The Imperial Palace stood tall and defiant beneath a sky littered with stars, its gilded towers slicing into the heavens like spears made of ambition. Within those hallowed halls, a tremor pulsed—not one of rebellion, but of something far more insidious.
Doubt.
The Emperor had shown them power. Divine, unrelenting, inhuman.
But power is a fickle god. And Kael Arden was ready to chain it.
In the velvet hush of her private chambers, Empress Seraphina sat alone.
The candlelight wavered, casting serpentine shadows that danced across her skin like whispers from another world. She looked every inch the imperial jewel, yet the look in her eyes spoke of calculations, not coronets.
The divine display had confirmed her fears.
Her husband—if he could still be called that—was no longer tethered to mortality.
And if Castiel had transcended man, where did that leave her?
Certainly not beside him.
A knock. Soft. Deliberate.
"Enter," she said, voice steady.
The door eased open, and Kael Arden stepped inside with the quiet confidence of a man who knew the future bent for him.
Seraphina's lips curved, faintly amused. He was always so precise—never a wasted step, never a wasted breath.
"You chose a bold hour to visit," she said, swirling the crimson wine in her goblet.
Kael took the seat across from her, uninvited yet entirely welcome.
"The Emperor has unshackled himself from mortality," he said, voice smooth as silk laced with steel. "And in doing so, he's forgotten the weight of the throne."
Seraphina tilted her head. "And you would remind him?"
"No," Kael replied. "I intend to take it from him."
She didn't laugh—but something glinted in her gaze. "You ask me to betray a god."
Kael leaned forward, eyes narrowing with purpose. "No, Seraphina. I ask you to outlive one."
A beat of silence passed between them.
Then, her voice, a murmur sharper than a blade: "Why should I believe you can succeed where empires have fallen?"
"Because gods," Kael said, "are only as untouchable as the myths that shield them. And I have already begun unraveling the myth."
His certainty was a stormcloud. Heavy. Inevitable.
Seraphina set her goblet down.
She was no stranger to survival. She had outlasted plots, poison, politics. She had endured a throne beside a man who had now become something else entirely.
And now Kael offered her the one thing the Emperor never could.
Control.
A slow breath escaped her lips.
"Then let us see," she whispered, "how high a god can bleed."
Above them, in the sanctum carved from starlight and stone, Castiel stood before a mirror that no longer reflected a man.
The face looking back shimmered between forms—mortal, radiant, unknowable.
And yet, there was tension.
He could feel it.
A ripple against the divine current. A hand reaching where none should reach.
Kael.
The name came not with rage, but with an understanding.
The serpent was moving.
He turned from the mirror, his voice low but absolute. "Summon Lucian."
His sword would be tested.
And so would his claim to godhood.
To Be Continued...