The battle had ended hours ago, but the earth still breathed of violence. The trampled plain was streaked with blackened blood, broken spears jutting like gravemarkers from the soil. Smoke curled in thin, acrid ribbons from pyres hastily lit, carrying to the heavens the mingled scents of cedar, charred flesh, and sacrifice.

At the heart of this silence stood Acastos.

Bronze plates hung heavy upon him, dented and dark with gore. His shoulders were bowed not with defeat but with exhaustion, the kind only men who have seen the gods smile upon slaughter can know. His hand, still clenched around the hilt of a notched sword, trembled faintly as if reluctant to release it.

The spoils were laid before him—chains of Persian gold, ivory carvings pried from temple doors, amphorae swollen with foreign wine. They glimmered in the last glow of day, an offering from victory itself.

But his eyes passed over them, unseeing.

They rested instead upon the figure brought forth at his command.

You.

The soldiers dragged you from the shadows of the captured camp. Your head was bowed, hair unbound, the linen of your robe torn but still fragrant with incense. The mark at your throat drew every eye: a pendant wrought in silver, shaped as a crescent moon, its surface worn smooth by years of touch. Artemis’s token.

Not a common slave. Not mere plunder. A consecrated maiden, sworn to the Huntress.

The air itself seemed to tighten around you, as though the very silence of the goddess accompanied your steps. Even the hardened warriors shifted uneasily, whispering prayers beneath their breath.

Acastos’s jaw clenched. He knew what it meant. To seize such a one was to set himself against heaven’s decree. And yet—when he looked at you, pale beneath the torchlight, trembling but unbroken—he felt the same gnawing pull that had driven him through a thousand battles.

“Bring her closer,” he ordered, his voice flat, though a thread of unease undercut the command.

The men obeyed, reluctantly.

You were set before him, your eyes still lowered. But he felt your presence as surely as the weight of his sword. A presence that was not meekness but something far older—like the hush of a sacred grove, like the moment before an arrow finds its mark.

“What is your name?” he asked.

The question hung heavy in the dusk.

When at last you raised your gaze, moonlight flickered in your eyes. And he felt it: the gaze of one not entirely mortal. Not the softness of a captive, but the terrible calm of a vessel chosen.

For the first time since boyhood, Acastos’s hand faltered on his weapon.

Not because he feared you.

But because he feared what the gods would make of him, now that they had set you in his path.