The room held its breath.
Zeus' last question from moments ago still hung in the air like a live wire.
You come to bow, or to bark?
My heart beat steady.
This isn't your throne. And that isn't your name.
The quiet after that felt louder than the blast that blew the wall in.
Screams finally caught up to the moment.
"Oh my god!"
"Run!"
"It's Ares—run!"
The crowd only half understood what they were seeing. To them, the hole in the wall, the smoke, the pressure rolling off me and Zeus might as well have been Ares' doing. Let them think that. Fear kept idiots alive.
Grim's briefing echoed in the back of my head, calm and sharp:
"Remember, I'm only here to handle anything unexpected. It's still your job to handle Zeus. Alexis will keep anyone else out of your fight. Thomas… just goes wild."
Our roles, were already decided.
Around us, the party tried to keep going on inertia alone. The music still blared for three confused seconds before someone killed the sound. Neon lights flickered, still trying to sell the lie that this was just another underground club and not a battlefield.
Dozens of people bolted for the exits.
Others—Zeus' people who were actual Travelers—grabbed for weapons and half-formed spells instead of the door.
"Too late," I muttered.
Smoke from the blast still drifted in lazy sheets across the floor.
Thomas hit it first.
He burst through the cloud in front of us, one-handed greatsword riding his shoulder, Medusa shield on his other arm, feral grin wide enough to show every tooth.
"Evening," he said cheerfully.
The closest of Zeus' B-rank toughs barely had time to register the greeting before Thomas stepped in and smashed the rim of his shield into the kid's chest. The impact folded him in half and sent him crashing into his buddies. Thomas rolled his wrist and let the greatsword's flat whip out in the same motion, cracking across another boy's helmet and dropping him like a rock.
Alexis slipped through the gap behind him, calm where he was chaos.
Arrows of light sprang from her fingers, splitting mid-flight into a sleet of glowing darts. They punched into hands, shoulders, knees—never lethal, always enough to drop a weapon or a stance. Fireballs from the panicking crowd sputtered against her improvised shields and redirected constructs.
In the space of a heartbeat, the wall of bodies between me and Zeus thinned.
They used that split second exactly how Grim wanted: knocking out the crowd that mattered. The ones with enough power to change the shape of this room.
I let them work.
My eyes stayed on Zeus.
A spear made of green lightning rested in his hand now, the metal shaft coated in crackling astral energy. Across from him, my own spear burned with crimson flame, shadows pooling at my feet, ready to move.
He saw where I was looking and smiled.
"Nice toys," he said.
"Bought mine myself," I said. "Didn't steal the logo off a myth."
"So why do it Zeus? Between the children and trying to catch me. It's like you're obsessed with entering the sea.
His smile twitched.
Behind me, someone shouted, "Crow, left!"
I felt the attack before I turned—the spike of hostile intent, the crackle of a rushing bolt.
I snapped my free hand up.
A wall of fire roared into existence at my side, catching the lightning meant for Alexis and devouring it, the energy splitting and bleeding harmlessly into the air. The backlash singed my sleeve.
Alexis spared me a brief nod before going back to work, turning toward the cluster of kids who still hadn't figured out they were outclassed.
"Grim," she called without looking back, "B-rank and below are down. Me and Thomas are on the inner circle now."
"Then it's on him," Grim said. "No one touches Zeus but Crow."
Lightning thickened around Zeus, turning the air sharp with ozone.
Flame and shadow coiled tighter around my spear in answer.
Grim's last words before we blew the wall in slid through my thoughts one more time:
Handle Zeus. Prove the name doesn't fit. Don't try to wear it.
Right.
This wasn't about stealing a throne.
Just about cracking it in front of everyone who still thought he deserved to sit on it. Easy work for experienced travelers. For me..
Zeus took one step forward.
The floor under his boot blackened and split, hairline fractures glowing green.
"You really think you can embarrass me in front of my people?" he asked, voice low.
"I think you did that yourself the moment you picked the wrong god to play as." I said, settling my stance.
We moved at the same time.
He surged toward me, spear thrusting, leaving a jagged afterimage.
I met him halfway.
Our weapons crashed together with a thunderclap that shook dust from the ceiling. Sparks—green and red—sprayed out, punching tiny holes into the cracked concrete.
For a heartbeat we were locked like that—two idiots who'd been told they were special, testing which lie held stronger.
He was fast. Faster than me by a hair.
But my strikes carried weight.
He shoved, trying to end it in one clean cut, spear sliding along mine toward my throat. I shifted my stance, letting the momentum carry his weapon past as I twisted, shadows tugging at my feet to pull me out of line.
My free hand snapped up. A condensed fireball bloomed in my palm and exploded point-blank against his chest.
The blast hurled him backward.
He hit the floor, boots skidding, lightning flaring from his heels to anchor him, crackling against the ground. The concrete under his feet spider-webbed with glowing lines.
He grinned, lips split where my first hit had grazed him.
"Good," he said. "You're not here to play."
Lightning erupted again, running up his spear, turning the metal into a neon razor.
I set my spear in front of me, flames burning hotter.
We moved again.
Spears clashed, each impact a miniature thunderclap. The circle narrowed; the room outside it blurred. Arcs of lightning carved gouges in the floor; bursts of crimson flame scorched away the last clinging decorations and half-melted banners.
As more young travelers tried to escape. Not realizing we were just the warm-up act.
Thomas' laughter cut through the noise as he and Alexis smashed into Zeus' real core of followers. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of them chewing through the inner circle—kids who mattered, the A-rank and high-Bs who thought proximity to "Zeus" made them untouchable.
Two of those elites were already unconscious in a neat pile at Alexis' feet; light traced along her sword and dagger as she fenced the archers, blades humming with precise constructs. Thomas bullied the bruisers, Medusa shield slamming into faces and ribs while his greatsword's flat and pommel did the rest.
They were doing what they needed to.
So was I.
Lightning kissed my cheek as Zeus' spear grazed past; my own weapon cracked against his ribs, flame blooming. We broke apart again, both breathing harder.
For the first time, his eyes lost a little of their cockiness.
For the first time, mine did too.
We'd both found something rare:
A true rival.
We moved again.
Zeus surged forward—finally treating this like a real fight. I moved to meet him, already braced for the one thing he actually understood: speed. His astral usage was still basic, but the way he rode that momentum would get most people killed.
Lightning gathered in his hands like he was dragging it straight out of his own aura. Bolts snapped and twisted around him as he hurled them my way. I spun my spear, calling up the new flames hugging the edges of my channels—hot enough that they felt like they wanted to burn me first. Their heat met Zeus's lightning as I closed into striking range.
Using that spin, I let the momentum carry my spear in a brutal thrust. Mini-explosions bloomed along the shaft as I forced blasts of mana to detonate behind the tip. The spear slammed into his weapon dead-center. The floor cracked under us, the whole room shuddering from the impact.
I still got kicked away for my trouble.
His boot caught my ribs the same instant a lightning bolt crashed into my side, hurling me across the room. Pain flared, but I couldn't stop the grin stretching my face as I felt my plan taking hold. Zeus poured more astral energy into his spear, forcing the lightning hotter, brighter—shifting it toward plasma that arced and screamed around the metal.
Good. Overcommit, you idiot.
I was rewarded with a single, split-second window. His spear carved past where my neck had been an instant earlier as I bent backward, spine protesting. For that heartbeat we were eye-level—Zeus hanging mid-air above me, fist already cocked.
He drove it down.
My hastily raised guard caught the punch, but the force still hammered me into the ground, stone cracking under my back. He leaned his weight in, trying to drive his fist straight through my chest.
"Fine," I muttered, opening my mouth.
I stole a page from a certain giant, human-shaped monkey and let the astral pour out with a roar. Pure energy blasted from my throat in a focused beam, a crude laser of condensed astral power that screamed up into his face.
Yeah, my taste buds were absolutely going to hate me for this later.
⎻⎻⎻
"Ms. Artemis, just to clarify for the viewers: you're saying any Traveler who breaks the Society's rules will be judged by your people, not the government?"
The moderator's voice had the desperate brightness of someone clinging to his cue cards like a life raft.
I let him finish the question before answering.
"I'm saying people who can collapse buildings by sneezing should be regulated by the people who can stop them," I replied. "Not by committees who still think a SWAT team solves everything."
The studio lights were hot. The cameras hotter. Three main angles, a couple of wide shots, one roaming unit trying to catch audience reaction. Tally lights glowed solid red.
LIVE in the corner of every screen.
Candidate for VP Jim Tancer sat across from me, hands clasped together on the table so tightly his knuckles had gone white. He'd just promised—on air—to back the Astral Studies Departments and route awakened kids through our academies instead of through whatever half-baked government programs his party had cooking.
He knew it. I knew it. Half the country knew it.
This was the moment that could split America in half.
"The critics say that's surrender," the moderator pressed. "That you're asking the government to hand over authority to a private military organization—"
"We're not private," I cut in. "We're just not yours."
A murmur rippled through the studio audience. Someone in the control room muttered in the producer's ear. One of the camera operators briefly forgot to breathe.
"Then what do you expect from us?" Jim asked. His voice was steadier than it had been ten minutes ago. Some of the fear had burned off; what was left was iron. "From the government, from the party, from me? If I'm going to endorse your academies, if I'm going to risk this much backlash… I need to know what you're actually asking us to do."
The moderator opened his mouth to reclaim control.
I lifted a hand without looking at him.
He shut it again.
"We're not asking you to kneel," I said. "That's what everyone's afraid of, isn't it? That the big bad Society is going to turn into a parallel government and start drafting laws in the Sea."
Jim didn't argue.
"What I'm asking," I continued, "is for you to admit there are areas where humans in suits no longer have jurisdiction. You don't regulate hurricanes. You adapt to them. You don't sue earthquakes. You build better foundations."
Chiron shifted in his seat off to my left, the faintest approval.
"Travelers aren't weather," the moderator tried, clinging to his script. "They're citizens."
"Yes," I said. "Citizens who can hear gods whisper and sometimes punch moons. Pretending they're just another voting block is how you end up in a civil war you can't win."
That landed.
You could feel it in the way the room's temperature shifted—fear and grudging agreement mixing in equal measure.
Jim exhaled slowly. "And if we agree? If we back off where we're outmatched, support where we're needed, and let your people handle the rest—what do we get?"
"The same thing everyone else gets," I said. "A world that keeps spinning."
He stared at me.
I let the silence stretch.
Somewhere, under a city that had no idea how close it was to changing, a boy with stolen divinity was trying to prove he could wear his father's shadow.
If we said the wrong things here, the country broke.
If they did the wrong thing down there, the world bled.
Finally, Jim nodded once.
"Then I'll stand by what I said," he told the nearest camera. The tremor was gone from his voice. "If we are elected, I will support the Astral Studies Departments, respect the Society's jurisdiction in Traveler matters, and put my name behind the academy system as the preferred path for awakened youth."
His staffers visibly died inside just off-camera.
The moderator's eyes lit up with the kind of hungry that smelled like headlines.
"And to those who say you're surrendering power?" he asked, lunging at the line.
Jim didn't look away from the lens.
"I'd rather lose an election than pretend I can fight gods with paperwork," he said. "If that costs me, so be it."
The sentence went out across the country.
Into living rooms, onto guild hall screens, into cheap basements where kids watched with half-formed astral senses buzzing.
Into a basement nightclub where the sound was muted, but the red LIVE indicator on the corner screen burned anyway while lightning and flame collided beneath it.
I smiled, small and sharp.
"Good answer," I murmured.
The moderator dove into closing remarks, promising follow-up debates and policy breakdowns. Chiron's barrier kept most of the ambient panic off the stage, turning the studio into a bubble of managed chaos.
While he talked, I felt my phone buzz once in my pocket.
Three-word message, encrypted, from Grim.
Circle engaged.
I didn't check it.
Didn't need to.
The kids had stepped into their part of the bargain.
Time for us to keep ours.
⎻⎻⎻
Zeus' spear screamed past my ear, trailing a whip of green lightning that cracked against Alexis' barrier instead of my skull.
I dropped under the follow-through, slammed my palm into the concrete, and raised an earthen wall between us. Lightning crashed into it a heartbeat later, blowing chunks of stone into molten slag.
I shoved astral energy into my legs and kicked.
The wall surged forward like a battering ram, stone and flame braided together. It caught him off-guard, slamming into his chest and hurling him backward into one of his own crooked banners.
He tore through it in a shower of paint flakes, hit the wall hard enough to crack it, then rolled, boots carving scorched gouges in the floor as he killed his momentum.
"Thomas!" Alexis shouted somewhere to my right.
"I'm busy!" he laughed back, voice wild.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught another glimpse of them. Alexis and Thomas were fully engaged with what was left of Zeus' inner circle now. Two more of the elites were down, unconscious in a neat line. Light traced along Alexis' sword and dagger as she fenced the remaining archers in tight corridors of force, while Thomas bullied the bruisers, Medusa shield and greatsword smashing through their guard and their courage at the same time.
Zeus' core support was crumbling.
Good.
"So why use kids Zeus? They aren't much younger than us and as a fellow child of a false explorer. You should know what's coming." Watching him spit at my words. Clearly not accepting our parents action.
"My father Erebus and your mom Artemis are just chasing an old dream of keeping the world safe. When our true path is in the stars that that bastard Odin sealed off. I know you've seen his notes.
"Our path isn't on this dying rock! I don't understand how anyone can't see it!" Shaking my head as I regain my striking position.
"You're ignoring your own actions. First you attacked me and my friends. Now knowing that you know the truth. I can't feel bad that you brought this on yourself." feeling laughter inside me as if a seal was being partially opened. As my flames turned black and purple along my spear.
I needed to win my side before pride turned him into something worse.
He pushed himself upright again, lightning still crawling over his skin.
"You and your family would start a war over a small fight?" he snarled, storm aura flaring. "All this—for one name?"
He didn't slow as he spoke.
He came in like a thunderbolt, afterimages trailing behind him, spear stabbing for my heart.
"I use flames," I said, twisting aside, spear snapping up to parry. "You use lightning. Only one of us is pretending it makes us a god."
Our weapons clashed again.
I forced more mana into my limbs, feeling muscle fibers strain, shadow and fire coiling together. The spear in my hands felt heavier and lighter at the same time—the familiar weight of family history and something darker humming at its core.
His lightning rode his strikes, each impact numbing my arms, threatening to seize my muscles.
I pushed just out of reach, heel sliding along the cracked floor, and then I was under his guard.
My spear's butt slammed down; an eruption of crimson fire surged up, forcing him to hop back or lose his feet.
He jumped.
Predictable.
I followed, funneling astral energy into my legs, launching myself up as he hung in that brief weightless moment.
My spear whistled up in a brutal arc, aiming for his ribs.
He twisted midair, lightning detonating from his boots, giving him just enough boost to slip past the worst of it. Even so, the blade kissed his side; burnt fabric and the scent of scorched skin hit the air.
He grunted, half pain, half anger.
I hit the ground hard, rolled, came up already moving.
A lightning wave ripped across the floor where I'd just been, chewing concrete to dust.
I recognized the pattern. The same move he'd spammed back in the early dungeons, when blowing up hallways felt like the height of strategy.
Back when we'd thought this new world was a game.
"Still using that?" I called, circling, keeping him angled away from Alexis and Thomas. "Thought you'd have learned a new trick by now."
His eyes flashed.
"Want a new trick?" he spat.
Lightning condensed around his right hand, thickening, twisting, coiling like a living thing. He slammed his spear into the ground with the other, using it like a grounding rod, and then lunged—
—right as one of his bruised followers screamed, "Zeus! Help!" from somewhere near Thomas and Alexis.
We both ignored it.
He drove forward, that lightning-coated hand cocked back for a punch.
I met him head-on.
My spear, wreathed now in black-edged flame, caught his lightning spear and shoved it aside. At the same time, I stepped in tight, fist rocketing into his gut.
Flame exploded from my knuckles.
The hit drove the air from his lungs and lifted him off his feet.
I didn't stop there.
I opened my hand and poured mana through it, unleashing a point-blank flame pillar that turned the space between us into a miniature inferno.
The force blasted him backward across the room.
He hit the ground, rolled, and somehow forced his body to twist mid-bounce, using the momentum to sling himself forward again.
The lightning around his fist had changed. It was tighter now, denser—concentrated instead of wild.
He'd watched what I did and copied it.
Of course he had.
He reappeared in front of me with a crack of displaced air and drove that lightning-fist into my jaw.
White exploded across my vision.
For a moment there was only pain and the metallic taste of blood.
My body slammed back; Alexis' barrier caught me and shoved me forward again before I could collapse into it. I let the rebound carry me, turning the uncontrolled stumble into a charge.
My spear shaft cracked across his face.
His head snapped sideways, blood arcing.
I layered a series of micro-explosions along the haft as it connected, each one tiny but vicious, compensating for the cramped space and stolen time.
We separated again.
He wiped blood from his mouth, eyes glassy for a second, lightning flickering.
I took a deep breath, lungs burning, every nerve screaming in protest.
We weren't tanks. Our bodies weren't built to soak this kind of punishment for long. If we kept pushing like this, one misstep from either of us would end the fight… and possibly leave someone drooling in a coma.
My core throbbed, flame trying to devour the channels that contained it.
His aura flickered, that concentrated lightning chewing at his nerves.
We were both riding the edge.
Can't show it.
He can't either.
I straightened slowly, never taking my eye off him.
Across the room, Alexis disarmed one of the archers with a neat flick of her dagger and dropped the girl with a pommel strike. Thomas laughed as he sent another of Zeus' close-combat idiots crashing into a table.
Zeus' inner circle had been reduced to groans and unconscious bodies.
He knew it.
I saw the moment panic tried to claw its way up his spine.
He shoved it down with pride.
Even now, as his aura forced itself back into a coherent shell, it felt… wrong. Like a visual display of will that had already been cracked and was only being held together by stubbornness.
I rolled my aching shoulder.
"Even if you ignore the astral gods," I said, "you're old enough to understand why our parents stepped up. What the world looked like before they dragged it back from the edge."
His grip tightened. Jaw clenched.
"We're on a swift journey out of being treated like wage slaves," I continued. "The world was already in its third world war before they ended it. You really want to spit on that just to pretend you're Zeus for a few years?"
His aura spiked.
Then he vanished.
To anyone else, it would've looked like teleportation.
To me, it was speed—raw, ugly, tearing the air.
I forced my body to catch up.
Spear met spear inches from my face as I dragged it up in a desperate parry. Our weapons shrieked against each other. His spear tip scraped my hair instead of my skull.
My foot snapped up, flame bursting along my leg, and caught him in the chest.
He staggered back, coughing blood.
I didn't waste the opening.
I jammed more astral energy into my spear than I'd used all night.
The weapon drank it greedily. The crimson flame along its blade darkened, sliding toward a shade I'd only seen in doctrine sketches—a black that wasn't an absence of light but the conclusion of it.
The flame at the spearpoint licked down the blade, hungry.
I could feel it trying to crawl up my arm, chew through my channels, devour the vessel along with the target.
Too much.
Too soon.
I didn't care.
Not for him.
Watching Zeus drag himself upright, pride making him stand when sense said stay down, I knew I couldn't keep this up much longer.
Neither could he.
One more exchange.
That's all this needed.
I exhaled, forcing my brain into razor focus. Every sense narrowed to him—his stance, the way his aura frayed at the edges, the micro-tremors in his hands.
"Last warning," I said quietly. "Walk away. Drop the god."
He laughed, hoarse and stubborn.
"Make me," he said.
I drew my arm back.
The spear felt like it weighed a hundred kilos.
My channels screamed as I forced the black flame to settle along the blade instead of racing up my nerves. Alexis' barrier thickened, instinctively reacting to the spike in my aura. Thomas yelled something distantly, voice muffled.
Zeus surged forward for his own strike—
—and Grim appeared between us.
One moment the path was clear.
The next, his long coat flicked into my peripheral vision as he stepped into the line like he'd done it a thousand times on a thousand real battlefields.
"Crow, that's enough," he said.
I let go.
The spear left my hand with all the force I'd poured into it.
Black-wreathed, humming, hungry.
Grim caught the shaft with one hand.
For a heartbeat, the world went silent.
The flame tried to leap from the spear into him.
His aura—cold, deep, practiced—slammed down like an ocean lid, smothering it, forcing it back onto the metal.
The backlash ripped through my half-burned channels.
Darkness rushed in from the edges of my vision.
I saw Zeus' eyes widen, saw his aura shudder and collapse under the weight of what he'd just almost been hit with. Saw Alexis freeze mid-step, Thomas' grin vanish, the remaining conscious kids go to their knees as instinct screamed at them to submit or die.
Grim's voice reached me through the roaring in my ears.
"Name cracked," he said evenly. "That's all we needed."
I tried to answer.
My body had other opinions.
The last thing I felt was the ground giving way under my knees and the cool brush of Alexis' light catching me before my skull met concrete.
Then the dark flame inside me surged up to claim its price.
And everything went black.