Page 12 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

At the edge of Troy’s battlefield, two figures stood. Beneath the sun’s blinding glare, one leaned heavily against a spear, his thick armor swallowing the sunlight. Beside him, a figure in radiant gold gripped a bow, shimmering like a mirage in the heat.

Ares’s gaze swept the horizon, tracking the Greek army as it marched toward Troy. “A great force for just one woman.”

“You may thank Aphrodite,” Apollo replied, his tone dry as the sunbaked earth beneath their feet.

Ares scowled, jaw clenching. “The damage is done,” he said brusquely. “Now we see that Troy survives it.”

“The Greeks have brought the greatest army in the world to Troy’s gates,” Apollo retorted. “How do you propose to save them when Zeus forbids us from the battlefield?”

Ares glanced toward Troy. Then his chin jerked to the city walls looming high in the distance.

“Those walls were a gift from Poseidon during Laomedon’s rule. They have never been breached. The Trojans can withstand a siege—if they’re prepared.” He paused, then grimly added, “If their king is prepared.”

“Priam is beloved by Troy.”

Ares barked a mirthless laugh. “Peace has softened him.”

“How can you be so certain?” Apollo asked testily.

Ares watched the armies before them. “Any other king would have sent the girl back the moment she arrived.”

In the distance, the armies collided in a wild crash that echoed across the plain. Screams of men and horses rose on the wind. Blood arced in vivid sprays, staining the sky before falling in heavy spatters onto the dust below.

Overhead, crows circled lazily, grim spectators awaiting a feast .

Ares’s gaze idled over the carnage.

The Greek fought loosely, careless and confident in their greater numbers. The Trojans, though fewer, held their lines with grim resolve, cutting through the enemy’s ranks like teeth ripping into flesh.

His eyes snagged on a promising young Trojan. His sword flashed with lethal grace as he felled Greeks one after another—until an arrow streaked the air, punching through his eye. The warrior crumpled, trampled underfoot in the fray.

Nearby, a towering Greek swung a spiked club with brutal force, each blow landing with bone-shattering impact. Armor splintered. Bones crunched. Men fell, screams lost in the discord.

Ares’s lips curved. “There.” His head tipped toward the clubbed brute. “The mighty Achilles?”

The club swung again, crimson spraying across the Greek’s breastplate.

“No.” Apollo’s reply was flat. “Ajax of Aegina—formidable, but not Achilles.”

Ares grimaced as he scanned the battlefield once more, watching the bloody, churning chaos.

Swords and spears flailed in unskilled hands, wielded mostly by farmers and shepherds.

Men with scarcely a prayer of survival, sent to die by their kings.

The same grim, clumsy spectacle he’d witnessed a thousand times on the killing fields.

The dance of death was brutal, unchanging.

“Perhaps Achilles oversleeps,” he grumbled, shifting his weight.

Apollo ignored him, his gaze cutting sharply back toward the Greek lines as a roar surged, swelling in the air.

The ranks parted down the center. From the shifting mass of armored bodies, a lone warrior emerged.

Clad in blazing bronze, the warrior was lithe and powerful. He advanced with unnerving calm, a sword hanging easily from his hand. Black horsehair crested his helmet. Behind him, the Greek ranks closed, surging forward, as if drawn by the force of the bronze warrior.

Over the eons, Ares had seen warriors of every breed: brutes with raw strength, tacticians who wielded strategy like blades. But this one...

This one moved like quicksilver.

Mercurial. Untouchable.

His feet scarcely skimmed the blood-soaked earth as he advanced with swift, sure steps. Trojans fell in his wake, cries cut short by his blade—a flash of lethal precision, each stroke deadly and blindingly fast.

Death, honed to its purest form.

To lead an assault was to invite death, yet no weapon found him. Spears glanced off his armor like broken reeds, harmless. Arrows whistled past, slicing only air. Even the dust seemed to recoil from him, as if unwilling to embrace something so ferociously alive.

“That,” Apollo said, nodding to the bronze-clad figure, “is Achilles. Son of Peleus and Thetis.”

Ares’s gaze sharpened. A thrill stirred in him, sharp, visceral. Admiration and unease coiled together, indistinguishable.

For one wild, blistering moment, the urge to descend gripped him. To meet this mortal. To measure that fury against his own and see if Thetis’s golden son could survive staring into the true face of war.

His face.

The gods watched in silence as Achilles carved through the chaos, moving with a predator’s elegance—ruthless, inevitable. Each strike was measured, each kill deliberate, cutting through men like a blade through cloth. No wasted effort. No hesitation.

Behind him, the Greek line surged forward, ranks tightening, the tide of battle shifting under his command, swelling with every step he took. Momentum built like a stormfront, and the war— the war —followed him.

The Trojan line bent beneath the assault.

Then snapped.

Retreat was called, swift and decisive. The Trojans fell back to the stronghold of the city walls.

“Achilles!” The Greeks roared his name in unison, an earth-shaking cry. “Achilles!”

If the warrior was moved, it didn’t show.

His bronze armor was slicked with blood that trickled down in dark streams as he stalked back toward the Greek encampment. Beneath the fierce helmet, his face was carved from stone. No glory, no triumph. Only the cold, steady burn of purpose.

Ares watched grimly. “He is not immortal. Drive a sword through him, and he will die.”

Apollo clicked his tongue, his gaze sweeping the field. Chanting still rose on the air, an exultant hymn. Voices crying out not to Olympus, but to him . The mortal in bronze, son of Thetis.

“Do they know that?” Apollo asked. Bitterness clung to the edge of his words. “The Greeks will follow him to the world’s end. They pray to him, call out to him—not us.”

Ares’s gaze was stony, still fixed on Achilles’s back. “Before this ends,” he said darkly, “they will follow him to the Underworld.”

Above, the crows drifted in.