Chapter 84: Siren Says
Hermes stopped mid-sentence. Aphrodite tilted his head, puzzled.
The scent cut through the air like a knife — hot, coppery, unmistakable. Blood.
Hermes knew it too well. Too intimately.
"Something’s wrong."
He bolted from the kitchen without another word, Aphrodite and the Grrberus pups running after him.
They rounded the corner into the living room...
And the sight that greeted them was not a pleasant one.
Apple sat on the couch, casually cradling Somner, teeth buried in his throat. Crimson streaked his chin, dripping down the side of his mouth in slow, obscene rivulets. Somner’s body was limp.
Hermes wasn’t just seeing it. He was seeing himself—his own face, his own body—feeding.
"No! GET OFF HIM!"
Hermes lunged, shoving Apple away, blood splattering across the couch cushions.
"Why?" Hermes snarled, grabbing his doppelgänger’s collar. "Why would you do this?"
Apple only smiled, his lips glistening.
"He asked for it."
Hermes’s glare hardened. "You’re lying."
Apple tilted his head, and then...
Hermes’s vision shifted.
Above Apple’s head, pale, translucent bubbles began to rise, each one swelling and blooming until their surfaces played like film. Mindbloom. Only this wasn’t Apple’s mind.
Somner’s life unfolded in the air. His stiff, joyless childhood, the crushing weight of inheritance, the battlefield horror of Eris’s death in the beast’s teeth, the years of calculated control and hollow smiles.
And then minutes ago....
Apple coaxing out the truth Somner had never voiced aloud:
"Yes... I have thought about that. I have yearned for death. Ever since I was young."
Hermes’s grip faltered. He let Apple go.
He turned to Somner. No breath. No heartbeat.
Hermes pulled him close, the weight of the body unfamiliar in his arms. "Why didn’t you tell me?" His voice cracked. "Why did you have to carry it alone?"
Aphrodite knelt beside him, a hand on Hermes’s shoulder. "It’s not your fault. There was nothing you could do to change his past."
Apple’s voice slid in like silk. "No. There is."
Hermes looked up.
"Dante Quasar," Apple said simply.
Hermes’s breath caught. Dante’s power—not just multiplying himself, but touching every version of himself across the multiverse, pulling them into this one. If Quasar could reach other timelines... Hermes could step into Somner’s past.
Change it so he does not have to be ’Somner’ anymore, so he does not have to carry the responsibility and guilt.
Aphrodite’s brow furrowed. "If you do that, you could change the present too. Somner might not even be Somner anymore. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just use Rewind?"
Apple shook his head. "If you only bring him back, you’re throwing him back into the same chains. The same perfect-hero role. The same pain."
Hermes’s jaw tightened. "Then... I’ll do both. Bring him back, and let him choose."
He pressed his hand to Somner’s chest, power curling in his palm. The golden clock of Rewind spiraling backward, pulling at the frayed thread of life.
But it wasn’t enough.
Hermes’s magic was guttered. Somner’s chest remained still.
Apple stepped forward. "Let me help."
Before Hermes could answer, his double began to change.
Gold and pink bled across his skin like molten metal meeting rose quartz. His limbs elongated, flowing rather than moving, and the meat of them shimmered into translucent fins that caught every flicker of light in the room.
Iridescent scales climbed his legs in perfect symmetry, shifting colors like they were deciding which world to reflect.
Golden wings unfurled behind him. Slowly, so slowly...
Until their tips brushed the walls, scattering sharp beams of refracted light across everyone’s faces.
The Grrberus pups went rigid in unison, all six eyes blazing with fascination.
"It must be..." Whispered the left head, ears folding.
"There’s no doubt about it..." Whimpered the middle, tail curling in tight panic.
"That is a creature from the Void." growled the right, fur bristling. "A power that matches that of a Void Primordial."
They pressed into the corner, all three heads low, watching Apple like they were looking at a god.
Aphrodite stepped back, his usual composure shattered, voice shaking. "Hermes... do you know that he can..."
"I know." Hermes said, but his own voice was unsteady. "I can."
The hum rose into something more structured. Not music in the way mortals understood it, but something older. It coiled through the body’s nerves, bypassing thought entirely, speaking in the language of muscle and heartbeat.
It was beautiful in the way the deep is beautiful. Terrible, irresistible, promising release if only you’d let it take you under.
Hermes swayed before catching himself.
Every part of him wanted to listen, to yield, to belong to that sound.
Apple stepped toward Somner, the tips of his golden wings brushing the floor. His hair floated as if he stood submerged in some invisible sea, framing a face that had taken on an alien precision.
His pupils were gone, replaced by twin disks of liquid gold.
He tilted his head, and when he spoke, the word carried the weight of a tide.
"Rise."
The sound didn’t just leave his mouth. It poured into the room like water rushing in to fill a void.
It struck Hermes in the chest first, like the push of a wave, then sank lower, curling around his spine, threading into his nerves until it felt like his own body was echoing the command.
The walls shimmered faintly, as though the word was pressing through reality itself.
The Rewind Hermes used mixed with this powerful Sirentone.... The two powers twined together until there was no telling where one ended and the other began.
Somner’s body jerked violently, as though yanked by an invisible tether.
His back arched, his fingers spasmed, and then...
With a gasp so raw it sounded like tearing... breath returned to him.
Apple’s voice cut. The hum snapped silent.
The fins dissolved. The scales retracted. The wings folded and melted into skin. But the room still felt thick, as if something vast had only just left and might return if it was called again.
Somner was alive. But the Grrberus pups didn’t move from the wall.
"He heard it." the left head murmured.
"And obeyed." said the middle.
The right lowered its voice to a growl. "He was commanded to live, and he did."
The newly resurrected Somner turned to Hermes, then to Apple. WIth Rewind, the wound on his neck had closed, and it even cleaned the blood off his clothes. And with Sirentone, he was back to his feet.
Confused but also flustered, seeing TWO of the man he loved.
"Master... and Master?"