Chapter One.

Eden cast his brown gaze towards Cameron's room, something that had become a habit over the last week, ever since the younger boy had returned. Anytime Cameron was in there, Eden was worried. The first time Cameron had slept, his nightmares had been bad enough that Callum enchanted the room to prevent sound from leaving it and to ease them.

Cameron still didn't sleep well despite the ancient demigod's charms. He hadn't left the apartment, either, as his divinity was so powerful that it permeated everything around him. Callum had enchanted each of the rooms in the apartment against it, so that it would be contained to whatever room the younger demigod was in, provided the door was closed.

His kidnapping, imprisonment, and near-treeification had left its mark on him, and Eden wished he could be there for Cameron. He let out a sigh as the Cupid's words came back to him. Cameron was straight, and there was a potential love of his. Whoever she was, Cameron wouldn't talk about her. The only thing he'd say was that she wasn't around, when Eden asked.

Eden did manage to find out that she was the one who had taught the younger boy martial arts a couple of years ago. Her and her brother, it seemed. They were only together for a few months before parting ways.

That was the extent of what Cameron would reveal, and Eden suspected they didn't part on good terms by how bitterly Cameron spoke about them.

Sighing, Eden grabbed the last fry from his plate and crammed it into his mouth, before taking the plate to the sink to wash. Briefly, a sense of divinity overwhelmed him, filling the apartment. A door quickly closed, and the spatial mage looked at the bathroom, whose door had been opened a moment before.

Cameron must have needed to pee or something, Eden thought. He normally doesn't teleport into it.

A moment later, Eden heard the shower turn on, then shrugged and finished washing the plate. When he finished, he walked over to Soldier and took the dog outside to use the bathroom and toss a ball around for a few minutes.

With Cameron's current state, Eden didn't want to leave him alone for too long. Adam was busy doing something, so he couldn't watch Cameron, and Eden didn't trust the vampire. Otherwise, he'd take Soldier to the dog park to run around.

After a few minutes, Eden brought Soldier back upstairs, where he was overwhelmed with Cameron's divinity once more. The younger boy was sitting on the couch, a bowl of grapes on his lap, h is feet on the coffee table, ankles crossed as he watched cartoons. He was dressed in a pink hoodie and black skinny jeans, his platinum-blond hair darkened by the water from his shower, his dark blue gaze focused on the cartoon.

"Are you okay?" Eden asked as Cameron popped a grape into his mouth. "You were napping for a long time."

"Napping?" Cameron asked. "Oh, that. I didn't get much sleep, so I was working out. Then I got all sweaty, so I took a shower. No! Stop that! That's disgusting! Why would you even say that? Well, I don't care. You're disgusting, so shut up. No, please, shut up. Seriously. Stop that. Yeah, listen to him, but not me. It's not like I'm the one who has to put up with you in his head. Oh, wait, I am. So stop saying stuff like that!"

This has to be good, Eden thought. The voices always say amusing things when he gets frustrated like this.

"What did the voice say?" He asked.

"Huh?" Cameron asked, then huffed. "I did it out loud again, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Eden responded.

He didn't point out that out loud was the only way Cameron could talk to the voices, as he knew it would only upset the mind mage more.

"He said I should try dipping the grapes in mustard."

"That… sounds disgusting," Eden said.

"I know!" Cameron popped a grape into his mouth. "Hi, Callum. Where'd you go?"

Eden turned around to find the ancient demigod standing behind him. Unlike most demigods, Callum didn't possess a divinity. For reasons not given to him, it had been stripped away, something that Adam said he didn't know was possible.

Callum stood over six and a half feet in height, and possessed dark brown hair that covered his dark blue gaze. He wore a dark gray hoodie, his hands tucked into their pockets, and dark blue jeans, black sneakers on his feet.

The ancient demigod was not a people person, Eden knew, and was only around because of Cameron. His cousin's father had freed him from a prison specifically to protect Cameron and help teach him how to use his mind magic, something that happened a little too late to protect the boy from being kidnapped by the Fairy Empress herself.

"To visit an uncle," Callum responded, pulling a hand out of his pocket and tossing something to Cameron. "That should conceal your divinity as long as you wear it."

The amulet he had tossed Cameron was an intricate, chaotic design with black, red, and blue bands wrapping around each other several times. It was no thicker than half an inch at the center and a quarter of one at the golden edges, a perfect ring all the wary around, only three inches across. It hung from a chain as black as any void, and Cameron stared at it in shock for several seconds, then slowly turned his gaze to Callum.

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"You met Lelmaris?" Cameron's eyes were wide.

"The voices tell you his name?" Callum tilted his head to the side. "He isn't very well-known."

"I've met a couple of his children in the past," Cameron's voice turned bitter, informing both of his protectors that it was the set of twins he'd met a couple of years prior. "They wore these. But they said that their father only made them for his children."

"I asked him to make one for you," Callum said. "The first being with divinity to wear it, it will bind to. You can remove it as you wish, but no one can ever steal it from you or force you to remove it or give it to them, not even through magical means."

Cameron nodded, having already known this, and pulled the amulet on. Immediately, Eden felt his divinity disappear.

"That's… impressive," Eden said. "But who's Lelmaris?"

"High God of chaos and destruction," Callum answered. "He makes those amulets so that his children go undetected for longer. He likes to see how much chaos or destruction they'll cause before being found."

"Are all High Gods unstable?" Eden asked, and Cameron snorted. "What?"

"They're ancient beings who've been around since, well, forever," Cameron said. "They have to find some way to amuse themselves. Though I'm still mad at my own dad."

Ulrima, the High God of love and life, had kidnapped Cameron after the boy unlocked his divinity to throw a big party for passing a test. Cameron still wasn't completely sure what the test was.

"I haven't been able to go to the arena," Eden stretched a bit, looking at Callum. "But I've heard that there's a new contender for untouchable. Since you're back, I'll be heading there. Cameron, do you want to come with me?"

Eden knew the answer was probably going to be a 'no', but he asked anyway. Odds were, Cameron was not yet ready to be around fighting again, especially after being one of the two people who killed the Fairy Empress.

"No," Cameron answered. "Callum's really, really old. Like, really old. That means he knows lots of stories."

"Alright," Eden felt surprised by the answer. "I'll see you two later, then."

Cameron looked at Callum as Eden teleported into his room to change before teleporting to the arena, and the ancient demigod sighed.

"I'm not going to be allowed to turn into a dog, am I?" He asked.

"No," Cameron said. "What's the War of the Line? You fought in it? What was it like? Don't give me the gory details, I just wanna find out what the War of the Line was over. And your role in it."

Callum nodded, then sat in Eden's armchair, stroking his chin before explaining to his younger cousin about the War of the Line.

Long before most worlds that have life now had life, there was a single world where all species and races originated. All sapient life could trace its roots back there, and it was where the first gods formed, including the High Gods.

Back then, the gods walked among mortals, ruling over them personally, much like how some did on Earth from time to time. Gods and demigods, angels and nephilim, roamed the world freely back then.

One day, a demigod was born who was unlike any other. He was a son of Ulrima, a powerful god who was constantly fed by many things, even without worship. A High God, among the first. It was the first demigod sired by any of the High Gods after their ascension to that status.

At the time, Ulrima didn't pay much attention to his children – most gods didn't care what their children did, after all. However, he was in the habit of binding his children because of one particularly nasty habit of theirs, something Cameron seemed to not have an inclination towards.

Somehow, another god found out about this daughter of Ulrima's and how powerful her magic truly was. A natural mind mage with the power of a High God was a tempting reward, and he stole her away, training him to serve him.

It was a god of darkness and evil, and he corrupted her, turning her into a perfect warrior of hatred and spite. He built up a cult using her powers and befriended many gods who served darker ideas. Once his power was strong enough, he began to conquer the world with the gods beneath him.

Soon after that, the gods who served good ideas began to rally their own followers and angels, forming a second side and began to fight against the darker gods. The battle lasted for three days and nearly destroyed the world. Most mortals who wanted no part in the battle found spatial mages and them create portals to flee, hoping that their gates would lead to other lands.

Callum himself had fought on the side of good, and had even assisted in creating the portals, guiding them to other worlds he'd found during his journeys. He and his mother both did so, their ideas being to protect mortals from the darkness.

Cameron's own mother-in-law, the High Goddess of protection and sanctuaries, ascended to the status of High Goddess in that three-day battle, mortals worshiping her and asking for protection, their worship filling her with immense power, enough to create sanctuaries, havens where only the strongest of the gods would chance breaching.

When the war ended, the First World had been devastated to the point that even now, billions of years later, it had yet to recover. There were some mortals there, but not many, the environment harsh and corrupted by the War of the Line. Many gods had been slain in the war as well, to never be recovered or remembered.

It was the first true war between good and evil the universe had ever known, and was where the line between them was finally drawn.

"Whoa," Cameron said when Callum finished telling him about the war. "So our battle with the fairies… that doesn't even compare."

"No," Callum shook his head. "Though the war against the fairies can be compared to it. It's cost more lives than the War of the Line, and by freezing the Fairy Forest and destroying those trees, many realms were outright destroyed. The only reason why the War of the Line can be called worse than the Fairy Wars would be because of how short the actual war lasted. If it were stretched out over the same timeframe as the Fairy Wars, it would be much, much less significant."

He didn't add that when comparing the populations during the wars, the War of the Line would remain more significant. Ninety percent of all mortals were killed during it, as well as more than half of the gods, angels, demigods, and nephilim. Not one god was killed by the Fairy Wars.

"Okay," Cameron seemed to relax a little to him. "So-"

"No more stories," Callum said. "You will learn a spell, now."

"But I already know spells," Cameron pouted. "I don't want to train more."

"You need to," Callum stated. "You have to learn to control your powers, now that they're even greater than before. When you unbound your divinity, you increased the power of all of your magic. What might have knocked a mortal out before could outright kill them now."

"Teach me," Cameron quickly sat up straighter, pulling his feet off the table.

Callum nodded. Mentioning that Cameron could accidentally kill someone was definitely the way to go to convince the younger demigod to learn how to control his new level of magic. Cameron did not like the idea of killing, even if he'd already done it several times.

And being scared of doing it again, especially by accident, was the primary source of the boy's nightmares.