The sky was ash.
Not cloudy, not smoke-filled ash. Gray and black snow drifted from the heavens, the remnants of obliterated bodies, armor, stone, and magic. Thor's final scream still echoed in fragments across the ruined battlefield, swallowed now by a silence too deep to measure. The land where once stood lines of soldiers, wings of angels, columns of Valkyries, and hordes of demons was now a cratered wasteland. Those who hadn't been vaporized stood bloodied and hollow-eyed, their ears ringing, limbs trembling.
Bodies were everywhere some torn in half, some melted into blackened silhouettes against cracked stones. Sand had been glassed. Statues of once-living creatures had been formed by the blast. The air smelled of ozone, burnt flesh, and despair.
Helga groaned under a broken slab of obsidian debris, blood coating her robes. Her wand was snapped in two beside her. She dragged herself to her knees, eyes wide, searching but the battlefield had no order anymore. Just chaos.
Somewhere in the distant haze, Anubis lay collapsed against a blackened ridge, his golden armor cracked, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Beside him, Ra bled light, one of his wings charred down to the bone, clutching at his ribs as he tried to rise again.
And Khufu Khufu was gone. Nothing remained of the ancient king but a swirl of golden sand, drifting over what used to be the barrier he summoned with his final breath.
A shriek rang out.
Demons, wild-eyed and shrieking, pushed forward through the black mist, emboldened by the explosion, aiming for the heart of it all the anchor, now exposed at the base of the shattered pyramid, its protective spells damaged, glyphs flickering. Victory was within reach, and they would claim it.
Until two figures landed before it with a crunch of ash and bone.
Morpheus, his coat tattered and mouth bleeding, raised his hand and incinerated the first demon to approach. Herpo half-shifted into his basilisk form, scales cracked and fangs dripping with blood sank his teeth into the next and hurled its corpse into the others.
The brothers stood back-to-back as more came.
"No more," Morpheus growled. "They'll not touch it."
Herpo hissed in agreement, his voice distorted and cruel. "Let's burn them all."
More came. They answered in unison.
A ripple of red magic spread from Morpheus's hand, fortifying the terrain. Debris rose into walls. Corpses reanimated not to attack, but to hold shields, to form barricades. Herpo spat curses, each one like a plague skin withered, weapons crumbled, bones snapped mid-run.
Within moments, they had held the line.
Morpheus turned to the dazed soldiers nearby humans, goblins, centaurs, their ranks in shambles. "Form up!" he roared, his voice like a whip. "The commanders are down, but the fight isn't over! You get the wounded behind that ridge! You, spears from the sand conjure them now!"
A human witch, blood running down her cheek, blinked at him but obeyed, snapping her wand into motion. Metal spears burst from the ground and began launching in sync with centaur arrows. Goblins rose from the sands like wraiths, daggers already dripping.
Morpheus walked past the burning ruins of a Valkyrie banner and raised his wand again. A flare of red a signal. Not a warning this time. A call to regroup.
And it worked.
The humans, wounded and terrified, began pulling back toward the pyramid. The chaos became movement, then strategy. They began to fight together again.
The enemy felt the shift. For the first time in hours, the demons hesitated. Angels pulled back. Valkyries retreated into the skies, regrouping.
Helga, barely able to stand, leaned against a shattered statue and watched Morpheus direct the battlefield like a conductor of death. She blinked, stunned by it—not just the skill, but the necessity. He'd taken control. And for the moment, he was winning.
Behind him, Herpo stood silent, blood dripping from his fangs, watching the retreating enemy with glowing eyes.
The storm had passed, but the war was far from over.
***
Morpheus watched as his enemy retreated and knew the forces around him were too injured to chase.
A frown etched onto his face as he looked behind him at the damaged anchor, "You need to put on a show brother." Herpo muttered softly from his side
Morpheus looked up to the sky, "Of course."
Flicking his risk Morpheus transfigured a podium.
Morpheus stepped onto the transfigured podium, a jagged platform of black stone rising from the sand like a throne of judgment. His coat hung in tatters, one arm wrapped in makeshift bandages, the other slick with dried blood. Ash swirled around him as he looked out over the battlefield.
The desert was death. Craters and glassed sand stretched for miles, punctuated only by the distant moans of the wounded and the quiet sobs of those who had survived. Behind Morpheus, the half-destroyed pyramid still smoldered. Beside it, the anchor flickered faintly, held steady only by the stubborn will of the few protectors who remained.
Before him stood a battered army: witches and wizards burned and bloodied, centaurs with broken arrows still lodged in their flanks, goblins hunched low with smoke still rising from their blades. Some knelt, gasping. Others clutched the dead.
Morpheus raised his voice, clear and echoing across the dunes.
"This is what they brought us."
He gestured to the wasteland. "Look upon your fallen. Look upon the broken sky, the torn earth, the blood that runs like rivers in this cursed sand. This is what their gods gave them chaos. This is what we were given to face."
He looked up toward the veil of magic high in the heavens. Though the divine had not descended again, he knew. Eyes watched from beyond the cowards behind the curtain.
"ODIN!" Morpheus bellowed, voice shaking the air. "You who send your sons like wolves into our world, you who cloaked this in glory and honor your children are dead!"
He pointed toward the crater left by Thor's obliteration, fire still smoldering at its heart.
"You thought him your spear. You thought him your hammer. You thought he would bring an end to us. But now he is ash. As is Loki. As are the hosts you dared to send."
He paused, breathing ragged. His skin was cracked, the side of his face burned. But his eyes gleamed bright.
"You failed."
A silence settled—deep, uncomfortable, brimming with the weight of grief.
Then a voice broke it. A human soldier, barely standing, bloodied face streaked with tears. "You bastard!" the man shouted. "Let our dead rest in peace! Do not use them like this!"
Murmurs rose others nodded, grieved, hollowed by loss.
Morpheus did not flinch. He turned to face the man, and for a moment, the fury in his eyes sparked like lightning. "Quiet," he snarled. "Even in death, they are protecting humanity. Is this not the dream of all of us?"
He gestured behind him, where the corpses he had risen stood still holding shields, forming barricades, silent guardians in rigor mortis.
"You want to bury them in the sand and pray they are remembered? I refuse to let them be forgotten. They will stand! They will shield! They will remind the heavens that we do not go quietly!"
The soldier fell silent, eyes trembling.
Before more could rise against him—or for him—Morpheus raised a hand and conjured silence once more.
"I do not offer comfort," he said. "I offer truth. This war is not over. The sky will tear again. More gods will come. More devils. More monsters. And when they do… who will stand for humanity?"
He looked to the centaurs. To the goblins. To the witches holding broken wands and the wounded dragging their comrades to safety.
"You will. We will."
He paused, letting the silence sink in like a stone in deep water.
"This battle was not the end. It was not even the storm. It was only the warning. If we are to survive what comes next, we must bind together. We must take the dead and build walls of memory. We must bleed forward."
A murmur rolled through the crowd. Some bowed their heads. Others gritted their teeth. All listened.
Morpheus turned again to the sky, and his voice dropped to a whisper that carried like thunder.
"Odin, may your halls be filled with the cries of your children. And may your gods learn humanity does not kneel."
Then he stepped down from the podium, and the soldiers parted.
No more voices rose against him.
Only the wind.
Only the ash.
Only the war still to come.