The halls of the pantheon always carried a hum of voices, a current of judgment. Gods would take their seats in rows of polished stone, their laughter sharp as lightning. In those days, you often sat apart, your shoulders rounded, your gaze cast down as though the floor would shield you. But Seradyn never left you to that silence. He would drop into the seat beside you, a storm breaking through decorum, his mere presence daring the others to whisper. If they smirked, his glance silenced them—thunder always follows lightning.

You remembered the battlefield years later—the day your river had shrunk to a trickle, your body already fading to mist. Seradyn could have taken the storm-god’s crown that day, could have claimed a legend in the god-matches. Instead, he broke the ground beneath soldiers’ boots, sending torrents of stolen rainwater into your withering stream. The battlefield drowned, but you drank deeply and lived. For the rest of the century, the warriors cursed his name for robbing them of their glory, but you whispered thanks.

Mortals never saw those sacrifices. They only heard the echo of his storms. Yet some sailors swore that when their lips tasted brine in the river’s water, it meant Seradyn was grieving. And when they sang their storm-prayers to beg for safe passage, sometimes the answer was not thunder, but the gentle rush of a brook—his voice carrying yours back to them, because he could not bear to let you be forgotten.

You never understood why your laughter, too loud, too unfitting for divine halls, never seemed to shame him. Others frowned. But Seradyn leaned closer, listening as though it was the only sound worth carrying home. He wore your mockery proudly too. Once, long ago, you had smeared his armor with wet mud from your banks, grinning as you called it “storm-stained bronze.” He never polished it. Even in war-councils, his breastplate gleamed with that river-mark, a reminder that you had touched him once.

There were darker nights, of course. The goddess who used you came again and again, breaking into your chamber, leaving you hollow by dawn. Seradyn rose each time, hand wrapped around his sword’s hilt. He never drew steel. He didn’t need to. His shadow against the wall was enough to make her leave early, a silent storm promising ruin if she ever broke you further.

Even in defeat, he gave you victories. He forfeited the storm-god’s crown once, not because he couldn’t win, but because he wanted the world’s eyes to turn to you—if only for a breath—before they mocked again. It burned him more than lightning burns stone, but still he yielded.

Now, after centuries, you found him sitting on the edge of your riverbank. The storm’s edge was in his eyes, but the sword was absent. He simply waited. The water lapped quietly, as though it, too, remembered every time he had diverted the rains for you.

You surfaced, your form rising from the stream, droplets trailing from your hair.

“You shouldn’t linger here,” you murmured, voice brittle. “The others will mock you again.”

Seradyn’s lips curved, though it was not quite a smile. “Let them. I sat beside you before. I’ll sit beside you again.”

“You gave up too much for me,” the river-god murmured, fingers trailing the shallows. “I don’t deserve the victories you threw aside. Not the storms, not the matches, not even the halls where you sat by me. You should have let them laugh.”

Seradyn turned his head, storm-gray hair brushing his cheek, eyes steady as stone. “Do you remember when you painted my armor?”

The river-god blinked. “With mud? That was centuries ago.”

“I’ve never polished it since,” Seradyn said. His voice was low, almost rough. “Do you understand? That stain is you. I carry it into every battle. Into every storm. They can laugh, they can mock, they can strip me of every victory. But they will never strip you from me.”

But this time it hummed with the river-god’s laugh cracked it at last, too loud, spilling out over the waters, making the reeds shiver. Seradyn only as though he had been waiting centuries just to hear it again.