Chapter 78
{{{So it’s indeed ti... ti for the end...}}}
Veil tilted his head slowly toward Atlas, whispering with barely contained irritation, "What the fuck is he talking about?"
Atlas only smiled.
It was not a mocking smile, nor one made of arrogance. It was the soft, strange kind of smile that cos from understanding—the kind that hurts more than it soothes. His eyes remained fixed on the Giant, but sothing within them had shifted.
Because he heard it.
Not just the na.
But the essence of the na. When the Giant had spoken it—Atlas—it wasn’t just sound. It was a vibration. A word dipped in truth, soaked in law, then flung into reality where the world itself rejected it. Atlas felt it ripple through his spine, through his upgraded mind, through the still-breathing remnants of the Guide. The very laws of reality flinched when the na echoed in its purest form. The system whispered warnings. The air thickened.
Because now, he could see what he was never ant to see.
Hear what he was never ant to hear.
"...Don’t worry, Veil," he said quietly. "He won’t harm us."
He blinked, and his Truth Eyes flickered into focus.
Before, he had only trusted the colors—red, orange, green—like a cautious child trusting a sword’s glint. But now, it wasn’t just color. It was essence. He could feel what green ant. It wasn’t safety. It was hope. It was harmony. The kind that couldn’t be faked.
The Giant pulsed with it—pure green, humming like a song beneath the skin.
Atlas hadn’t known his Truth Eyes had evolved.
But sohow, they had.
"...My na is Atlas Von Roxweld," he said firmly, voice carrying across the jungle. "Prince of the Berkimhum Kingdom. And truthfully... I am, indeed, human."
The Giant watched him carefully.
Watched the boy who carried the scent of Jörmungandr, the echo of forbidden gods, and the mind of a man who had once held infinity in his palm.
He closed his eyes.
And then his body caught fire.
Not taphorically. Not symbolically.
Flas licked up his spine from his neck to his crown, shifting hue—from bright yellow to electric blue to a searing, blinding green. Symbols carved themselves into his skin, ancient and wild, casting shadows onto the trees like old hymns.
The fire consud him completely.
Veil stepped back, swearing as the ground began to tremble beneath them. "What the fuck?! Did he just kill himself?!"
Atlas coughed as heat blasted toward them, waving the smoke from his face. "No... he’s still alive."
He pointed through the smoke and falling debris, through the crumbling mass of burnt bone and ash. His eyes narrowed, focusing.
"There. Look."
Rising from the charcoal, a new figure erged.
Not a Giant. Not anymore.
A man.
Tall—but human. Broad but burnished. His skin glowed faintly with lingering heat, like tal just removed from the forge. He stepped barefoot over smoldering grass, his long legs trailing embers. His hair still burned—a mane of open fla atop his skull—and his golden eyes shone like the dying suns of distant gods.
He smiled.
"Hello.... Atlas."
His voice was fire given voice. Soft. Absolute.
"I am Loki. Once a prince. Banished to the Dark Continent for the sins of my blood."
He extended a hand.
"Thank you... for setting free."
Atlas looked down at the offered hand.
He should have flinched.
Should have stepped back.
But the old part of him—the mortal part—was too numb to fire. And the new part of him, the part that had survived the Guide and danced through broken laws, saw no threat.
Only kinship.
He took the hand.
Firm grip. Hot.
But Atlas didn’t even wince.
"I feel like we’re going to be close," Loki said, his grin widening.
Atlas chuckled, then nodded.
"I didn’t an to set you free completely," he replied. "But... I don’t mind the credit. And yeah—"
His eyes glinted.
"I feel the sa way."
Veil rolled his eyes, arms crossed. "Great. Another insane prince. That’s what this party needed."
Loki stepped forward, his presence almost too large for the space he occupied. "Don’t worry, Serpent Child. I may be old, but I’m useful."
"That’s what the plague said," Veil muttered.
Loki’s smile sharpened. "And didn’t it shape the world?"
Atlas glanced between them, but said nothing. The rhythm of his heartbeat was slow, even, and the firelight made his shadow dance longer than it should.
Because sothing in his chest knew.
They weren’t done.
They were only gathering.
This eting wasn’t fate. It was a rehearsal. A prelude to the true conflict still rising.
Dracula was dead...
A God... was dead.
A kingdom was waking.
A war was coming.
Loki stared into the jungle canopy. His flas had dimd to embers now—still alive, still breathing, but quiet. Even his grin had faded, replaced by sothing rare and almost reverent.
"You were there, weren’t you?" he asked, voice lower now. "At the center. When it broke."
Atlas didn’t answer at first. His eyes lingered on the sky—those shattered constellations of mory still painted behind his eyelids. "Yeah," he said finally. "I was."
"What was it like?"
Atlas’s breath caught in his chest.
He wanted to lie.
To say it was nothing.
To say it was fire and noise and violence—because those things were easy to na. Easy to wear like armor.
But what he had witnessed... wasn’t that.
"It was... beautiful," he said quietly. "And wrong. Like watching the death of a lullaby. Like seeing a cathedral collapse in slow motion and realizing you’d been praying to the architect, not the god inside."
Loki’s head tilted. His golden eyes softened. "You killed him?"
"No," Atlas said. "Not really. I was... a host. A witness."
"The Guide." Loki’s lips curled again, but this ti there was no mischief in it. Just awe.
"You knew of him?" Atlas asked.
Loki let out a short laugh—strangled, half-nostalgic. "I dreamt of him," he said. "As a boy. Before the banishnt. Before the fire. My mother told stories—about a figure who would co not to rule, but to break rules. Who would burn old altars and free things too monstrous to kneel. I thought he was just that. A story."
He looked down at his hands—still smoldering with the heat of his transformation. "But then I felt it. The Dreaming collapsing. The chains breaking. The air turning thin with possibility."
He looked up again.
"You carried him," Loki whispered. "You held him in your bones."
Atlas said nothing.
Because it was true.
"And now he’s gone," Loki continued, more to himself. "Dracula too. The Warden of Sleep. The poet king. I didn’t love him like you did... but I respected him."
"He was never ant to last," Atlas said. "He built a sanctuary out of grief. And sanctuaries can’t survive when the grief is cured."
Loki’s smile returned—slow, sharp, and dangerous.
"You’re him now," he said. "Not the Guide. But the spark. The afterward. The creature the Dreaming tried to ta and failed, the incarnation whom the fate and death would want to claim."
Atlas’s heart beat once—slow and deep.
Loki leaned closer, voice a whisper behind the flas.
"I followed you out of that realm not just because you set free," he said. "But because I think you’re next."
"Next?"
"The next myth," Loki said, fire dancing in his smile. "The next one the gods will try to bury. The next na they’ll rewrite in holy texts to sound like a villain."
He stood and stretched his arms toward the sky.
"And I want to watch it happen."
Atlas looked at him.
Not as a fla.
Not as a god.
But as soone who understood.
And then, quietly:
"haha....Then you better keep up."
Loki grinned wide. "Oh, I will...but...Wait...umm....wouldn’t any of you have so extra clothes?" Loki asked.
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