Chapter 4: The Taste of God
Thalos stared at the floor for a long time. The silence in the shop was heavier than the rock above them.
The dust was grey, mixed with the grime of the shop floor—mud, oil, and the footprints of the soldiers who had just destroyed his life. It was a pathetic sight. Five minutes ago, that pile of dust had been a golden sun, a beacon of hope that would have bought Elara years of life.
Now, it was just dirt.
"Useless," Thalos whispered. His voice cracked.
He dragged himself into a sitting position, his back against the cold metal of the desk. The pain in his ribs from the soldier's boot was a dull throb, but it was nothing compared to the hollowness in his chest.
He looked at the empty doorway where Captain Vane had stood.
"The sky is for the Gods. The dirt is for you."
The words echoed in his mind, bouncing around like a trapped bird. Vane hadn't even been angry. He hadn't been cruel for the sake of cruelty. He was just... indifferent. To him, Thalos wasn't a person. He was just part of the scenery, a bug to be stepped on because it was in the way.
Thalos scraped his fingers across the metal floor, gathering the grit into a small pile. The movement was mechanical. Mindless.
He thought of Elara.
He pictured her lying on her cot back in their hab-block. She was probably staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks, waiting for the door to open. Waiting for her big brother to come home with the medicine.
She never complained. Even when her lungs rattled like a bag of marbles, even when she coughed up blood that was speckled with grey dust, she would just smile and tell him it was okay.
"Don't worry, Thalos. I'm just tired."
She was lying. She wasn't tired; she was petrifying. The Stone-Sickness was turning her soft tissues into calcified rock. First the lungs, then the throat, then the heart. It was a slow, suffocating way to die.
Thalos looked at the grey pile in his hand.
It wasn't glowing anymore. The Ichor, once exposed to the air and shattered, lost its potency within minutes. The divine energy dissipated, leaving behind only the toxic husk. They called it "Dead God Dust."
If he breathed it, it would accelerate the sickness. If he ate it... well, nobody ate it. That was suicide. It was poison.
I can't go back, he realized.
If he went back empty-handed, he would have to watch her die. He would have to sit by her bed, hold her hand, and watch the light fade from her eyes, knowing he had held the cure in his hands and let it be crushed.
He couldn't do it. He wasn't strong enough to watch her die.
Captain Vane said the blood belongs to the Archons.
Thalos felt a heat rising in his chest. It started in his stomach and clawed its way up his throat. It wasn't fear. It wasn't sadness.
It was hatred. Pure, molten hatred.
They live in the sky. They eat the best meat. They drink the pure blood. And when we find a crumb, they crush it under their boots just to remind us of our place.
He clenched his fist around the dust. The sharp grit bit into his palm.
"If I'm going to die," Thalos muttered, his eyes burning with tears he refused to shed, "I'm not going to die hungry. And I'm not going to die a maggot."
He looked at the toxic powder.
Eat it.
The thought came from nowhere. It was insane. It was a death sentence.
Eat it. Take what is yours.
He didn't hesitate. Before his survival instinct could stop him, before the rational part of his brain could scream NO, he shoved his dusty hand into his mouth.
He swallowed the grit, the dirt, and the shattered remnants of the Ichor.
It was dry. It coated his tongue and throat like sand. It tasted of copper, ash, and something ancient—like the smell of a tomb that had been sealed for a thousand years.
He gagged, his body trying to reject the foreign matter, but he forced himself to swallow dry. He scraped the last bits from his palm and licked them off.
For a moment, nothing happened.
He sat there in the silence, wondering if he was just an idiot who had eaten dirt. Wondering if he would just die of heavy metal poisoning in a few hours.
Then, his stomach exploded.
It wasn't a noise. It was a physical sensation of rupture.
A white-hot spear of agony tore through his gut. It felt like he had swallowed a live coal. Thalos doubled over, clutching his stomach, his mouth opening in a silent scream. His throat had seized shut; he couldn't even vomit.
The fire spread. It didn't stay in his stomach. It raced through his veins, turning his blood into boiling lead. It shot down his legs, up his spine, and into his skull.
He fell onto his side, thrashing. He kicked the desk, denting the metal. He clawed at the floor, his fingernails tearing off against the steel, leaving bloody streaks.
Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.
His body was revolting. He could feel his internal organs tightening, hardening. The Dead God Dust was doing what it always did—it was petrifying him.
He looked at his hand. The skin was turning grey. The veins were bulging, turning a dark, bruised purple. His fingers stiffened, locking into claws. He couldn't move them.
The cold was spreading now. It started at his fingertips and toes, chasing the fire in his veins. Where the fire burned, the cold followed, turning everything to stone.
His heart began to hammer—not a human rhythm, but a frantic, machine-gun beat. Thump-thump-thump-thump. It was beating so hard he could hear it in his ears, louder than the world outside.
I'm sorry, Elara.
The thought floated through the red haze of pain.
I tried. I really tried.
Vision went dark. First the edges, then the center. The pain started to fade, replaced by a terrifying heaviness. He felt like he weighed a thousand tons. He was sinking through the floor, through the Titan, falling into the void.
The darkness was complete.
Thalos stopped thrashing. His body lay still on the dirty floor of the shop, twisted and grey.
As his consciousness slipped away, the last thing he heard wasn't the sirens. It wasn't the hum of the city.
It was a chime.
Clean, digital, and impossible.
Ding.