CHAPTER 215: CHAPTER 216: OUSEROUS

Merlin could not move.

The flesh that once held centuries of defiance now felt like wet paper—a collapsed cathedral of magic, scorched nerve by nerve by Ouserous’s divine thunder. His limbs lay twisted at unnatural angles, fingers trembling in spastic flicks, not from pain, but from how thoroughly his body had been rewritten. The lightning hadn’t just pierced him. It memorized him—broke past the final sanctums of his layered soul and carved silence into them.

And still... still he looked.

His eyes, bloodshot and cracked like molten glass, locked on two still forms beside him—Aurora and Loki. The two who followed him, loved him, feared him. Lay beside him like shattered statues. He could no longer tell if their chests rose.

Lightning buzzed faintly in the air like a gnat chewing through metal. His skin still hissed with the leftover heat.

He blinked. Slowly.

Aurora.

That girl... That foolish girl. Her golden hair was drenched red now. Not the ceremonial red she wore in court, but a deeper hue—real blood, real death. Her skin, once radiant with the quiet pride of the righteous, was pale. Pale like she had finally accepted the truth. Pale like a prayer that had not been answered.

She was still warm when he touched her hand. But barely.

And Loki—clever, laughing Loki—laid on his side, his eyes half-open, lips curled in a faint sneer even in unconsciousness. There were a thousand curses layered on his skin. Some were Merlin’s. Some were Loki’s own. Some were from their enemies.

But none of them had mattered.

None of them mattered now.

He had failed.

Merlin’s throat contracted. No sound came. But he tried anyway. A gasp. A breath. A curse. Something. Anything.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

He hated the gods. Hated them. From the first time he reached out to the heavens, bleeding in a cavern of books and corpses, pleading for guidance—not miracles, just recognition—they had laughed. He remembered that sound. Cold, high, sterile. A choir of perfect voices echoing with derision.

They laughed at him not because he was weak, but because he was ’too strong. Too smart. Too curious. Too... mortal to reach the knowledge they had.

He remembered when he burned his first altar. The gods didn’t scream. They didn’t cry. They watched

. Like vultures above a battlefield, knowing more would rise. That’s what they always counted on.

Continuity. Worship. A cycle of servitude fed by hope and fear.

And he hated that.

He hated them.

So when he met Aurora—when she knelt beside him in that burnt village and said she believed in him, not the stars, not the temples—he should have turned her away. Told her to run. But he didn’t. He let her stay. Let her fight. Let her believe.

And now she was going to die.... Maybe.

Maybe.

The ground shivered as he landed.

Ouserous.

His massive figure landed like a mountain’s final fall. Red hair wild, eyes glowing blue with webbed thunderbolts branching from his irises. He wasn’t just tall—he was unreal. A vibration in the air. A living contradiction. The son of Thor. A god in the most literal, crushing sense.

He didn’t even look at Aurora or Loki. Not even a glance. He looked only at Merlin. At the heretic. At the insect who tried to rewrite heaven’s geometry.

Ouserous’s voice boomed in Merlin’s mind.

...My father warned you... when you first reached out to us. I remember. I was young, but I remember.

Merlin wanted to spit. But his jaw barely moved.

You wanted change, Merlin. You wanted to tear the sky and give man wings. To ask us to share. To let go. To evolve. That wasn’t just heresy.....That was theft.

His voice was like pressure. Like hands tightening around a world.

Gods don’t like change, Merlin. The worship. The power. The structure... We thrive from it. And you hate it. So I will ask again: Apologize. Take back your words. Start praying tomorrow morning... and maybe I will stop the flood.

Merlin coughed, a thin trickle of blood trailing down his beard. His lips barely moved.

But they did.

"You cunts... Even if you say snow is white... I’d call it a lie." His laugh was broken. "So why in your puny heavens would I ever apologize for?"

His eyes flared with finality.

"Fuck off."

A pause.

And then—

Ouserous sighed. ...I tried. I really did, mother. There was something odd in his voice. Not frustration. Not sorrow.

Excitement.

He raised his hand.

Thunder.

A massive spear of lightning coalesced in his palm. The air tore open as it hummed, white-hot and hungry, blinding in its purity. The pressure alone cracked nearby stone.

...Die.

The thunderbolt surged down.

And then—

{Hold.}

The lightning froze mid-air.

It stopped. Inches from Merlin’s heart. Screaming with power, trapped in time.

A voice.

Footsteps.

Loki’s body stirred, rising from stillness like a dead man rejecting death itself. His bones cracked, his shoulder half-melted from earlier impact, one eye closed from swelling.

He threw Merlin over his shoulder.

"...I will hold him... as long as I can... take him far... far away."

His voice was ragged. But his eyes burned.

Crack.

The law fractured.

The air around them shimmered like broken glass.

Ouserous turned.

He looked at her.

Aurora.

Somehow—barely—she stood. Her legs shaking, her body torn, but her spirit shining like a dying star.

His gaze locked on her.

And she felt it.

That pressure.

Not just power. Not rage.

Death.

It wasn’t metaphor anymore. It wasn’t prophecy. It wasn’t possibility.

It was a creature with a face, and a voice, and a name.

Her legs wanted to run. Her mind screamed. Her stomach clenched as if all her organs had tried to flee her body. But she did not move.

Because she knew—running and staying were now the same thing.

Both meant the end.

Crack.

The law—her law, the sacred human logic she had bent into being—shattered again.

The god moved.

His neck turned fully. A slow, deliberate gesture. Like a beast acknowledging a gnat not for its sting, but for its refusal to die.

...Law? Used by a human... Interesting. But you will die the same.

His fingers twitched. Lightning snapped again.

Aurora’s knees buckled. But she kept standing.

Blood ran down her arms, down her inner thighs. She couldn’t breathe properly. She wanted to scream but all that came out was a dry, rattled gasp.