The hammer fell.

  DOOM!

  It did not strike stone the way mortal weapons struck stone. The skill Cleave wasn't like that. The skill did one thing and one thing only. It did not smash. It didn't break. It did what its name entitled: split and sever. And what it only did was sever snow from the hills. So for a half-second, nothing happened. The summit held. The gale howled. Snow continued its quiet drift over the false valley below. Then the sound came.

  Not thunder. Not an explosion. An echo severance. A low, tearing groan that seemed to come from inside the mountain’s bones, like skin torn from muscles.

  The ridge beneath Aron’s boots shuddered. Fine cracks raced outward from the point of impact, deep broken veins spidering through white crust and buried ice. Snow that had slept for centuries shifted, unsettled by something unnatural. The hammer’s edge had not merely cleaved snow—it had severed the tension holding the slope in place.

  Aron straightened slowly as the first slab broke free.

  A sheet of packed snow, thirty meters across, peeled away from the mountainside and began to slide. At first it was almost dignified. A quiet descent. Powder rolling lazily down a shallow incline.

  Below, along the outer sectors of the god valley, a handful of demigods turned their heads.

  “What was that?” one muttered, the thunder sound finally reaching their nimble ears.

  They saw it, a modest spill of white, tumbling from the summit in a narrow ribbon. A few of them laughed. “Relax, mud. It’s just snow. Nothing we cannot handle.”

  Yes, sometimes the snow would fall but not this time. This time, the mountain did not stop moving. The small spill gathered weight. The ribbon thickened. Loose powder joined packed layers. Layers joined slabs. The slabs fractured into churning mass. What began as a spill became a slide. What began as a slide became a full-on slide.

  The sound deepened.

  More snow tore free from higher ledges, pulled by the disturbance. Ice shelves cracked and slowly but surely the demigods stopped laughing.

  The avalanche widened, no longer a narrow descent but a swelling wall, devouring the slope as it came. Trees that had been planted to sell the illusion of a green sanctuary snapped like twigs beneath the growing weight. Rune nodes embedded in bark sparked once and vanished under crushing mass.

  “It’s getting bigger,” someone said.

  “It’s not—”

  A younger half-blood squinted upward, and the color drained from his face.

  “It’s coming this way!”

  The words carried across the lower ranks, rippling through bronze armor and spear lines. Heads snapped up. Shields shifted. A murmur rolled outward. From the upper terrace near the citadel’s outer gate, a true blood stepped forward, aura flaring to command attention.

  “Form ranks!” he barked. “Hephaestus shield grid—activate!”

  Several half-blood technicians slammed their palms against rune pillars embedded in the marble streets. The pillars flickered. Symbols ignited along the valley perimeter.

  And then sputtered.

  “It’s not stabilizing!” one of the half-bloods shouted, slapping the stone again. “The shield of Hephaestus isn’t responding!”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “It’s lagging, no, it’s not linking at all!”

  James and Theo stood shoulder to shoulder near a colonnade, watching the white mass swell as it devoured half the mountainside.

  Theo did not blink. “Well,” he muttered dryly, eyes still on the growing storm. “Is this the so-called wise immortal’s plan?”

  James’s jaw tightened. The illusion over his features made him look arrogant and calm, but something close to helplessness flickered behind the gold.

  “Haaa… I thought he kinda changed, still the same I see,” James said, though the words came out thinner than he intended.

  Above them, the avalanche crested a lower ridge and dropped. The ground trembled beneath the false valley. Demigods began backing away. As what was coming wasn't just a simple snow fall, but a full-blown swapping avalanche.

  “Hold formation!” the true blood roared, but the tremor undermined his authority. The shield grid flickered weakly once more and died completely. Now not even flickering. The avalanche reached the upper lip of the valley.

  The first impact crushed the outer courtyards in a detonation of snow and shattered stone. Pillars snapped. Rune lines embedded in streets burst apart in cascades of blue sparks. The wave split around central structures, but the second surge followed immediately behind, heavier, denser, relentless. Destruction followed.

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  The green illusion tore apart under the weight. Grass vanished. Trees were ripped from their roots. The river that had once shimmered politely through the sanctuary froze solid and shattered beneath crushing tons of ice.

  James felt the vibration in his teeth.

  Theo’s eyes narrowed, calculating even as panic spread through the lower ranks. Half-bloods broke first. Screams rose as avatars and lesser vessels scattered, dropping spears and shields alike. Discipline cracked like thin ice under sudden heat.

  “We need to move,” Theo said.

  James did not argue. His legs started moving. Theo had spoken and they too ran.

  Behind them, the avalanche swallowed entire streets. Demigods who had stood in perfect formation moments ago were now reduced to flailing shapes in white chaos. Bronze armor disappeared under churning mass. Rune pillars toppled like matchsticks.

  James glanced back once, and knew.

  ‘Too late.’

  The wave was faster than any orderly retreat. Theo felt a hand seize his arm. “What are you doing?” he snarled as James yanked him sideways.

  “Trust me!” he beckoned, as his eyes flared gold.

  He planted the cracked transit staff into the ground and drove his fist downward with a shout that split the wind.

  “Charge!”

  The earth beneath them ruptured.

  Stone fractured outward in a circular burst. A crater collapsed beneath their feet, deep and sudden. The ground gave way entirely, swallowing them both as the avalanche roared overhead.

  They fell.

  Snow and debris cascaded across the collapsing pit as James pulled Theo down with him. White thunder rolled above their heads, muffled but monstrous.

  They hit the lower cavity hard. Theo grunted, rolling to absorb impact. James landed beside him, chest heaving. Above them, the avalanche consumed the surface. Screams echoed briefly through the buried tunnels, then cut off. Snow packed over the crater’s mouth, sealing them in dim half-light.

  Theo shoved James away.

  “You’re insane,” he snapped. “We will be buried!”

  James wiped frost from his brow. “Still breathing, aren’t you?”

  Theo opened his mouth to retort—then stopped. As he gazed up, the avalanche was moving with such force that it refused to perch inside for some reason.

  “How?”

  “It's because of Cleave,” James mentioned. “A terrifying and mysterious skill, which I still couldn't learn.”

  Theo still gazed at the ice and frost above. The sound outside had changed. The avalanche was still moving. And something else moved with it.

  From the top of the palace’s highest balcony, Hermez watched. Disappointment etched across his perfect features. Below him, his sons ran. They fled in clusters, abandoning ranks, abandoning discipline. Bronze armor flashed chaotically as fear overrode lineage.

  “They carry my blood,” Hermez murmured, voice quiet but edged with disdain. “And yet they run.”

  The avalanche devoured the outer districts, surging toward the palace heart. Hermez stepped forward.

  The marble beneath his sandals cracked under the weight of gathering divinity. Light began to bleed from his skin—golden, sharp, blinding. Human instinct.

  Pathetic.

  He would remind them.

  He walked to the edge of the balcony as the white storm thundered closer. Wind tore at his robes. Snow blasted against him, but it evaporated before touching his skin.

  His legs coiled.

  Then he moved. In less than a blink, he vanished from the balcony and appeared at the very front of the advancing avalanche.

  Speed.

  The law itself answered him. He ran. At first, he ran parallel to the wave, matching its velocity. Snow hurled forward, but his body blurred into a streak of golden afterimages. The air around him ignited with friction. Heat warped space. The ground beneath his feet scorched black where divine speed kissed stone.

  The avalanche slammed against the barrier of his motion. It should have swallowed him. Instead, it faltered. Hermez accelerated. Faster. Faster still. His afterimage thickened into a shimmering wall. The leading edge of the avalanche buckled as though striking invisible stone. Snow piled against his wake, unable to overtake the speed field he carved through space.

  Demigods stopped mid-flight, staring in awe.

  Hermez did not simply hold the avalanche. He pushed.

  His legs churned with such impossible force. Divinity roared through his veins. The friction of his passage ignited the very air, turning snow at his flanks to steam. The ground burned beneath his stride, leaving molten streaks in his wake.

  The avalanche began to retreat by his push, by his motion. Inches at first. Then meters.

  “Nature and its disasters… are slaves to us Gods,” he muttered as he leaned forward, driving the mass back with sheer velocity. Snow compressed and redirected, shunted sideways toward the valley’s far corner.

  The white storm buckled under godly momentum.

  With a final surge of speed, Hermez forced the avalanche entirely off the central district and into the outer wall, where it piled high against the valley’s boundary like a defeated beast.

  Silence fell. Steam rose in curling plumes. Hermez slowed to a walk as the last tremors faded.

  He turned.

  His sons stood scattered across the ruined courtyards, staring at him in reverence and shame.

  “Fools!” he shouted. “You all ran,” Hermez said, voice carrying effortlessly across the wreckage.

  No one answered.

  “You carry my blood,” he continued, eyes blazing. “Natural disaster is no matter to gods.”

  His gaze swept over them, hard as forged steel. “Run again,” he warned softly, “and I will drown every one of you myself. This issue would have been solved if all of you just trusted your speed instead of turning cowards!”

  Heads bowed. All of the surviving ones. But far above, on another mountain spine, Aron watched. His golden eyes reflected the steaming valley below.

  He had expected resistance. Of course, Hermez was called god for a reason, not just because he had quick legs, but because he had mind and control unique to speed.

  That's why he had expected speed.

  Hermez stood at the center of his battered dominion, divinity still radiating in waves and watching that Aron smiled faintly.

  “What about another one?” he whispered.

  He raised the hammer again. Not one strike this time.

  Many. He turned toward the surrounding ridges—snow-laden hills that had slept undisturbed beyond the first collapse.

  ‘Cleave.’

  The hammer fell again and again, each strike precise. Mountain spines cracked. Shockwaves rippled everywhere, reaching everywhere, slamming into secondary slopes. Snowfields that had remained stable under the first collapse now destabilized entirely.

  Across the horizon, white began to move. Not one avalanche. Five. Ten. From multiple directions, the mountains answered the heed of its Guardian as ice shelves broke free in titanic slabs. Entire ridgelines collapsed inward. Shockwaves slammed into the false valley’s outer rune grid, shattering what remained of Hephaestus’s anchoring points.

  Below, demigods looked up once more.

  The horizon had turned white and blank, and so was their hope. This time, there was no singular front to confront. The collapses came from every angle. The mountain spine itself began to crack.

  Hermez’s eyes lifted. For the first time since stepping into the storm, he frowned as he finally knew this was no natural disaster. This was orchestration. And this time, speed alone would not be enough.

  “You came here after all, immortal.”