Chapter Text
Mexico, Isla de Mara
The first thing that cut through the groggy, thousand-year haze was the call. Goji’s calling. Rodan stirred in his nest, the thought slow and syrupy. But something was off. The call was wrong—a weird, warped version of the deep rumble he remembered. Then again, it had been literal millennia since he’d last heard it. He didn’t wanna move. His nest was warm, safe, the volcanic rock still humming with the familiar heat he’d been soaking in for who knows how long. But a summons from Gojira? That trumped sleep. Even if he’d been catching up on a few thousand years’ worth of it.
He blinked crusty eyes, unfurling his wings with a massive, bone-creaking stretch, a jaw-cracking yawn escaping him—until he froze. There was something in his nest. Something that definitely hadn’t been there when he’d dozed off.
Rodan craned his neck, confused. The mouth of the volcano above him wasn’t open anymore. It was covered. ¿Qué es eso? (What is that?) He pushed himself up, legs stiff, and gave his wings a heavy beat, lifting his bulk off the ground. He drifted closer, giving the strange material an experimental poke. ¿Eso es metal? (Is that metal?) Another tap of a clawed finger. Yep. Metal. So why was there metal sealing the opening to his home?
Did his humans try to trap him? Rude. He hadn’t seen them in ages—he wondered how they’d evolved. Anyway. Not the point. He had somewhere to be.
He lowered his head and gave the metal a solid thump. Then another. It groaned but gave way, and he dug his claws into something—probably more metal—and hauled himself out. Lava spewed around him in a glorious, furious cascade as he emerged, the volcano behind him roaring to life in a dramatic, fiery tantrum.
Vaya, qué brillante está esto aquí… y qué ruidoso. (Wow, it’s bright out here…and loud.) He shook his head, trying to clear the sensory overload. Bright. Loud. So much happening all at once.
He let out a sharp shriek—Coming!—back toward Gojira, even though that call was sounding more and more bizarre the longer he listened. Had it always been that weird? He honestly couldn’t remember. He spread his wings to launch, but something small and fast was screaming toward him. A lot of somethings.
He squinted. What in Terra were those?
Then came the pain. Nothing serious, just—ow. He just woke up. Why was he already being attacked? They swarmed him, pelting him with these tiny, hot little stingers, one after another, and he could feel his temper flaring. One of them zipped past his eye, and he spotted a bigger one hanging back. The leader, probably.
¡Ah, ¿quieres pelea? ¡Bien, vamos a jugar! (Oh, you wanna go? Okay, let’s play!)
Rodan threw his wings wide, took one massive step forward, and launched himself off the rim of his home, the force of it cracking stone. He shot into the sky after the big one, paying exactly zero attention to the chaos unfurling below him. (Would he have cared? Eh.)
He punched through a cloud, keeping his gaze locked on his target. Four smaller ones peeled off and dove at him, those stingers flashing again. He gritted his beak. This was annoying. He needed to get to Gojira, but surely his friend would understand—he had to handle these pests first.
Besides. It was a wake-up call, not a distress call.
He clapped his wings together with a thunderous boom, the shockwave ripping through the fighters and scattering them like confetti. Then he was off again, chasing the big one. He dropped beneath the clouds, let them think they’d lost him, then exploded back up in a sharp side-dive, snatching two of them in his claws and crushing them without breaking stride. He swung toward the rest—and paused. Wait. Were the clouds always this… orange?
One of the little ones was firing straight at his face, right at his eye. He angled away, not about to let some bug blind him. Something small and hot landed in his mouth, and he grimaced. That’s why you don’t hunt with your mouth open, idiot.
He closed in on one of them, and it veered off fast. Smart. But he was getting impatient. All the little ones were clustered within range now, and he knew exactly what to do. A perfect barrel roll, wings scything through the air, and they were gone. Just like that. Was he being too aggressive? Absolutely. But he’d just woken up from a millennia-long nap and gotten jumped. He was allowed to be mad.
…Was that golden lightning?
He shook it off and refocused on the big one. Probably just his imagination. Millennia was a long time. Maybe lightning changed colors. (Why was he lying to himself?)
He followed the big one straight into the heart of the storm.
And then he heard it. That unmistakable three-toned shriek that turned his blood to ice.
Ghidorah.
Rodan froze.
Not literally—his momentum was still carrying him forward, wings half-cupped against the wind—but for one stretched, impossible second, it felt like the whole world had just slammed to a halt. That call. That specific, three-toned shriek he hadn't heard in millennia but would know anywhere, any time, in any life. It slid under his scales and wrapped around something deep in his chest, equal parts familiar and nauseating.
The invaders.
They were here. At his nest. At his volcano.
Not happening.
He banked hard, abandoning the chase like the big metal thing had ceased to exist entirely. His focus snapped eastward, toward the churning wall of clouds he'd been so stupidly ignoring, toward the storm that crackled with unnatural gold. Gojira's weird, warped call still echoed in the back of his mind, and suddenly it clicked. Was that them? Had they somehow figured out how to mimic the King's voice? The thought made something hot and furious curl in his gut. Ridiculous. Insulting.
He knew it was stupid. Engaging the golden one alone was suicide, and he wasn't stupid enough to pretend otherwise. But this wasn't the first time they'd come sniffing around his territory, and that last encounter—strangely peaceful, the three of them just backing off for reasons he'd never quite understood—had left a bitter taste in his mouth. This time wasn't going to end like that. He could feel it. The storm was always their hiding place, their little smokescreen. Cowards, the lot of them. Never liked facing him or Mothra in open sky without their precious cover to dive back into.
Gojira had to be on his way. He'd called, after all. The uncertainty prickled at him, but he shoved it down.
He broke through a wisp of cloud and there they were.
Three necks curving out of the churning dark like snakes from a pit. Six eyes burning with that hungry, ancient light, all swiveling toward him in perfect, awful unison. The storm churned around them, lightning dancing between those massive wings, and for a moment Rodan's flight stuttered.
This was the first time he'd truly face them alone. Mothra had always been there, darting between the necks, her light weaving through theirs. Gojira had always been below, a solid anchor of raw power waiting to drag them down. But now? He had no idea if either of them was coming. The call had been wrong. Distorted. What if it hadn't been Gojira at all? What if he was alone out here?
Every instinct he had—every single one carved into him by millennia of survival—screamed at him to dive. Tuck his wings, drop below the clouds, get away. This wasn't a fight he could win alone. He needed to live. Gojira needed him to live. The thought came sharp and certain, cutting through the fear like a claw through soft stone.
He didn't dive.
They met in the middle.
It was chaos from the first impact. Claws raked across his chest. A snout snapped at his wing joint, missed by a hair. He got his talons into something—San's neck, he thought—and squeezed, but Ni was already there, wrapping around his left wing, and Ichi was coming in hot, mouth crackling with that awful golden light. He thrashed, tried to twist free, but they were faster, always faster when they worked together.
Ni and San caught him. Clamped down on his wings, stretched them wide, pinned him open and helpless like some kind of offering. He screamed, a raw, furious sound, and kept struggling even as Ichi pulled back, that grin splitting wide, electricity arcing between those curved teeth.
The beams hit him square in the chest.
The world went white, then red, then nothing but pain. It tore through him, searing, blinding, and when the two released him he was already falling, wings limp at his sides, smoke trailing from hissing wounds.
The ocean caught him like a wall of ice.
He hit hard, salt water exploding around him, and for a moment all he could do was sink. The cold was worse than the burns. Worse than the cuts. It seeped into him, into every crack and hollow, stealing the heat he'd spent millennia hoarding in that volcano. He hated the cold. He hated it. The pain was sharp and bright, but this—this deep, bone-aching chill—was something else entirely.
He kicked, finally, pushing himself back toward the surface. Broke through with a gasp that came out more like a snarl, wings spreading automatically to keep him afloat even though they screamed in protest.
Above him, three silhouettes circled against the bruised sky. Waiting.
He was wet. He was cold. He was furious.
And somewhere in the distance, he could swear he finally heard the right call. Low. Familiar. Getting closer.
Rodan tore himself out of the water.
His wings slammed down, sending a massive spray of salt and foam in every direction, and he launched upward on pure fury. Every muscle screamed. His chest still smoldered where Ichi’s beams had carved into him, the burns raw and angry, but the cold was worse—the cold was unbearable—and the only way to escape it was to get back to his sky. His heat. His domain.
He climbed fast, putting distance between himself and the golden nightmare circling above. He shook his head violently, trying to clear the water from his eyes. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He'd known better. He'd known and he'd gone in anyway like some hatchling with something to prove.
But he wasn't dead. That counted for something.
He leveled out beneath the cloud layer, wings beating steady, and let out a low, rumbling call. It wasn't a challenge. Wasn't a scream of defiance. It was something smaller, almost private, pitched to carry through the storm to the one creature who'd know what it meant.
Goji? You there?
Above him, he knew the triplets heard. He could feel their attention like a weight, all six eyes tracking his movements, waiting. Let them listen. Let them wonder if he was calling for backup or just calling for comfort. He didn't care.
The silence stretched. Rain hammered against his wings. The storm churned.
And then—there.
Faint, distant, but right. The rumble that came back wasn't warped or strange or twisted into something it wasn't. It was low and certain and so unmistakably Gojira that Rodan almost sagged with relief.
Yes.
The single word hit him like a pulse of heat straight through his chest.
Above the clouds, the triplets stirred.
*Oh, how fun!* San's thoughts crackled with barely contained glee, all three heads tracking the red bird below. *He's still so fearless. Even alone!*
Ni's eyes narrowed, though he couldn't quite hide the flicker of interest. The red one had always been entertaining—fiery, reckless, never knowing when to stay down. It was almost endearing. Almost.
*Focus,* Ichi snapped, dragging his siblings' attention back. *The little king will be here soon—*
San's head whipped around, neck curving sharply. *Something's there!*
Two sets of eyes turned.
The Argo cut through the storm like a clumsy metal insect, its lights blinking, its engines whining against the wind. So small. So fragile. The lifeforms (humans) inside were little more than pinpricks of warmth, but they were there, huddled behind their glass and steel, trying to escape.
Ichi tilted his head, eyes fixed on the ship. *Hm. Wanna catch?*
*Yes!* San's response came immediately, his tail lashing with anticipation.
Ni sighed—or as close to a sigh as a telepathic thought could get. *That is so point—*
They moved.
Inside the Argo, alarms blared. Voices screamed. Hands scrambled for controls that wouldn't matter, that never mattered against something like this. The golden wings blotted out the sky, those three grinning maws descending, and for a heartbeat the world was nothing but lightning and teeth and the terrible promise of death.
Rodan felt it before he heard it. A pressure change. A shift in the air that had nothing to do with the storm. He craned his neck, wings beating steady now, and saw the triplets angling away from him, toward something smaller, something—
His chest tightened. The humans. They were going after the humans.
He opened his beak to scream something, anything, a challenge, a distraction—
The ocean exploded.
Gojira rose like a mountain waking. Water cascaded off his spines in great sheets, his jaws already open, already there, and he hit Ghidorah like a freight train made of ancient fury. His teeth sank into the central neck and he pulled, dragging all that golden weight down with him, down into the churning dark, down into his domain.
The triplets shrieked—not with amusement this time. They thrashed, wings beating uselessly against the water, necks twisting, claws scrabbling for purchase that wasn't there. Airborne beings. They'd always been airborne beings, never comfortable in the deep, never able to match what lived beneath the waves.
Gojira knew it. He was counting on it.
He dragged them deeper.
Rodan hovered above the chaos and watched his king go to war. Watched the golden horror flail and scream and struggle, all that arrogant power suddenly useless in a world that wasn't built for it. The sight sent something warm and vicious curling through his chest.
Yeah, he thought, stay down there. See how you like it.
He was still too far to help. Still too hurt to be anything but a distraction. But he was there. He was there—and so was Gojira—and that meant the triplets had made a mistake coming to his nest.
His sky might be out of reach for now. His heat might still be somewhere below, buried under all that cold ocean water.
But Gojira was here and…and something was wrong.
Rodan didn't know how he knew. There was no sound, no scent, no flash of golden light to warn him. Just a feeling—low and deep and crawling under his scales like something burrowing into his chest. His wings stuttered for half a beat before he corrected, climbing higher on instinct.
Was he about to get attacked again? His head swiveled, scanning the churning water, the bruised sky, the wall of storm clouds still crackling with Ghidorah's dying lightning. Nothing. No movement, no shape, no—
Na Kika? No. She'd never come this far from the trenches, and even if she did, she wasn't an ambush predator. Tiamat? Maybe, but the sea dragon wasn't stupid enough to interrupt a fight between Kings.
His breathing quickened. His chest burned where Ghidorah's beams had carved into him. His wings ached with every beat. He was pushing too hard, flying too fast, but he couldn't stop, couldn't land, couldn't do anything except hover here and feel the wrongness crawling up his spine.
He forced himself to breathe. Panicking wouldn't help. It never helped. He couldn't abandon Gojira, not now, not when the King was finally here, finally fighting, finally doing what he did best (these days). But the feeling kept getting worse, a pressure building behind his eyes, a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with Ghidorah's beams.
Distance. He just needed some distance. Just enough to see, to breathe, to figure out what his instincts were screaming at him about. If something happened, he'd still be close enough. And besides—
Below him, Gojira had it handled.
Rodan peeled away, wings cutting a wide arc over the churning sea. A few kilometers. That was all. Far enough to think, close enough to dive back in if—when—Gojira needed him. He settled into a hover above a patch of relatively calm water, claws almost brushing the surface, and watched.
Gojira erupted from the water.
And in his jaws was one of them. One of the three. Ni, maybe, or San—Rodan couldn't tell from this distance, didn't care. What mattered was the way Gojira's teeth sheared through scale and muscle and bone, the way the head came away with a crack that echoed across the water like thunder. What mattered was the way the remaining two heads screamed, a sound so full of fury and loss that it made Rodan's chest ache in sympathy he immediately shoved aside. (They deserved it.)
Yes. His wings beat faster, lifting him higher. That's how you do it, Goji. That's how—
Gojira surged upward, the water sluicing off his scales in rivers, and closed his jaws around one of the thrashing necks. Which one? Didn't matter. Didn't matter. He had them now. In his waters. In his domain. The thought pulsed through him like a heartbeat, hot and vicious, and he bit down harder just to feel the satisfying crunch beneath his teeth.
The triplets went wild. Body twisting, claws raking uselessly against his armored hide, all that golden fury turning frantic in the dark water.
*Sarth-vethan—!* (Brothers!) San's mental voice cracked, panicked. He hated water. Hated the cold, the pressure, the way it stole his lightning and turned his wings into anchors.
*Sarth-Zer!* (Hold on!) Ichi's snarl cut through, sharp and commanding. He was trying to angle a shot, jaws crackling with desperate light, but the sea drowned it before it could form.
Ni snapped at anything he could reach, relentless, furious, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough down here. They were creatures of the sky, of storms and heights and open air. The ocean was not their battlefield. It was his.
Gojira grinned around the neck in his jaws and tightened his grip.
He couldn't use his atomic breath down here—too much water, too much risk of the blast scattering useless—but he didn't need it. He had rage. Another abomination trying to take what’s his, just like the first ones did…the first…his family…
His family. His parents and siblings.
/Gojira, please, you must run, you must! We’ll be okay, son, I promise…/
The thought hit him like a physical blow, old grief flash-incinerating into something far more useful. Rage.
He launched at the nearest head and bit down with everything he had. Bone gave. Sinew tore. The taste of copper and ozone flooded his mouth, and the scream that ripped through the water wasn't one voice but three, harmonizing in agony before fracturing into two.
Ni and Ichi howled as their brother's headless neck thrashed wildly, black blood clouding the water, and Gojira surfaced with his prize still clamped between his jaws. He rose out of the ocean like a monument, the severed head hanging limp, water and blood streaming down his chest, and he roared.
The sound rolled across the waves, through the storm, into the very bones of the earth.
Above him, a red shape against the bruised sky. Rodan. Watching. Alive. Gojira's chest swelled with something that might have been pride under other circumstances, but right now it was tangled with something hotter. You idiot. You absolute idiot. You should have waited.
But he was okay. That was what mattered. He was—
The world turned white.
It wasn't lightning. Lightning was quick, bright, natural. This was something else. Something that reached into his chest and pulled. Gojira's roar cut to a choked gurgle. The head slipped from his jaws, forgotten, as his body seized. Pain—no, not pain, something worse, something empty—bloomed through him like cold fire. His limbs felt like stone. His vision swam. The roar of the ocean faded to a dull, distant hum, and for one horrible moment he couldn't feel the water around him, couldn't feel anything except that awful draining sensation, like something was drinking him from the inside out.
What—
The ocean rushed up to meet him, and he was falling, sinking, his own weight dragging him down into the dark. His claws scraped uselessly at the water, too heavy to lift, too weak to fight.
What happened?
The world exploded in white.
Not lightning. Not Ghidorah's beams. Something else. Something wrong. The whiteness bloomed beneath the waves, silent for one terrible second before the sound hit—a roar that wasn't a roar, a pressure wave that slammed into him like a mountain. His wings buckled. His ears rang. The world spun and tilted and he was falling, catching himself at the last second, wings beating ragged and wild just to stay in the air.
He didn't think. He flew toward it.
The water below him was wrong. All wrong. The churning chaos of the fight was gone, replaced by something worse—a stillness, a flatness, a terrible quiet. And floating on the surface were bodies. Fish. Whales. Things he didn't have names for. All dead. All rising from the deep like an offering to something that didn't care.
Rodan stopped.
His wings beat once, twice, holding him in place. The air felt different. Thick. Wrong. Each breath scraped going in, burned going out. His chest—the wounds from Ghidorah's beams—felt like they were splitting open again, or maybe that was something else, something deeper. His head pounded. His vision blurred at the edges.
He hovered there, rain mixing with the spray of a dead ocean, and watched the bodies multiply. His lungs burned. His wings ached. Every instinct screamed at him to leave, to climb, to get above this poison air and never come down.
But Gojira was down there.
He couldn't see him. Couldn't feel him. The water was still, flat, dead. No thrashing. No golden lightning. Nothing.
Rodan's beak parted, and a sound came out—small, uncertain, nothing like the creature he was supposed to be.
Goji?
Rodan watched them rise.
For a horrible, suspended moment, he thought he was seeing things. The water was dead. The air was poison. His King had just ripped one of their heads off and disappeared beneath the waves and surely—surely—that had been enough. It had to be enough.
But Ghidorah emerged from the stillness like something crawling out of a nightmare.
Battered. Bleeding black from the ragged stump where a head should have been. One of the triplets—San, he could see now—was just gone. The remaining two necks wove together, unsteady, wings beating slow and labored, but alive. Moving. Fleeing.
Rodan's chest seized. They were heading east. Toward the column of smoke still rising from his volcano. Toward Isla de Mara. Toward his nest.
He lunged after them before he could think better of it, wings snapping wide, and the pain that shot through him nearly sent him tumbling into the dead water below. His chest was a ruin. His wings screamed with every beat. He couldn't fight them. He couldn't. He'd barely survived the first exchange when he was fresh from sleep, and now—
He stopped. Hovered. Watched the two remaining heads disappear into the clouds, trailing gold and thunder, heading straight for the only home he'd had for longer than he could remember.
Ghidorah landed.
The volcano's rim crunched beneath their claws, still warm from Rodan's long occupation, and for a moment the three two of them just felt it—the heat seeping up through the stone, the familiar comfort of solid ground after that endless, miserable cold. Ni shook himself first, water sheeting from his scales in a furious spray.
*By the void,* he hissed, the words dripping with venom. *I hate water.*
He pressed himself against the volcano's slope, letting the warmth soak into his battered hide. The stump of San's neck was still raw, still weeping black blood, but already the flesh was beginning to knit. Slow. Too slow.
*...Yes. I know.*
Ichi's voice was quiet, distant. His eyes never left their youngest brother—or what was left of him. The head was regrowing. It always did. Their kind could regenerate from almost anything as long as something remained to build from. A scrap of flesh. A shard of bone. They had survived worse than a decapitation.
But it still terrified him.
Every time. Every single time one of them was taken, that frozen moment when the connection went silent, when the space in their shared mind where San should be became a hollow, screaming absence. The rest of San was still attached, still there, but for one terrible second there had been nothing but white static and the realisation that they could lose him. Forever.
He tore the amniotic sac away as it finished forming, the membranous casing peeling back to reveal San's newly-formed face blinking up at them, confused, there, alive—
*Oh, thank the stars.*
The words were a breath, a prayer, a sob all wrapped into one. Ichi pressed his snout against San's, a gesture older than memory, and San—still shaking off the haze of regeneration—leaned into it without thinking. His eyes were clearing now, recognition flooding back, and the relief that came through their bond was almost physical.
Ni joined them without a word, his earlier irritation forgotten. For a long moment, they simply were. Three heads. Three minds. Three parts of a whole that should never, ever be broken. Their species was built for three. That was the strongest number—no single dragon could dominate the others, any conflict left a third to mediate, any wound could be carried while the others stayed strong. One alone was a tragedy. Two was a power struggle. But three?
Three was perfect.
They stayed like that until San's trembling stopped, until his new scales hardened and the memory of the little King's jaws faded from the forefront of his thoughts. Then, slowly, they pulled back. There was work to do.
Ichi raised his head toward the sky, the storm still churning obediently above them, and began the call.
It rolled out from them in waves—that three-toned frequency that no other creature could mimic, that cut through rock and water and the deepest sleep. An alpha call. A command. “Awaken. Rise. Your King has returned!”
Across the world, lifeforms were stirring. Old beings. Hungry beings. Ichi could feel them waking, one by one, their ancient minds brushing against his like fish surfacing from the dark.
And then—
*Oooh!* San's voice cut through the call like a child spotting something shiny. His newly-regrown eyes were bright, his earlier fear already forgotten in the face of something far more interesting. "Can we call Rodan? Can we? Please, please, please—"
Ichi's gaze flicked to Ni. Ni's expression didn't change—he looked, as always, like he was tolerating something mildly irritating—but there was a warmth in his eyes that betrayed him. He gave a small nod.
Ichi turned back to San, and for the first time since they'd hit the water, something that might have been a smile tugged at the corner of his snout. *Yes. Let's do that.*
San made a sound that was almost a chirp, his tail rustling with barely contained energy. He was already turning toward the sky, toward the distant shape he could feel hovering over the dead water, toward the red bird who had fought them alone, who had burned so bright, who was theirs to call.
Ni sighed, but it was soft. Fond, even. He leaned into San's neck, letting his brother's excitement warm him almost as much as the volcano did.
They were all okay. And soon, they would have everything they wanted—
*He's going to be so mad—*
*San.*
*And he'll come anyway! He always comes—*
*San.*
*And then we'll have a firebird and the little King won't have anyone—*
Ichi and Ni exchanged a look—the long-suffering, this is our brother look that they had perfected over several hundred million years.
But neither of them told him to stop.
San was back. San was whole. And if chasing the red bird across the sky made his brother happy, then Ichi would chase the red bird across the entire planet.
Gojira.
He spun back toward the water, toward the flat, dead stillness where his King had vanished. The slick of bodies was still spreading. The air still burned. And somewhere beneath it all, beneath the poison and the silence, Gojira had to be there. He had to be.
He called out. A low, questioning rumble, the same one he'd used a thousand times before when they were young and the world was simpler and the only thing he ever had to worry about was whether Gojira wanted to hunt or nap.
Nothing.
The silence that answered was worse than Ghidorah. Worse than anything.
He called again, louder this time, the sound ripping out of his throat raw and desperate. Goji!
The water didn't move. The bodies floated and somewhere beneath it all his King was gone. Goji!
Gojira! The third call was almost a scream, his wings beating harder, carrying him lower, closer to that terrible stillness. He'd go in. He'd dive into that poison water if he had to, he'd drag Gojira out himself, he'd—
He couldn't see him. Couldn't feel him. The bond that had always hummed at the edge of his awareness, that low, constant thrum of there, alive, mine—it was silent. Stretched thin. Fading.
No. No, no, no.
Rodan's wings faltered. His claws curled and he was so cold, so tired, so afraid, and Gojira wasn't answering, wasn't coming, wasn't there—
He didn't think about it. He just opened his mouth and reached.
MOTHRA!
Her name tore out of him not as a call but as a prayer, a desperate, ragged thing flung into the void with nothing to carry it but pure, animal panic. He didn't know if she could hear him. Didn't know if she was close, if she was awake, if she was even alive. He hadn't seen her in millennia, hadn't felt the warm brush of her presence since before the long sleep, but she was the only one left, the only one who might—
The three-toned call slid into his mind.
It wasn't like Gojira's call, rough and rumbling, a thing of earth and fire. It was wrong. Beautiful, golden, perfect in a way that made his scales crawl. A command wrapped in silk, gentle and inescapable, pressing against the edges of his thoughts like a tide rising.
“Awaken!”
The word echoed through him, through the earth, through every sleeping thing beneath the mountains and the ice and the deep, dark places. An alpha call. A summons. A demand.
All across the world, Titans were waking up. He could feel them stirring at the edges of his awareness, old minds shaking off millennia of sleep, pulled by that terrible, beautiful voice.
And then it turned on him.
“Rodan.”
His name in that voice made him want to scream. Made him want to crawl. Made him want to fold his wings and go, to fly to that golden light and let it wrap around him and tell him what to do so he wouldn't have to think, wouldn't have to feel, wouldn't have to sit here in the silence where Gojira used to be—
“Come to us, Rodan.”
The triplets were calling him. Specifically him. Not all the titans. Not the ones stirring in their sleep. Him. Their voices curled around his name like smoke, like silk, like chains. Gentle. Patient. Inevitable.
“Come to us.”
His wings beat on their own, turning him toward Isla de Mara. Toward his nest. Toward the golden storm settling over his home like a crown.
“Come to us.”
His body moved. His mind screamed. No, no, no, please, I can’t go to them!
Gojira was gone. The water was dead. His chest was burning and his lungs were burning and his eyes were burning and he couldn't—he couldn't—
“Come to us, Rodan.”
His beak was open, but no sound came out. Just that voice, filling every hollow space in his skull, pushing out the silence where Gojira's answer should have been. Gojira needs him, Gojira—…
“Come to us.”
He flew toward the golden light.