CHAPTER 494: THE FALL OF OLYMPUS 9

Zeus’s eyes blazed with fury as he witnessed his brother’s final moments. The King of the Gods had seen empires rise and fall, witnessed the birth and death of stars, but never—never—had he watched a god die with such finality. Poseidon’s divine essence didn’t retreat to reform elsewhere, didn’t scatter to be reborn in some distant realm. It simply... ended.

"POSEIDON!" Zeus’s roar shook the very foundations of Olympus, his voice carrying the weight of a thousand storms. Lightning cascaded from his form like liquid fire, each bolt roaring in grief. The air itself began to burn as his divine rage reached its peak, reality warping under the pressure of his anguish and fury.

The King of the Gods began to transform, his humanoid form dissolving into something far more primal. Pure electrical energy coursed through his being as he became a living lightning bolt, his essence compressing into a spear of divine wrath aimed directly at Adam. The very concept of thunder trembled in anticipation of the devastation about to be unleashed.

But Zeus had forgotten about his other enemies.

The three Hecatoncheires—Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges—had been weathering the combined assault of the three brothers for what felt like eternity. Now, with Poseidon’s death, the crushing weight of oceanic pressure suddenly lifted from their massive forms. The liquid mountains that had been battering their hundred arms collapsed into ordinary water, no longer sustained by divine will.

"FREEDOM!" Cottus roared, his voice carrying the fury of eons spent in Tartarus. His hundred arms flexed simultaneously, each one wielding weapons forged from the bones of primordial chaos. The Hecatoncheires had waited millennia for this moment—their chance at revenge against the gods who had cast them into the depths.

As Zeus prepared to launch himself at Adam, the three titans moved with surprising coordination. Briareus lunged forward, fifty of his arms reaching out to intercept the lightning bolt that Zeus had become. Electrical energy seared through his flesh, charring entire limbs black, but the titan’s grip held firm.

"You cast us into darkness!" Briareus bellowed, his remaining arms pummeling Zeus’s electrical form. "Now taste the fury of the forgotten!"

Gyges joined the assault, his hundred fists striking Zeus from all angles. Each blow carried the accumulated rage of eons, the primal fury of beings who had been deemed too dangerous to exist in the ordered world. Lightning scorched his arms, turning divine flesh to ash, but still he fought on, his hundred hands working in perfect synchronisation.

Zeus struggled against their grip, his electrical form writhing like a caged storm. But the Hecatoncheires had been forged in the earliest days of creation, their strength rivalling that of the gods themselves. Even as their flesh burned and their bones cracked under his divine fury, they held him fast.

"Release me!" Zeus commanded, his voice carrying the authority of absolute rule. "I am your king! I freed you from Tartarus!"

"Only to use us as weapons," Cottus snarled, his hundred arms squeezing tighter. "We were never your allies, Zeus. We were your tools, and now we choose our own purpose!"

The titans’ assault intensified, their combined might keeping the King of the Gods trapped in their burning embrace. Zeus’s lightning coursed through their bodies, leaving trails of charred flesh and exposed bone, but their grip never wavered. They had endured the depths of Tartarus—they could endure this.

While the Hecatoncheires held Zeus in their deadly embrace, Adam turned his attention to the third brother. Hades stood at the edge of the battlefield, his form wreathed in shadows that seemed to drink in the surrounding light. The Lord of the Underworld watched Adam approach with eyes that held the cold certainty of death itself.

Planted on Adam’s head was the very cap he had stolen during his escape from the underworld—the Helm of Darkness, woven from the primordial darkness that had existed before light itself. Seeing his own divine artifact draped across a mortal’s form was like witnessing his authority mocked, his dominion over death and darkness challenged by a mere thief.

"You’ve come back after fleeing from my domain," Hades spoke, his voice carrying the weight of every soul that had ever died. Each word was a promise of eternal torment, a reminder that death was the one authority that no being—mortal or divine—could truly escape. "Let me bury you in the depths of Tartarus."

Unlike his brothers, Hades didn’t rely on raw power or fluid technique. The Lord of the Underworld was a strategist, a being who had spent eons managing the complex politics of death and the afterlife. His approach to combat reflected this—every movement calculated, every strike designed to serve a greater purpose.

Hades raised his bident, the two-pronged weapon gleaming with the accumulated authority of every death that had ever occurred. Unlike Zeus’s lightning or Poseidon’s water, Hades’s power was subtle, insidious. It worked through inevitability rather than force, through the simple truth that all things must eventually end.

The moment Hades struck the ground with his bident, the very nature of the battlefield changed. Darkness began to seep from the cracks in the marble, not the simple absence of light but something far more fundamental—the primordial void that existed before creation itself. The shadows writhed and twisted, taking on a life of their own as they spread across Olympus like a living thing.

Mount Olympus itself began to rumble, the massive peak shaking as Hades’s authority reached deep into its foundations. The Lord of the Underworld wasn’t just fighting Adam—he was turning the very ground into an extension of his realm.

"You think you understand death," Hades said, his bident weaving through the air in precise patterns. "But you only know how to cause it. Let me show you what it means to face death itself."

The shadows around Hades began to take shape, forming into the silhouettes of legends that had carved their names into the very foundations of Greek history. First came the heroes—Heracles materialised, his massive frame wreathed in the darkness of the underworld, each of his twelve labors etched into his shadow-flesh like scars of divine torment.

Hector stepped forward, his noble bearing unmarred by death, the shadow of Troy’s greatest defender still radiating the honor that had made him legendary. Perseus appeared with the phantom outline of Medusa’s head still clutched in his ethereal grip, while Theseus emerged bearing the spectral thread that had once guided him through the labyrinth of his own demise.

But the dead heroes were not alone. Ancient beings that had once terrorised the world began to coalesce from the primordial darkness—creatures whose very existence had challenged the order of creation itself. The Lernaean Hydra’s shadow writhed with a hundred serpentine heads, each one dripping with venom that could poison the very concept of life. The Nemean Lion prowled at the edge of the growing army, its shadow hide still impervious to mortal weapons, its roar echoing with the fury of the wild places that civilisation had forgotten.

Medusa herself materialised, her serpentine locks writhing with deadly beauty, her gaze carrying the power to turn even shadows to stone. The Chimaera stalked beside her, its three heads—lion, goat, and serpent—breathing shadow-fire that burned with the heat of primordial chaos. The first Minotaur’s massive form shambled forward, its bull-head lowering in preparation for a charge that had once shattered the bones of Athenian youth.

Each shadow was a fragment of mortality given form, a reminder that death was the one constant that claimed both the greatest heroes and the most terrible monsters. They moved like an army that had known only victory in life and had found only servitude in death, their forms shifting and flowing like liquid darkness given purpose and malice.