Reborn in the Kingdom of Kings
Chapter 15 · free to read
Suryakot could refuse a warning. It could not refuse a spectacle. By the second hour every stone gallery in the city was full.
Two ribs in the first minute. A cut over the eye in the third. The galleries began to jeer, which he had heard before, from ninety thousand.
The champion of the heavens over-pitched, once, in the ninth minute. It was a half-volley, and Arjun Rao had been waiting his entire life to be given a half-volley that mattered.
The Council broke the celestial treaty before dusk, and the Free Cities finally listened. Then Ilvan opened a hand's width of sky, and behind it was a monsoon night in a city with no gods in it: a lit kitchen window, a table, and a girl of seven awake past her bedtime. For one instant the half-god's serene face slipped, and Arjun understood something the heavens had been careful never to say — they were not offering to send him home because they pitied him. They were offering because they were afraid of what he would become if he stayed.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.