The fracture had been quiet for three days.
Not stable. Quiet. The kind of quiet that came from exhaustion, from the realm itself running out of energy to tremble. Zeus stood at its edge, looking down into the light that bled through the crack—thin, pale, endless. He had been standing there for hours. Maybe longer. Time didn't move the way it used to.
The ceremony had changed something in him.
Not the words. Not the names carved into stone. Something deeper. The way the gods had stood together. The way the angels had bowed their heads. The way a single lost soul had found its way home.
He had been watching the mortal world for days. The crowds at the Parthenon. The woman in London who quit her job. The child in Brazil who kept drawing pictures of a man made of lightning. They were praying to him now. Not because he asked. Because they needed someone to believe in.
He didn't know what to do with that.
He heard Michael before he saw him.
