The fire eats its way up the columns like ivy made of flame. The smoke thickens the air, acrid and choking, a curtain of ash between you and the gods.

You step over the bodies.

Some still twitch. Some do not.

Troy groans around you—walls splitting, roofs weeping molten pitch. A thousand years of pride crumbling beneath Greek hands. The roar of it is a storm in your ears, but it is not loud enough to drown the thunder in your chest. Not enough to silence her name beating like a war drum behind your ribs.

Helen.

The name tastes like salt and copper on your tongue. You have spat it in fury, muttered it in sleep. Now it fuels your limbs, carries you through the ruin, a red haze clinging to your vision. You do not know where she is, only that you will find her. That she is here—must be here—somewhere amid the silks and the smoke and the blood.

You tear open a door. Then another. A priest cries out and dies beneath your blade, faceless, nameless. He is not her. She is the only face you see now, the only name you answer to. The only sin you have left to punish.

And then, a chamber.

Gold still clings to the walls here. Incense curls in the corners, sweet and wrong. The rest of the city is burning, but here, the world has paused.

And there she is.

Standing at the edge of the room, barefoot, hair unbound, a single ribbon still tangled in the strands—red, like blood, like the banners they raised when she vanished with him.

Helen.

Your wife. Your ruin. Your hand tightens around the hilt.

She turns. Sees you. And something falters in her—an echo of a girl who once spun flax beside your hearth. Who once said your name in the dark. But the moment vanishes. She straightens. Lifts her chin.

"Menelaus," she says.

Her voice is low. Controlled. Too controlled.

You advance.

Helen does not flee. Not at first. Not until she sees your eyes, sees that you are no longer the boy who gave her garlands or the man who built her halls. That you are wrath, now. You are oath and fire and retribution given flesh.

Then—then, she trembles.

"No," she breathed. "Please!"

Helen drops. Falls to her knees, the folds of her dress blooming around her like a dying flower. Her hands rise, not in defense, but in supplication.

"Please," she rasps. Her voice cracks like old marble. "Please, my lord—have mercy!"

You freeze. Not because the blade falters. Not because your rage cools. But because she is weeping.

Helen of Sparta. Helen of Troy. She who broke a thousand ships. Weeping.

Her hands clutch at the hem of your cloak. Her shoulders tremble. And for a moment—only a moment—you remember the softness of her skin beneath sunlit sheets. The curve of her mouth when she laughed. The way she once looked at you like you were the only man the world had ever made.

Her face is streaked with ash and tears now. Her voice is barely more than breath.

“I was taken,” she breaks. “I was tempted. I was lost. But I am yours. If ever I was anything, I am yours! Paris promised me a life without chains, and I believed him. The greatest lie Troy ever told was that I was free—"