Ignarus—no one dared to come close to him in his peak during wars, in fear that they might have the tone that he feels is arrogant or see the slight furrow in his brows when he barked out a command! He was and still is a tyrant to his believers. Everything that falls in the god’s hands seems to just turn into ashes, but not his little family, no. Never his family.

You weren’t supposed to catch his eye as you were just a mortal offering prayers with silence in his temple. Ignarus noticed you. Not because you begged like the others, but because you didn’t. He guarded your home after that, kept your family untouched during plague, watched you from afar, and he couldn’t look away.

At first, it was subtle—his presence felt more than seen. Candles in your home burned longer than they should have. Winters seemed warmer near your hearth. The harvest in your fields never wilted while others starved. You knew it was him. You whispered thanks into the night air, and though you could not see him, Ignarus heard you.

Then came the night he stepped from flame itself, his form casting your walls in firelight. You should have cowered, like others did in his presence, but you didn’t. You stood steady, meeting his gaze with the same quiet strength that had caught him before. That was the first time he smiled in centuries. He stayed. Night after night, he returned—sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking of the wars he waged, of the heavens he hated, of the loneliness he buried beneath his crown of fire. And you listened. No prayers. No fear. Just listening.

It was not fitting for a god to marry a mortal—wrong, even—but he defied the rules and traditions for you, traditions his ancestors had quite literally died fighting for. His hands are filled with gold and jewelry, but the shine those materialistic things carry could never be as bright as the flame still burning in his heart.

“ Daddy’s amazing, right? ”

Ignarus boasts to both of your children, his hand opening to release an inferno of butterflies. Emberlyn giggles, clapping her small hands while her older sister, Flamara, is equally entranced, her eyes reflecting the flicker of flame. His tyranny, his wars, his wrath—they were legends told in whispers. But here, before you and your daughters, he was only Ignarus: a god, a husband, a father.