Chapter Text
Olympus was breathing the way a great, ancient thing breathes when it believes itself safe.
Not asleep. Never that. But unguarded in the particular way only immortals allow themselves to be after too many victories. The wind moved lazily through the colonnades. Clouds drifted where Zeus had last left them. The fountains sang to themselves. Somewhere down the eastern halls, a nymph laughed. Somewhere higher still, Apollo’s lyre murmured in an open room.
Nothing felt wrong.
Hera stood near one of the high windows of the palace, a scroll open in her hands, quietly sorting a hundred small affairs of heaven. Zeus was not far, speaking with one of the Horae about a small dispute. It was all so ordinary it almost felt like a joke.
Then the light shifted.
Not dimming—twisting. As if the sky itself had tilted its head.
Hera looked up first.
The blue above Olympus was being pushed aside, not by clouds, not by storm, but by stone. A jagged horizon rose where none should exist. Mountains—actual mountains—were being stacked into the air, one atop another, groaning and grinding as they were forced upward by something vast and arrogant beneath them.
“They’re climbing the sky.” someone whispered.
That was when the unnatural darkness fell. Not Zeus’s thunderheads. Not the rolling iron grey of a gathering storm. This was a blunt, choking shadow, cast by sheer mass blotting out the sun.
Zeus was already moving.
The first alarm rang, a deep, resonant note that shuddered through Olympus like a struck bell. Then another. Then all of them. The palace woke in a flash of divine urgency.
Gods poured from halls and terraces. Armor snapped into being. Weapons flared into existence in hands that had held cups a moment before. The sky filled with wings, light, fire, wind.
Hera closed her scroll and handed it to a passing nymph without looking. Power gathered around her like a mantle as she turned toward the palace heart, already shaping the defenses—wards, barriers, the old geometries of protection that had been laid into Olympus long before this age.
Zeus rose into the air in a crack of thunder, the sky snapping open around him as if it were only waiting for permission.
Giants emerged from the rising stone.
Ephialtes and Otus stood astride their grotesque mountain staircase, colossal and gleaming with the wild, unrestrained strength of the earth itself. They did not rush. They did not scramble. They stood there like conquerors surveying a city that already belonged to them.
“Again?” Ares muttered, rolling his shoulders as fire crawled under his skin. “Do they never learn?”
Artemis was already drawing her bow, eyes sharp and cold.
The Olympians took their positions with practiced ease. They had done this before. Giants had come before. Titans before them. Monsters, armies, rebellions, cosmic tantrums. Olympus had endured them all.
There was a hum in the air, the familiar vibration of battle readiness. A confidence that was not foolish, just ancient.
Zeus hurled the first bolt.
It tore across the sky in a screaming arc of light and slammed into the mountain stack, blasting rock into molten rain. The impact sent shockwaves through the clouds. Laughter rose from some of the gods below, fierce and eager.
Hera’s barriers flared into being, luminous walls of force wrapping the palace in gold and white. Apollo and Athena flanked her, forming a living bulwark.
For a heartbeat, it felt like the giants had already lost.
The Aloadae only smiled.
Stone continued to rise beneath their feet, faster now, as if the earth itself were obeying them. Their laughter was deep and booming, shaking loose fragments of the very sky.
Olympus had repelled giants before.
But the way these two were climbing—methodical, relentless, building a path straight into heaven—it made something in Hera’s chest tighten.
The illusion of control still held.
Just long enough to make what came next hurt.
Ephialtes did not meet Zeus in the sky.
That should have been the first warning.
While lightning split the air and Otus roared his challenge upward, Ephialtes shifted. Not retreating. Not charging. He stepped aside, using the chaos of thunder and flying stone as cover, his massive form slipping through a blind angle even gods sometimes forget to watch.
Hera felt it before she saw it.
That old, instinctive tightening between her shoulders—the sensation of being chosen.
She turned just as the shadow fell over the palace terrace.
Ephialtes loomed there, close enough now that she could see the runes carved into his skin, the crude jewelry of bone and iron, the grin that was all appetite and certainty. He did not raise a weapon. He did not snarl or shout.
He reached.
Not a strike.
A claim.
The hand was enormous, fingers spread as if he meant to close them around her wrist, her waist, her right to herself. The intent was naked and obscene in its simplicity: mine. Wife, prize, spoil of conquest. As if marriage were something that could be taken by force and declared finished.
Hera’s power flared white-hot.
“Do not.” she said—and the word cracked the air.
She did not step back. She struck forward, a surge of divine force slamming into Ephialtes’ chest, driving him off balance. Light burst from her like a crown of blades. The ground beneath his feet fractured, marble screaming as it split.
Fury made her magnificent.
She wove wards and lashes of binding energy with ruthless precision, her voice sharp as a verdict as she drove him back step by step. Every movement was controlled, lethal, exact. This was not panic. This was a queen defending her sovereignty.
But defending herself cost her position.
For just a breath too long, her attention narrowed. The palace defenses faltered as her focus pulled inward. The careful geometry she had been holding cracked at the edge.
That moment was all they needed.
Ares sees it.
Not the strategy. Not the lines of battle or the shifting advantage of gods against giants.
He sees the reach.
He sees the way Ephialtes’s hand closes around empty air where his mother had been a heartbeat earlier. He sees the intent that lingers even after Hera drives the giant back—possessive, pleased, undeterred.
Something cold and incandescent locks into place inside him.
He does not wait.
He does not shout.
He does not look to Zeus.
Ares moves.
The space between him and Ephialtes collapses in a blur of red and gold. He hits the giant like a living weapon, all momentum and fury, slamming into Ephialtes’s side with a force that cracks the air. The impact sends both of them skidding across the sky, clouds shredding around their bodies.
“Get,” Ares snarls, driving another blow into Ephialtes’s chest, “away from her.”
This is not a duel. There is no flourish, no declaration. Ares fights like something feral and precise, every strike aimed to push, to drive, to remove the threat. He keeps himself between the giant and the palace without thinking about it, without needing to.
Ephialtes stumbles back, startled more than hurt, eyes flashing with something like delight. “The son.” he rumbles. “Ah.”
Ares answers him with steel and fire.
He chases Ephialtes hard, relentless, forcing him back step by step across the torn sky. The distance between them and Olympus stretches, unnoticed in the violence of the exchange. Clouds thin. The palace becomes a glint of marble and gold far behind them.
Hera shouts his name once.
Ares does not hear it.
All he knows is the shape of the giant in front of him and the simple, burning certainty that this creature will not be allowed near her again.
Ephialtes retreats just enough to draw him on, just enough to keep Ares pressing forward, further and further from where he started. The giant’s grin widens, imperceptibly, as the ground below them changes—stone giving way to jagged cliffs, then open air.
That is when Otus notices.
He had been circling the main clash, watching, waiting. His gaze snaps to his brother and then to the god driving him back with such focused brutality. Understanding passes between the giants in a single look.
Otus shifts his course, moving not toward Olympus, not toward Zeus or Artemis—but toward the red streak tearing after Ephialtes, away from everything that might protect him.
Ares is still driving Ephialtes back, still forcing him farther from Olympus with a brutal, efficient fury. Ephialtes gives ground just enough to keep him moving, just enough to keep him focused. The sky around them is in shreds, clouds boiling, air burning where Ares’s power bleeds through every strike.
Then Otus’s voice cuts through it.
Not a roar.
A call.
“Boy!” it bellows, carrying unnaturally far. “Your mother won’t like what I’m doing to her.”
Ares’s head snaps up.
Otus is standing some distance away, not advancing, not fighting—just watching, one massive hand lifted in a mocking half gesture toward Olympus.
“You ran so fast after my brother.” Otus continues, smiling. “Left her all alone.”
The words are chosen with care. Each one lands where it hurts.
Ares’s grip tightens on his weapon. His whole body goes rigid. The battle instinct in him screams trap, but something louder answers it.
Hera.
“Where is she?” Ares demands.
Otus’s smile widens. “Not here.”
That is all it takes.
Ares breaks off.
Not fully. Not foolishly. But he turns—just enough to look back toward Olympus, just enough to search the distant sky for her light, her presence, any sign that what Otus said is a lie.
That fraction of a second is all the giants need.
Otus moves.
The blow comes from behind, titanic and precise, slamming into Ares’s back and driving him forward through three layers of cloud and into open air. Before he can recover, before he can turn, Ephialtes is there again, suddenly at his side instead of in front of him.
Chains snap into existence between them.
Not forged in Olympus.
Older.
Darker.
They coil around Ares’s arms, his torso, his legs—pre-Olympian bindings made to hold gods when gods were still afraid of being held. They bite into his power, leeching it, numbing the divine force that normally makes him untouchable.
He fights like hell.
He tears at the chains with raw strength and fire. He drives a knee into Ephialtes’s ribs, sends Otus staggering with a backhand that could have leveled a city. The giants strain to keep their grip, their feet carving trenches through the air itself as they’re dragged by his resistance.
But the chains hold.
They are not stronger than him.
They are made for him.
Every second he struggles, more of his power bleeds away into the ancient metal. His movements grow heavier, slower, as if the world itself is thickening around him.
“No.” Ares snarls, twisting, trying to break free. “You don’t get to—”
Otus wrenches one chain tight, forcing Ares’s arms down.
Ephialtes clamps another around his throat, not to choke, but to control, to keep his head locked in place.
“Should’ve stayed by her.” Ephialtes murmurs, almost amused. “That was your mistake.”
Ares is still fighting when they start dragging him away.
Still raging.
The air grows wrong as they descend—thicker, heavier, stripped of divine resonance. No gods’ voices. No palace hum. Just raw sky and distant stone. Ares is dragged between them, chains biting deeper with every furious movement, each struggle feeding the bindings instead of breaking them.
Then the bronze jar comes into view.
It isn’t beautiful.
That’s what makes it worse.
No ornamentation. No inscriptions meant to impress. Just old metal, darkened with age, wide-mouthed and squat, sitting on a jagged outcropping like a tool left where it was last used. Its surface is etched with runes worn smooth by time—binding marks from an era when gods were fewer and fear was practical.
Ares knows what it is the instant he sees it.
“No!” he says, the word tearing out of him raw and furious. He surges forward, lightning flaring around his body in a desperate, instinctive attempt to explode outward.
The jar drinks it.
The light bends toward the bronze, vanishing against its surface like sparks swallowed by water. The runes glow faintly in response, answering his power with quiet, merciless efficiency.
Otus grunts with effort as they haul him closer. “Still loud.” he mutters. “Won’t be, soon.”
Ares thrashes, muscles burning, divinity roaring in his veins as the chains yank him forward inch by inch. The opening of the jar yawns before him—too small, impossibly small, yet waiting with the confidence of something that knows it will be obeyed.
“This won’t hold me.” Ares snarls. “I will tear it apart.”
Ephialtes only laughs. “Good luck with that.”
They force him down.
The moment his head crosses the threshold, the world changes.
Sound dies first.
The clash of battle, the wind, the distant thunder—gone, snuffed out as if he’s been shoved beneath a frozen lake. Light follows, collapsing inward until all that remains is a dim, bronze-tinted glow clinging to the inside of the jar.
His power recoils violently, compressing in on itself, trapped in a space too small to contain it. It doesn’t vanish—it suffocates.
Ares roars, the sound tearing out of him—
—and cuts off mid-cry.
The jar seals.
Bronze slams shut with a final, echoing thoom that reverberates once, then never again.
Inside, there is no sky.
No direction.
No room to draw breath properly, no space to brace or strike. The chains lock him in place, pinning him in a crouched, twisted posture that leaves no leverage, no mercy. His divine senses scrape uselessly against the runes, finding nothing to answer back.
Outside, the giants step away.
The world moves on.
Inside the jar, there is only darkness, pressure, and the slow, horrifying realization that he has been removed from reality itself.
And Olympus does not know where he is.
They do not linger after that.
That is the second cruelty.
The moment the bronze seals, the Aloadae are already moving—fast, purposeful, without triumph. This was never about savoring victory. This was about removing an obstacle.
Ares is no longer a god on the field.
He is an object.
Otus hoists the bronze vessel with a grunt, its weight far greater than its size should allow. It hums faintly, like a caged star forced into a coffin. Ephialtes doesn’t look at it for long. There is something deeply unsettling about the way it sits so still, knowing what is inside.
They haul the jar away from Olympus immediately, descending through layers of broken sky and torn earth while the battle still rages above. Thunder cracks overhead—real thunder now, Zeus’s—but it feels distant, unfocused, searching.
The chaos is perfect cover.
They take the jar to a place Olympus does not look.
Not because it cannot—but because it has learned not to.
A chasm split deep into the bones of the world, where stone never fully became land and air never fully became sky. A fault between realms, older than the Olympians, where divine perception slips and refracts. Sound dies strangely there. Distance lies.
The jar grows heavier the closer they get, not with weight, but with absence. Ares’s power presses outward, trapped and furious, but the bronze answers with silence, swallowing every attempt at reach. Even now, even screaming, he cannot be felt properly.
They wedge the jar into the rock.
Not buried.
Hidden.
The runes flare once—dim, satisfied—and then fade back into dormancy. The chasm closes around it like a held breath.
“He won’t be found.” he says, not quite as confidently as he wants to.
Ephialtes nods. “Good. Now we can finish what we came for.”
With the jar concealed, with the war-god removed from the board, they turn back toward Olympus—toward Hera, toward Artemis, toward the original, foolish ambition that started all of this.
And above them, the war still rages, oblivious to the fact that something essential has just been removed from the universe.
The Aloadae return, bold with the terrible confidence of men who think they have already won something priceless.
They step back into the war.
That is their mistake.
They do not get a second long speech. They do not get to declare their claims. The moment they reappear in open sky, Zeus sees them—and this time there is no distraction, no split attention, no Hera in danger right in front of him.
Lightning falls like judgment.
It is not one bolt. It is a storm condensed into will. The stacked mountains they used as a bridge to Olympus explode into flying continents of stone. Ephialtes is struck mid-shout, his body incandescent for a single, terrible second before it is hurled backward through the clouds. Otus tries to raise his weapon, tries to charge—
Artemis’s arrows take him through the throat.
He falls without another sound.
The giants are dead.
The air clears.
The sky slowly returns to its familiar blue. The last of the unnatural darkness bleeds away, leaving Olympus standing amid cracked marble, shattered towers, and drifting ash.
It looks like victory.
Hera stands on a balcony overlooking the wreckage, her hair still wild from the wind, her hands trembling faintly with the aftershock of power spent. Zeus comes to her, relief flooding his face as he pulls her into his arms.
“You’re safe.” he murmurs into her hair. “It’s over.”
For a breath, she lets herself believe him.
Olympus still stands.
The enemy is dead.
Nothing obvious has been lost.
The victory keeps moving without them.
Olympus is still loud with it—orders being shouted, halls being cleared
Fires are being smothered. Statues are being lifted back into place. The palace is knitting itself together, stone flowing like slow bone beneath divine hands.
Hera should be part of it.
Instead, she is standing very still.
Her gaze drifts, not to the dead giants, not to the broken sky, but to the empty spaces between gods. To the places where a certain presence should be flaring, loud and hot and unmistakable. Ares is never subtle on a battlefield. He is never quiet. Even when he isn’t fighting, he burns.
(He should have been back already—)
She reaches for him the way she always does, not with words, not with sight, but with the small, private thread of divinity that runs between mother and child.
Ares.
Nothing answers.
The connection doesn’t resist. It doesn’t stretch. It doesn’t pull thin with distance.
It is simply… gone.
Hera’s breath leaves her in a sharp, soundless way. Her fingers curl in the air as if they’ve brushed something that should be there and isn’t.
No. That isn’t possible. Gods don’t vanish like that. They echo. They leave scars. They leave grief.
This is different.
This is a hole.
She tries again, harder this time, pouring more of herself into the call, forcing the bond to respond.
Ares.
Still nothing.
Not even silence.
Panic crawls up her spine.
“Zeus.” she says, and her voice is suddenly too thin for the word. “Zeus—where is he? Where is Ares?”
Zeus turns, already frowning, already reading the fear on her face. He lifts a hand, eyes going distant as he does what only he can do—sweeping the heavens, the earth, the deep layers of reality where gods leave their footprints.
He searches for their son.
He finds… nothing.
His expression changes.
“Try again.” Hera says, stepping toward him. “You didn’t—just try again.”
Zeus does.
He reaches wider. Deeper. He calls Ares’s name not with his voice but with the authority that shaped the sky.
There is no answer.
A blank stares back at him where Ares’s fire should be.
Hera turns, suddenly, desperately, calling into the palace, into the courtyards, into the open air.
“Ares!” Her voice rings against stone and cloud. “Ares!”
Gods look toward her. Some shake their heads. Some start searching with her, uneasy now.
Hera’s chest tightens as she calls his name again, louder, rawer.
No footfalls answer.
No hot, reckless laugh.
No furious, beloved presence breaking through the noise of the aftermath.
Just the echo of her own voice falling back at her, empty and wrong.
Somewhere in the vastness of Olympus, something precious has slipped out of the world without a sound—and both his parents feel it at the same time, like the sudden, impossible sensation of reaching for a heartbeat and finding nothing there at all.
The searching begins like a storm that doesn’t know where to fall.
Zeus is everywhere at once—on the palace steps, in the broken courtyards, in the torn open sky above Olympus. Wind coils around him as he moves, sharp and restless, his power casting itself outward in frantic arcs. He calls Ares’s name not aloud but with the full weight of a god who has never failed to find what is his.
Nothing answers.
He searches the palace next, every hall and terrace, every armory and shadowed stairwell. He calls Ares’s name into places where sound itself bends. He demands the world give his son back.
It does not.
Hera follows him at first, rigid, sharp eyed, commanding attendants to look again, to search lower, to search deeper. Her voice stays steady for a few precious moments longer than it should.
Then the steadiness fractures.
“No.” she whispers. “No, no—”
Then the whisper breaks.
“Ares!”
Her voice rips through Olympus like a blade. It slams into marble and sky and echoing halls, raw and wild, a mother’s call stripped of all dignity.
“Ares!”
Nothing answers.
Not even an echo.
The gods fall silent around them. Victory drains out of the air, leaving behind only unease. Olympus still stands—burned, cracked, but whole. The giants are dead. The threat is gone.
And yet something vital is missing.
Hera sways.
Zeus catches her before she falls, pulling her into his arms as her strength finally gives out. She clutches at his robes, fingers trembling, breath coming too fast, too shallow.
“He was right there.” she says, the words tumbling over each other, disbelief hollowing them out. “He was just here.”
Zeus holds her, his arms the only solid thing left in a world that suddenly feels wrong.
Around them, Olympus still stands. The sky is clearing. By every measure that should matter, they have won.
But the space where their son should be is empty, and no victory in the world can fill it.