flickered. Her skin glowed with divine runes. Her eyes-gold-ringed, like Velarion's.

A whisper in the dark:

"You are no longer Cassia Valerius."

She reached for the mirror. It shattered.

And when the shards hit the floor, she saw not her reflection-but Marcus.

Older. Colder. A general. A tyrant.

"He thinks you're dead," Velarion said. "Use it. Let love be the dagger."

She left the shrine that night with fire in her lungs.

Titus waited beside the campfire. "You're going back, aren't you?"

She didn't speak.

He laughed bitterly. "Then let me come with you. The capital's crawling with bastards who need killing."