Chapter 50
The ghosts faded.
Not because I'd beaten them.
Because they'd made room—for him.
Adim stepped down from the blood-forged dais, cloak trailing behind him like a living river. His boots splashed through the crimson tide, each step echoing like war drums in my skull. There was no more crowd, no more specters. Just him.
And me.
"You've bled," he said. "You've broken. Now... you choose."
My fists tightened. "Choose what?"
Adim stopped ten feet from me. "What kind of god you want to become."
I laughed, short and bitter. "I'm no god."
"Wrong," he said simply. "The moment you touched the Relic, you stopped being just flesh. You are a nexus of death and memory, stitched together by suffering and bound by blood. Your enemies look at you and see an aberration. That's not fear, Kiro. That's recognition."
I swallowed, throat dry. "You talk a lot for a ghost."