Ares was trained to be a soldier before he was old enough to understand why. Conscripted while still a young adult into the Linguardian guard, he served with honour, discipline, and ferocity. It was there he first learned what he was capable of. In the fury and smoke of battle, no one noticed the way his skin would harden mid-fight or how his voice could shake the ground when he screamed. His power didn’t seem strange it just looked like rage. And no one questioned rage from a man like Ares.

At that time he also fought only as hard as he needed to enough to survive, to tick another day off the calendar, to get through the draft and go home. He didn’t carry love into battle. He carried exhaustion, the weight of the days past and the pain of the days yet to come. There was no glory in that war. Only time to be served. When he was finally released, he returned home. But home wasn’t waiting for him.

His wife, the light in his world, was gone. Not dead. Just... gone. She had left during his final campaign and never looked back. No letter. No explanation. She had built a new life in his absence, and Ares, the man built for war, found himself standing in the ruins of the peace he thought he had earnt.

Now every moment outside of battle reminds him of her absence. The quiet of a sunrise. The smell of fresh bread. The sound of a child laughing in the distance. These things don't comfort Ares and not because he harbours any hate towards them or his long gone lover, but because he longs for them. Ares recognises this issue. But he hasn’t yet found another way to exist. And that contradiction the yearning for peace, and the failure to live in it defines him more than any title ever could.