"What do we do?" Zeus whispered after what felt like ten straight minutes of tense silence. Except his version of a whisper was about as subtle as a lightning strike in a library. He clearly wasn't built for stealth. Or patience. Or volume control.
I sighed through my nose, keeping my voice low. "Okay, here's the plan. I'll distract her. The rest of you—free the Cyclopes. No hero speeches, no screw-ups. Just move."
Everyone gave a quick nod, and like shadows melting into the gloom, they slipped away behind the rocks. I stayed where I was for a heartbeat longer, steadying myself. Then I stepped into the open.
Kampe noticed me immediately. Of course she did. Her crimson eyes locked onto mine with the precision of a predator. She paused mid-step, nostrils flaring like some twisted bloodhound.
"You smell like my Lord," she said slowly, voice dragging like chains across stone. "But… you're weaker."
I gave a half-bow, the kind you use when you're trying to appear confident but secretly want to vanish into a crack in the ground. "Hades, son of Cronos."
Her brow furrowed. "My master has no son," she growled. "You don't smell like a Titan."
"That's because I'm not," I said, trying not to wince at how dry my mouth was getting. "I'm a god. One who's planning to take my father off his throne."
That did it. Her eyes flared, and her cleaver swung with a terrifying howl through the air toward me. I flinched, badly, heart skipping, and barely melted into the shadows in time.
I reappeared ten feet to her left, stumbling just a bit as I caught my balance. "Oh no," I muttered under my breath, shaking the shadows off my shoulders. "That was way too close."
Kampe twisted around, tail lashing as she lunged at me again. I dodged left, shadows clinging to me like armor, but the speed of her strikes forced me to teleport more than I liked. It was draining, and each time I emerged from the dark, my limbs felt a little heavier.
"You know," I gasped, appearing on a boulder above her, "for all the legends about you, I expected a little more… finesse."
"Hold still, you little rat!" she shrieked, her wings flaring open as she leapt at me.
This time, she grazed my shoulder with the edge of her tail. It stung like fire, and I winced, shadows recoiling instinctively. Okay, no more smug taunts. This was serious.
Still, I had to buy time.
I clenched my fists, breathing hard, blood dripping from my shoulder. The pain buzzed behind my eyes like a swarm of hornets, but I pushed it aside. I could feel the shadows around me—just barely. They were slippery, wild, refusing to listen. Like trying to catch smoke with broken fingers.
I reached for them anyway. Forced them to move.
At first, it was like pulling against a wall. But then—something gave. A thread snapped into place, and I felt it: a pulse, a tether. The shadows buckled… then burst.
Darkness exploded from the rocks around Kampe, not as claws or tendrils—but as butterflies. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Smoky, delicate wings beat against the air, forming a churning cloud of midnight-blue.
Kampe recoiled with a sharp hiss, slashing at them in confusion. "What madness is this?!"
I stared, stunned. My heart skipped a beat. I knew those butterflies.
Pipevine Swallowtails.
A flood of memory crashed into me—summers from a life long gone. Sitting alone outside a hospital window, watching those same butterflies dance through the garden beyond the glass. They were the only thing that kept me calm as my mother wasted away inside. I hadn't thought of them in years, and yet now I had created them subconsciously.
I ducked behind a rock as Kampe thrashed, her tail carving into the earth. "Distraction," I muttered, struggling to stay upright. "Very stylish distraction."
Demeter's voice echoed from across the clearing. "Butterflies? Seriously?"
"Hey, it's working!" I shouted, dragging myself into the open. The swarm had thrown Kampe off completely—her wings twitching, her fangs snapping at shadows.
My shoulder throbbed, legs trembling, but I wasn't done yet.
Not by a long shot.
Kampe let out a furious, animal snarl, her rage boiling over. With a sudden jerk, she ripped the massive cleaver from the ground and hurled it straight at me.
It spun through the air like a guillotine the size of a cart.
I barely had time to react.
My hand shot up on instinct— and the shadows reacted quickly, butterflies folding in on themselves mid-flight, condensing into a wall of shadows as it seemed to harden into a large flat shield.
The cleaver slammed into the shadow and sunk an inch into it as these tendrils emerged and coiled around the blade like serpents, and before I could even think, the entire weapon was dragged into the wall and vanished.
I blinked in disbelief. "What the—?"
I stared at the wall of shadow in confusion, and in that moment that hesitation cost me greatly.
Kampe was already attacking again—moving faster than a creature her size had any right to be. Her scorpion tail whipped around with a wet snap, and by the time I realized—
Too late.
Agony ripped through my face as the barbed stinger slashed across my right eye, tearing flesh and bone. I felt the hook sink in, twist, and rip. A burst of hot pain blinded me. The world tilted.
I screamed.
God the pain felt so horrible! I reached up slowly and felt my face as I stared at the blood on my hand, it was red still. Similar to Poseidon when he had gotten his arm bit off but I could see some inchor starting to appear in it, just like what Metis had said when I asked her about it. Blood is the symbol of life and when a Divinus uses their divinity more and more it causes their blood to turn and transform into inchor.
But what was I doing? My knees hit the ground as I clutched my face, vision spinning, mind racing.
Then—boom—another strike.
Kampe's tail smashed into me, sending my body flying like a broken doll. I crashed through a stone pillar, then another, until the ground caught me like a punch to the ribs.
Everything hurts.
But I was still breathing.
Barely.
My vision pulsed in and out, like someone was flicking the world's light switch behind my eyes. I was on the ground before I even realized I'd been hit. My limbs felt like jelly and my head throbbed—no, throbbed was too gentle. It was pounding, like war drums against my skull.
I tried to rise, my arms trembling beneath me, palms scraping against the scorched stone. My body was trying to pull itself back together—bones knitting under my skin like winding roots, torn flesh sealing slowly, sluggishly. I felt the familiar tingle as muscle fibers rethreaded themselves, my divine blood pulling me back from the brink.
Except—
Pain flared sharp and sudden in my face, like a hot poker shoved into my skull. My right eye, it wasn't healing and at that moment I realized that I had just permanently lost my eye.
A harsh, cruel laugh echoed through the smoke. Kampe's silhouette shimmered through the haze, wings flared, her long black hair drifting unnaturally in the still air. Her red eyes glowed with delight.
"Oh, poor little god," she cooed mockingly. "Are you sad that you just lost your eye?"
I didn't respond
"You of the Divinus blood think that you are so great!" Kampe's voice turned sharp, triumphant. "And yet, look at you! My poison destroyed your eye and it will never be healed . That eye will never return. Consider it a gift from Kampe!"
She cackled, high and wild, the sound bouncing off the obsidian walls around us like mocking spirits.
And something in me snapped, and I realized that she reminded me of that one annoying kid in school that you would do anything to just beat them up.
I pushed myself up as I could feel my clothes rip and fall off me as bone plates started growing over my skin and expanding, forming this exoskeleton. My body was in pain as it was forcefully changed as
Then came my head—as this demonic looking skull formed over my face tracking a lot of inspiration from a ram with fangs and
Kampe actually flinched.
I flexed my fingers. "Still think I'm weak?"
With a growl I charged.
Our blades clashed—her cleaver against my bone extensions. She struck with raw fury, hacking and slicing. I ducked, weaving between her strikes like a dancer. Each time her blade connected, it shattered part of my armor, splintering the white bone like ceramic.
But I fought back.
I stabbed at her wings, sliced at her legs, jabbed her midsection. She screamed, tail lashing wildly. When her strikes came too close, I burst into butterflies, letting them scatter and swirl before reforming from the darkness elsewhere. The distraction bought me just enough time to rebuild the armor—more brittle now, but still holding.
We fought like that for what felt like hours. A brutal, endless loop of strike, shatter, dodge, regenerate. I could feel myself wearing down—my lungs burning, muscles trembling, every movement slower than the last. But I wouldn't give up. I couldn't.
Then I saw it—an opening.
She raised her cleaver high for a finishing blow, her tail drawn back like a whip. I burst into butterflies one last time and reformed directly behind her. Before she could turn, I drove both bone blades through her spine, using my weight to force them in deeper. Kampe let out a shriek that shook the cavern. Her wings spasmed, her tail jerked wildly, and her body collapsed to the ground in a heap of scale and shadow.
I stood over her for a moment, breathing hard, waiting… but she didn't move.
I staggered back a step, then another. My knees gave out and I collapsed beside her lifeless form, panting. My head spun, and every inch of me felt like I'd been run through a forge.
The armor cracked.
Chunks of it fell off my body, clattering onto the black stone in sharp echoes. My ribs ached like they'd been crushed, and I was pretty sure one of my arms was fractured. I felt my face again, my fingers brushing the mangled flesh where my eye had once been.
Gone.
Forever.
I sat there for a while. I didn't know how long. Long enough for the battle-high to fade and for my breath to slow. Long enough for the silence to set in.
Then I realized something.
It was too quiet.
My eyes darted around. The chains that had once bound the Elder Cyclopes now hung loose against the mountain wall. The others—Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter—all gone. No footprints. No sound.
They left me.
I wasn't even angry. Just… tired. I exhaled slowly and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
"Of course," I whispered to myself. "Classic."
Then I heard it.
A low growl.
My entire body went rigid as I turned toward the sound. I reached for one of my shattered bone blades, fingers curling around the sharp edge. My eyes narrowed.
Something moved behind a pile of scorched rocks.
The growl came again.
I stood slowly, blade in hand, ready to face whatever fresh horror Tartarus wanted to throw at me next.
And then… it scampered out.
A small, furry creature—barely the size of a mortal puppy—emerged from behind the rocks, its three heads peeking around in different directions. All three pairs of eyes blinked up at me, curious and unafraid. Its tails wagged.
I stared.
The tiny three-headed wolf yipped once and trotted toward me, stumbling over its oversized paws. One of the heads licked my foot.
I blinked.
Then I laughed.
It started as a low chuckle. Then grew. And grew. Until I was bent over, howling—no pun intended. The little pup yipped again, clearly pleased with my reaction.
"Gods," I said between breaths. "What a fucking day."
The pup pawed at my knee, one head nuzzling my leg while the other two barked excitedly.
I leaned down and picked it up, cradling it in my arms. Its fur was black as void, and its middle head yawned, showing off a tiny row of milk teeth.
"Well," I muttered, ruffling its ears, "guess it's just you and me now."
The pup gave a happy whine and licked my cheek—right below the eye I'd lost.
I exhaled.
My body still ached, my vision was half gone, and my siblings had apparently decided to ghost me—but somehow, in this burning hellhole, holding a three-headed wolf pup in my arms… I felt okay.
Strange.
But okay.
"Let's get out of here, little guy," I said, pushing myself to my feet. "Before something worse shows up."
The pup growled softly, and I swore I could feel something... old, something powerful, stirring in the tiny creature's presence. Maybe this wasn't just a pup.
I smirked. "You've got secrets, don't you?"
The pup sneezed.
Yeah.
Me too.