Scene 1
"Apollo!"
A roar of wind carried Apollo's name across the island, and I realized the twins had left a present behind for me.
The shout didn't sound like a voice at first. It sounded like the sky itself had finally decided to take offense. Wind slammed across the broken island in a single sweeping wave, ripping sand from the shore and peeling whole sheets of seawater into the air. Black stone cracked under the pressure before anything even fully arrived. The ocean around the island churned hard enough to turn white, while the clouds above twisted into a spiral around one point.
"Lord Zeus grows tired of you ignoring his summons to the Court."
I looked up as the wind gathered into a humanoid body made entirely of storm and pressure.
Aether.
He didn't really look like a god in the ordinary sense. He looked like the violence of air forced into the shape of one. His body was vaguely man-shaped, but too fluid around the edges to ever feel stable. Wind condensed where skin should have been. His face kept half-forming and half-breaking apart beneath streams of pale pressure, while his eyes burned like compressed currents too dense for normal sight. Every motion shed slicing gusts, and every second he remained standing there, the air around us grew heavier, sharper, more willing to kill.
"They've already run away," I said. "Aether, weakest of the wind gods."
Answering the Peak Major God while summoning my spear back into my hand, I forced all three of my Domains to shield me, using their higher concepts to barely bridge the rank gap between us.
Black flames wrapped around one side of me. Sun pressure rose over the other. Death settled beneath both like the hidden blade waiting under a smile. Even with all three layered together, his winds still slammed into me and the island with enough force to carve apart anything they touched. The shore split open. Trees farther inland shredded into spirals of bark and leaves. Chunks of the island blew free and vanished into the sea below.
I had no choice but to rely on the full combination of my trinity just to endure the opening assault.
The damage reduced itself to shallow cuts along my skin.
That was the best I could force out of the exchange.
Thin lines of blood opened over my arms, chest, and cheek before the heat of my own Domain tried sealing them shut. The black cloth around my arm snapped violently in the wind while the sea behind me rose higher and higher in response to the pressure he kept dumping into the battlefield.
And that still didn't change the truth in front of me.
I was already in a losing position.
No matter how weak Wind Laws might seem when compared to the fullest expression of Sun or Death, Aether was still wielding Major God-ranked Laws while I was not.
That difference alone could kill me if I let this remain a simple contest of force.
Scene 2
"Who are you?"
Only now did Aether truly focus on me.
At the same time, I felt a barrier of Sea Laws rise around the battlefield, sealing the space and trapping me inside with Zeus's lackey.
The pressure shifted the instant it formed. The sea itself answered from below, drawing a ring of dark-blue force around the island and locking the surrounding waters into place. The waves stopped behaving like waves. They became walls. Breathing became harder. Sound got heavier. Even Aether's storm had to move differently once the Ocean decided this battlefield belonged to it.
"It doesn't matter who I am."
Utilizing the techniques Hyperion had left behind, I expanded my size until I could barely match the towering form Aether had shaped from True Wind. Even then, he still carried himself like this was a hunt instead of a fight.
His arrogance made sense.
The sky had spent too long above everything to learn caution quickly.
Driving my spear forward, I aimed for his heart—
the place where every god's Laws and Domain gathered.
I increased the heat of the black flames around my spear, and the air around the blade began to warp. Not ordinary heat. The kind that made distance bend and forced the wind itself to hesitate before crossing too close. Aether raised a wall of wind at the final moment, layers of pale pressure folding over one another like transparent blades packed side by side.
So I shifted my strike just enough to shear through his left arm instead, turning his own body of True Wind against itself.
The reward was a tornado straight to the face.
The force hit like a mountain moving at once. It swallowed my body whole and hurled me through broken stone and black sand, ripping flame from the edges of my spear while my Domains screamed at each other to hold shape. His roar birthed fresh cyclones in his moment of pain while he condensed more Laws around the missing limb, trying to suppress the flames by feeding divine energy into the wound.
I crashed back-first into the island, rose immediately, and stepped aside just as a blade of wind sliced the island in half.
The cut went clean through it.
Stone. Sand. Salt. Residual fire. Everything separated under the edge before the sea rushed in below.
"I'll kill you!"
I almost laughed.
Such a pointless threat in the Golden Cycle.
Compared to forced subordination—or a lifetime of pain—death was one of the easier things to recover from.
"A God of Winds threatening Death. How ironic. But I need a prideful mind like yours."
Ignoring his rage, I forced Death Laws into my Spear of Black Flames. White dots formed along the blade, lining it like buried stars beneath darkness as I rushed him again—this time feinting toward his heart.
He answered with the same wall of wind, only denser now, with the thickest concentration protecting the exact place I wanted him to defend.
Good.
Pulling the spear back, I grinned before changing direction and cutting through the wall guarding his remaining arm.
Aether was forced to manifest two smaller replacement limbs.
Shallow things.
Crude constructions of basic Wind Laws compared to the lethal Laws he had once compressed into his real arms.
His missing right arm had already devolved into an uncontrollable tornado, one that dragged in seawater and whatever fish were unlucky enough to be caught nearby. The waters beneath us churned black-blue under the pull while scales, foam, and broken chunks of coral disappeared into its spinning mouth.
His left arm had sunk to the floor of the sea, where it continued carving out a trench that stretched farther and farther beyond the reach of this Olympus god. I could feel the ocean groaning around it, the pressure of the seabed splitting under the remains of his own Laws.
"Ahhh!"
He screamed again, blasting Wind Laws outward in every direction as he tried to calm himself, only to slip deeper into madness as more of his own wind bled off his form.
His shape was getting worse.
Less controlled.
Too much of him had started moving without permission. The edges of his body kept peeling away into slicing gusts before slamming back in. His face flickered between a god's features and a storm's rage. Every time he pulled in more air to restore himself, part of it answered to me instead.
"Time for you to go bye-bye."
I raised my spear once more and forced the Sun in the sky to bleed out its orange flames until they darkened with a tint of black under the overlap of my Domain.
The light above us changed at once.
The sea barrier dimmed. The clouds burned at the edges. Orange-gold light spilled downward, then blackened where it touched the pressure surrounding me. The flames around my spear connected to the Sun like a bridge, a long warped current of fire and authority running from the heavens into my hand.
Ignoring the golden blood running from my nose, I chose one final charge instead of caution.
Weaving through the air, I slipped between blades of wind from this mad god and drove my spear into his leg while compressing my size, making myself far harder to shake free.
Then I turned my feet into pure flames and dragged my spear upward, carving a path of fire along his body as the connection to my Domain began feeding directly on his Wind Laws.
That was when panic finally reached him.
In desperation, he launched blades of wind into his own body, trying to sever the pull that was helping me climb. Great crescents of pressure tore through his torso, his shoulder, his side—wounds that should have given him relief only for the black flames to burrow deeper each time the openings appeared.
Too late.
I completed the path to his heart.
Driving the spear in, I commanded it to turn into a pillar.
I watched the pillar punch through him and force his body over. Then I spat blood onto it, tripling the connection as the black-flamed construct began devouring the God of True Winds.
The sound that came out of him wasn't a scream anymore.
It was collapse.
Pressure folding inward. Law being eaten. Structure refusing to stay itself.
I ignored his pleas for mercy.
Instead, I formed another spear and shifted my focus toward the new presence waiting beyond him.
Covered in Oceanic pressure and holding back the majority of his own Laws, the Sea God met my gaze.
He stood out over the water like a quiet answer to Aether's noise. The ocean bent around him naturally, not violently. Old pressure. Deep pressure. The kind that didn't need to flare to make the battlefield recognize it. Even with most of his strength restrained, the air near him felt denser, like the sea itself had risen into the shape of a god and decided to speak.
"A fine battle, if I had to judge it," he said. "But I'm not here to judge or hunt you. Prometheus, you can come out."
The Sea God waved one hand.
I still couldn't sense his rank.
That same hand tore through several barriers of Wisdom as Prometheus's bald form appeared, studying the pillar-spear with open interest.
The old Titan's eyes moved over the battlefield first. The ruined island. The split sea. The wind trench. The dark pillar devouring Aether. Only then did he settle his gaze on me.
"A Divine Child of Sun, Darkness, and Death," Prometheus said. "Aether won't be recovering from this. So tell me, Hades—how did you restart your journey?"
His attention shifted toward me, but I only shook my head.
"My father is still around, so Ten is fine."
Prometheus studied me for a moment before laughing under his breath.
"If you say so, Little Lord of Stars. Be careful of the Sky. He isn't as forgiving as Poseidon."
His body dissolved into mist.
When I looked back toward the Sea God, he had vanished as well, along with the barrier.
Only then did I feel the other auras rushing toward the battlefield.
I checked my injuries once, decided standing around here would be stupid, and dove straight into the sea. Salt flooded over the burns and cuts across my body as I swam toward the first island I could hide on, then kept moving from there until Zeus's forces finally gave up the hunt.
Scene 3
Juris POV
"Hades! Zeus will find out! These wicked plans will be stopped!"
From above the Nether Realms, I watched Aether's ruined form scream toward my father's palace below us.
By then it no longer mattered.
The sight beneath me was too large for his rage to mean anything now. Two newly forming realms—Hell and the Netherworld—were already absorbing the divinity from his body, while the Dark Sun at the center of the Nether Realms devoured the rest. Black radiance breathed from it in slow pulses, not like ordinary fire, but like a system inhaling fuel and deciding what to become from it.
"All Things Evil."
Speaking plainly, I let my brother's Divine Crown form above my head before waving my hand toward Aether.
His screaming sharpened at once as he struggled to maintain control over his soul while it tore free from what remained of his body. Wind shrieked around the shape of him as identity fought procedure and lost. The Crown answered the moment it recognized something suitable to process.
Before placing that soul into it, I built the first node of the Seven Sins.
The structure settled into place almost eagerly.
Body and soul were stripped of identity before being cast into the Sun of Pride.
Only once his voice had finally stopped did the body of winds fully dissolve into my Domain, enhancing both me and Tenebris with a minor offering of power condensed from Aether's greater existence.
"Give this to Ayin so she can officially step past the Demi-God rank."
Dropping the condensed energy into Hell, I let the Sun divide what remained between my Domain and the two newborn realms.
Aether had arrived as Zeus's enforcer.
Now he would remain here—
as fuel for the realms his side would never understand until it was too late.