The blue-skinned man regarded John for a long, quiet moment in the small chamber.

  Then he huffed a soft, amused breath. “By the gods,” he said, tone edged with wry surprise. “You are like an open book. We need to do something about this if you join our cause.”

  John stiffened almost imperceptibly.

  “But right now,” the man continued, “it is easier for me like that.” His yellow eyes glowed faintly brighter as he focused. “I can read your thoughts and see your memories.”

  John felt it—not as a physical intrusion, but as a strange lightness in his mind, like doors he hadn’t meant to open were swinging wide on their own. Images flickered at the edges of awareness: the white weretigresses’ camp, the blue tiger’s rage, the dragons’ lairs, the loop of time tightening around his younger self, the potion trick, Archangela, his shelter, his Trial realm. They weren’t being dragged out; they were being observed, as though someone were watching the reflections on the surface of a deep pool.

  “You had an unusual life, John,” the blue man said, and there was no judgment in it—only acknowledgment. “I can see you are of good character. Good. This is what we need for our ranks.”

  John’s jaw clenched. To be assessed like this—measured from the inside out—left him feeling more exposed than any battlefield. It was not the first time he felt that. Others had done this to him in the past.

  “But you don’t know of your origin either,” the man went on, head tilting slightly. “No, that drop you drank is not what is causing this reaction.”

  John’s thoughts lurched around that word. Reaction? The ichor—he had assumed that was the key to everything strange about him that seemed to indicate he had some divine blood. If not that, then what—

  He didn’t even manage to form the question fully in his own head before the blue man answered it.

  “This chamber measures demi-gods,” he said calmly. “It already acknowledged you as one.”

  The words settled into the quiet room like a new law.

  John felt, for a heartbeat, as if the floor had shifted under him, even though the light-smooth surface remained perfectly still. Demi-god. Not just a boy who had drunk divinity, not just a human pushed beyond his limits by borrowed power—but someone whose very origin, whose blood, tied him to the beings he had thought of as distant and other. Yet he had met more gods in his life than most mortals could even dream of.

  His earlier unease crystallized into a sharper awareness: the chamber itself, the subtle tingling in his skin since he entered, the way the air had felt aware of him. It hadn’t been his imagination. This place saw things, and it had looked at him and placed him in its own category.

  Outside, he had been a paradox. Here, for the first time, someone was telling him what he was.

  He didn’t speak yet. He just met the blue man’s gaze, mind a quiet storm behind his eyes, as the word demi-god started to take root.

  The blue man paced a slow step across the small chamber, his yellow eyes never leaving John’s face.

  “I know you met the emperor of Celestor,” he said. “He is one of us. And he is weakened—as you know.” He paused, gaze sharpening. “Actually, he is doing worse than the last time you saw him.”

  John’s mind flashed to that imperial bedroom—the emperor’s fading light, the strain behind his words. Worse now.

  “Lesser evil gods were at work in Celestor,” the blue man continued. “They are gone for now, but the veil is still weakening. The evil forces have reinforced their armies. They are marching toward Naggaroth. They come from corrupted lands.”

  John felt a chill despite the even air. Naggaroth—the dark elves’ stronghold, a place he had heard of in whispers, a bulwark against things that crawled from rot.

  “The dark elves will not be able to hold without help,” the man said. “And as you know from past conversations you had with the emperor, not many beings can fight in the corrupted lands.”

  John remembered those talks—the emperor’s grim warnings about corruption that ate at the soul, lands where even the strong withered.

  “We demi-gods are mobilizing to defend the mortal realm,” the blue man went on, his voice carrying the weight of inevitability. “See, we have a parent there. We grew up there. We don’t want it to fall, even if it would not affect our divine heritage.”

  He stopped pacing, facing John squarely. “Gods, our other parents, are bound by higher laws to not intervene. So we are the last chance for this world to not fall to total corruption.”

  A beat of silence.

  “I suppose you will join our cause, young John?”

  John’s thoughts churned. Lesser evil gods—he remembered them, their interference, the chaos they had sown. And Serenielle—the goddess of light, her luminous intervention long before the ichor she had given him. But when he thought of her, something held; the memories stayed shielded, tucked behind a veil even this mind-reader couldn’t pierce.

  The blue man’s brow furrowed slightly. “I am just like you, John,” he said. “I also don’t know what stopped the lesser evil gods in Celestor. But you are lucky the divine laws were imposed before the transgressors took your life.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  John noted it: the man could sense the thought of interference, the shadow of evil gods, but not the details. Not Serenielle. Not the higher goddess who had bent rules in her own way. Whatever protected those memories—ichor, or something deeper—held firm even here. Also the emperor at the time was not able to read that episode.

  He met the blue man’s gaze, weighing the words, the war, the stakes.

  “If what you say is true,” John said evenly, “I will help you if I can.”

  The blue demi-god clapped his hands once, sharp and decisive.

  “Good,” he said, a note of finality settling the matter. “This is settled then.”

  He studied John again, yellow eyes glinting with something like approval. “But you are very young. To most of us demi-gods, a million years is a short period of time. While you are… well, even young in human standards, a very ephemeral race.”

  John kept his expression neutral, but the scale of it landed: beings who measured lives in eons, looking at him like a fleeting spark.

  “I know,” the man went on, catching the flicker of John’s curiosity about his appearance, “you are wondering why I am blue. Let me enlighten you.”

  He gestured to his own skin, the deep twilight hue catching the chamber’s even light. “When demi-gods awaken their divine blood, they transform. When they are children of a mortal and a lesser god, usually their skin turns grey.”

  He nodded toward the memory of the one who had brought John here. “There are around a thousand such demi-gods. There have never been more. All are still alive. The emperor might be the first to die.”

  John filed that away—the emperor, one of a thousand greys. Vulnerable, despite it all.

  “Let us proceed,” the blue man said. “When the parent is an intermediate god, then awakening the divine blood would make the skin turn blue, just like mine. There are ten of us in total.”

  John’s thoughts drifted to higher tiers—kids of higher gods. Serenielle had spoken of her son, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that the emperor himself? The memory surfaced, but as before, it stayed veiled, only fragments leaking through: John thinking about the next skin tone.

  The blue man’s brow creased faintly. “There are no children of higher gods,” he said, “but if there were, we assume they would have golden skin. Why we assume this is too complicated to explain. But anyway, higher gods seem to not be interested in procreating.”

  He waved a hand, dismissing the topic. “Not all of us have a good relationship with their divine parent. But from what we learned, some gods have offspring with their peers, and these children are born gods and grow up very differently to us. Of course, there are rare cases of lesser gods having a child with a demi-god, and that offspring is usually a stronger demi-god.”

  A pause. “Demi-gods also did have offspring with mortals, but quarter-gods have never awakened their divine blood.”

  His gaze sharpened, pinning John. “But anyway, we want to know what you are.”

  The yellow eyes shone brighter, a focused flare.

  One of the smooth walls shimmered, and a stone tablet materialized against it—dark, rectangular, etched with faint, glowing runes that pulsed like a slow heartbeat. It looked ancient, heavier than it should in this space of light, as if pulled from some deeper reality.

  “Place your hand on it, John,” the blue man said. “It will reveal your origins. This is a gift from a god to help us demi-gods organize.”

  John stared at the stone tablet for a long moment.

  The runes pulsed beneath its surface, expectant, ancient power humming in the quiet chamber. Whatever this was—a gift from a god, a key to origins—it felt heavier than the void outside, as if it held the weight of forgotten bloodlines and unspoken truths.

  He stepped forward.

  His hand lifted, palm open, fingers steady despite the uncertainty coiling in his gut. He pressed it flat against the cool stone.

  For a heartbeat, nothing.

  Then the tablet awoke.

  A low thrum filled the chamber, vibrating through the floor and up his bones. Grey light erupted from the point of contact, surging outward like storm clouds boiling over a horizon. It spread across the wall in tendrils of shadow and silver, coiling around the runes, illuminating every crack and curve of the artifact with spectral intensity. The air thickened, charged, as if the light itself were breathing.

  John’s skin tingled, the grey radiance washing over him, probing, assessing. It felt like being measured by something vast and impartial—a scale that weighed not flesh, but essence.

  The grey light crested, then receded, dissolving into motes that faded into the walls.

  But the tablet was not done.

  Blue fire kindled next, brighter, fiercer—a torrent of sapphire flame that roared silently from his hand, engulfing the stone in azure glory. The runes blazed, casting the chamber in electric twilight, shadows dancing like waves crashing against unseen shores. The power hummed deeper now, resonant, as if recognizing kinship in the blood it touched. John felt it pull at him, testing boundaries, stirring echoes of the demi-god’s words: intermediate, blue-skinned, ten of us.

  The blue blaze peaked in a corona of light, then ebbed, retreating like a tide.

  Silence fell, heavy and expectant.

  Then—gold.

  Pure, molten gold erupted from the tablet, a divine dawn breaking across the chamber. It flooded outward in radiant waves, blinding and warm, filling every corner with unyielding brilliance. The light didn’t flicker; it shone, eternal and sovereign, runes igniting into pillars of luminescence that pierced the air like spears of celestial judgment. The chamber trembled faintly, the walls themselves seeming to bow under the weight of it, as if the artifact had unleashed a fragment of the sun itself. John’s hand burned—not with pain, but with a fierce, living heat that raced up his arm and into his core, awakening something primal, something that whispered of thrones and stars and blood older than time.

  The golden torrent held, unyielding, bathing him in its glory.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it snuffed out.

  The chamber plunged into stillness. The runes dimmed to faint embers. The tablet went dark, silent as any ordinary stone. No more light. No more hum. Just quiet.

  John pulled his hand away slowly, staring at his unmarked palm. His breath came even, but his pulse thundered in his ears.

  He turned to the blue demi-god.

  The man stood frozen, yellow eyes wide, mouth slightly parted in a shock that bordered on disbelief. For the first time since John had met him, the composure had cracked—raw surprise etching lines across his blue features.

  “What does that mean?” John asked.

  The blue man blinked, swallowing as if words had momentarily escaped him. “I… don’t know,” he admitted, voice hushed with awe. “You are neither the offspring of a lesser, intermediate, or higher divinity.”

  John’s brow furrowed. “Then I am not a demi-god.” He shrugged, the epic display suddenly feeling hollow. “Yes, I did not know my parents, but I am pretty sure they were human.”

  The blue man raised a hand sharply, interrupting. “Oh, but this is not the reaction the tablet would have had if you were a mere mortal. It would have not reacted at all if that was the case.” He glanced at the now-silent stone, almost reverently. “We did some experiments in the past, out of curiosity for studying this divine artifact. This reaction… we never saw.”

  He met John’s eyes again, still visibly shaken. “You are something else. I don’t know.”

  John glanced back at the tablet, then at his hand. Something else. After the light show of greys and blues and golds, the answer was… uncertainty? No lineage, no rank, just a question mark.

  It felt underwhelming. All that power, all that probing, and for what?

  His thoughts turned inward: Would he still be able to help protect the lands of the dark elves? If he wasn’t one of them—not grey, not blue, not even the mythical gold—did his place in their war still hold?