The rain hadn’t stopped in three days, but Kaelen barely noticed anymore. He walked with his head down, shoulders hunched like the rest of the city’s ghosts, blending into the crowd with practiced ease. A god, dressed in a threadbare hoodie and boots worn thin at the soles, waiting for the crosswalk light like everyone else.

  People bumped into him. No one apologized.

  He didn’t mind.

  They didn’t see him—not truly—and that was the point.

  He wasn’t here to be seen.

  The light changed. Kaelen crossed with the tide of commuters, steam rising from storm drains and the acrid smell of oil bleeding through the rain. It was a hard city. It made people hard. He could feel it in the air—tight shoulders, short fuses, the quiet ache of too many days spent surviving.

  Two blocks ahead, a woman screamed.

  Short. Sharp. Cut off.

  No one turned.

  Kaelen did.

  The alley was narrow, tucked between a closed deli and a payday loan office. The fluorescent buzz of a faulty streetlamp flickered overhead. He stepped into the shadow without hesitation, slipping into the dark like it welcomed him.

  Three men. One woman. Cornered. One of them laughing.

  Kaelen didn’t speak.

  He didn’t need to.

  One of the men turned. “Get lost.”

  Kaelen met his eyes. Something ancient moved behind his own. Slow. Inevitable.

  They always felt it—even if they didn’t understand.

  He stepped forward.

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  The first punch came fast. Human fast. It caught Kaelen on the jaw, snapping his head sideways. Pain bloomed. He took it. Let it root itself in his ribs, where the old gods had once carved oaths into his bones.

  He let them hit him. Twice more.

  And then he stopped letting.

  A twist. A sharp movement. A knee. An elbow. He moved like rain off a blade—fluid, unforgiving, quiet. The men went down, not dead, but changed. Somewhere in the silence that followed, one of them whispered, “What are you?”

  Kaelen didn’t answer.

  He turned to the woman. Her lip was bleeding, but her eyes were steady. She didn’t ask who he was. Just nodded. Thanked him like you thank the train that shows up on time.

  “You okay?” he asked, voice low.

  “I am now.”

  She walked away. No drama. No spotlight. Just gone into the night like him.

  Kaelen stood in the alley a moment longer, breathing in rust and ozone.

  This wasn’t glory.

  It wasn’t worship.

  But it was enough.

  And for now, enough was everything.

  Kaelen left the alley the way he came—quiet, unnoticed. By the time he reached the corner, the rain had already washed the blood from his knuckles.

  He ducked into the doorway of an old laundromat, its flickering sign sputtering like it was on its last breath. Inside, the machines rumbled, half-full with clothes and lives. A man slept on a plastic chair in the corner, arms folded, a plastic bag for a pillow.

  Kaelen sat down. Watched the dryers spin.

  Time blurred.

  It always did when he let the stillness in.

  And with the stillness came the past.

  Then—Long Before

  They carved his name into stone, once.

  Kaelen the Watcher. Kaelen the Unfallen.

  He stood on high cliffs of white crystal, where the sky was a living flame and the wind carried songs in languages older than grief. He had armor of star-metal and a voice that could calm storms. Mortals prayed to him. Other gods envied him. Some feared him.

  But he didn’t want to be worshipped.

  He wanted them to be safe.

  When the lesser gods turned on each other—drunk on pride, power, prophecy—Kaelen stepped between. He brokered peace, offered shelter, bore their burdens. He shielded mortals from the divine fallout, even as his own temple walls cracked beneath the strain.

  And when the heavens burned, and the war came anyway—

  He refused to raise his blade.

  “I will not fight to rule,” he told them. “Only to protect.”

  They called it weakness.

  They stripped his name from the stars.

  Cast him down.

  He fell not like a flame—but like a man. Quiet. Heavy. Alone.

  ?

  Now

  A dryer buzzed. Loud. Mundane. Pulling him back.

  Kaelen blinked, and the vision of the crystal cliffs was gone—replaced by the hum of fluorescent lights and the stale scent of detergent.

  He flexed his hand. The blood was dry now. The scars beneath the skin—older than any human war—still pulsed faintly, like echoes.

  He stood.

  Another storm was coming.

  Not rain.

  Something worse.

  And like always… he’d be there.