On his side, in an isolated sliver of time, Kael opened his eyes.Silence crushed him at once.Absolute silence.No breath.No heat.Not even the echo of his own step.
Beneath his feet stretched a white plain, veined with dark scars.Sometimes they pulsed, as if memory itself breathed through those fissures.The air quivered with a strange weight, a vertigo not of the body but of the soul.
The Memory Fragment.
Before him, Mimas stood.An incandescent colossus born of a forgotten volcano.Basalt skin, cracked, bleeding magma through its seams.Each breath in those lungs of stone loosed a low rumble, like a mountain waking.Lava eyes fixed on Kael, ardent, spoiling for battle.
Kael drew a long breath.The heat he felt came not from Mimas's magma, but from the raw, primal tension saturating this place.He raised a hand—not to strike, but to still.
— "Before you turn me to cinders… listen."
His voice split the hush like a blade of glass.Firm.Calm.Not a plea.A statement.
He met the giant's gaze.— "A moment ago, you pierced the truth. You saw through that mask.You saved me from that parasitic Echo that tried to steal even my name.So, in a sense… I owe you my life."
Mimas growled, his flames coughing braziers of sparks that fell as rain of ruddy ash.The Fragment vibrated beneath his weight, as if the warden's anger threatened to crack space itself.
Kael went on.His voice did not waver.— "To butcher you here and now would be a poor way to honor that debt.That isn't how I repay what I owe."
He stepped forward.The ground cracked, and he did not step back.His golden eyes held the colossus's, unblinking.
— "If it does not offend you, I'd like to understand the reason for your anger.To see it. To know it."
Mimas's flames guttered.A rumble rose from his chest, but his arms stayed at his sides.The silence grew near-unbearable, vibrating through the Fragment's seams as though time itself held its breath.
Kael inhaled again.He knew he was risking everything.He added, deeper, sharper:
— "And if, after that, you still want to trade blows with me to the death…So be it."
A feverish spark moved in his pupils.Not fear.A cold lucidity.
He finished, each word falling like a sentence:— "But at least… I will have given us a chance."
He lowered his hand. His breathing held steady.His eyes never left the colossus.— "So then, Mimas, Warden of the Furnace of Instinct… what do you decide?"
A rumble resounded in the giant's chest.His fire wavered, then steadied.His lava-gaze darkened—not with rage, but with a heavy gravity.
He lowered one arm of rock and held out a massive hand.Cracked fingers lit with a dusky red glow.A translucent fragment materialized between them, hovering, vibrating with ancient gleams.
Kael lifted his hand.Their fingers brushed around the crystal.A shock rang through the air, like two oaths colliding.
A translucent window bloomed before Kael, suspended in the air.
⟡ Memory Fragment — access granted ⟡Would you relive the scene of Mimas's Gigantomachy?[ Yes ] [ No ]
Kael didn't think.His lips already shaped the word:— "Yes."
The Fragment thrummed.The world fractured with a dry crackle, like glass shattering to infinity.The white tiles of the floor spun and tipped into the void.One by one, they flipped, revealing on their reverse a scatter of images—shards of a forgotten world.
Then the scene collapsed to rebuild itself.The fissures flared; the ground became a charred land bristling with blackened mountains.Above them, a blood-red sky unfurled, riven with spears of fire.
The Gigantomachy.
They were there.Invisible spectators, intangible.Their bodies had no weight, no scent, no voice.They saw all.No one could see them.
The world crystallized around them.The earth thrummed beneath their feet.A far-off roar rolled up from the guts of an ancient world.
Blackened mountains rose to the horizon, vomiting rivers of lava.The blood-red sky screamed beneath burning lightning, scored with luminous breaches.Every gust carried the acrid reek of ash and scorched iron.
Then… they appeared.
The Giants.Titanic silhouettes, carved of rock and flame, erupting from crevasses like walking volcanoes.Each a storm of destruction: stone arms raised, voices thundering like earthquakes.Their strides shook the crust of the world.
And facing them, an army of divine figures.Silhouettes mantled in light, brandishing weapons forged from aether.Gods.Their war-chants braided with the giants' roars.
The Gigantomachy.
Amid the carnage, one colossus towered above the rest.His shoulders bore the Furnace itself; his veins coursed with incandescent magma.Mimas.
He bellowed, and his cry burst the heavens.His fists felled mountains; his flames swallowed whole legions of divine warriors.Every strike was a catastrophe; every breath, a cyclone of embers.
Invisible, Kael clenched his jaw.He had never seen violence so pure.
But the numberless gods closed ranks.Their voices joined in a litany.Lances of lightning tore the sky, falling in endless rain upon Mimas and his brothers.The ground split; volcanoes screamed; lava drowned beneath torrents of light.
Mimas roared on.His basalt frame split; magma geysered like blood.He kept striking, even as his limbs shattered under heaven's storm.
His brothers fell, one by one.Their fury crushed beneath the weight of celestial vows.
Until only he remained.Mimas—standing in a field of giant corpses, ringed by gods with faces set in scorn.
He dropped to his knees, flames faltering, his body fissured on every side.His roar broke into a lament—a cry of impotent rage.Yet his eyes… his eyes did not close.
They still burned.With hate.With fury.With instinct.
Memory vibrated—and froze.Everything thinned to a breath of ash.
Kael stood a moment, unmoving.Images rattled in his mind: fallen mountains, triumphant gods, giants pulverized.He drew a long breath, searching for words.
— "I understand.Your war.Your defeat.Your humiliation."
His golden eyes narrowed.— "But something… is off."
Mimas still blazed before him.A body cinched by a coal that never died.Lava eyes pulsing with feral light.
Kael stepped forward.— "What I see in you… isn't anger.Anger I know—it's cold, it aims, it strikes.No. What I feel… is something else."
His hands curled, the truth spilling like a weight too heavy to keep inside.— "Fury.Raw.Boundless.Like an open wound that refuses to close."
He lifted his chin.Locked eyes with the incandescent colossus.— "And that fury… it cannot come only from your defeat in that war."
Silence fell.The Memory Fragment's fissures seemed to quiver, as if waiting for the next line.
Kael inhaled again, breath growing heavier.— "No.There's another memory.More intimate.More terrible.The one you're still hiding.The one that feeds your fury."
His mouth tugged into a tired, lucid half-smile.— "And until I see it… I won't know who you really are."
He finished.Silence thickened.Then, slowly, the Fragment's seams widened.Red light burst through—painful, overspilling with new images.
The scene changed.The Gigantomachy faded, replaced by a ruined plain.Giant corpses carpeted the ground, but in the distance a few shapes still shook: women, children, the wounded.Survivors.
Mimas—vast—advanced, his arms bound with divine chains.His voice rolled through the ether:— "Leave them. Spare them. I surrender. My life for theirs."
Silence.Then the gods nodded.A pact was sealed.The Furnace chained Mimas, ripping away his essence, his power, his breath.He dropped to his knees, emptied.
But the instant his fire faltered, divine trumpets sang.And lances of light fell.
The survivors screamed.One by one—children, women, brothers—collapsed.Mimas raised his head, eyes blazing, chains pinning him in place.He roared, but no sound could stop the slaughter.
Everything was consumed.Everything—except him.Trapped.Alone.
The Fragment shook; the images warped and cracked, as if even memory refused to hold that much horror.
So this was the worth of celestial words.