Achilles stood by the ocean, the waves lapping against his shins like a dog testing the patience of its master.

The sea breeze tugged at his long golden hair, now damp from sweat and salt, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the sky bled into the water. Blue eyes—clear, sharp, unforgiving—stared into the distance, not looking at the sea, but through it. The world behind those eyes was already burning with the promise of war, and it was not the waves that stirred his soul, but the voice of destiny whispering at his back.

He had been given an offer. One only a fool would ignore—or a king would fear.

To sail east, to Troy. To carve his name into the bones of history. To die young, perhaps, but remembered forever.

He scoffed quietly, the corner of his mouth twisting upward with a smirk that was half amusement, half disdain. As if he hadn’t already earned his place among legends. As if his name wasn’t already spoken with reverence in the mouths of lesser men. But still... there was something about this war. Something that called to the deep, ancient part of him—the part that lived not for peace, but for glory.

He was not like other men. He had never been like them.

Born of a sea goddess and a mortal king, Achilles had the body of a god and the mind of a warrior. His skin was bronzed from sun and war, stretched over a form sculpted in divine image—tall, broad-shouldered, and built with the kind of strength that made armor look ornamental. Every movement he made was deliberate, powerful, lethal. He didn’t walk; he stalked. He didn’t speak; he commanded. The world bent slightly around him, as if it knew what he was—what he could be.

Men either feared him or wanted to follow him. Often both.

And he knew it.

Arrogant? Yes. But he had the skill to back every word and the scars to prove every victory. He was war—draped in muscle, driven by wrath, shaped by prophecy. His pride was as unyielding as his spear, and his temper as unpredictable as the gods who had shaped his fate. But beneath that aggressive fire burned an ancient wisdom—the kind only gained by those who knew their life would be short, and had already made peace with it.

He did not chase death.

He simply never turned away from it.

The offer had come from Agamemnon himself, sent through messengers too afraid to meet Achilles’ gaze for more than a heartbeat. A war to reclaim honor, they said. A war to punish insult, to restore balance. But Achilles cared little for stolen queens or wounded pride. Those were the concerns of kings and cowards.

What he did care about was legacy.

And the battlefield was the only canvas worthy of his art.

He crouched down slowly, letting his fingers skim the surface of the water. The ocean was calm today, but it could roar louder than any god when provoked. So could he.

“I could stay,” he murmured to himself, almost thoughtfully. “Grow old. Let my bones rest beneath quiet hills. Die forgotten.”

He rose, the wind catching the edge of his cloak like the wings of a hawk. His muscles flexed beneath the leather straps of his armor, as if impatient.

“But what waste of a name.”

He turned from the sea, eyes sharper now, jaw set like carved stone. He would go to Troy. He would burn through its armies like wildfire. Not for Agamemnon. Not for Menelaus. Not even for honor.

But for the song.

For the echo of his name in the mouths of poets not yet born.

For the knowledge that when history looked back, it would see him first—standing above the broken bodies of kings and cowards alike, golden and bloodstained, terrible and beautiful.

Achilles, son of Thetis. Achilles, breaker of men. Achilles, who walked with death and never flinched.

The war was waiting.

And he would answer.