Chapter 37 The Cost of Carrying Gods
The road had become a living thing that hated them.
Crops in the fields they passed decayed unevenly, one patch of wheat stood golden and healthy while the next row blackened and rotted overnight. Villagers grew restless for no reason, arguments flaring over nothing. A mother slapped her child for smiling. A merchant punched a customer over the price of a loaf of bread that neither of them truly wanted.
Darius walked in silence, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool morning air. Inside him, the three powers churned like oil and water and fire forced into the same vessel. Plague demanded precision. War demanded violence. Famine demanded absence. They never agreed. They only compromised by tearing at him.
He was privately calculating.
\[Three bonds nearly killed me last night. Four might break something permanent. Five… I may not survive the activation. Six and seven…\]
He didn’t finish the thought. The answer didn’t matter if he stopped now.
Veth marched on his left, axe resting on her shoulder. “This is pathetic. The land itself is flinching from us. I miss when things fought back properly.”
Mara walked on his right, quiet and watchful. She had barely spoken since the black veins appeared on his throat.
Solis moved slightly behind them, elegant and sorrowful. “It is my influence bleeding through him. The emptiness spreads.”
They made camp early that evening beside a dying orchard. As soon as they stopped moving, the wives began speaking without him. Darius had walked a short distance away to wash blood from his hands in a stream. He could still hear them clearly.
Mara’s voice was low and tense. “He is getting quieter. Not just tired. Silent. Like he is calculating how long he has left and refusing to tell us.”
Solis answered softly, guilt heavy in her tone. “He is self-destructing. I can feel it. He carries my hunger now along with everything else. He smiles and plans like it is just another problem to solve, but his body is breaking faster than he admits.”
Veth snorted, but her usual bravado sounded forced. “He is tough. Tougher than any man should be. If he dies, though…” She paused, voice dropping. “If he dies, everything goes back to how it was. The Pantheon wins. The empires keep using us. And I go back to that endless, boring war. I… I do not like that idea.”
The admission hung in the air. Veth sounded genuinely unsettled.
Mara spoke again. “He pretends the blood coughing is nothing. He pretends the black veins are nothing. He studies his own collapse like it is an interesting trade ledger. That frightens me more than the powers themselves.”
Solis whispered, “He stays with me even when my hunger tries to hollow him out. No one has ever done that. I do not know how to carry that kindness without breaking him further.”
Darius stood at the stream, listening. He wiped fresh blood from his lips and returned to camp as if he had heard nothing.
That night, sleep came hard.
He woke suddenly in darkness, gasping. Not from pain. From memory.
He was standing in a vast empty hall. Not his memory. Solis’s. Centuries of watching people consume and consume and remain empty. He felt her loneliness like it was his own. Then Veth’s memory bled in, endless battles that never satisfied her hunger for real conflict. Then Mara’s, three thousand years of watching everything she touched die.
Darius clutched his chest, breathing hard. The three powers inside him were no longer just fighting.
They were sharing.
He laughed once, quietly, the same broken sound from the night before.
Mara appeared at the entrance of his small tent, golden eyes wide with worry. “Darius?”
He looked up at her, sweat on his face, blood on his lips again. “Their memories are bleeding into mine. All three of them. At once.”
Mara stepped inside. “You need to stop this. You cannot keep carrying them like this.”
Darius wiped his mouth and stood slowly. “I have to. Four more to go.”
Outside, Veth and Solis waited. Veth looked restless. Solis looked guilty.
Darius stepped out into the night air. The powers inside him settled for now, but he could feel them watching each other warily through him.
He was no longer just their vessel.
He was becoming their crossroads.