OLYMPUS REBORN — BOOK ONE: ZEUS REINCARNATED AS A TEENAGER
Volume: One — The Awakening
Iowa smelled wrong.
It wasn't a "bad" smell—not the familiar stench of roadkill, industrial fertilizer, or the specific tragedy of gas station sushi.
It was wrong-wrong. The kind of wrong that doesn't have a name in any language invented in the last two millennia. It was an ancient, stagnant scent, like a tomb that had been cracked open and left to vent in the sun.
I felt it the second we crossed the state line. The air went heavy, pressing against my eardrums. The atmosphere was holding its breath, waiting for a blow that hadn't landed yet. Something had moved through here recently, leaving a psychic residue behind the way a wet dog leaves a scent on a rug—you can't see it, but it's absolutely there, and it's absolutely not okay.
I gripped the wheel and said nothing.
Demi noticed eleven minutes later. She stopped scrolling through her notebook and looked out at the horizon. "Something's different."
"Yep."
"You felt it the second we hit the 'Welcome to Iowa' sign."
"Yep."
"And you weren't going to mention it?"
"I was going to mention it when I had something useful to say," I muttered. "Right now, all I've got is 'the air tastes like copper and old grudges.'"
She opened a fresh page. "I'm counting that as useful."
The corn was wrong, too.
I'm a sky god, not an agriculture specialist—that was my sister Demeter's department—but I know how life is supposed to look. The dead patches in the fields we were passing weren't random. They weren't caused by drought or blight.
They were patterns.
Long, jagged streaks of charcoal-brown cut through the vibrant green at angles that didn't match the wind or the irrigation lines. Something had moved through these stalks. Something massive that killed things just by being in their zip code.
"Stop the car," Demi said.
I pulled onto the shoulder.
She was out before I had the gear in park. She walked to the wire fence, crouching low to look at the shriveled stalks. She didn't touch them—smart girl. Even as a mortal, her instincts were screaming predator.
I stepped out and stood behind her, the wind whipping my hair across my face. It felt cold. Too cold for September.
"How long ago?" she asked.
"A few days. Maybe a week." I could feel the trail now. It was oily. Purposeful. "It wasn't just passing through, Demi. It was circling."
"Circling what?"
I looked down the road. Two miles ahead, a rusted water tower rose above the tree line. Underneath it sat a cluster of gray roofs.
"That," I said.
The town was called Millhaven. Population: small enough that the woman behind the gas station counter knew exactly what kind of car every resident drove. She knew ours didn't belong here before the door chime finished ringing.
"Passing through?" she asked. Her voice was flat, but her eyes were darting to the window, checking the perimeter.
"Just gas and water," I said, keeping my voice low, my "Average Teenager" mask firmly in place.
She nodded, but her hand stayed near the cordless phone on the counter. She looked exhausted. Everyone in the store did. The air in here felt like a funeral parlor.
Demi was already at the community board by the door. Between the flyers for a church bake sale and a lost tabby cat was a hand-written notice. The ink looked fresh, even though the paper was curling at the edges:
If anyone else is having The Dreams, please contact Pastor Williams or Dr. Reyes at the clinic. You are not alone. There is nothing to be afraid of.
Demi took a photo of it. I bought two waters and a bag of pretzels, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone who didn't want to be a "local incident."
We got back in the car and rolled the windows up.
"Dreams," Demi said, showing me the photo. "Plural. They're having a localized epidemic."
"I saw."
"Same dream, Zeus. They put up a public health notice about it."
"I know," I said, putting the car in gear. "I know."
We didn't drive around Millhaven. We drove through it.
Main Street was a relic of 1987. A diner, a hardware store, a barbershop with a spinning pole that looked like it hadn't turned in a decade. A few people were on the sidewalks, but they moved with a strange, heavy lethargy—heads down, shoulders hunched. A dog tied up outside the hardware store didn't bark as we passed. It just sat there, ears back, watching us with wide, white-rimmed eyes.
Dogs always know when a storm is coming.
Near the end of the block was a small park. A gazebo, a rusted swing set, and a single child sitting on a swing.
She wasn't swinging. She was about seven, wearing a bright red coat that looked like a bloodstain against the gray playground. She had a sketchbook balanced on her knees, drawing with the kind of intense focus usually reserved for surgeons.
Demi looked at me. "We have to."
"No," I said. "We are two teenagers in a beat-up car with out-of-state plates. We do not approach solitary children in parks. That is how you end up in a holding cell."
Demi didn't even blink. "I'll go. You stay in the car and look... non-threatening. If that's even possible for you."
Before I could point out how flawed that plan was, she was out. She walked toward the swings with her hands visible, her posture softening into something harmless and sisterly.
I watched through the windshield. The kid looked up. She didn't look startled. She said something, and Demi crouched down to her level. They talked for a minute—the kid pointing at her drawing, then looking across the park.
Right at the car.
Right at me.
Even from fifty feet away, I saw her expression. It wasn't fear. It was a terrifying, eerie kind of relief.
Demi came back three minutes later, her face pale. She got in and handed me her phone. She'd snapped a picture of the page in the sketchbook.
I stared at it.
It was a kid's drawing—wobbly lines, skewed proportions, heavy-handed pencil marks. But the subject was unmistakable.
A figure stood on a high peak. Arms outstretched. Jagged lines of light arced from his palms, tearing the sky open. And at the top of the page, in careful, blocky letters, she had written:
THE STORMKING
My heart did a slow, heavy roll in my chest.
"She's never seen you before," Demi whispered. "She said she dreamed you. Three weeks ago. Same night the rest of the town started waking up screaming."
"What are the others dreaming?"
"She didn't know. Just that her parents are scared to go to sleep. That the whole town is 'heavy.'" Demi paused, her thumb hovering over the screen. "She said in her dream, the Storm King was looking for someone. And that he was late."
The lukewarm coffee in my cupholder felt like lead.
Late. Yeah. A few thousand years late.
"Did she say anything else?"
Demi looked out the window. "She said to tell you... that the 'Dark Thing' that came through here was afraid of you. She saw it in the dream. Whatever circled this town—when it felt you crossing the state line, it ran."
I looked at the girl in the red coat. She was already back to her sketchbook, drawing with steady, unbothered hands.
Seven years old. Dreaming of cosmic wars and telling me the darkness was afraid of me. I wanted to go over there and tell her everything was under control. I wanted to tell her to go home and lock the doors.
But the only "adults" on duty were a reincarnated god in a hoodie and a girl whose eyes turned silver when she got stressed.
"Okay," I said, my voice sounding like gravel. "We keep moving."
"Zeus—"
"We can't help them by staying, Demi. We help them by getting to the coast. By finding the others."
She was quiet for a long beat. She looked at the kid, then at the Ven-ing Machines motel key still sitting on the dash. "I know. I just... I hate it."
I pulled back onto the highway.
In the rearview mirror, the girl in the red coat watched us fade into the distance. She didn't wave.
She just watched.
She knew.