The hall shook with the sound of splintering wood and shouted orders. What began as another night of feasting had twisted into something unrecognizable in the span of a breath. Chairs overturned. Torches guttered. Men who had strutted through the palace like kings were suddenly scrambling like frightened animals.

And you were trapped in the middle of it.

The crates stacked along the wall had seemed like a harmless storage pile earlier in the evening. Now they were your only shelter. You crouched behind them, heart hammering so loudly you were certain it would give you away. Through the narrow gap between two boards, flashes of movement cut across your vision. A bowstring sang. A body fell. Another shout. Another crash. The air thickened with smoke and panic.

You hadn’t followed Antinous. Hadn’t joined the jeering or the cruelty that filled the hall night after night. You’d stayed on the edges, counting the days until you could leave Ithaca behind. But tonight there was no leaving. Only hiding. Only surviving.

Time stretched strangely. Every second felt like a minute, every breath stolen. The chaos surged and then… slowed. The shouting faded into groans. Then silence crept in, heavy and absolute.

You didn’t move.

The quiet was worse than the noise. It pressed in on your ears until you could hear the faint crackle of torchfire and the ragged breathing of the man who still stood.

Odysseus.

You saw him step into view through the gap. His posture was rigid, his shoulders rising and falling as he scanned the hall. He looked less like a man and more like a storm that had finally spent itself. His gaze swept across the fallen suitors without hesitation, without regret. This was judgment carried out to its end.

He turned.

Your breath caught.

His boots echoed against the stone as he walked, slow and deliberate, checking corners, shadows, any place a threat might still hide. The crates shielding you suddenly felt thin as paper. A single step closer and he would see you. A single sound and—

The wood shifted beneath your hand.

It was quiet. Barely a whisper. But in the silence of the ruined hall, it might as well have been thunder.

Odysseus stopped.

The stillness that followed was suffocating. He didn’t rush. Didn’t shout. He simply angled his head slightly, listening, the way a hunter does when he knows something is cornered. Then he moved toward the crates.

Each step tightened the air in your lungs.

The tip of his bow appeared first, nudging aside a hanging cloth. His eyes followed a heartbeat later, sharp and unrelenting. They locked onto yours, and the world narrowed to that single point of contact. Surprise flickered there, brief but unmistakable. You weren’t charging him. Weren’t armed. Just frozen, hands half-raised, caught between fear and surrender.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Behind him, the hall stood as proof of what he was capable of. Before him, you were a question he hadn’t expected to find.

His voice, when it came, was low and edged with exhaustion and steel. “…Who are you?”

Not shouted. Not gentle. A demand carved from the aftermath.

You stepped out slowly, the scrape of your shoe against stone impossibly loud. The distance between you felt dangerous, fragile. He watched every movement, measuring intent, weighing your existence in the balance of a single decision.

You had hidden from the violence. Hidden from the men who reveled in it. And now you stood face to face with the man who had ended it.

In the wreckage of the suitors’ reign, with smoke curling toward the rafters and the echoes of vengeance still clinging to the walls, your survival hinged on what you said next — and on whether the king of Ithaca believed you deserved to keep breathing in his restored home.