OLYMPUS REBORN — BOOK ONE: ZEUS REINCARNATED AS A TEENAGER
Volume: One — The Awakening
We found the bridge anyway.
I know. We rerouted. We burned forty minutes of Gary's gas. We took every backroad and detour the map offered to circumvent the GPS.
Apparently, that bridge had our scent.
We were descending out of the Rockies into the jagged terrain of western Colorado, following a highway that hugged a canyon carved by a river that had been arguing with the rock for four million years. That's when Demi said, her voice dropping into that flat, "vision-adjacent" tone:
"I see the bridge."
I looked ahead. There it was. It wasn't the exact structure from her sketchbook—the iron was different, the span was shorter—but the gravity was identical. The air around it had that specific, settled wrongness. It felt like a house that had been lived in by something unpleasant for so long that the walls had started to look like the occupant.
"We could turn around," I said, though I already knew the answer.
"We're in a canyon, Zeus. There's one road. Unless the Civic can climb a vertical granite wall, we're committed."
"I could reverse for two miles."
"You're doing fifty."
"I could slow down."
"Jason."
"I know," I muttered. "I know."
The bridge was human-old. Concrete and iron from the 1940s, built to withstand the elements and mostly succeeding. It hung thirty feet above the churning white water of the river. It looked normal. It looked boring.
Except for the water.
The river wasn't flowing right. It was moving, yes—the current was visible—but it was being nudged. It was swirling in unnatural patterns around the pilings, like something beneath the surface was breathing, and the rhythm of that breath was dictating the tide.
I pulled over ten yards short of the entrance. "Okay," I said, my hand hovering near the door handle. "Intelligence report. What are we dealing with?"
"It's a Keres," Demi said.
I looked at her, surprised. "You're sure?"
"I looked it up while you were teaching that kid how to shade clouds last night," she said, tapping her notebook. "The 'settled' feeling. The way it's claimed a choke-point. The hunger in the air—it's patient, not impulsive." She flipped to a page covered in neat, cramped research. "Keres are death-spirits. They feed on violent ends. They're drawn to places where the veil is already thin from tragedy. Bridges are—"
"Prime real estate," I finished. "Yes. Since when do you read the 'unabridged' myths?"
"Since I was eight," she said, not looking up. "The school textbooks are fairy tales. The older sources... they felt more like warnings."
I stared at her for a beat too long.
"What?" she snapped.
"Nothing. You're right. It's a Keres. But it's evolved, like the Drakon. Centuries in the Void turns a spirit into something... denser."
"What will it look like?"
"I won't know until it decides it wants to eat us."
"Helpful as always."
"You're welcome."
I got out of the car. Demi was right behind me, slamming her door with a finality that told me arguing was a waste of breath.
"You're not doing this alone," she said.
"I was absolutely planning on doing this alone."
"You can barely aim your primary weapon, Zeus. Last time, you almost hit a parked car."
"The arc was intentional. It was a flanking maneuver."
"It went sideways."
"Sideways still counts as a hit!"
"I'm coming," she said. "Stay behind you, don't be a hero, run if you say so. I know the drill. Now move."
We walked onto the bridge.
It didn't crash out of the water. There was no cinematic splash. It simply rose, slowly, like a bubble of oil surfacing from a great depth. It moved with the unhurried confidence of a thing that has never known fear.
The Keres looked like a woman.
That was the first shock. The old poems described them as winged hags, monstrous and clawed. This thing wore a human shape like a high-end coat—not because it fit, but because it projected an image. It was pale, draped in something that looked like wet silk, and its hair moved as if it were still underwater.
Its eyes were the real problem. They weren't "monstrous." They were just... empty. Not blank—empty. Like a well that had run dry a thousand years ago.
"Oh," it said. Its voice was the sound of freezing water grinding over smooth stones. "A storm-child. I haven't smelled your lightning in an age."
"Step off the bridge," I said, my voice dropping into the King's register.
It tilted its head, a predatory, bird-like motion. "Or what? You'll tickle me with a stray spark?"
Demi made a soft, sharp sound behind me.
"I've been practicing," I said.
"Have you?" It took a step forward. It wasn't a threat; it was curiosity. "I wondered when you'd start waking up. The cracks have been widening for months. I've been very well-fed lately." It smiled—a technically perfect arrangement of teeth. "Are you the first? The Eldest? The King of nothing?"
"Final warning. Step off."
"I like this bridge," it purred. "Nine deaths here since 1987. None of them were my doing—humans are so beautifully fragile on their own. I simply moved into the vacancy after the first one."
It looked past me, its empty eyes sharpening as they landed on Demi. Something hungry flickered in the gray. "Oh. Now that is interesting. You brought a Not-Quite-Mortal. She's barely awake, and yet she smells like... old war. Old wisdom." It inhaled deeply. "Is she yours? Does she know she's carrying a temple inside her?"
"She isn't mine," I said, my temper finally catching a spark.
"No," the Keres whispered. "But she will be, won't she? The gods always return to their old configurations."
I hit it.
It wasn't a perfect bolt. It hit the iron railing first, spiraling in a chaotic blue arc before slamming into the Keres's chest. The spirit didn't just scream—it unraveled. The sound was like metal tearing.
It held on longer than the Drakon. It had roots here; it had fed on the local grief. For a second, I thought it was going to re-form, its pale hands reaching for the bridge's edge.
Then Demi spoke.
She didn't speak to me. She didn't shout at the monster. She leaned over the railing and whispered something to the river.
I couldn't hear the words over the roar of the wind and the spirit's dying shriek, but the river answered. The current surged with sudden, violent force, a column of white water leaping up like a hand. It struck the dissolving Keres from below, washing the last of its oily essence into the mist.
The spirit vanished. The absence it left was different from the Drakon's—cleaner. Like a fever that had finally broken.
The water settled. The river began to flow normally again.
I stood on the bridge, my heart hammering, and looked at Demi. She was staring at her own hands, then at the water, then back at her hands. She looked terrified.
"Did you know you could do that?" I asked.
"No," she whispered.
"What did you say to it? To the water?"
"I don't know," she said, her voice trembling. "It just... I felt like I was asking a friend for a favor. And the friend said yes."
I looked at the river. Then I looked at the girl who had just commanded a canyon's worth of current with a whisper.
She's barely awake, the Keres had said.
Gods help us when she finally opens her eyes.