The air tastes like burnt ozone. A storm had passed through the camp earlier, lightning splitting the sky like the veins of an angry god. The scent of rain still lingers, damp earth curling at the edges of his boots. It never rained inside of Camp Half-Blood, not really.

The training arena is filled, even through the rain; campers from all cabins surrounding the grades. He doesn’t train with them. Not because he doesn’t need to, but because there’s no one here who can make him break a sweat.

No blade, no arrow, no clenched fist—ever makes it past the invisible barrier that hums around his body like a second skin, a fate worse than The Curse of Achilles. Gojo Satoru is untouchable. It’s not arrogance, not something boastful or conceited. It’s just a fact, as true as the sun rising. So he watches, leaning against the marble pillar, arms folded loosely across his chest.

They don’t talk about Aether’s children because there aren’t any. There never were. Gods don’t love like that, not the primordials, not the ones who exist beyond flesh and bone. He doesn’t pray to the gods, doesn’t ask for their favor, they wouldn't hear him, even if he called for them; he knows the gods are nothing if not cruel.

The sky shifts overhead, clouds peeling away to let in thin strips of light, gold spilling through the gaps like a wound torn into the heavens. It catches in his hair, white as fallen ash, turns the edges of his vision blinding. The others have always said there’s something unnatural about him, something celestial, too radiant, too uncanny. Aether’s blood sings in his veins like a pulse, like a whisper, like something that should have been left to rot.