Perfect.
I'll weave both into a single terrifying mystery—
a pantheon erased from history AND the first pantheon from which all othersThe
Dawn crept slowly across the sky, bleeding pale light into the stone courtyard. The gang had barely slept. None of them could—the map, the symbols, the blank space where a god should have been… it clung to their minds like a curse.
Kairo stepped outside first.
Cold air brushed his skin, sharp enough to wake something restless inside him. But the courtyard wasn't empty.
Someone was already there.
The newcomer—the silent boy with Hades' shadow—knelt on the ground, dragging a piece of charcoal in slow arcs across the stone.
He was drawing.
At first, the circle looked like a summoning seal, then a clan crest… then something older, something Kairo didn't recognize from any pantheon.
But it felt familiar.
Too familiar.
The boy didn't look up when he spoke.
"You felt it yesterday, didn't you?"
Kairo stiffened.
"The blank space," the boy continued. "The… absence."
Kairo's voice came out sharper than he intended.
"Who are you?"
The boy finally lifted his face.
Eyes like the Underworld.
Too calm.
Too knowing.
"I am someone who remembers what the world forgot," he said simply.
"And what it was forced to forget."
Then he stood and walked away, leaving the half-drawn symbol glowing faintly with black Aether.
Kairo stared at it.
Something inside him whispered home.
He hated that.
Before he could chase the boy down, a deep, familiar voice cut through the courtyard:
"Kairo."
Sensi stood under the archway, his cloak stirring though there was no wind.
"We continue the lesson inside."
The Hall of Echoes
They followed him into a chamber none of them had entered before—a dark hallway lined with ancient stone statues, every one carved in the likeness of a warrior.
But these warriors…
They didn't belong to any pantheon.
Some had six arms.
Some had horns of starlight.
Some had wings made of molten shadow.
Some were human—almost—but their eyes were voids.
Damis whispered, "Who the hell are these?"
Sensi placed a hand on the nearest statue.
"Before the world fractured into pantheons, before Zeus or Odin or Ra or Sàngó took their thrones… there was only one bloodline."
His voice echoed, low, steady, ancient.
"The bloodline of the Aether Kings."
The torches flared.
The statues seemed to breathe.
"They were the first wielders of Aether. The first to bend reality. The first to command creation."
Isha stepped forward, awe widening her eyes.
"You mean… the gods came after them?"
Sensi nodded.
"The gods were born from their shards. Their remnants. Their failures."
Kairo's chest tightened.
"Then why did the pantheons destroy them?"
Sensi's jaw flexed.
He didn't answer immediately.
Finally:
"They did not destroy the Aether Kings."
A long pause.
"The Aether Kings destroyed themselves."
The room fell silent.
But Sensi was not done.
The Shattering
"It began with a single King," Sensi continued, "one who discovered that Aether could do more than create."
He looked each of them in the eye.
"It could take."
A sickening chill coiled down Kairo's spine.
"This King stole. Absorbed. Consumed. Entire clans, entire realms, entire gods—broken down into power he devoured."
Ruel whispered, "So that's why the map had a blank space? A missing pantheon?"
Sensi's gaze darkened.
"That blank space was the King's dominion."
"And what's it called?" Lani asked.
Sensi hesitated.
Then—
"No name survives."
Kairo felt something burn under his skin.
His Aether stirred—like a trapped animal.
Sensi continued walking.
"When the King grew beyond the gods, the pantheons united for the first and last time. Zeus, Ra, Odin, Amaterasu, Sàngó, Quetzalcoatl—every throne allied to stop him."
"And did they win?" Damis asked.
Sensi laughed.
It wasn't a happy sound.
"They lost. Horribly."
The statues trembled as if remembering.
"But in his arrogance, the King made one mistake."
He placed his palm on a statue with four wings and eyes of white flame.
"He trusted his heir."
Kairo felt as if he were sinking into the floor.
"His own child betrayed him," Sensi said.
"Split his Aether. Shattered his soul. Broke his dominion into fragments that birthed the pantheons you now know."
Kairo forced his voice out.
"What happened to the heir?"
Sensi's eyes flickered toward him.
"The heir vanished."
Kairo's heartbeat thundered in his ears.
No one else noticed.
But the silent boy—
the one with Hades' shadow—
watched Kairo with the strangest expression.
As if he already knew the ending.
The Fearful Truth
"What does all this have to do with us?" Ruel finally asked.
Sensi turned fully, cloak swirling like storm clouds.
"Because the blood of that King did not disappear."
His gaze locked onto them like a knife.
"It survived. It hid. It wove itself into the world quietly, secretly…"
Then he looked directly at Kairo.
"…until now."
Kairo took a step back.
His breath came short.
The walls seemed to close in.
The statues shuddered.
The silent newcomer smiled again—slow, like he was watching the beginning of a prophecy.
Sensi finished:
"You are not dual-bloods.
You are not anomalies.
You are not mistakes."
He raised a hand.
Black and white Aether twisted together above his palm—two forces merging into something that made the air whimper.
"You are fragments."
"Remnants."
"Echoes of the First Pantheon."
"Descendants of the Aether King."
Sensi lowered his hand.
"And one of you carries the oldest fragment of all."
Everyone turned to Kairo.
Kairo turned numb.
"Me?" he whispered.
Sensi did not blink.
He simply said:
"Yes."
The torches went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
And Kairo felt it—
a pulse in his blood,
a whisper in his bones,
a presence in the darkness…
A voice he had never heard yet somehow remembered:
"My heir."
Kairo stumbled back, gasping.
The darkness recoiled instantly—
as if someone had slapped it away.
Sensi stepped between Kairo and the shadows, his Aether flaring violently.
"That is enough for today."
But his voice trembled.
Sensi was afraid.
Kairo stood shaking in the dark hall.
The others watched him with wide eyes.
The newcomer simply tilted his head and murmured:
"Now the world will start to notice you."
Kairo's heart clenched.
The room felt like a coffin.
And for the first time since joining the gang…
Kairo wondered if Sensi had saved his life—
—or ruined it.