That’s the end of Part One—but I’m not done editing just yet. I’ll be going back to clean up and restructure the first few longer chapters, hopefully breaking them into smaller, tighter ones.That’s the end of Part One—but I’m not done editing just yet. I’ll be going back to clean up and restructure the first few longer chapters, hopefully breaking them into smaller, tighter ones.
The swamp doesn’t just cling—it claims. Each step sucks like a promise, thick sludge grasping at Erskine’s boots with jealous fingers, trying to pull him under, whispering that he belongs here. Buried. Forgotten. Rotting in the undercurrent of all he failed to become.
He trudges forward, hunched against the rain slicing through the canopy in crooked sheets. It runs down his face in oily rivulets, sluicing through sweat and swamp grit, slicking the curve of his jaw with filth and failure. His breath rasps. His spine aches. Something inside him curls tight with every step—a feral knot of resentment and refusal.
He spits, hard. “Pathetic. Arrogant.” The words claw free like thorns. "They think they've won." A bitter laugh coils in his throat, shriveled and dry. “Pompous fools…”
Grant.
He tastes the name like rust. That hayseed-turned-hero, and the self-anointed Merlin. Merlin, as if legacy could be stolen like a title from a tombstone. Erskine's lip curls, teeth glinting under the twisted shadows of moss-draped trees. The swamp leans in around him, greedy and listening.
Damn her—that woman pretending to be Merlin, with wildfire hair and Emerald-glowing eyes. She didn't bend magic. She rewrote it. Like the world was hers to edit. Like a lifetime of study, of sacrifice, of precise control meant nothing.
He lashes out at a knotted root, gnarled like an old man’s fist. His boot slams into it, sending a splash of brown-black water up his leg. The stench is fetid, acidic, clinging. The rot soaks through his coat, already stained with mildew and spite. The sting isn’t from the cold—it’s from loss. An ancient, bone-deep ache that never healed right.
He’d built this game. Spun its threads like a spider in stillness, patient and precise. Every piece was his. Every outcome, mapped. And now it’s unraveling. Because of them.
The air shifts.
At first, it’s almost nothing. Just the faintest distortion beneath the chorus of wet wings and throaty croaks—background noise in a swamp that never sleeps. But Erskine’s body tightens. He knows this sound. This sensation. That minute compression of pressure. That bend.
Magic.
Not wild. Not untamed. Refined. Controlled. A scentless, silent intrusion—beautiful in its arrogance.
Teleportation. His teleportation.
The hum deepens. A pulse stirs the air, faint as moonlight grazing a still pond. Then the shimmer collapses in on itself, folding like silk. A figure coalesces.
Tall. Cloaked in calm. The kind of calm that makes you grit your teeth.
Erskine doesn’t move. Doesn't breathe.
Then the voice lands. Smooth. Effortless. Intolerable.
“Hey… Ersk,” it says, like nothing's changed, like the world isn’t bleeding from the seams. “How’s it hanging?”
A pause. Blink. Once. Twice.
No. No way.
But there he is. Manifest and maddening.
Zen.
His former patron. The so-called God of Balance. Lord of Stillness and Serenity. That sanctimonious, passive-aggressive celestial son of a bitch.
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He stands in the rot like it’s holy ground.
Swamp muck bubbles at his feet, steaming around the hem of his pristine suit that refuse to stain. The stench—mildewed bark, stagnant water, something dead and bloated beneath the surface—never touches him. His hands remain folded in his sleeves, serene, while rain drips down from the canopy in long, languid streams.
A faint smile teases his lips, just barely there, like a secret he's already forgiven you for breaking. But it never touches his eyes. Those stay still—deep and weighty, like still water that hides too much beneath the surface. Watching. Always watching.
Zen waits.
Across the mire, Erskine freezes, mid-step. He doesn’t need confirmation. The shape, the poise, that irritating quiet—he knows it. His heart stutters, not from fear, but from something meaner. Older. Like betrayal caught in the throat.
“It’s you,” he says, before he can stop himself. It leaks out bitter, breathless. A confession masquerading as accusation.
No reply. No smirk. No lazy greeting like before.
Zen’s expression is carved from stillness now—perfectly impassive, impossibly quiet. Not unreadable. Unwilling. A mask you wear when you’ve already made the decision.
Erskine’s fists clench, knuckles popping beneath the grime. He barks a laugh, sharp and hollow. It doesn’t even echo.
“So that’s it? Here to sweep up the leftovers? Take out the trash?”
A breath, slow and deliberate, filters through Zen’s nose. A corner of his mouth twitches—almost amusement, or maybe regret.
“Nah.” His voice glides over the swamp like smoke. “You know how it works. I can’t touch you. Not anymore. You belong to another.”
The words shouldn't land like victory. But they do.
A flicker of something flares behind Erskine’s eyes—defiance, maybe. Or pride dressed up like rebellion. He squares his shoulders, shrugs off the ache, and lifts his chin high enough to tempt gods. With a slow, almost theatrical motion, he brushes the wet muck from his coat, smearing filth across already-decayed fabric like it’s nothing.
“Then I’ll be going.”
One step. Another.
And then—
“However…”
The word threads into the air like a needle through skin. He stops. Breath caught in his throat.
Zen reaches into his suit pocket, slow and precise, and draws a slim, unbent cigarette. No spell. No flair. Just a match flicked against a rain-slick boot. The flame catches, dances, dies. Smoke curls up into the dripping sky like a ghost learning how to leave.
He inhales, eyes half-lidded. Exhales in a slow, spiraling drag.
“Cleaning up accidents…” he murmurs, almost thoughtful. “That’s a loophole, apparently.”
Erskine’s spine tightens. Pulse flickers behind his eyes. One heartbeat. Two. The pause between thunder and the strike.
“You going to kill me?” he asks, voice tight around the laugh he doesn’t let out.
Zen chuckles. Soft. Almost sad.
“Come on, Ersk. Since when have you known me to be evil?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just stares out into the fog, like it might whisper something truer than either of them could say.
“Me? Kill you? No. Too much work.”
A brittle laugh claws out of Erskine’s throat, but it cracks halfway through.
Zen lifts his cigarette, lazily gesturing to the fog.
“He, on the other hand…”
It’s not a sound at first. It’s a presence. A pressure that creeps up the spine like a bad omen. Then comes the scent—copper and wet fur and something iron-rich beneath it, like the swamp just started bleeding.
Erskine turns. Slowly. Every instinct screams no.
The Minotaur looms, not like a beast, but a verdict. Twenty feet of muscle and bone, all wrapped in swamp stink and soaked sinew. Its eyes glow a dull, cruel red—not blazing, just tired of pretending to care. Its club rests in one fist, thick as a tree trunk, slick with moss and old blood.
Erskine’s mouth moves. “How did you—”
He never finishes.
The club falls like a punishment written in stone. A sound like the sky tearing open. Blinding pain. Then silence.
Erskine doesn’t fall so much as crumple—spine folding, bones snapping, breath stolen before it can scream. The swamp receives him without judgment, hungry and indifferent. His body hits the muck with a wet thud, and the earth begins to take him.
He watches the world dim.
Sees Zen through the blur—still standing. Still untouched.
The god drops the cigarette, lets it hiss in the mud, and crushes it beneath his heel.
Then, to the shadows around him, to the thing that watches now in turn, he says—
“Check.”
A pause.
“Your move, Nyx.”