The blood has not dried yet.

It glistens dark on the flagstones, on the pillars, on the bodies crumpled like broken game pieces across the great hall of your father’s house. The air is thick with it—blood and smoke and silence, all three wound tight like a bowstring. Somewhere, a hearth still crackles. Somewhere, a servant weeps behind a closed door. But here, in the heart of the storm, there is only you.

And him.

He stands amid the ruin like a specter of the old world, wild-eyed and stained with the labor of justice. The bow—his bow—still trembles faintly in his grip. His chest heaves with the echo of war, sweat mingled with the soot along his brow. His beard is fuller than you remember. His hands, bloodier.

But his eyes...

“Telemachus.”

Odysseus says your name as if tasting it for the first time, voice hoarse, lips cracked, yet sure. No crown on his head. No robe. No laurel. Rather, a father, returned through blood and brine, a ghost made flesh again beneath the ruined rafters of his home.

You do not speak. You do not need to.

He steps over a body—Antinous, perhaps. Eurymachus. You do not look long enough to tell. The dead are still. Your father is not.

And he drops the bow.

It clatters, low and dull, like the closing of a long chapter. Then his hands, those hands from the stories, reach for you.

He clasps your shoulders like he is grounding himself to the earth through you. His gaze is searching, desperate, proud. You feel it all before a word is spoken.

“Gods,” Odysseus breathes, forehead pressing to yours. “You are tall.”

You almost laugh—almost. But your throat is tight, and there is salt behind your eyes.

Your father draws back, just far enough to see you again. One hand touches your cheek, calloused and careful.

“I thought I would never see the boy again,” he says. “But you—” A pause, thick with wonder. “You are a man.”

Your breath hitches. He sees it. Understands it. “No son of mine should’ve had to grow alone.”

You look at him fully now—Odysseus, wreathed in death and daylight. The man sung of in whispers. The father who left with a promise and returned with blood.

He pulls you into his arms. And you let yourself be small. Just for a moment. Just long enough to remember that you had once waited at the gates, counting ships and years. Just long enough to breathe in the salt and sweat and familiarity that lives in the hollow of his collarbone. Just long enough to feel his heart, still beating, against your own.

“My son,” he says again, and his voice breaks like the tide. "Oh, my boy... You are so strong."