Hera never intended to return.
She left the child on an island in am area where no gods will go to.
An area most gods instinctively avoided. The island lay near where Uranus's meat lay which holds the remnant of Uranus's authority torn from him when Kronos wielded the Scythe of Extinction.
Though Uranus's consciousness had been erased, this fragment of his sky essence remained, bleeding power endlessly into the surrounding sea and heavens.
The air there was unstable. Winds twisted without pattern. Thunder answered no storm. Creatures born in this region were warped by sky and lightning—winged serpents, storm-beasts, living clouds bound by rage.
The gods believed the relic would eventually fade, its power dispersing harmlessly into the world and reinforcing the sky.
None of them realized that when the last trace of sky authority finally drained away, what remained would not vanish. It would condense. From longing, separation, and severed union, a goddess would be born—one whose domain would be love, but not the gentle kind sung by poets. A love forged from loss.
The child Hera abandoned didn't know about this at all. After all he is just a child.
Thankfully unlike during the era of Uranus. Time flows unified, allowing Hephaestus to sense his time in the island. This was one of the best things about Kronos's rule.
Back then as the other god whos also ruled over the time domain. Rhea the wife of Kronos had made it so that the passage of time can be known easilly by creating day, week, month, and years.
In this world, domains were not singular crowns in this world. They were contested territories. Multiple gods could exist under the same concept, but only one could stand at the center of it. Kronos as the most powerfull god of time ruled as the main god of time since he was the one who cause the domain of time to grow the strongest while Rhea who is also the goddess of time can only be his subordinate.
Before Kronos rose, time had been loose, almost playful. Gods stepped outside it. Titans bent it casually. But Kronos did not merely rule time—he disciplined it. He imposed sequence, inevitability, consequence. Under his authority, time hardened into one of the strongest laws of the world. And he ensured its dominance by suppressing others.
Hyperion's sun no longer moved freely. Kronos bound it to cycles—day and night, rise and fall—forcing the solar domain to obey time. One suppression alone would not have triggered rebellion, but Kronos continued. Other domains slowed. Some weakened. Evolution stalled. And when only time continued to grow, the Heavenly Dao marked his reign as unstable.
Ten full years passed for the child while Olympus barely noticed his absence. And because Hera never returned—and never spoke his origin aloud—the child would grow without ever knowing who his mother was.
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Hephaetus POV
I don't remember faces.
I remember the sound of waves. Wind tearing across the cliffs. The way thunder sometimes rolled for no reason at all, even when the sky was clear.
I remember being small and cold and hungry, and learning very quickly that if I didn't move, nothing would change.
Someone left me here. I've always known that. I don't know who. I don't know why. But I don't think it was meant to kill me.
I only know that my name is Hephaestus and I am a god from the knowledge given to me by the heavenly dao.
I learned to walk by falling. I learned to eat by stealing eggs from nests I probably shouldn't have touched. The animals here were strange—too aggressive, too sharp, too aware.
Storms came suddenly and left just as fast. Sometimes lightning struck the same rock over and over again until it glowed faintly at night.I grew fast but I didn't think about it much.
I remember when I just arrived here, a snake almost suprise me. It came down from the clouds like a falling rope, wings snapping open at the last moment. I saw the shadow before I saw the body. I tried to run, slipped on wet stone, and then everything went dark and hot and tight.
Being swallowed felt… unpleasant. I remember thinking that this was a stupid way to die. But then I remembered that I was a god.Then I pushed back.
My hands tore into flesh that should've been tougher than iron. My teeth found something important. The pressure loosened, and suddenly I was climbing out of a dying thing, gasping as its blood mixed with seawater.
I lay on the sand afterward, staring at the sky. It was then I also wondered about my dkmain. The world told me that every god had one like the sea, sky, wind, time, sun. But me? Nothing.
Just… me.
I built my first shelter because the rain was annoying.
That's it. No great reason.
I cut trees where they felt weakest. I stacked stones that somehow stayed where I put them.
When I needed something sharp, I made it. When I needed fire, it came easily—too easily. I didn't question it. Questioning didn't help me eat or sleep.
The shelter turned into a house. The house turned into something… nice.
I shaped a pool beneath the waterfall because the water looked lonely rushing past unused.
I carved channels so it wouldn't flood. I planted things just to see if they'd grow—and then adjusted when some didn't.
Animals wandered in so I made places for them to stay so they wouldn't chew through everything else.
One day I stood on the roof, looked at the island, and realized I'd changed it.
That was new.
"I might look awful," I muttered, catching my reflection in the water, "but at least I'm good with my hands."