POV — The Summoned Champion
He did not arrive in thunder.
That was the first mistake the gods made.
The mortal champion descended upon the scorched plains where Kael had last been seen, wrapped in divine containment sigils, his flesh rewritten by Olympian sorcery. His heartbeat echoed like a war drum, every pulse reinforced by god-forged enchantments.
He was perfect by mortal standards.
Strength elevated into the low god-tier
Reflexes bent by time-scrying
A divine artifact chained to his soul — Aegis Phobos,, a blunt weapon designed to fracture lesser divinities
A body resistant to heat, radiation, and mid level kinetic force.
Magic layered so deeply into his bones that dispelling it would kill him
The gods watched through distant scrying pools, expecting a spectacle.
They got slaughter.
POV — Kael (SOL-ABRAXAS)
Kael felt the champion before he saw him.
Magic.
Thick.
Crude.
Loud.
The Olympians had finally stopped posturing.
Kael stood still as the champion struck first.
The artifact hammer carved a glowing arc through the air and connected, shearing through Kael's shoulder in a burst of divine light. The pain was real, magic bypassed Kryptonian resistances, burning directly into his nervous system.
Kael staggered back 6 meters .
The gods rejoiced.
For exactly three seconds.
Kael's body adapted.
Muscle fibers compressed and reknit mid-motion, solar energy flooding into the wound as his cells learned the magic's frequency.
His Seraphim, watching through quantum-linked perception, recorded everything.
Kael looked up.
And smiled.
The Battle Escalates
The champion unleashed everything.
City-shattering blows
Reality-distorting enchantments
Divine smite after divine smite
Kael was driven into the earth, the nearest continents trembling as shockwaves rippled outward. Old Mountains collapsed. The sky ignited .
But Kael kept rising.
Every strike made him stronger.
Every spell burned itself into his biology as experience .
Kael began fighting back.
A single punch shattered the champion's ribs and collapsed his enchanted organs inward. A follow-up strike folded space, launching the champion through kilometers of stone.
The artifact screamed as Kael grabbed it barehanded.
The magic fought him.
It lost.
Kael bit into the hammer , solar fire erupting from his eyes as he destroyed the enchantments, and absorbed the energy , stripping it layer by layer.
The champion screamed in realization.
He was not fighting a mortal.
He was fighting a future god-killer.
...
Kael broke the champion.
Not quickly.
Not cleanly.
Bone by bone, enchantment by enchantment, Kael dismantled him, testing thresholds, recording reactions, learning how divine blessings failed under sustained solar overload.
When the champion finally collapsed, barely alive, Kael stood over him, eyes and chest glowing crimson like a miniature star.
The Seraphim descended.
Sleek. Silent. Clinical.
They restrained the broken champion in null-magic containment, extracted his artifact remnants, and teleported him away.
For study.
For dissection.
For understanding the gods from the inside out.
Kael did not look back as he left...
POV — The Olympian Gods
Panic.
Raw, undignified, and immediate.
The scrying pools shattered.
Voices overlapped in frantic denial.
"That was impossible"
"He ate the artifact? "
"He's learning"
They rewrote prophecies.
They blamed one another.
They invoked ancient emergency accords long thought ceremonial.
For the first time in millennia, the gods feared extinction.
And they refused to accept it.
New plans were drawn.
More champions.
More blessings.
More collateral.
They would not lose to something that breathed.
Elsewhere
....
POV — The Green Lantern Corps
The second assault force arrived over Earth only to find nothing.
No energy signature.
No base.
No anomaly.
The planet was quiet, no Kryptonian deceptively so.
Scans revealed lingering solar distortion, scorched ley lines, and unknown technological residues buried deep beneath the crust.
Kael was gone.
A Lantern commander clenched his fist.
"We hesitated for too long ."
Intelligence updates flooded in.
Mercury's dark side showed impossible readings
Solar fluctuations around the sun's core had increased
Multiple pantheons were mobilizing in secret
The realization settled like a death sentence.
They had not been hunting a criminal.
They had been incubating a calamity.
...
...
Far from Earth, beneath Mercury's lightless surface, Kael stood within his second superior base Seraphim moving with reverent precision around him.
On the central wall, newly engraved in solar-gold alloy:
HOUSE SOL-ABRAXAS
THE SUN EATER
Kael stared at the star beyond the walls.
Soon, he would enter it.
Hibernate.
Grow.
And when the universe finally came for him again
He would be ready to take risks he couldn't before.
End of the chapter