"He came at the wrong time," she murmured. "It seems... things are reaching their end."
Ikenga glanced sideways at her, a faint smile curving his lips. His arm pressed more firmly around her.
"He couldn’t have come at a better time," he said, his voice warm with quiet conviction. "With how things are unfolding... we may not even need to stand at the frontlines."
He looked ahead, eyes narrowing with resolve.
"We now know our enemy’s weakness — and all we have to do is keep our pawns alive long enough to keep pressing on those soft spots."
Keles gave a quiet hum of agreement as her fingers moved in slow circles over her growing belly — a gesture of both worry and hope.
"Have you got a name for him yet?" Keles asked, a teasing lilt in her voice as they walked slowly side by side.
Ikenga scratched his head with a sheepish grin. "I think I’ll leave that to you," he replied.
By now, they had reached the door to their chambers — quieter and more still than usual. There was no Agatha waiting for them, no mention of her lingering in the air. Ikenga felt the absence but said nothing. Some Chapters end in silence, and he had learned to respect that.
Keles stepped in first, pulling back the veil from her head. The moment she did, the coldness that often marked her features softened into something far gentler. Her eyes, once hollow with divine distance, now shimmered faintly — like something was blooming behind them.
Pregnancy was not new to her. She had brought Xerosis and Roth into the world through her own means, forged of her essence — as the goddess of death and darkness. But this time... this child was different.
This child carried his blood.
Ikenga — god of nature and curses — had added something new to the cycle she embodied. A disruptive harmony. An unfamiliar sensation.
Her previous children were born of undeath, living paradoxes sustained by the shadows and silence of her realm. But now, for the first time, she felt it — the stirring of life. A warmth not her own. An echo of breath within her — pulsing in tandem with the chill of her own dominion.
It was... disorienting.
And deeply grounding.
"I never thought I’d feel something ," she admitted quietly, her fingers brushing her stomach again. "This... conflict of forces inside me."
Ikenga stepped closer, placing his hand atop hers — earth to grave, life to death.
"It’s not a conflict," he said softly. "It’s a balance. You hold the dark... and I, the wild. What grows from us might just be what this world needs — something not yet written in prophecy or bound by fate."
Keles didn’t answer immediately. She simply leaned into him, her head resting gently against his chest, eyes closed.
Ikenga held Keles gently, but the quiet beat of her heart against his chest only amplified the noise in his own.
He wasn’t as calm as he looked.
In the stillness of that chamber — in the warmth and weight of the life growing inside her — another presence pressed itself into his thoughts.
The name alone carried weight. History. Complication.
Their relationship had always been... different. Not bound by mortal norms, not shaped by declarations or ceremonies, but a dance of forces and fates that intertwined over centuries. They were gods. They understood each other through instinct and essence more than spoken promises. And still... Ikenga had drawn a line once.
He had denied Mahu a child.
Not out of cruelty, but because he knew — he wouldn’t be present. He wouldn’t stand beside her through the ache of growth or the danger of birthing something divine. He respected her too much to give her half of what she deserved.
And yet here he stood.
Keles, carrying his child. Not through careful decision, but through the chaos of war and proximity and shared purpose. And she, the Lady of Death, was nurturing a new life.
Ikenga wasn’t blind to what this meant. Not just for Keles. Not just for the child.
He had hurt her in a way only immortals could hurt each other — across centuries, through choices that will last in time. He hadn’t spoken to her since, but he could feel the potential of her judgment like a sword still in its sheath — quiet, patient, but real.
She was the goddess of motherhood, She could whisper a curse upon a bloodline and it would cling for eons. If she wished to wound, she could do it through silence, or worse — through the unborn.
And that thought — that particular thought — planted a chill deep in Ikenga’s chest.
He was preparing himself, even now.
Not for an apology. That was already forming in his soul.
But for whatever action she chose.
He would not hide from it. He couldn’t. He was in the wrong, and he would bear the consequences — not as a god, but as a man who had made a choice with ripple effects he could not yet fully grasp.
Thankfully, they were not in their world. Here, on this foreign battlefield of corrupted soil and under distant moons, Mahu’s reach was thinner. Not broken — never that — but distant. For now.
Still, Ikenga found himself instinctively placing his hand again on Keles’s stomach — as if shielding what had not yet been born, from a wrath that had not yet arrived.
He breathed in deeply, One war outside.
Another one brewing inside and he would have to fight both. To think him Ikenga would one day fall into the routine and cliches that comes with a being a god.
Months passed by in the goblin world with a lot of changes taken place, first was the increase in chaos in the previously orderly cities under the empire.
Since catching their first glimpse of the battlefield, the goblins had been shaken. At first, they were repulsed—horrified by the brutal scenes of twisted bodies, scorched earth, and the unnatural silence that came in the wake of violence. Yet, that horror soon gave way to a deeper, more consuming curiosity. What was happening at the front line? Who was truly behind this conflict, and why had it begun?
Among the common folk, the goblins were perhaps the most reactive. Long used to being on the periphery of power, they were now drawn into the center of a mystery. They hungered for answers, and that hunger grew with each whispered rumor and half-seen image smuggled from the front. But the goblins weren’t the only ones watching.
For the nobles, life had become stagnant. Their wealth and titles protected them from hardship, but also left them yearning for excitement, for meaning. The chaos of the front line, distant and bloody, became a thrilling drama. In secret, they activated their personal informants and spy networks, dispatching daring scouts and mercenaries to the front lines—not to fight, but to observe. They sought not victory, but spectacle. Many even competed among themselves to see who could obtain the most vivid, uncensored image of the truth.
The Empire, sensing the danger in this growing attention, began to scramble. With all its might and resources, it worked overtime behind the scenes—muddying reports, intercepting messages, and planting disinformation to distort the reality of what was happening at the border. They shut down public channels, accused truth-bringers of treason, and attempted to redirect the people’s focus to festivals, political distractions, and state-sponsored narratives.
But theirs was not the only agenda at play.
Kaelen, the shadow behind the veil, was moving swiftly on his end. Somehow—no one knew exactly how—uncensored videos from the front lines began to leak into the public. Gruesome, haunting, and yet undeniably authentic, they showed not only the intensity of the battle but the unlikely alliances forming in its crucible. The empire tried to discredit the footage, calling it doctored or staged. But it was too late. The flame of curiosity had been lit, and Kaelen continued to fan it with precise, surgical strikes of information.
What made matters worse for the Empire was the revelation of who had facilitated the spread of these battlefield leaks: the Ogre merchants.
This insult did not go unnoticed by the goblins. Proud of their history in being above the Ogre, they took it as a direct challenge. How had the ogres—a race long considered brutish and slow—succeeded in a field the goblins believed was their birthright? Tensions rose. The goblins began to mobilize, not just out of curiosity now, but out of pride.
And yet, the implications were greater than a mere rivalry. The footage revealed a shocking truth: ogres fighting alongside the Ratfolk—another marginalized group often dismissed by the imperial narrative as cowardly scavengers or pests. This revelation struck at the heart of the Empire’s propaganda. Hadn’t the Empire claimed the ogres were hostile, disloyal, and too dangerous to trust? Hadn’t they declared the Ratfolk as enemies of the state?
Now, the people began to ask difficult questions. Whispers of conspiracy grew louder: Was the Empire lying about the war? Were the ogres victims of a greater manipulation? Why would the Empire hide these alliances, if not to control the narrative?