love, which pardons no beloved from loving

The tide had not moved, or rather, it had, in all the ways the ocean always does: creeping and retreating, churning under a summer sun too hot to be gentle. But the spot on the sand where Dorian now stood was unchanged. Precisely where he had stood before. Precisely where he had said he would return.

He had not dressed for sentiment. His coat was dark and crisp despite the heat, tailored to an old-world standard that had never quite reached Torchline’s shores. Not a speck of sweat touched his brow. Not a grain of sand sullied his polished boots. He was the eye of the storm in a world that had born the burnt of his planning.

Hands folded neatly behind his back, he faced the sea. The violet curl of Starfall loomed behind him—his creation, his claim—and yet it was the horizon ahead he watched with quiet finality. He did not pace. He did not fidget. He waited. The kind of waiting that made lesser men sweat. The kind that bent time around it.

The morning was bright, the waves cruel, and there was only the faintest scent of static on the breeze.

He'll rekindle all the dreams
it took you a lifetime to destroy

There had been no grand notices. Only a few letters sent quietly and with speed in Hadama's usual penchant for understatement and bare facts. The Tidebreaker had gone to the Jailhouse to tell the Reaper in quiet, even tones that she would be returned to her Family. Of her freedom's price he said nothing but that Dorian would explain when she saw him again, letting her believe what she wished.

And soon enough the day had dawned and the sun had risen, and Hadama had handed Deimos the Vi's Rose that had been sent to him a few weeks earlier. Better to be prepared if treachery met them on the beach, and the Sword had ways of concealing and storing items that the Tidebreaker did not.

Then he went to the Jailhouse once more and nodded grimly to Remi where he stood guard. "She may walk unbound," he had rumbled quietly, granting her that dignity at the end. Or perhaps indignity, having seen her weakness without the Void's strength to empower her. They did not need chains or manacles or harsh hands to control her now. Hadama walked beside her, slow and measured as they made their way to the meeting place so that those who had gathered in preparation arrived at the appointed time.

Neither late nor early. And bringing with them the promised Dahlia, diminished but alive, in their midst.

Dahlia's body may be diminished but her mind is not, and whilst she's utterly at the mercy of the bellycrawlers who had put her down, it doesn't stop the quiet, disdainful sneer she gives them at their generosity. To walk unbound, then, but flanked on all sides by the sort of power she had once wielded, even if its source is primitive and unclean compared to where she'd drawn her strength. 

Sweat trickles down the back of her neck and her dark hair remains loose, wild in its waves, tossed by the salt-sea breeze. Her feet are bare and blistered, her clothes loose and modest thanks to the needs of this new body and its difficulty coping with the high temperatures. She walks with her chin high but her eyes down, all the more so at the sight of the darkly-dressed man waiting for them on the shore.

Falling to a halt when prompted, the Reaper's hands - nails bitten to the quick, knuckles grazed and bloody from her flares of temper within the Jailhouse - clasp gently before her, and she drops her head further. "I am sorry," she says through a voice made rough from alternates of screaming and lack of use. The apology isn't intended for those gathered - never - but is directed for Dorian alone.

let me put my lips to something
let me wrap my teeth around the world

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

i was raised as a scorpion
being pulled by the moon in a high tide

With the letter in the back of his mind and the absolute need to ensure he’s there early, the Flood’s arrival had come late in the night, just after the stars had begun to show along the coast of Haulani. He’d spent a night within the Inn, prepared, bright and early to arrive just when the exchange would occur. And as such, he trails after the group that has collected Dahlia, his jaw set tight, but with nods granted to everyone in attendance - Hadama, Remi, and Ronin.

Such that when they reach the beach and she walks unbound, Sunjata hangs to the side, silent but forcing himself to stare at Dorian, to bite through the way the man’s face is permanently horrifying, all too many eyes and teeth and caverns, yawning skin pulled too taught over the confines of what would typically be bone. But through the pride of himself, he continues to watch, to prepare with muscles taught and careful, just in case.

the flood

that's why i'm broken, yeah,
am i a villain or a saint?

Noah stepped onto the Torchline coast to meet the other demigods, the sea wind catching the loose shirt as waves crashed against the sand. Salt bit the air, mingling with tension, but he kept his stride even—measured.

Already, he could see the Dorian’s silhouettes ahead—still and watchful, presence as deliberate as ever and matching the tone that made Deimos react. The prisoner was the fulcrum, Dahlia brought to her knees, but the real weight hung in the space between both sides. Noah could feel it in the air. The Forsaken made his way to stand near Sunjata, though his eyes moved between Hadama and Dorian.

He breathed in, and out. And waited.

Sentinel.

They were here for the world. For its people. For the fragile peace stitched together by those who still believed it mattered.

He didn’t speak. There was strength in their silence—in the way they stood beside each other, gods' blood humming quiet beneath their skin.

There then they were—a line of divinity forged not from likeness, but purpose. Protect Caido. Hold the line.

f o r s a k e n

an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth
a knife for the ribs

Ronin wouldn't miss this for the world. Ronin, who had felt the sting of Dahlia's talons in a very personal way, who had lived under the yoke of her threats to his family, who had been the one to press the thorn of Vi's Rose into her flesh and strip her of her power; while every part of him wants nothing more than to tear her to shreds, he knows this isn't about him.

So as satisfying it would be to see if he might be able to shake some real emotion into Dorian's infuriatingly neutral expression, he stands quietly by and waits. His feet take him next to Sunjata automatically, though, and firebolts prick the air around him, locked and loaded and ready to cause havoc at the mere suggestion of any fuckery on the part of the Family.

Because whilst he can't touch them with any celestial force, the Reaper is now a different matter.

RONIN

REMI

the alchemist

Walk me home in the dead of night,
'Cause I can't be alone with all that's on my mind

Remi walks the shore with Hadama and the others, Dahlia silent between them, and lets the wind tug at his curls and the salt sting the inside of his throat. There’s a flicker of doubt in his sea-glass gaze as it lifts across the horizon, looking not for beauty, but for signs of betrayal. His magic is already laid—thin and quiet and woven through the sand like fishing line—catching gently at the presence of every person he means to protect.

Dahlia ’s barefoot steps crunch beside him. He can feel her, still raw with the kind of rage that’s harder to shake than the void. Her hands are scraped and trembling. Her voice—when it breaks free—is rough from disuse and screaming, and though her apology is aimed forward, Remi still hears the blade in it. Still remembers the way she’d smiled when she thought Flora wouldn’t rise again.

His jaw works as he exhales slowly through his nose.

There’s no satisfaction in seeing her brought low. Not really. Just a prickling tension in his chest and a wordless ache behind his ribs that has nothing to do with her at all. He doesn’t speak to Dorian. Doesn’t look too long at the still figure waiting by the surf like he hasn’t already rewritten the shape of the world. Instead, Remi just plants his feet in the sand and listens—to the crash of waves, to Ronin’s soft fury beside him, to the quiet strain of the net he’s holding taut through his bones.

He hopes Hadama is right, but his hands don’t shake for having kept them ready.

---

Remi casts Spread Thin over the group.

Magic: Spread Thin | Can soak the damage cast at all allies within 60ft. Cannot use any other actions.
Type: Light | Rank: Mastered

So say you'll stay with me tonight.
'Cause there is so much wrong going on outside

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

The way the world altered, shifted, from day to day was always somewhat awe-inspiring; weeks before, the apprehension had been nettled into his ribcage more so than before, and now, with something else on the precipice, Deimos wasn’t quite sure what to feel.

So he held everything inward, stretched and banded together in his lungs and bones, arriving in Torchline with all the stoicism and quiet that had eternally carved its wake into his soul. The reserve lodged even deeper, casting aside multitudes and litanies for the sake of waiting it out – presuming, in some parallels and junctures, the Family would try something.

Hoisting his bag of holding higher on his shoulder, he maneuvered to stand amidst the crowd – alongside Noah, Hadama, Remi, Ronin, and Sunjata – nodding to each in turn, but otherwise silent. His incantations could be at the ready, within a moment, a second, should anything be tried. The Sword gave no other credence to the Family however, eyes simply narrowing.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same

Dorian did not move.  Not when the demigods gathered. Not when familiar faces arrived in quiet succession like pawns settling into place on a board they could never hope to comprehend. Not when Dahlia emerged at last. Only then did his gaze shift, a flicker of blue meeting the wreckage she had become.

The woman who walked toward him was clothed in shame. In soft, sweating fabrics. In the indignity of human limits. He saw her feet blistered, her hands cracked and bloodied, her eyes downcast like some sacrificial wretch who had forgotten what it was to stand beneath stars not carved by gravity, but will.

And yet—she was his. Still and always, she was his.

The silence between them pulsed like a bruise. When her voice finally broke it, the words dragged something jagged through him. Dorian’s lip curled—not in anger, not in affection, but something older than either. A rupture in the mask that didn’t crack, but flexed. "I'm sorry," she’d said. He loathed how small it sounded.

A single hand extended, palm up. Elegant and razor-sharp in its stillness. "Don’t," he said—quiet as a dagger unsheathed. "Don’t ever say that again."

The wind caught the edge of his coat. Overhead, hels turned wide circles like vultures made patient by heat. And only then did he lift his head, eyes grazing across the line of soldiers and demigods like someone checking for dust on glass.

"Tidebreaker," he said at last, inclining his head a fraction in Hadama’s direction. "Our business is concluded." And with that, the void answered him. It bloomed first in the sand—a black wind that rose from nowhere, pulling seafoam into eddies that dissolved into ink. It wrapped around Dahlia and Dorian alike, silken and absolute, and then they were gone.

Not a single footprint left behind.

~FIN

He'll rekindle all the dreams
it took you a lifetime to destroy