LOGIN(Adelaide & Cael)The passage devoured them by degrees. Daylight thinned behind them within a handful of steps, shrinking to a pale slit through the roots before vanishing as the stone curved inward. Adelaide’s wings became their first light, dim white-gold flame spilling over the tunnel walls, revealing black volcanic rock polished smooth by ancient heat and the passage of countless hands. The floor sloped downward in uneven waves, worn at the centre by centuries of use, and the sound of their footsteps shifted as they descended, trading the hush of forest soil for the hollow echo of boots on stone.The air inside the tunnel pressed close. It was not suffocating, but it held them more intimately than the forest had, wrapping sound around their bodies and returning each breath to them altered. Adelaide could hear the small scrape of Cael’s boot when he adjusted his footing, the quiet shift of leather at his shoulder, the faint metallic whisper of his blade. She could hear her own puls
(Adelaide & Cael)The palace ought to have looked abandoned. It ought to have looked ruined, haunted, distant in the way places become when too much history has bled out inside them. Instead, it looked awake. Waiting. The sight of it pressed against Adelaide’s chest with a force that was nearly physical, and something deep within her answered before she could resist. Her wings stirred, not flaring, but drawing in with a soft, possessive pull, and the flame along their edges brightened until the silver grass nearest her bent away, trembling in the heatless radiance.“Oh my God,” she whispered.Cael looked at the palace, then at her, and whatever he saw on her face made the bond warm with something so tender that her throat tightened. “It was built before gods learned to stop interfering with kingdoms,” he said quietly.Adelaide swallowed, unable to look away. “That is not the sort of sentence people should say casually.”“I was not saying it casually.”“No,” she said, breath catching a
(Adelaide & Cael) The forest transformed itself long before Adelaide glimpsed the palace. It started as a pressure beneath her ribs, subtle enough to masquerade as exhaustion, the ache of too many impossible truths pressed into the architecture of one body. With every step, the air thickened, not with heat but with a mineral density that clung to her skin, raising the fine hairs along her arms in silent warning. The trees had been ancient for miles, but here they had crossed an unseen threshold into something older than age, a realm where time did not simply pass but gathered, coiling in roots thick as sleeping serpents and trunks broad enough to make her feel, for a moment, exquisitely small. The canopy above wove itself into a cathedral of black-green leaves, and the scant light that pierced it arrived in fractured shafts, catching ash, pollen, drifting spores, until the air shimmered with slow-falling gold. Adelaide moved with her wings folded close, the white-gold flame of them
(Apollo)Then he saw it.A small triangle of parchment. Barely visible. Poking from a rip along the side of the mattress where the fabric had torn open.Apollo went still. The entire ruined chamber seemed to narrow around that tiny pale edge. No flame moved. No shadow breathed. No bell rang now, or if it did, the sound had retreated beyond relevance.Apollo crossed the room with terrifying care. Broken glass cracked softly beneath his boots. A thin trail of blood followed from his knuckles, dotting the ash-streaked floor. He stood beside the bed and looked down at the tear.The parchment waited. Small. Quiet. Patient as sin.He reached for it. His fingers were almost gentle when they took hold of the exposed edge and pulled.The parchment slid free with a dry whisper. It was old. Older than the mattress. Older than the room’s current arrangement. The edges had softened with age, one corner darkened by heat or time. It had been folded many times, then flattened, then folded again, hidd
(Apollo)Adelaide's scent was faint. Almost gone. But not gone enough.The discovery struck harder than it should have.Her scent lingered across the bedding in fragile traces, woven through the fabric so lightly that another demon might have missed it entirely. Apollo did not. He recognised her instantly. For one brief, terrible moment, relief flooded through him. Because she was there, this was proof that she still existed somewhere in the world beyond his reach.Then the relief died, because another scent emerged beneath it. Smoke. Leather. Cold ash. Shadow.Cael.Apollo's eyes opened. Slowly. Very slowly.The room seemed to tighten around him. The mountain itself felt quieter. Listening. Waiting.His gaze followed the scent toward the narrow space beside the bed where several travel items had been stored. A pack rested against the wall. A weapons case sat beside it. Partially concealed beneath both lay a dark cloak that had likely gone unnoticed for too long.Cael’s cloak.Apollo
(Apollo) By the time Apollo reached the eastern residential wing, the rage had changed shape. It was no longer sharp. It was vast. A red ocean beneath a black sky. The corridors grew quieter the deeper he moved into the palace. Torchlight shivered against dark stone. Ancient shadows gathered between pillars carved from volcanic glass. The servants who saw him coming vanished almost immediately, disappearing through side passages and service doors with the instincts of prey scenting a predator. No one stopped him. No one dared. Because everyone in the palace knew which chambers waited at the end of this corridor. Cael's. The guards outside his doors knelt before he came into view. One pressed his forehead so hard to the floor that blood smeared the stone. Apollo passed without acknowledgment. The doors opened for him, but too slowly. He tore one from its hinges. The sound of it ripping free rolled through the small chamber like thunder beneath the mountain. The door struck t
(Apollo)Smoke trailed behind him as his feet barely touched the ground. The torches flared violently as he passed, reacting to the magic rolling off him in waves. Shadows chased at his heels like hunting hounds, drawn to their master’s rising fury.He burst into the hallway leading to his chambers
(Apollo)The door shuddered behind him.So did he.Apollo stood in the corridor, chest heaving, fists clenched so tightly his claws had already broken skin. Blood slid down his palms in slow, hot lines, dripping off his fingertips onto the obsidian floor. Each drop hissed faintly as it hit the ston
(Adelaide & The Devil)“Apollo.”The name felt strange on her tongue—too soft, too human, too real for the creature who had ripped her from the world she knew. She didn’t mean to speak it aloud. The sound simply escaped, barely a whisper. It slid out like an accident, like breath forced from her lu
(Adelaide )The silence after he slammed the door wasn’t silence at all.It throbbed.It rolled through the chamber in suffocating waves, vibrating across the stone walls and humming beneath the floor like something alive. The iron in the door still rang with the echo of his exit, a faint metallic







