The sky rumbled and twisted overhead.
Wind tore across the field in violent sheets, sharp enough to bite, sharp enough to draw blood. It screamed like a living thing, circling Wilhelm as he planted his feet and refused to yield an inch. The scorched earth beneath him cracked and split, groaning under the pressure of descending divinity.
Something vast was coming.
A voice rolled through the storm—not loud, but absolute.
"Who dares tread upon my kingdom?"
Thunder followed the words, not as an echo, but as judgment. The sky itself seemed to recoil.
The clouds split apart.
Sunlight speared downward, blinding in its purity, and from that opening he emerged.
Lightning coiled in his grasp like a living weapon as the heavens reshaped themselves in submission—clouds compressing, hardening, forming luminous steps beneath his feet. Each step rang with thunder as he descended, the air warping under the weight of his presence.
He was tall. Imposing. Certain.
A Greek chiton clung to his frame, blue and white fabric edged with gold thread, draped over one shoulder in the ancient style. Golden ornaments gleamed at his wrists and waist. Shoulder-length brown hair framed a face carved by centuries of rule, a neatly trimmed beard streaked with gray. His eyes—bright, impossible blue—burned with command.
Lightning crowned him.
Wilhelm didn't need time to think.
Ancient Greece.
An age when gods still walked openly. When the world bent willingly beneath divine Authority.
And there was only one god who ruled the sky and the heavens. Only one whose power eclipsed his brothers at the height of Olympus.
The King.
Zeus.
So this was it.
A perfect world—still within the Age of Gods. A world that welcomed divinity instead of rejecting it.
Almost the ideal refuge.
Almost.
All that stood between Wilhelm and a new home was the ruler descending before him.
The steps of cloud dissolved as Zeus halted in midair, lightning tightening in his grip. The storm leaned inward, waiting for his will.
"Answer, godling," Zeus commanded.
His voice struck like a hammer, shaking the sky, bending the wind, forcing the world itself to listen—to bear witness.
"Or feel the wrath of Zeus!"
Wilhelm exhaled slowly.
A name.
This was a new world. New laws. New bindings. A declaration was required—something to anchor him here, to announce him to gods and land alike.
He lifted his gaze, meeting the King of Olympus without bowing.
"I am Aetherion," he said.
The storm stilled—just for a breath.
"And as for what god I am…"
His lips curved faintly.
"I don't know yet," he admitted. "But I won't lose here."
For the first time, Zeus smiled—not with amusement, but with interest sharpened into threat.
"Very well," the King of Gods said. "Then let us test your resolve, son."
Lightning raced violently around his form, the sky screaming in response.
"You will be punished for daring to disobey the heavens—and the will of their king."
Aetherion braced himself.
He wasn't ready. Not even close. His body still rang with damage, his core thinned from the escape through worlds. If the earlier lightning was any indication, the gulf between them was vast.
But—
Nothing ventured.
Nothing gained.
Zeus drew his arm back.
The sky answered.
A lance of lightning formed in his grasp, born directly from the heavens themselves, its presence scorching the land, splitting stone, burning reality where it pointed.
Aetherion answered in kind.
He pulled his arm back, divine breath surging through him as wind condensed, screaming into form. A lance of compressed air wrapped itself in thunder and lightning, raw and unstable, cutting the storm as thunderbolts shattered the sky around it.
The world held its breath.
They threw their weapons as one.
Divinity collided.
And the world was consumed by the light of gods.
With his left arm, Aetherion struggled to push himself upright.
Pain screamed in protest. Every movement sent fire through his body, and the absence of his right arm made the effort clumsy and slow. He ground his teeth and forced the pain aside long enough to understand where—and what—he was.
His vision swam. Blurred. A dull pressure throbbed behind his eyes.
A concussion.
Wonderful.
The field was gone.
What remained could only be described as a wasteland. The earth was split and vitrified, scorched into black glass. Not a single blade of grass survived. Above, the sky itself looked torn in half—lightning tearing endlessly through roiling storm clouds, thunder falling in constant sheets. What little life had been nearby lay burned beyond recognition.
"You still live."
Zeus's voice cut through the storm, close now.
Aetherion forced his focus forward.
The King of Olympus stood only a few steps away, lightning idly crawling along his fingers.
"Good," Zeus continued. "It would not please me if one of my sons were bested so easily—no matter how injured he may be."
Before Aetherion could respond, lightning surged.
It didn't strike.
It entered him.
Pain flared—white, absolute—then vanished. Bones knitted. Torn flesh restored itself. Breath tore from his lungs as sensation flooded back all at once, strength rushing into limbs that moments ago had barely obeyed him. Zeus's grip was unyielding as he hauled Aetherion fully upright.
Aetherion staggered once—then steadied.
Lightning continued to dance around his form, no longer violent, but deliberate. It wrapped him in threads of divine will, weaving cloth from thunder itself. A chiton took shape Greek in cut and weight, blue-white fabric threaded faintly with gold settling against his skin.
Not clothing.
A declaration.
"…Why," Aetherion asked, voice rough, "didnt we just try to kill each other?"
Zeus regarded him the way one might regard a newly forged weapon—evaluating, interested.
"You wield lightning and thunder," Zeus said simply. "Only my strongest children are capable of such dominion."
Aetherion blinked.
"You endured my trial by fire—by lightning, in this case." Zeus's lips twitched faintly. "That makes you mine."
Silence followed.
"…That doesn't make any sense," Aetherion said. "You didn't date my mother."
Zeus waved a dismissive hand.
"Details," he said. "You are a child of Zeus, just as Athena is.
His gaze hardened, and the storm answered instantly.
"I will hear no more of this matter."
Lightning flared brighter around him.
"When your name reaches Olympus, I will return," Zeus said. He paused, eyes narrowing with something dangerously close to amusement.
"One piece of advice, son."
Aetherion tensed.
"Do not let my wife find out about you," Zeus added calmly. "She will make things… difficult."
Thunder cracked.
In a flash of lightning, Zeus was gone—the storm folding inward as if the sky itself had decided the matter was finished.
The field fell unnervingly quiet.
Aetherion stood alone amid the ruin.
"…Did I just get adopted?" he muttered.
He stared at the blackened horizon, trying to process the last several minutes.
Gods.
Trials.
Lightning-induced paternity.
Talk about bipolar.
He exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck.
The Olympians were infamous for it—capricious, fickle, dangerously whimsical. Brilliant one moment, catastrophic the next. Compared to their Norse counterparts, they were almost irrational.
"And now," Aetherion said to the empty field, "I'm apparently family."
The storm rumbled once more, distant—and faintly amused.
In the years that followed, shepherds would speak in hushed voices of what they had seen.
They told of a field where the earth screamed and the sky split open. Of thunder that did not fade, and lightning that carved the world like a chisel. They spoke of two sky gods, locked in combat—father and son—hurling the wrath of the heavens at one another until the land itself broke beneath them.
They swore the battle lasted only moments.
An instant.
Yet when the storm finally withdrew and silence returned, the field was gone.
Where once there had been open land stretching for acres, mountains now stood—jagged, towering, and raw. Stone thrust upward as if clawing at the heavens, ridges folded and broken like scars left by divine hands.
The shepherds said it was a testament.
A mark left behind so the world would remember what happened when gods clashed without restraint.
Centuries later, scholars would give the formation a name. They would measure it, map it, and explain it away with slow-moving plates and unimaginable spans of time.
Modern historians would call it
the Pindus Mountain Range of northern Greece.
But the old stories persisted.
And in those stories, the mountains were not born of time.
They were born of lightning.