Rage against the heavens: chapter 22: Prometheus in the mirror

There are thresholds you cross where turning back is no longer a choice, where the smell of ash clings to your skin, not because you walked through fire, but because you set the fire yourself. You can lie to others. You can even lie to yourself if you're good at it—paint the pyres as sacrifices, the smoke as necessary, the flames as purifying—but somewhere between the second and third scream you utter in your mind, you realize you were wrong. Or at least, you hope you were.

Because if you weren’t?

Then the only thing left is the knowledge that this was always who you were becoming.

I knew. I knew. Long before the body of the Cyclope had fallen at my feet, before seeing the corpse of the child he had murdered, desecrated, the moments Beryl made me realize the world I was living in, I knew that my actions would have costs

I told myself that I would give everything. My blood, my bones, my breath. My name. My future. My soul, if someone would take it.

Everything—except my humanity.

And yet here I am, standing in the ruins of a choice that doesn’t feel like one I cannot unmake, wondering why I had to became this.

When did It all begin to rot?

Was it the first time the stars of potential of the inspired inventor had appeared in my mind, the first time I shaped one?

Or was it earlier—when I looked at a child and saw nothing but something that should not be? When I told Alabaster, “you’re human,” and meant it—because I needed it to be true? Because if he was still human, then so was Thalia.

“You really thought you were human, didn’t you?”

Her voice was quiet. A murmur. No need for volume when the truth was a blade, and it had already found the soft place between my ribs.

Hecate looked at me not with accusation, but with pity. It sickened me. I would have preferred rage. Indignation. Anything but this heavy, silent grief in her eyes. A goddess who had seen countless mortal lives flicker and fade, and yet she grieved me, she grieved me when she had probably hadn’t when some of her demigod children died.

“I did,” I said, voice rough. Not from the cold, not from the dryness of a throat long used to screaming—but from the rawness of the thing inside me. “I truly did. Because otherwise… what would be the point of it all?”

There was no grand battle here. No clash of swords or bolts of lightning. Just a man—or more precisely something that was one—and a goddess, standing in the aftermath of the two trying to hurt each other as much as possible.

I had wanted to go against the heavens. To spit in their eye. To break their chains not because I believed they were wrong—but because I refused to accept a world where might made right. I wanted to challenge them as a man, only a man. With nothing more than grit, cunning, and that foolish little ember mortals call will.

To prove that it was enough.

That being mortal—being human—could still change everything.

Even in a world where gods walked, where monsters hunted, where fate itself bent and turned around godly bloodlines and prophecies like reeds in wind… I wanted to prove that we were not ants. Not pests. Not toys.

I wanted the heavens to tremble, not because I had stolen their fire, but because I had earned something equal if not more than it.

And now? Now the fire burned in me, yes—but it did not feel earned.

It felt taken.

“I read through the memories of my child,” Hecate said quietly. “I saw your promise to him. The words you shared. For what it’s worth… he may not have shown it, but he believed them. He loved them. He hoped they were right.”

Hope.

A fragile thing, isn't it? Like a paper bird flying toward a storm. And I—I had placed that bird in his hands and told him to believe in the sky.

A promise. I had made a promise.

And if what she said was true—if he had clung to that hope, even though. the world had constantly try to crush him—then I had no right to falter now.

I would not break that promise. Not for anything.

But what was humanity?

Was it just the flesh? This meat and sinew? The bones that splintered, the organs that failed?

Was it the soul? That invisible thread of self that clung to dreams, to guilt, to laughter?

Or was it something else—something in between, something beyond?

I didn’t know.

Hours ago, I’d stood before Alabaster and said, “We’re all human.” I’d meant it. Meant it with the fierce conviction of someone trying to nail themselves to the idea of being good. Of being true.

Because if he was human—this broken, tormented half-child the world spat on—then I was too.

And hadn’t that been the point all along? Wasn’t the whole damn plan to make humanity stronger? Smarter? Better?

To carve a future out of stone with nothing but bleeding hands?

I may be an outlier now. Maybe I had already stepped too far into the shadow of divinity. Maybe I had begun to bend the rules in ways that made me unrecognizable to the nature those who once like me.

But if everyone were like me—if all of us became this version of ourselves, improved, uplifted, forged in a better fire—would we cease to be human?

I scoffed inwardly. Of course not.

The Ship of Theseus had all its pieces replaced, yet it remained the ship. The one that sailed, that dreamed, that carried.

Its point of origin remained.

Its purpose remained.

So too with us.

Limiting humanity to mere flesh was cowardice. It was the act of a child who feared that growth meant loss. That evolution was betrayal.

But we change. That’s what we do. That’s what makes us human—we endure. We fall, and we rise again. We are broken, mended, and broken once more. We transform.

So maybe I had crossed a line. Maybe I had stepped beyond some threshold and left my past self behind.

But I had not abandoned humanity.

I had become something more because of it.

“You gave him hope,” she repeated, as if it was an absolution.

No. Not absolution.

A burden.

Because if he had believed me—if he had loved the dream I’d handed him with calloused palms—then I owed him more than words.

I owed him victory.

But victory at what cost?

My hands curled, unbidden. I could still feel the blood beneath my nails, even though there was none. I could still smell the burning flesh, even though the wind had long since scattered the ashes I had surely left behind when she had burned me with her arcane might.

Some things don’t leave you.

Some things shouldn’t.

And if I had to carry this weight—this guilt, this slow erosion of self—to keep that hope alive?

Then so be it.

There was a silence between us. Not empty. Not peaceful. The kind of silence that pressed. That demanded.

“I thought I could do this,” I whispered to an existence I could not but hate, to the one that I had almost made me lose it all, the words slipping from my throat like confession. “I thought I could walk through hell and come out with clean hands. I thought I could touch power and not be touched by it in return, without becoming like you in any way possible.”

I hadn’t wanted to be in any shape or form like that bastard of Zeus.

Our eyes crossed and this time, instead of fractal green, I saw that her eyes held galaxies unborn, and her voice came not from her throat, but from somewhere beneath your skin.

“You do not like us,” she said, her tone not accusatory, but curious. Like a biologist watching a wounded fox chew off its own leg.

I met her gaze. Didn't flinch. I would never flinch before one of them 

“Is that what the wind told you?” I replied to her my voice sufficed with so much sarcasm that one could probably choke on it. “Or did the mist whisper it in your ear? In any case, bravo for guessing the obvious.”

She didn’t smile. Gods like her don’t need to.

“I know. The question is why.”

I inhaled. My fists clenched without meaning to. “Because of Thalia.”

A silence stretched between us—tight, buzzing with unsaid names.

“She &/ a child,” I said. “Brave. Fierce. Bright like lightning bottled up in a girl’s body. She should’ve been safe at my side and if not my side, somewhere else, somewhere else where you would be treated like a queen.”

“And yet,” I said, my voice sharpening, “your king—Lance—decided that the world should not be good, pleasant enough for the child he begetted, for the innocent half-blood brought to life by his pantheon. He chose pride over his blood. Chose to not take care, to not raise his children, to make my sisters suffer, to do less than the bare minimum and act as if it was mercy.”

Hecate’s eyes flickered, an infinitesimal twitch of something ancient. She didn’t interrupt. That, at least, she understood.

“It’s not just her.  Demigods are hunted like beasts. Born only to be broken. Monsters smell them the way wolves smell bleeding deer. And their divine parents? They sit in their sky-thrones, wrapped in egos as thick as fog, pretending it's all part of the natural order. Let's not even talk about humans without divine parentage that are in many ways in a worse situation.”

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Natural. As if being born to die is a sacrament.”

“You think this is injustice,” she said, not quite questioning. She already knew the answer.

“No,” I whispered. “I think this is design.” I didn't think that the system set up by the Olympians was supposed to be like this. No, if anything, I believed that all my problems with it were not bugs but intended features.

Her gaze narrowed, shifting. A ripple passed through her outline—like something underneath her form had moved.

“Say it.”

I looked at her, and for a moment, I saw not a goddess, but something else. A mother, perhaps. The idea of motherhood, distorted by eons.

“It’s not wrong because it hurts, Hecate,” I said. “It’s wrong because it was built this way. Because the very rules of our world were etched by beings who saw us as amusements at best. Because suffering is not a bug, it’s a feature.”

“And what are we?” I asked. “Pawns? Toys? Pets? Flawed imitations of immortality, made only to worship and perish?”

Her lips parted, but I raised a hand.

“No. Let me finish.”

She allowed it not that I would have let her stop me even if she had not allowed it.

“You—all of you—you see yourselves as necessary. As inevitable. But you aren’t. You’re not stewards. You’re jailors. The world is your prison, and we? We’re the inmates who don’t even know they’ve been sentenced.”

There was fire behind my ribs. Words I hadn’t known I’d carried, roaring to be born.

“You created systems where children rot in alleys while their divine parents watch. You allow monsters to kill because it prunes the weak. You demand worship from people who’ve never known safety, only fear.”

I took another step. “You, Hecate—you say you love your children. Do you love Alabaster?”

Her expression didn’t change, but the air did. The purple light dimmed without dimming. The air thickened like molasses and something else I could not put my finger on.

“Yes,” she said. “More than the thousand temples they built in my name.”

“Then where were you when he screamed for you?”

The silence after was not empty. It was heavy.

“I am a goddess,” she said finally. “And that is the tragedy.”

“Then change it.”

She looked at me like I had asked the moon to drown.

“I have tried. When the Titans fell, I stood with Olympus. I thought… they might be better.”

Her voice frayed like parchment, crackling around the edges.

“But they weren’t. They simply were. Different crown. Same rot. Worse rot.”

She lifted a hand and the space shimmered—like curtains pulled back just an inch. I saw children turned to monsters. Demigods hunted. Prayers unanswered. Dreams smothered in divine negligence.

“I was mistaken,” she said. “And in the span of millenias, I have watched my mistakes repeat themselves in flesh and suffering.”

“And now you want to stop it?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “How convenient.”

“No,” she said, softer now. “I want to study you.”

My stomach twisted. At least she we honest. I began to prepare discreetly to activate the perks given to me by the stars in my mind. This time if we clashed, I felt more confident that things would be way more different.

“You are something… other. Your magic—it is foreign. Not born of ichor or legacy. Not born of me or other deities like me. It pulls from truths even I do not fully grasp.”

“And you want to use it.”

“I want to understand it. And if you let me… I would also join you.”

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. The idea tasted like rust and blood. A goddess on my side? An absurdity.

But power… was power.

I didn’t trust her. Of course not. She was divine. Which is to say, fallible without consequence.

And yet… she was ancient. She knew things I didn’t. Could move through places I couldn’t. Could smother truths in lies and lies in mist. She could serve as an excellent spy.

And the mist—it had always been a veil, a shield for Olympus.

But perhaps… perhaps it could work the other way.

It hid monsters from mortals. Gods from scrutiny.

Why not us from them?

“Do not lie,” I said. “You don’t care about humanity. Not really.”

“I care about my children.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” she said, solemn, “but it is close enough for now.”

I exhaled through my teeth, thoughts clashing like swords in my skull.

If I accepted her… I’d gain an ally with reach, with knowledge, with protection.

But I’d also be inviting a serpent into my den.

Yet…

She controlled the mist.

She was the mist.

The veil that blinded the world could be turned.

Used.

Bent.

The thought repeated itself like a cancer. What if the same illusions that shielded the gods from mortals… could shield mortals from the gods?

What if I could build something beneath their noses?

Raise cities while they stared at clouds?

What if they looked—and saw only what I wanted them to see?

I thought, silent, war raging behind my eyes.

And then she spoke—softly, carefully, like placing a blade into my open palm.

“For a parent to another,” she said, “so that you give me a chance, so that you know that I am on your side…”

Green mist bloomed from her palms and changed colours. It reminded me of the opening of a curtain. The mist rose and it flickered into shapes—a child in them, dark-haired that I had recognised because it was the same as the one I had before being changed into whatever I was now. She was  asleep, bruises, dried blood and dirt on her skin, clothes that were such in bad condition they could not be called rags.

“I would give you the most precious thing to a parent.”

She looked at me, not with grandeur, but with something frighteningly human.

“The safety of their child.”

My breath caught.

Not because she’d said something clever.

But because she’d said something that could not be more true.

After is there anything a parent would not accept for the well-being of their child?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She cut the cake with a plastic fork.

It was pink. Not violently so—nothing garish, nothing that screamed birthday like a child’s drawing of joy might—but soft, sugar-dusted, like the kind Alex used to pretend not to like and always asked for second helpings of when he thought no one was looking.

Her hand trembled. Not from effort. The cake was the consistency of sponge, collapsing with too much ease. No resistance. No fight.

Just like—

Stop. That wasn’t a thought. That was a knife too close to bone.

She blinked once, twice, eyes not on the girl across from her but somewhere in between the crumbs, the air, the silence. Somewhere in the space where her brother’s voice should still echo.

Happy birthday, Elpida. The words had been left behind like a bookmark in a novel she wasn’t sure she’d ever finish. A note recorded—not because he believed he’d never return—but because Alex was the kind of idiot who planned for everything, because even though the odds were against him, he still planned to return. And for a moment, a terrible, knife-twisting moment, Beryl had believed the message had been for her.

But no.

Of course not.

It had been for the girl before her. For his daughter. For the niece she hadn’t earned the right to call family.

“Why does it taste like strawberries?” Elpida asked, chewing like she wasn’t sure how the act worked, how pleasure functioned. There was icing on her lip.

Beryl shrugged with one shoulder, a loose-limbed motion too casual to be sincere. “Because he had always liked strawberries. Or maybe it's because I had liked them too much when I was younger and fed more than he needed because I liked strawberries. Or maybe Thalia did. It’s all a soup in my head, probably.”

Elpida tilted her head in that eerie, precise way that reminded Beryl of clockwork. A movement made, not grown. As if she were still learning how to be a girl in a body built from blueprints and guilt. As if she was trying to smile with borrowed instructions.

She looks like Thalia.

No, not exactly. Thalia had more lightning in her eyes, more rebellion on her tongue not that Beryl had not deserved it. This girl was quieter, stiller—like Alex had distilled ironically hope into something delicate. Something unbreakable only because it didn’t know it could shatter.

Hope.

Elpida.

Beryl couldn’t even say  the name without something splintering behind her ribs.

She took a breath that tasted like old regrets and said, “You’re one now. That’s something.”

“I am not.” Elpida’s voice wasn’t defiant. Just… correcting. As if facts were things that mattered to her more than feelings.

“You’re eating cake. On a day he called your birthday. That’s close enough.”

“I was not born. I was manufactured.”

There was no self-pity in her tone. Just precision. She could’ve been describing how a toaster worked.

Beryl felt her face stretch into something that might have been a smile in another lifetime. “So was Thalia, if you ask Lance. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t matter.”

Silence returned. Not uncomfortable. Not yet. Just full. Like a room that had forgotten how to echo.

Beryl looked at her. Really looked. And it hit her—not like lightning, but like falling through a memory you thought you’d burned out of yourself. The girl didn’t just look like Thalia. She looked like her. Like pieces of Beryl had been stitched into her cheeks and tucked beneath her lashes.

And more than that, more than anything—she looked like Alex.

The line of her jaw. The way her mouth turned down when she thought. The way she looked at the world like it was a puzzle with a missing piece.

It should’ve scared her. It should’ve made her turn away. But all it did was make her feel smaller. 

Smaller and older and so goddamn tired.

Of course she looked like them. She was one of them. A homunculus, he’d said—created from magic, brilliance, desperation, and DNA. A last-minute miracle sculpted with trembling fingers and too many hopes.

His daughter.

Her niece.

And Beryl—what was she, really? A broken matchstick trying to light a fire that had already gone out? She hadn’t earned the word mother. Hell, there were no chances she would ever earn the title of aunt.

She remembered being twelve and thinking Alex was her baby. She never said it aloud—because she was Beryl Grace and affection had always been a thing weaponized or whispered when it was already too late—but she remembered feeding him formula when their own mother was too wrecked to notice, remembered tucking him in, singing lullabies she didn’t even believe in.

He had been hers. And then Thalia had been hers. And Jason. And she had failed all of them.

It had been Alex who kept things together. Even when he shouldn’t have. Even when it was her job as the older sibling.Her role. Her responsibility.

Even when she’d drowned her guilt in alcohol and broken promises, it had been Alex who pulled the pieces together.

So no. She didn’t deserve to look at this girl like she mattered. Like she was something Beryl could help in any way, could approach.

But…

If she walked away now, if she left Elpida alone after being the reason her father was gone—probably fighting a god—probably dying, even with all his impossible magic—then wouldn’t that be just another mistake?

One more brick on the wall she’d built between herself and the people she loved?

Elpida’s voice was soft. “What are you doing?”

Beryl blinked. “Feeding you cake. Badly. Why?”

“You shouldn’t be here. I should’ve left the moment the cake was uncovered. My purpose is retrieval. Of Thalia. I was made for it. Staying here is… inefficient.”

“You stayed,” Beryl said quietly, “because of the cake?”

“I didn’t want to disrespect him. He left this for me. He didn’t have to. I’m not a real person. Just a tool.”

The fork snapped in her hand.

Not loudly. Just enough.

Beryl didn’t speak for a moment. She forced herself to breathe, to be. Then she set the broken utensil down like it was made of porcelain, and said with a kind of tired ferocity, “You’re not just a tool.”

“I was made—”

“I know what you were made for.” It was her fault after all. Beryl leaned forward. Her voice was low, cracked in the center like something held together with glue and spite. “Alex told me. I know. I alsoknow he gave you a name.”

Elpida blinked.

“Do you know what that means?” Beryl asked. “He didn’t call you Subject 3 or Operation Rescue. He named you Elpida. That means—”

“Hope.”

Beryl nodded, a sharp motion. “Exactly. And Alex doesn’t name things lightly. If he named you Hope, it’s because you are. Not just for Thalia. For him. For all of us. For the family he tried so damn hard to hold together.”

Elpida frowned, uncertain. “But—”

“He made this for you.” She gestured at the half-eaten cake. “And you think he did that because you’re a mission brief? Because you’re a tool?”

Beryl exhaled, eyes wet without weeping. “He’s not like that. Not like me.”

The words sat heavy in her chest. Rotten fruit she couldn’t throw away.

“Alex always understood family. He never let us go. No matter how much we deserved it. Me, most of all.”

She gave a smile that felt like glass. “That’s why I’m sure. You matter to him. You’re his daughter. And that makes you mine too.”

Elpida stared at her. Not with awe. Not with recognition. Just with quiet, stunned stillness. Like she didn’t know how to receive the gift she’d just been given. Like no one had ever told her she was wanted.

Beryl took a breath and began to sing.

“Happy birthday to you…”

Her voice wavered but didn’t break. Not entirely.

“…happy birthday, dear Elpida…”

The name was a prayer. A promise. A plea.

“…happy birthday to you.”

When the song ended, silence stretched between them again.

Beryl didn’t move.

Elpida spoke softly. “Thank you.”

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

And for once, Beryl didn’t try to twist it into a joke, didn’t lash it with sarcasm or self-loathing.

Because Alex had done so much more than this. Had given everything, always. Even now. Probably dying, probably gone.

The least she could do was this.

Even if she was the last person in the world who deserved to try.

Because that was the thing about her, wasn't it?

She broke everything. She ruined everything. Thalia. Jason. Alex. Even herself.

That was the one thing she’d ever been good at.

And yet—

And yet here she was.

Trying.

Still trying.

Still breathing.

Even if it hurt.

Even if she only wanted to give up and would have long ago if she didn’t know it would hurt her brother Because he still cared for her, and loved her even though she never did and would probably never deserve it.