(As told to me by Daniel, as he remembered the height of his demigod power)
I remember the way the world smelled of ashes that day. There was a swirling wind—hot with the breath of distant flames—and an undercurrent of ozone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. At the time, I told myself that it was nothing but the standard byproduct of cosmic energies colliding on the battlefield. Yet, if I am honest, there was a quiet part of me that realized, in those final hours of the Titan War, the realm itself was trembling in anticipation of something far more devastating. That trembling had a scent: a smoky, electric tang that crawled through the air as if every particle was alive with nervous tension.
Hovering above the front lines, I flexed my radiant wings and watched the battered mortal armies regroup behind me. The noise was immense: the clatter of swords, the groans of siege engines, the bestial roar of Titan monstrosities rampaging across the blood-soaked fields. The horizon flickered with chaotic lights—explosions of arcane power from the lesser gods and demigods locked in their own desperate struggles. My vantage point was some fifty feet above the fray, affording me a perfect panoramic view of the carnage. And though I ought to have felt pity, or sorrow, or even righteous anger at the brutality unfolding below, what I actually felt in that moment was triumph. A heady, surging feeling that crackled through my veins like liquid lightning.
I was Daniel, after all—mighty among the demigods. My name alone made lesser immortals bow their heads, and even the proudest mortal kings had learned to shut their mouths in my presence. Over centuries of constant battle, I’d perfected the art of unleashing cosmic fire on my enemies, of cutting down entire legions with a single slash of a blade forged from stardust. My wings, each feather ablaze with primal luminosity, were the symbol of my near-limitless might. Even the elders of the pantheon had begun murmuring that I was more than a mere demigod—that I’d ascended to something truly divine. My lips twitched with amusement at the memory: their hushed compliments, their awe. My oldest friend, the minor god Alumen, once told me I was “a star in mortal form.” How I reveled in those words!
I snapped myself out of my reverie and scanned the battlefield. Looming shapes of Titan spawn dotted the war-torn plains like colossal shadows, each a twisted caricature of living flesh and elemental fury. Their roars reverberated through my ribcage, but I did not fear them. They were enormous, yes, easily three times the height of a mortal fortress’s tallest tower, but they had fallen in droves before my cosmic flames. Below me, mortal infantry—thousands of them—formed ragged lines to meet the onslaught. Despite their valiant hearts, they were hopelessly outmatched by the sheer power of the Titan monstrosities. That was precisely why I was here. Watching them. Shielding them. Delivering them.
At the edge of the battlefield, I noticed a cluster of lesser demigods—my distant kin, in a sense—struggling to hold back a Titan beast that spat molten rock from its cavernous maw. They worked in tandem, forming wards and chanting incantations, their combined powers only barely matching the creature’s fury. One of them, a slender figure in shimmering armor, glanced up and saw me aloft in the sky. It was clear from the tilt of her head that she was silently begging for aid. I hovered a moment longer, letting a small smirk grace my lips, before descending.
My wings snapped out to slow my fall as I landed in a swirl of dust and displaced air. The lesser demigods stumbled back, alarmed by the sudden shockwave of my arrival, but soon recognized me and bowed their heads in relief. I reveled in the intimidation my presence commanded, a warm flush of pride surging through me. Flicking my gaze toward the Titan, I barked, “Spread out. I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.” My voice carried an edge of impatience, as though I were instructing novices in a lesson repeated far too many times.
One of the lesser demigods, a bronze-skinned youth named Ivel, stepped forward cautiously. He held a faintly glowing spear, though the light of his weapon paled in comparison to my own cosmic aura. “But… my lord Daniel, we’ve fought it for hours, and it—”
“Is still standing because you haven’t truly tested its limits,” I cut him off, half-smiling in a way that was more condescending than kind. I pointed at the Titan, which roared again and stomped forward, the ground quaking beneath its massive hoofed feet. “I’m going to finish it. Brace yourselves.”
Ivel’s eyes darted from me to the Titan and then back again. He and the others took several stumbling steps backward, uncertain but obedient. Inside, I mused at how pitiful it was that these offspring of gods—these “demigods”—had allowed the beast to remain alive so long. Granted, it was enormous, with thick armor plating of igneous stone and a furnace-like maw belching rivers of molten magma at intervals. Yet in my estimation, any being calling itself a demigod should have dispatched such an oversized brute with minimal fuss. My arrogance felt justified; I was convinced so few could measure up to me in direct combat, or in sheer destructive capacity.
I drew in a breath, summoning the cosmic tapestry that existed just beyond the mortal realm’s physical boundaries. My entire being glowed with a swirling, opalescent sheen—colors no mortal eye could properly name. The Titan reared back and spewed molten rock. I raised my palm, wings flaring to shield me, and whispered a word of power. The magma blast froze mid-air, each droplet crystallizing into a floating chunk of igneous matter. I smirked again, flicking my hand. The suspended chunks of rock reversed course and sailed back toward the Titan’s mouth, punching deep into its throat with a sickening crunch. The beast howled in shock, staggering on thick, tree-trunk legs.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the lesser demigods exchanging stunned looks. Good. Let them be reminded of who stands at the top. “You had the right idea,” I called over my shoulder, adopting a patronizing, instructive tone, “but you must outthink these brutes. Channel their power back at them if you can. If that fails, reduce them to cinders.”
Before the Titan could recover, I seized the moment. Wreathing my hands in arcs of cosmic fire—white-hot flares that licked at the edges of reality—I leapt high, wings boosting me upward. My vantage from the air was fleeting but perfect. With an almost casual flick of my wrists, I let loose a concentrated inferno. It was a lance of pure cosmic flame, narrower than many of my grander spells but infinitely more potent. The Titan’s stony exterior hissed and cracked, glowing white from the intensity. Then the entire mass of the creature’s body imploded in on itself as if it were yanked inward by the force of a collapsing star. I exhaled, letting the air fill again with swirling embers and stifled roars. When the smoke cleared, the Titan was a lifeless husk, half-crumbled into an ashen pile on the battlefield. Not even a trace of molten lava remained, for I had transformed its heat back into cosmic energy that now thrummed in my veins.
The lesser demigods gawked; their expressions ranged from awe to alarm. They’d seen me do similar feats in prior battles, but I sensed that none of them would ever fully understand the extent of my power. To them, it was simply an unexplainable miracle. To me, it was the slow but inevitable culmination of centuries spent harnessing the cosmic tapestry. I had studied deeper, sacrificed more, and pushed my body and soul beyond all mortal or lesser-divine limits. In the hush that followed, the mortal foot soldiers watching from a distance erupted in a scattered cheer. Their voices carried grateful reverence. It was as if my name was the only thing holding them together, like the axis of a trembling, war-torn world. Internally I wept for them, most destined to die but we demi-god’s could not fight on their behalf without the sacrifice.
I spun to face Ivel and the others, chest still rising and falling with the aftermath of conjuring cosmic flames. My wings trembled slightly from the output of energy, but I disguised the motion by standing straighter, as though such spells cost me no effort at all. “Next time,” I said curtly, “finish the job on your own.”
Ivel nodded quickly, his helmet catching the dull reflection of a smoldering pyre nearby. “Of course, my lord,” he stammered. “Thank you.”
I sniffed, unimpressed by his gratitude. While it was pleasant to be admired, my mind drifted elsewhere—toward the next wave of Titan monstrosities, or perhaps the rumored stronghold of the Titan King that loomed somewhere on this battlefield. My senses tingled with the distant echo of immeasurable power. There were still legions to destroy, after all, and if I was to be recognized as the realm’s savior in full, I had to ensure the greatest threat was claimed by my own hand.
As I prepared to launch myself back into the sky, an abrupt wave of disorienting energy rippled through the battlefield. The cosmic tapestry around me flickered, as though something had disrupted its natural flow. For a split second, my wings faltered; the bright flame in each feather dimmed. A jolt of alarm shot through me—what was that? I clenched my fists and re-stabilized my connection, forcibly drawing cosmic energy back into my body.
Alumen’s voice crackled in my mind, carried through the telepathic link that some of us in the pantheon shared. Daniel, are you feeling that? he asked, his voice tight with concern. There’s an anomaly near me at the eastern front lines. It’s—
I cut the telepathic connection, not wishing to waste time in needless discussion. Whatever it was, I would handle it. My role was to handle everything; that was what I’d agreed to shoulder and I would see it happened. With a beat of my wings, I vaulted into the air again, ignoring Ivel and the other lesser demigods. They could clean up the battlefield remains. Alumen knew my place was wherever the greatest threat presented itself.
High above the carnage, I paused to survey the entire landscape. It was an unimaginable expanse of shattered earth, rivers choked with the corpses of monstrous behemoths, and fortress walls battered down to rubble. Roaming amidst the chaos were Titan horrors of every shape and element: serpentine fiends with lightning-wreathed scales, bulking brutes with flails of bone and steel, screeching gargoyles that soared on leathery wings. Yet there was another presence overshadowing them all. Even from a distance, I could sense the gravitational pull of the Titan King’s aura. It was like staring into a black hole—an entity so vast and terrible that it warped reality around itself.
I angled my wings and flew toward it, the wind whistling past my ears. Below me, clusters of mortal knights struggled to hold strategic positions, some on battered ramparts, some in shallow trenches that served as last-ditch defenses. Their banners—a patchwork of baronial colors—hung limp in the ashen air. I glimpsed a siege tower crawling across the field, propelled by a frantic team of war horses that looked about ready to collapse from terror. The monsters that beset them were numerous, but from my aerial vantage, I judged these threats to be nothing compared to what awaited me at the epicenter of that unnatural swirl of power.
As I neared, the sky itself seemed to darken, as though clouds of cosmic dust had gathered above the battlefield. The light around me twisted oddly, suggesting the very fabric between realms was stressed, if not close to outright tearing. My wings crackled with leftover cosmic energy, responding to the distortion in unpredictable ways. A rational voice in my mind whispered that I should be cautious. This was no mere Titan spawn. This was their progenitor, their king. Perhaps even a fragment of a primeval cosmic being older than the known pantheon of gods.
But caution was never truly part of my approach. My entire existence had been predicated on pushing my power to new extremes. I soared faster, a comet streaking across the gloom, determined to end this war with a single, resounding victory. Within minutes, I reached a broad clearing surrounded by blackened craters and collapsed ramparts. The place reeked of sulfur and burnt flesh. And there, rising from a pit in the earth, was a shape so colossal that my breath momentarily caught in my throat.
The Titan King towered over the battlefield, easily five or six times taller than any lesser Titan I had seen before. Its torso was a knotted mass of sinew and charred rock. Its arms were each half the length of a mortal city’s main street, and every flex of its fingers could snuff out legions. A crown of twisted horns gleamed wickedly atop its lion-like skull, from which two blazing eyes stared into the emptiness with an ancient, malevolent awareness. Around its form clung tatters of cosmic essence that shimmered in sickening colors. With each step, the Titan King cracked the ground beneath it, creating new fissures that spewed molten rock and toxic vapors.
I glided in a wide arc around the monstrosity, searching for an opening. Far below, mortal soldiers had attempted some paltry barricade with sharpened stakes and catapults, but everything was wrecked. The catapults lay in splinters, their stone payloads shattered. The defenders were nowhere to be seen—dead or fled, I could not tell. I frowned. In all my centuries of battle, I had never witnessed anything that radiated such concentrated destructive potential. The Titan King’s presence alone was a phenomenon; it warped magic fields, corroded the earth, and repelled lesser gods with a raw, primal might.
Alumen, hovered to my left some distance away, his golden armor scuffed and dented. “Daniel, you’re here,” he said, relief mixing with terror in his voice. “We tried to contain it, but we can barely scratch it.” He gestured hopelessly at the swirling aura around the Titan King. “Every time we strike, it regenerates.”
I spared him a quick, imperious glance. I could see that he was exhausted—his chest heaving, wisps of his once-brilliant aura flickering erratically around him. “Stand aside,” I ordered, my voice resonating with authority that left no room for question. “I’ll handle this.”
Alumen’s eyes flickered. Perhaps he wanted to caution me, or protest, or remind me of the unpredictable cost of channeling too much cosmic energy at once. Yet he said nothing. A part of me suspected that he recognized his own inferiority in the face of the Titan King—indeed, in the face of me, the unstoppable force that I was. He nodded, drifting away to hover behind a fractured bastion wall. Another handful of lesser immortals retreated with him, all turning to watch.
With them out of the way, I flew higher, positioning myself directly above the Titan King’s horned head. From this vantage, I commanded the vantage of the storm. We had known each other in the past, but today one of us wouldn’t be leaving the battlefield. My wings burned with unrestrained cosmic light—each feather sizzling with primordial flame. The Titan King seemed to sense my approach. It lifted its enormous head, and for the first time in my life, I felt the weight of an enemy’s gaze that equaled my own. Its eyes were twin pits of cosmic hate, swirling with galaxies of malevolence, not those I had known lifetimes ago. A low, rumbling growl quaked the air.
“Daniel,” it seemed to say, though no lips formed the word. Instead, the name rumbled in my mind as if the beast spoke directly into the psychic tapestry that bound all powerful entities. “Little star… how bright you burn.”
I clenched my teeth. “Bright enough to burn you to ash!.” The retort came out hot and prideful—just how I liked it. Inside, though, an uneasy twinge pulled at me, as though I was stepping too close to an unknowable edge. Regardless, the Titan King would die by my hand. This was the apex of all I had labored for. Even if it took every drop of cosmic flame in my being, I would not shrink before this abomination. He threatened the world, all the mortals on it. Mortals un-numbered but what was one life, even that of an immortal in comparison to so many.
Drawing on the cosmic tapestry was second nature. It existed like an invisible lattice around me, humming with potential. I fed on it greedily, pulling more and more strands of raw power into the furnace of my spirit. Normally, I tempered each draw with caution, ensuring I did not overtax my divine vessel. But now, a flicker of reckless ambition stoked me on. With this foe it was all or nothing, nothing less than everything would defeat him. My wings flared out, doubling in radiance, tripling. My heart pounded so hard I thought it might crack my ribs. Below, the Titan King roared again, the temperature of the air spiking. Veins of dark energy pulsed across its stony flesh, funneling power into its limbs. In that moment, the entire battlefield became a tapestry of cosmic and anti-cosmic energies locked in collision, with me at its epicenter.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
I could hear the faint cries of the onlooking gods. I saw Alumen’s lips move, but the attack of the Titan King drowned out all external sound. My mind was singularly focused on the final blow. A swirling maelstrom of starlight coalesced around my fists. I pressed my palms together, forging it into a spear of impossible luminance. This was a new trick I had devised specifically for the Titan King: a spear that would pierce not only flesh but the intangible cosmic essence that bound him as a Titan to existence. A blow that would sever from reality itself.
The Titan King suddenly sensed my intentions. His eyes blazed with something akin to cosmic terror. He lunged upward, swinging a gargantuan arm that seemed to crack the very sky. I only just managed to swerve to the side, though the force of the blow knocked me across the air like a ragdoll for a dozen heartbeats. My chest seized with pain—an unfamiliar sensation indeed. Gritting my teeth, I flapped my wings, forcing myself upright in midair, and threw the spear with all my might.
No word exists that can capture what happened next, but I will try. The spear left my hands, trailing a kaleidoscope of cosmic fire, ripping all the energy from me that I had been holding. As it hurtled toward the Titan King, the battlefield itself seemed to hold its breath. Every mote of dust, every trembling mortal soldier, every lesser demigod and fleeing beast paused in that fraction of a second. The spear struck the Titan King’s chest. For a fleeting heartbeat, there was silence. Then the spear exploded in a radius of brilliant, coruscating blasts. A pillar of cosmic light erupted, punching a hole through the Titan King’s torso, shooting into the roiling skies above. He let out a horrifying shriek that shredded what little remained of mortal eardrums in the vicinity. His body twisted, the dark energies warping around it in chaotic spirals.
Triumph coursed through me, euphoria mingled with a sinister edge. Yes. This was the moment I had envisioned. The Titan King was undone, flesh dissolving in the epicenter of the cosmic spear. Dust, stone, and black blood rained from the sky. In a single, decisive blow, the greatest threat to the realm was finished. Or so I believed in that glorious instant.
My body, however, had other ideas. Immediately after the spear’s detonation, I felt the cosmic tapestry flicker. The lines of energy I had channeled did not simply release—no, they began to spiral uncontrollably, coiling around me like serpents. The sense of victory froze in my chest. In my reckless fervor, I had drawn far too deeply from the cosmic planes, creating a tear in the fabric that was now hungry to devour its source: me.
The Titan King’s roar died away, replaced by a thunderous crack overhead. The pillar of cosmic light that had impaled the beast lingered, spinning upward into the sky. I realized with dawning horror that it wasn’t dissipating. Instead, it was opening a rift—an aperture through which raw, cataclysmic energy poured. The ground began to quake. Thousands of cracks snaked outward, releasing gouts of arcane flame and noxious fumes. The very air seemed to buckle, warping in kaleidoscopic patterns. Somewhere, far below, mortals screamed. Even the Titan spawn that remained alive turned in fear, stumbling over themselves to flee the disaster unfolding.
That was when the cosmic tapestry bucked, drawing me in as if to swallow me whole. My wings spasmed, the feathers scorching white-hot. A voice in the back of my mind, my own voice, told me I was about to unravel. For all my pride, for all my power, I had not truly planned for the ramifications of unleashing such a destructive blow. I cursed under my breath, in a language too ancient for mortal tongues, and tried to wrest control back. But the energies wouldn’t be tamed. Each thread was beyond volatile—like a fractal chain reaction spiraling out of my grasp.
A sharp cry reached my ears. Alumen soared in close, though the swirling vortex of cosmic energies threatened to shred him if he came any nearer. “Daniel!” he yelled, his voice raw. “What have you done?”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” I snapped. Even at the brink, my arrogance burned bright. I refused to believe that I, among the mightiest demigod of the age, could be undone by my own power. Drawing a ragged breath, I summoned all my will to clamp down on the rift. If I could funnel the energies back into myself, I reasoned, I might contain them—though it would tax me immeasurably. But as soon as I began, the rift spewed a fresh wave of cosmic fire that seared me from head to toe. Agony ripped through my body. My wings, each proud feather once shining like a miniature star, curled inward as they blackened. Sparks of cosmic flame danced over my skin, igniting me from the inside out. Still, I refused to relinquish my hold.
Far below, the Titan King’s body sagged, broken and lifeless. My final blow had indeed ended the threat, but the cost was now manifesting around me like a swirling thunderhead of cosmic doom. Spurred by desperation—and yes, an ember of genuine nobility—I made a choice. If I allowed this cosmic storm to continue, it would ravage the entire realm, destroying not just the monstrous Titan spawn but every living creature, every blade of grass, every city and village. That was unthinkable, even to one as prideful as me. I would not let the realm I had fought centuries to protect be wiped away in a single cataclysmic stroke.
So I gathered everything—my power, my immortality, every last scintilla of my demigod essence—and forced it against the onrushing tide of cosmic energy. I willingly became a conduit, letting the energies funnel into me instead of exploding outward. For an instant, I felt a sharp, exhilarating clarity. It was as though I could see every thread of fate, hear every star’s heartbeat across the cosmos. The realm glowed in my mind, from the smallest particle to the grandest cosmic swirl. It was beautiful, and it was at my mercy.
And then it all turned to excruciating pain.
My consciousness flickered in and out, battered by the unstoppable torrent of energy. Waves of cosmic force obliterated entire sections of my aura. My wings shredded at the edges, their glow now a furious conflagration that burned me as well as the sky. Reality trembled, distorting in a dizzying swirl of color and shadow. The rift overhead pulsed, and I felt something tear inside my soul, as if my very essence was being forcibly unraveled. I dimly sensed that the lesser gods and demigods were fleeing, that mortals were running from the epicenter. Alumen’s stricken face flashed before my eyes, tears streaming as he realized I was truly lost. Could I blame them? Merely existing within a mile of me now was certain death.
Yet there was one glimmer of solace: the swirl of energies, once poised to consume the entire realm, began to collapse inward. My suicidal gambit was working. The unstoppable force was being drawn into a single vessel—me. Every tortured breath I took cemented that new reality, binding the cataclysm to my battered form. If I could maintain that for just a few moments more, the rift would seal. The realm would be saved.
I let out a ragged, primal scream that echoed across the battlefield. My body contorted, cosmic flames writhing across my arms, tearing at my flesh. Through the haze of agony, I sensed the rift flickering, collapsing on itself. A whirlwind of scorching wind buffeted me, and I felt the last wave of cosmic aftershock slam into my chest. The force of it drove me down, down, through the air. My wings, or what remained of them, folded uselessly against my back as gravity took over. The next thing I knew, the hard-packed earth of the battlefield rushed up to meet me.
I crashed into a smoking crater, ploughing through rubble and gore. For a moment, everything was a red haze. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, or if I still had eyes. My entire body felt as if it were on fire, and yet a numbing cold gnawed at my bones from within. My ears rang with an unbroken high-pitched note that drowned out all thought. In that half-conscious state, I was only vaguely aware that the rift had closed, the cosmic flames above subsiding into a churn of dark clouds.
Seconds stretched into what felt like eons. At last, the ringing in my ears receded enough for me to hear the distant rumble of thunder. Rain began to fall—heavy, sudden droplets that sizzled against the still-smoldering ground. I coughed, flecks of blood spattering my cracked lips. My cosmic senses, once so vast and keen, were shattered. Where there was once a blazing sun of power in my chest, there now remained only a tiny ember. My wings lay in tatters at my sides, mere shadows of their former grandeur. I tried to flex them, only to gasp in pain. One was broken entirely, the other singed to the bone I felt things tear inside me. Tears blurred my vision. I am dying? The thought was alien—demigods as powerful as I should never even need to consider such mortality.
Groaning, I shifted onto my back. To my left, the Titan King lay half-buried in a smoking crater of his own. In death, he looked smaller. His once-burning eyes were now empty sockets, his limbs twisted at impossible angles. My final blow had indeed annihilated him. A flicker of triumph mingled with the agony, but the sense of victory was overshadowed by the final realization that I had unleashed something far worse than the Titan King. I had nearly let the realm be consumed. With the last dregs of my demigod strength, I had contained it—but only by letting it consume me.
A rasping gasp escaped my lips, wet with blood, it was supposed to be a laugh. Perhaps this was what the pantheon had always feared. Perhaps they had seen that my hunger for power would lead me to this moment: on the threshold of godhood, stepping a hair’s breadth too far. The Godfall. Fitting name for it, if anyone survives to name it so, I thought numbly. My vision dimmed. The last thing I registered before blackness claimed me was a hush on the battlefield—an impossible hush. No more Titan roars, no more cataclysmic blasts. Just the quiet patter of rain, washing ash and blood away into the ravaged soil.
And then, nothing.
--
How long I drifted in that void, I cannot say. Time did not exist for me in that state. I was neither alive nor truly dead, suspended in a place beyond mortal comprehension. If there were any cosmic powers left to greet me in the afterlife, I did not sense them. I only knew a vague awareness of being adrift in darkness, starless and cold.
Occasionally, I thought I heard voices. Muttered words of mortal men and women, perhaps, or the distant hum of a lesser god. Perhaps they were phantoms created by my fractured mind. But if they were real, it meant I had not entirely perished. A flicker of rebellious pride flared in my soul, whispering that if any demigod could survive the unthinkable, it was I.
Yet I could not pull myself free of that blackness. My wings were gone—completely shredded. That reality weighed on me like an anchor, dragging me deeper into unconscious oblivion. Time and again, I tried to summon cosmic energy to heal myself, only to find I could not feel the tapestry’s threads. A yawning emptiness replaced what had once been the core of my existence. That recognition haunted me, even in the half-lucid dreamscape. I was powerless. My body broken, my divinity severed. There was no telling whether the pantheon itself might hunt me down, or if the realm at large would revere me as a martyr. Perhaps they would all simply forget me, labeling me a cautionary tale of hubris.
If I had possessed the strength to weep, I might have done so. But I had nothing left—no tears, no cosmic fire, no voice to cry out with. Eventually, even the phantom voices faded. I slipped back into the silent oblivion, alone with my thoughts and regrets.
--
When next I opened my eyes, I was not on the battlefield, nor was I floating in cosmic darkness. I was… somewhere else. But that, as they say, is a story for another day. At that moment, lying on what felt like a rough straw pallet, the only thing that mattered was that I had survived. My final memories of the Titan War, of hurling my cosmic spear at my friend and channeling the cataclysmic energies that followed, pulsed in my mind like a half-remembered nightmare. I felt strangely hollow, as if a crucial part of me was missing. And, in truth, it was. Yet the world survived, and I—miraculously—still breathed.
--
But that is for a future report. For now, let us fix our gaze on that final battlefield. I had to do number interviews of those who were there to find out the following. They report that rain hissing on scorched earth. Smoke curling from the corpses of monstrous Titan spawn. A crater in which a battered figure once known as the mightiest demigod lay broken and immobile. Around him, mortal soldiers, lesser gods, and the ravaged land itself breathed a sigh of stunned relief. The Titan War had ended, but at unthinkable cost.
High above, the storm clouds parted, revealing a single shaft of pale sunlight. The Godfall was complete.
No one knew then that Daniel still lived. No one guessed that the realm’s once-glorious champion, whose arrogance and might had lit the skies with cosmic flame, was now crippled, stripped of the power he once wielded so effortlessly. They assumed he had sacrificed everything to seal the breach, to slay the Titan King, to save a war-torn world. And in a sense, they were right.
If there had been any watchers brave enough to approach, they might have seen Daniel’s chest faintly rise and fall, might have glimpsed the ragged flutter of blackened wings. But fear of that swirling cosmic crater, and the immensity of the energies still crackling in the air, kept them all at bay. Overhead, lesser gods departed, reluctant to linger near the site of such devastation, uncertain how to proceed in a world suddenly bereft of its greatest champion. And in the days that followed, the battered mortal armies dispersed, each contingent returning to their own ruined holdings with whispered legends of Daniel’s final sacrifice.
Thus ended the Titan War. Thus began the legend of reforging.
Yet in the hush of that first night after the final clash, a few mortals in search of survivors might have crept close—none certain if they believed in the rumors of a divine champion’s body lying in the ruins. Perhaps among them was a courageous healer or a curious villager, drawn by the faint pulse of life they sensed from him. Whether they took him or left him, whether they recognized him or not, is uncertain in the immediate aftermath. But one thing is sure: if they did see that battered figure, they witnessed the final page of an era. Daniel, the unstoppable demigod, had fallen—not in open defeat, but by the fury of his own unstoppable might. And in that moment, the realm’s future was forever changed.
The cinders of cosmic fire still glowed in the cracks of the earth, forming twisting patterns that might never be erased. Here was the place where heaven and earth met in cataclysm, birthing an event no one would ever forget. Above it all, the hush lingered, silent testimony to the price of ultimate power. Smoke drifted, embers flickered. And Daniel, unresponsive but not quite dead, lay as the single, lonely occupant of that new cradle of ruin.
Such was the final stand of the Titan War, the consummate moment of destruction and fragile salvation. No one could guess at the time that Daniel’s story was just beginning anew, that the demigod stripped of his wings would awaken not as an immortal champion, but as a scarred, atrophied mortal. In the grand tapestry of fate, the biggest threads sometimes unravel, leaving behind quiet seeds of a new destiny. And destiny had far more in store for the man who gave everything to save a realm, only to find himself, in the end, lost to the cosmos he once commanded.
I would say the realm found its peace in that aftermath, but peace in a ravaged world is often fleeting. We call it peace only because, for a while, the thunder of Titan footfalls ceased and the flame-scorched battlefields emptied. Yet the wounds left by the Titan War ran deep—scorching farmland, cities turned to rubble, hearts weighed down by grief. Something more insidious still lingered: the twisted cosmic residues left behind by such a violent tear in reality. No one imagined that cults might arise in the shadow of that devastation, or that leftover Titan spawn would roam the fringes, ravenous for revenge. In that swirling vortex of uncertainty, many whispered Daniel’s name as a prayer, never suspecting he was lost and broken among them. The realm would carry on, uncertain and battered, sowing the seeds for the next great struggle.
But for now, let us look again at the man himself: lying still as the storm clouds slink away, battered beyond recognition. If he dreamt, perhaps he dreamed of the old days, of the pantheon’s golden halls and the adoration of mortal kings. Perhaps, in those delirious visions, his wings were still intact, a shimmering blaze of starlight that commanded respect and fear. Perhaps he soared above the clouds, unstoppable, imperious, believing there was no threat beyond his grasp. A fleeting fantasy, flickering in the feverish darkness of his fractured mind.
In the waking world, the rains intensified, washing away the dust and embers until the battlefield became a muddy expanse of toppled siege engines and monstrous carcasses. Rivers of blood merged with the rising waters. Soldiers scurried for cover in distant ruins or tent cities. But the crater where Daniel fell remained a quiet epicenter, tinted by an eerie glow that gradually faded as the cosmic energies calmed. When dawn finally broke, the site looked less like a war zone and more like a graveyard of kings, silent and foreboding.
All that remained of the Titan King’s enormous form was a petrified skeleton, half-sunken in a flooded pit. Mortals avoided it, superstitious terror keeping them far at bay. None dared approach Daniel’s still form lying near the boundary of that pit until—if rumor is correct—one or two brave souls ventured forth. Some stories say the lesser demigods vanished altogether, unwilling to confront the results of the cataclysm. Others say they lingered only long enough to see if Daniel would stir before resigning themselves to the conclusion that he was gone, body and soul. Even if they had recognized a faint spark of life, they likely feared the cosmic backlash more than they desired to help. In the end, no one can be sure of the truth in that swirling chaos.
What I do know is this: By the time the sun reached its zenith on that day, the crater was empty. Daniel was gone. Whether spirited away by gentle hands or by the residual cosmic energies themselves, no one witnessed it. One could stand on the lip of that crater and see only muddy water and charred bits of wreckage. If one listened carefully, maybe they would hear the echo of a demigod’s heartbeat carried by the hush of the wind. Maybe that hush was simply the realm breathing a sigh of relief.
Such was the conclusion of the Titan War’s final stand. Not in triumphant fanfare, not in the funeral rites of a beloved champion, but in an uneasy quiet that heralded a future of uncertain peace and deep scars. And in that quiet, the greatest champion of the age lay in oblivion, unaware that his legend would outlive him, while his mortal future crept up to greet him in ways he could never have imagined.
That battlefield remains a sacred site to some, a cursed site to others. In the decades to follow, rumors would persist of luminous apparitions at twilight, or swirling motes of cosmic flame that flicker over the waterlogged pit. Pilgrims and opportunists alike would visit, searching for relics or blessings, only to depart trembling at the memory of that residual power. And the skeleton of the Titan King, if indeed it was left behind, became a monolith of dread, half-buried in the silent ground.
This is how it ended. This is how Reforged Divinity began.