Zeus stood.
The battlefield felt it.
Not as some grand announcement. Not as a trumpet in the sky. Just a shift that rolled through every god, every angel, every broken inch of Heaven's plain. Heads turned. Weapons lowered. Even the wounded felt their breath catch for half a beat.
He rose from the crater slowly, like he had all the time in the world.
Black lightning crawled over his skin in thin living lines. It moved across his throat, his jaw, his arms, and sank into the space around him, turning the air wrong in a way no one there could fully understand. His wounds were still there. Blood still traced down his side. His face was still bruised. But none of it looked like weakness anymore.
It looked like a price already paid.
Metis stepped back first.
Athena followed, eyes narrowed, reading what she could and hating how little that was.
Hera didn't say a word. She just watched him with her hands clenched at her sides, fury and faith burning together in her face.
