OLYMPUS REBORN — BOOK ONE: ZEUS REINCARNATED AS A TEENAGER
Volume: One — The Awakening
The motel room smelled like stale tobacco and the desperate floral scent of industrial-strength carpet cleaner. It had two saggy twin beds, a TV from the era when screens were deep instead of wide, and a wall-unit heater that made a sound like a cat being slowly wronged.
Demi claimed the bed closest to the door. Tactically sound—it meant she had the exit, and I got the bed by the window, right next to the shrieking heater.
She didn't even take off her shoes. She just clicked her pen, flipped her notebook open, and leveled a look at me that said she'd been hoarding questions since the first week of September.
"Okay," she said, her voice terrifyingly steady for someone who'd just seen a rift in reality. "I have questions."
"I need about ten hours of sleep," I muttered, dropping my jacket on the floor.
"You drove through three states. You're running on divine ichor or caffeine or whatever."
"Divine energy or whatever," I repeated, rubbing my face. "Is that the technical term we're going with?"
"Do you have a better one?"
I didn't. My brain felt like it was made of wet cardboard. "Fine. Ask."
I collapsed onto my bed and stared at a water stain on the ceiling that looked vaguely like a Hydra if you squinted. Demi didn't waste a second.
"How long have you known? That you were... you."
"Since I was eight," I said. "I had fragments before that—flashes of gold and thunder—but eight was when the static cleared. When I realized the 'imaginary friends' were actually memories."
"That's a hell of a thing for a third-grader."
"It wasn't great."
She scribbled something down. "What was it like? Knowing who you were but being stuck in... this?" She gestured to my lanky, mortal frame.
I thought about it. "You know that feeling when a word is right on the tip of your tongue? You can feel the shape of it, the weight of it, but you can't make the sound? It was like that. For eight years. Except the 'word' was my entire identity and the ability to command the atmosphere."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It was annoying," I corrected. 'Exhausting' sounded too vulnerable.
"The crack in the cafeteria floor," she said, pivoting. "What was it, exactly?"
"A breach. A structural failure in the veil between this world and the places underneath."
"Underneath how? Like... caves?"
"Like layers," I said, tracing a circle in the air. "This world is the skin. Below it are older strata. The deeper you go, the more ancient the places get—and the less they appreciate being disturbed."
"And something from the basement punched through the floor to say hi."
"Something from very far down," I said. "Yeah."
She paused, her pen hovering over the paper. "It knew your name, Zeus. Not your school ID name. Your name."
"It did."
"How?"
"Because whatever is down there has been waiting for the lights to go out on Olympus for a very long time," I said. "And things with that much hate have very long memories."
She wrote. The heater gave a particularly mournful screech. Outside, the doppler effect of a semi-truck screamed past on the interstate.
"Are we in danger right now?" she asked. She didn't sound scared—just clinical. Like she was checking the weather.
"Moderate danger, constantly," I said. "Immediate danger? Probably not. We moved fast enough to break the scent trail."
"'Probably not' is a garbage reassurance."
"It's the only one I've got."
She looked up from the notebook, her brown eyes locking onto mine. "I appreciate the honesty, at least."
She hit me with twelve more questions. I answered nine. The other three—the ones about my mother, the location of the other gods, and exactly how I died the first time—I dodged. She noticed every single deflection, her mouth thinning into a line as she moved them into a separate column.
Then she got to the history.
"Okay, let's fact-check the textbooks," she said. "The Titanomachy. The war against the Titans. It says you, Poseidon, and Hades divided the world after you won. Sky, Sea, Underworld."
"Correct."
"By drawing lots."
I stayed perfectly still.
"You didn't draw lots," she said, narrowing her eyes.
"We drew lots."
"You're doing the thing. The 'God of Thunder' thing where your jaw goes rigid because you're lying."
"I am not doing a thing. We drew lots. It was a fair and legal distribution of domains."
"And nobody rigged the deck? Nobody used a little divine sleight of hand?"
"...We drew lots."
She sighed and wrote something in the 'Lies/Deflections' column. "Who got the best deal? Objectively?"
"I got the Sky," I said, as if that explained everything.
"And?"
"The Sky is the only domain with a view, Demi. It's the top floor. It's the penthouse."
"Hades got the basement."
"Hades preferred the basement," I snapped. "Mostly. Can we move on?"
She moved on, but I could practically hear the ink judging me.
"The Master Bolt," she said. "Where is it?"
"Don't have it."
"Where is 'somewhere'?"
"When I was... redistributed into this body, the physical manifestations of power didn't come with me. The Bolt is likely wherever Olympus is currently anchored."
"Which is where?"
"That's the problem. Olympus doesn't have a fixed GPS coordinate when it's vacant. It exists where the three domains meet—Sky, Sea, and Underworld. When the three of us are absent, it drifts. It's a ghost ship."
"So you need all three brothers to find the front door."
"Essentially."
"And right now you have yourself and a girl with silver eyes and a notebook."
"Essentially."
"Great," she said. No sarcasm. Just a grim acceptance. "Okay."
She kept writing for a few minutes, the only sound the scratching of her pen. I lay back on the flat, lumpy pillow and watched the ceiling Hydra. It seemed to be mocking me.
"Last question," she said.
"You said that three questions ago."
"This is the real one." She closed the notebook, leaning forward. The clinical researcher persona dropped, and for a second, I saw the girl who had been my best friend since we were kids. "The thing in the crack. When it laughed... you went white. I've never seen you look like that. What was it? The truth."
I looked at the water stain.
"Something old," I said softly. "Older than the gods. Older than the Titans. It's something that was here before we even had words for 'darkness.' It's been waiting for us to forget it exists so the locks would rust off the doors."
The room went very quiet. Even the heater seemed to settle.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
I thought about lying. I thought about giving her the Kingly "it is under control" speech.
"Bad," I said. "But we're not dead yet."
She nodded once, sharp and decisive. She stood up and tucked the notebook under her pillow. "Okay. Get some sleep. I'll take first watch."
"Demi, you don't have to—"
"Zeus." She looked at me, her eyes steady, the silver flicker gone for now, replaced by something just as fierce. "Sleep. I've got the door."
I didn't argue. I didn't have the strength. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.