Chapter 1: When the Sun Remembers

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The sky was bleeding.

Crimson light from the unstable Ignis Core painted the ruins of Neo-Veles in hues of fire and rust. Adrian Kael, the most lethal mercenary in the known systems, stood at the heart of the storm, his body broken, his breath ragged. His armor—once a masterpiece of blackened ceramite and reinforced nano-weave—was now a shattered shell, barely holding together. Blood trickled from his lips, each exhale a struggle against the weight of failure.

So close.

He had been so gods-damned close to stopping this.

The Ignis Core pulsed before him, a monstrous artificial sun on the verge of detonation. If it blew, it wouldn't just level the city—it would scorch the planet's atmosphere to cinders. Millions would die.

And yet, despite everything… he couldn't bring himself to hate *her*.

A whisper of movement behind him. The faintest scent of jasmine and ozone.

His combat augments screamed at him to move, to spin, to kill—but his body was too ruined, his reflexes too slow.

The blade slid between his ribs like a lover's sigh.

Neural disruptor. Military-grade. A single strike to sever his spinal enhancements, to leave him paralyzed.

He didn't fall immediately. His knees buckled, but he caught himself on one hand, his other pressed against the wound, fingers coming away slick with blood.

Then he looked up.

Lilith.

Her silver hair was windswept, her violet eyes shimmering with something between sorrow and resolve. She stood over him, the disruptor blade still humming in her grip, its edge stained with his life.

"You…" Adrian choked, his voice raw. "Why?"

She knelt before him, her free hand brushing his cheek. A tender gesture, even now. Even as she killed him.

"Because the Universe needs this," she whispered.

His vision blurred. The Ignis Core's whine reached a fever pitch. Containment was failing.

And then—

A memory.

No, not a memory. A truth, buried so deep even his cybernetic recall couldn't touch it.

Fire. Always fire.

A throne of gold, shattered. A crown of sunlight, trampled. A god-king, bleeding from a wound just like this one, staring into the eyes of another betrayer.

Again.

Again.

Again.

A thousand lives. A thousand deaths. Each one ending the same way—betrayal, fire, and the slow unraveling of his soul to keep reality intact.

'Why?'

The answer came in a voice older than stars.

"Because you were never meant to keep the Codex."

The Ignis Core exploded.

And Adrian Kael died.

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Death was not the end.

It was never the end.

Adrian no, "that was never my true name" he screamed as consciousness returned in a flood of fire and gold. His body was no longer human. His veins burned with liquid sunlight, his skin shimmering like molten dawn.

And in his mind, whispering in a voice that was both his and not, was the book.

The Codex of Fate.

It had always been there, buried in the depths of his soul, its pages torn, its power leashed. Now, for the first time in countless cycles, it spoke.

"You are Helios."

The name ignited something in him—a fury, a sorrow, a recognition.

God of the Sun. King of Dawn. The Eternal Betrayed.

Images seared into his mind.

A father's hand, clad in the robes of Fate itself, ripping pages from the Codex before it could bond fully with him.

A lie woven into the fabric of existence—that Helios was cursed, that his endless deaths were necessary to sustain reality.

But the truth?

"You were chosen by the Codex. He could not destroy it—so he broke you instead. "

Every betrayal. Every death. All of it orchestrated by the God of Fate to keep his son from awakening.

And now?

Now, the Ignis Core's explosion had done the impossible.

It had reignited small part of his divinity.He knew this was impossible, he knew there was something wrong but he didn't have time to ponder in in the void.

Helios rose from the ashes, golden eyes burning with the weight of a thousand lifetimes.

The Codex pulsed in his soul, its torn pages flickering with forgotten power.He knew time was short, Helios used all his strength to empower the codex and reality shattered.

Far beyond the reaches of mortal comprehension, in a realm where time itself knelt before divinity.

The heavens trembled.

The God-King stood before his throne—a monstrous edifice of jagged obsidian and gilded bone, forged from the corpses of deities who had dared defy him. His golden eyes, twin suns burning with divine fury, cast long shadows across the 'Hall of Eternity', where the assembled gods of a thousand races knelt in perfect, petrified silence.

The air itself screamed under the weight of his anger. Reality fractured at the edges, threads of existence unraveling like torn silk. Stars winked out in distant galaxies, snuffed like candle flames beneath his wrath.

His son was gone.

Not dead. Not reborn. Erased from the tapestry of fate itself.

"Explain" the God-King commanded, his voice a blade of ice and fire.

No one answered.

The 'Lord of the Deep', a primordial deity older than time, pressed his forehead to the marble floor, his massive form shaking. The 'Weaver of Fates', a goddess who spun the threads of mortal lives, had collapsed into a trembling heap, her silver robes pooling around her like spilled mercury. Even 'Khalzor the Undying', the empire's most feared war-god, knelt with his armored knees locked, his face ashen.

None dared meet the God-King's gaze.

A flicker of movement—the Duchess of Moonlit Dawn, her silver hair cascading like liquid starlight, lifted her chin just slightly.

"Perhaps—"

The God-King's hand twitched.

The Duchess exploded.

One second, she was there—a radiant goddess of the elven pantheon. The next, she was atoms, her divine essence ripped apart and scattered across the void. The shockwave of her destruction sent the other gods sprawling, their forms skidding across the hall like leaves in a hurricane.

Silence.

Then—

"I did not grant you permission to speak."

The God-King's voice was soft. That was the most terrifying thing of all.

He rose from his throne, and the universe 'bent' around him. The marble cracked beneath his feet, veins of gold and black spreading like spiderwebs. The lesser gods whimpered, their divine forms flickering like candle flames in a storm.

"My son Helios soul is bound to the cycle,"the God-King said, stepping down from the dais. "His death fuels existence. His rebirth sustains the balance. And now—" His fingers curled into fists."Now, something has stolen him from me."

The 'Lord of the Deep'dared to lift his head. "M-my liege… could the Codex have—"

The God-King's gaze snapped to him.

The Lord of the Deep imploded, his massive form collapsing inward like a dying star, his divine essence sucked into nothingness. The remaining gods pressed themselves harder against the floor, their breath frozen in their throats.

"Search every world," the God-King whispered. "Burn every noble house. Tear apart the threads of fate if you must. But find him, find Helios."

He turned, his golden eyes burning like twin supernovae.

"Or I will destroy all of creation to do it."

And the gods knew—he meant it.