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The blood on Levi’s hands wasn't his own, but the frost clinging to his skin was. His mother’s body had grown cold hours ago in the damp, rotting shadows of the mortal slums. For days, the fever had eaten her alive, and eleven-year-old Levi had sat beside her worn mattress, watching her breathe in ragged, shallow gasps while the city outside went on oblivious. When her final, faint breath slipped into the dark, something inside Levi had snapped.
It wasn't a sob but a wave of pure, absolute absolute zero where a sudden, violent burst of shadow and divine frost that shattered the wooden bedframe, coated the rotting walls in jagged ice, and froze the flies mid-air.
It was the death of his mortal mother that manifested his powers, tearing open the veil between the world of men and the realm of the divine. And it was that very spike of volatile power that drew the divine wardens to his doorstep.
They didn't comfort him. They didn't ask his name. They simply bound his wrists in iron chains and dragged him up the winding, cloud-shrouded slopes of Mount Paradisus to the Gardens of Ymir, the eternal dwelling meant to house the forgotten offspring of gods and mortals. Or more commonly known as the Paths.
They were demigods, but they were not princes or princesses. They had no world where they truly belonged; the mortal world was too fragile to sustain their blood, yet the high halls of Paradisus refused to acknowledge their existence. The lust of the gods had no boundaries, they took mortal lovers on a whim and spawned children whom they never turned to look back at, leaving them instead to rot in the golden gilding of the eternal gardens.
Levi stood on the pristine marble steps of the Great Courtyard, his dark hair falling over his hollow, bruised eyes. He clutched his mother’s faded silver handkerchief in his pocket, his knuckles white. All around him, lush elderberry trees bloomed with immortal nectar, and crystal-clear fountains sang soft, divine melodies.
It was paradise, and Levi hated every inch of it.
"Watch it, new boy!"
A sudden, violent crash echoed through the immaculate courtyard. A heavy wooden crate burst open, sending dried roots, brass instruments, and glowing blue beetles skittering across the spotless stone floor.
Levi stepped back instinctively, his hand flying to his belt as a girl his age tumbled out of the bushes, covered head-to-toe in mud, soot, and crushed leaves. Her dark hair was a tangled nest, and a pair of oversized, brass-rimmed goggles sat crookedly on her forehead.
She sat up in the dirt, wiped a streak of charcoal across her nose, and looked up at Levi. Instead of shrinking away from the cold, lethal aura radiating off him, her eyes sparkled with a wild, terrifying intensity behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
"Fascinating..." she breathed, scrambling to her feet and marching directly into his personal space, completely ignoring the sharp dagger he had half-drawn from his hip. "Your body temperature is unnaturally low! And those shadows clinging to your boots—are you a child of the Underworld? Did your divine blood manifest through frost or shadow-step?"
Levi narrowed his gray eyes, stepping back from the filthy, loud intruder. "Back off, brat. You're getting mud on my boots."
Hange let out a bright, unhinged laugh that shattered the quiet solemnity of the divine sanctuary. "Brat? I've been here since forever! I bet I am way older than you, shorty. By the way, I'm Hange! And you... you look like you haven't slept in a week and want to murder a tree."
"I want to murder you if you don't step away from me," Levi growled, his voice a low, icy rasp.
Hange only grinned wider, tapping her chin with a soot-stained finger. "A feisty one! Good. Everyone else here just mopes around crying about their god-parents ignoring them. You're going to be much more fun to study!"
Levi stared at her with utter, unadulterated disdain. The gods had thrown him into a gilded cage for unwanted bastards, and the first person… demigod, he met was a filthy, manic pest who didn't know the meaning of personal space.
He gripped his dagger tighter, turning his back on her as he walked toward the lonely quarters at the edge of the gardens. He was never going to like this place, and he was certainly never going to like her.
***
The morning sun over Mount Paradisus did not bring warmth; it only illuminated the dusting of ash and fallen golden leaves clinging to the marble.
Perched on the eastern ridge of the Garden stood the shrines, towering, weathered monoliths dedicated to the pantheon. The irony was a cruel joke devised by the Elders: the discarded bastards of the gods were tasked with sweeping, polishing, and maintaining the immaculate sanctuaries of the very parents who had abandoned them.
Levi worked in methodical, vicious silence. He scrubbed the cold obsidian altar with an old rag, brushing away every speck of dirt until the stone shone like a dark mirror.
"Hah... I am surprised you are cleaning your deadbeat father's shrine. I thought you'd hate him."
Levi didn't stop his rhythm, but his jaw tightened.
Hange was sitting on a makeshift wooden swing she had rigged to the branch of an ancient elderberry tree nearby. It gave her a perfect vantage point to watch him work. Her legs kicked back and forth lazily, sending a shower of loose bark down onto the freshly swept steps. Clutched in her lap was a wicker basket wriggling with glowing, translucent moss-beetles she had dug out of the swamp hours earlier.
"I don't like him," Levi growled, his voice a low, rough rasp against the quiet morning air. He wrung out his cloth with enough force to snap the fibers. "But there is something I hate even more. Filth. Looks like this place was not touched."
"It is not," Hange confirmed, her swing slowing to a gentle sway. She leaned her chin against the hemp rope, her dark eyes tracking the rigid line of Levi's shoulders. "Because your father is a forgotten deity. No one worships death, do they?"
Levi froze.
The wet rag stayed pressed against the obsidian. The cold draft sweeping off the mountain suddenly felt biting, cutting straight through his thin linen tunic.
"So he does know that mother is dead," Levi muttered. It wasn't a question. It was a realization that tasted like lead on his tongue. If his father was the god of shadows and the end of life, then every dying breath in the mortal realm echoed in his domain. He had known the exact second Kuchel's heart had stopped in that rotting slums room. And he had done nothing.
"He might," Hange shrugged, her tone strangely devoid of its usual wild enthusiasm. She picked up one of the glowing beetles, watching it crawl across her soot-stained knuckles before letting it flutter away, straight toward Levi's freshly polished altar.
"Gods," she said darkly, her gaze drifting up toward the distant, shimmering spires of Paradisus lost in the clouds above them. "They don't care about their children they had with the mortals. Because we can be their own downfall."
Levi turned slowly, his gray eyes narrowing as he glared at her through the falling golden leaves. He expected her to laugh, to make another unhinged joke about divine biology or dissecting the glowing bugs.
Instead, Hange’s face was shadow-draped, her usual manic spark replaced by a quiet, hollow edge that mirrored his own bitterness.
"What can I say?" she whispered, swinging her legs once more as she looked down at her own scarred, ink-stained hands. "I hate both the humans and the gods. They both abandoned me."
For the first time since he had been dragged to the Garden, Levi didn't yell at her to get her filthy bugs off his steps. He stood in the quiet shrine of a god he despised, looking at a girl who was just as thoroughly ruined by paradise as he was and found he had nothing left to say.
***
The basket of elderberries weighed heavy in Levi’s grip, the dark berries staining his knuckles purple as he marched toward the obsidian shrine.
Two days. It had been two whole days since he’d heard her annoying, booming voice echoing through the courtyard. No glowing bugs dropped onto his clean steps. No improvised swings creaking under the elderberry branches. At first, he had convinced himself it was peaceful, that he could finally get his chores done without a filthy nuisance ruining his hard work.
Then he heard the whispers near the fountain.
"Hey, did you hear? Hange was caught again trying to sneak into the Sanctuary of the Gods."
"Shit... what are they going to do to her? Are they going to punish her?"
The demigod speaking shuddered, looking around as if the Elders were listening from the clouds.
Levi’s heart did a strange, violent leap against his ribs. The cold precision that usually governed every move he made shattered in a single second. He didn't care about the Elders' orders. He didn't care about orderliness. He practically threw the basket of elderberries onto the cold stone, the fruit scattering haphazardly across the pristine steps he had spent hours scrubbing, and turned on his heel.
He moved fast, his shadows coiling around his ankles, propelling him through the winding garden paths toward the isolated edge where Hange’s tent stood.
The canvas tent was silent. The flap swayed idly in the mountain wind. Levi yanked it open, his eyes sweeping the cluttered space, there were stolen ledgers, broken jars, cold tea but it was completely devoid of her.
A sudden spike of panic flared in his chest, sharp and hot. Where is she?
Then, floating softly through the quiet rustle of the trees further past the tent, he caught it. A faint, shuddering whimper.
Levi followed the sound instinctively, his boots making no noise against the grass. He rounded a towering, ancient oak tree, his hand hovering over the pommel of his dagger and then he stopped dead in his tracks.
Hange was curled into a small, tight ball in the dirt behind the trunk, her knees pulled flush against her chest.
She was battered. Her linen tunic was torn, her hands bruised, and a dark, ugly mark bloomed across her cheek where an Elder's heavy signet ring must have struck her. Her wire-rimmed glasses lay broken in the grass beside her, and her shoulders shook violently with silent, agonizing sobs as she tried to muffle her crying against her bloodied knees.
Levi stood frozen.
He had seen death. He had seen his mother rot away in a cold bed. He had seen blood and iron and tears. But looking at Hange, the wild, loud, fearless girl who laughed in the face of gods and monsters, now shrunk into a broken shadow behind a tree Levi felt a strange, excruciating ache twist deep inside his chest.
His heart hurt. It was a physical, sharp pain, worse than any frost or shadow-burn he had ever felt.
Slowly, abandoning all his usual rigid posture, Levi dropped his dagger to the grass and stepped forward.
"Hange..." he rasped, his cold voice lower and softer than it had ever been.
As soon as her tear-blurred eyes caught sight of him, the quiet, muffled sobs broke into a loud, heart-wrenching cry.
"Levi!"
She didn't care about the dirt, her broken glasses, or her aching bruises. She scrambled forward and threw her arms around his neck, her small frame shaking violently against him.
Levi didn't pull back. Without a single second of hesitation, his usual strict boundaries dissolved. He dropped to his knees in the grass, wrapping his arms tightly around her shoulders and pulling her flush into his chest. His gloved hand moved instinctively to the back of her head, burying his fingers in her messy, dark hair to hold her close, shielding her from the rest of the cold world.
"Why doesn't anyone love me?" Hange wept into the crook of his neck, her voice raw and cracking. Her bloodied fingers clung to the heavy fabric of his shirt as if she were drowning. "Why did both mother and father abandon me? I've been here since I was an infant... I have only ever known these gardens!"
Levi’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth throbbed. He held her tighter, resting his chin lightly against the top of her head, feeling every ragged shudder of her chest.
"The others... they tell me it was better that I knew neither of my parents," she choked out, burying her face deeper into his shoulder, her hot tears soaking straight through his linen tunic. "But that makes it even worse! It makes it feel like I was nothing from the very start... like I was born a mistake!"
The words cut deeper into Levi than any blade ever could. He knew the suffocating phantom of a dead parent, but hearing her, the girl who was supposed to be untamable, who was supposed to laugh at the stars, broken by the realization that she had been discarded before she even had a chance to speak... it made something dark and lethal ignite in his blood.
He didn't offer her useless, hollow comfort about the gods. He didn't tell her the Elders were right.
Instead, Levi leaned back just enough to frame her battered face in his hands. His thumbs moved with delicate, aching gentleness, wiping the mud and hot tears from her cheeks, careful to avoid the dark bruise blossoming on her skin.
"Look at me, Hange," Levi commanded softly, his icy gray eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made the surrounding air feel still.
Hange blinked through her tear-stained lashes, her chest heaving as she met his gaze.
"Look at me," Levi repeated, his thumb brushing a soft path across her bruised cheekbone. "You think you’re nothing? You think no one loves you?"
Hange’s chest hitched, a small, trembling gasp escaping her lips.
"I don't give a damn about the gods, and I don't give a damn about your parents," Levi muttered, his voice raw, dark, and overflowing with an intensity he didn't fully understand yet. "If they didn't want you, they’re fools. I want you here. And I will love you, Hange. I will take care of you. You don't need them. You don't need anyone else."
Hange stared at him, her wide, tear-rimmed eyes reflecting the fierce, absolute honesty in his gray gaze. The quiet vow hung between them in the shadows of the ancient trees, sealing a bond that neither time, nor mortals, nor Paradisus itself would ever break.
That night, for the very first time in his life, young Levi knelt at the obsidian altar of his deadbeat father. He didn't ask for power. He didn't ask for glory. He offered his own shadows as a price, whispering a desperate, silent prayer into the dark: Shield us. Keep her safe from their wrath, and I will owe you everything. And I will be your only devotee who will pray to you every night.
Ten Years Later
The air in the valley below Mount Paradisus tasted of damp earth, pine needles, and sweet wild chamomile, a far cry from the suffocating, immaculate air of the divine gardens.
Inside a small, stone-built cottage hidden deep within the mortal pine forests, a soft fire crackled in the hearth. Levi stood by the window, his hand resting on the hilt of his twin blades, his sharp eyes sweeping the thick fog rolling off the hills. Ten years of living as fugitives in the realm of men had made his instincts razor-sharp, but his shoulders relaxed the moment he turned back toward the room.
Hange was curled up in a heavy wool blanket near the hearth, resting her chin on her hand as she scribbled frantically in a leather-bound journal. Her dark hair was tied back messily, her wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose and her tunic stretched taut over a prominent, beautiful swell.
Levi walked over quietly, setting down a steaming mug of tea beside her. He sank to his knees in front of her chair, his calloused hands moving to rest over the gentle mound of her stomach.
Hange smiled, putting her pen down to cover his hands with her own. "He's kicking again," she whispered, her eyes shining with that same familiar, brilliant spark. "Or she. Honestly, the sheer muscular force behind these kicks… I'm suspecting they inherited your absurd physical power, Levi."
Levi let out a low, breathy huff, a rare, soft smile playing on his lips. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against her bump, his voice dropping into a gentle rumble.
"Listen to me, little pest," Levi murmured against her stomach, his hand warm against the fluttering life inside her. "I don't care if the gods hunt us to the ends of the earth. I will love you. I will protect you both. No divine bastard will ever lay a finger on either of you."
"A touching promise, my son."
Levi’s shadow violently recoiled.
In a fraction of a second, Levi was on his feet, his dark shadow-step flaring as he drew both blades, placing his body completely between the doorway and Hange. Hange gasped, clutching her stomach as the room sank into an icy, pitch-black silence.
Standing near the threshold was a tall figure wrapped in a heavy, tattered cloak of midnight shadows. His face was obscured, but a pair of piercing, cold gray eyes, identical to Levi’s, gleamed in the gloom. The air smelled of ozone, crushed poppy flowers, and river mist.
Charon. Erebos. The God of Shadows.
"Put your steel away, boy," the god spoke, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across a tombstone. "If I wanted to drag you back to Paradisus, the sky would have already torn open."
"Why are you here?" Levi spat, his knuckles white on his hilts, his shadow flaring like jagged glass. "You ignored us for a decade. You let my mother die in the dirt. Why show your face now?"
The god looked past Levi, his cold gaze falling on Hange, whose eyes were wide not with fear, but with intense, analytical curiosity.
"I did not ignore you," the shadow god said quietly. "Who do you think veiled your scent from the Elders when you fled the Garden? Who do you think misled the sky-gods' hounds every time they crossed this forest? I heard your prayers boy."
Levi’s breath hitched. He remembered the desperate prayer he had offered ten years ago as a battered boy in the shrine.
"You..." Levi rasped, his eyes narrowing. "You heard me?"
"You prayed for protection to keep her safe," the god replied, gesturing faintly toward Hange. "A deity does not easily grant favors... but a father who watches his son choose love over a golden cage cannot entirely look away. And you kept your promise to me to be my only devotee. You lit up the candles every night."
The dark deity raised a pale, bone-thin hand. A subtle, shimmering veil of dark mist expanded outward, sinking deep into the cottage walls, completely masking the divine heartbeat pulsing inside Hange's womb.
"Their scent is now erased," the god declared softly, turning back toward the mist outside the door. "The gods will look at this valley and see only trees and dust. Raise the child well, Levi. Do what I could not. I am terribly sorry about you and your mother."
Before Levi could utter another word, the figure dissolved into a plume of quiet black smoke, scattering into the pine-scented wind.
The room fell silent once more, save for the crackle of the hearth. Levi slowly lowered his blades, his shoulders trembling slightly as the weight of ten years of paranoia finally eased off his chest.
A pair of warm arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Hange rested her cheek against his back, letting out a soft, relieved breath.
"See?" Hange whispered softly, her fingers intertwining with his. "We’re going to be just fine."
Levi turned in her embrace, pulling her close, resting his hand once more over their unborn child. "Yeah," he murmured into her dark hair, his heart finally at peace. "We are." Levi walked over to the makeshift shrine where he lit up the candles and prayed a little prayer before joining his family.