The giant Atlas used the chains of the underworld to bind Helios, the god of the sun.
Because the sun had suddenly fallen from the sky, the world was plunged into darkness.
The gods and every other living thing sank one by one into a deep sleep — even the three strange goddesses of fate could not resist this force born from the rules of the world itself.
"Why is the world advancing like this? It shouldn't be possible!"
"No... I've seen an unstoppable nightmare. Everything is going to end. It can't be like this..."
"Something far more terrifying than the darkness is happening. I can't see who's helping Atlas. The timeline itself is in chaos..."
The three goddesses murmured on, and as they did, the divine artifacts in their hands slowly began to crumble.
Weapons born of fate cannot be turned against fate itself. Not unless everything is reset from the beginning.
But such a reset would be an unimaginable catastrophe for the three goddesses of fate.
The darkness spread fast. Even Zeus could not resist the power of the Sandman.
Countless gods closed their eyes. Only one goddess still clung to wakefulness — Athena, goddess of wisdom.
She carried the power of hope within her, the one force that could stand against the Sandman. But that power had been sealed away inside Pandora's Box, so she dared not act rashly on her own. Still, nothing stopped her from sending her divine will out to observe the world beyond her temple.
Athena tried to trace the source of whatever was fighting the Sandman, tried to find the root of the disaster. She never expected that the moment she opened her sight, she would see a column of soldiers clad in animal skins charging toward Mount Olympus, led by a bald, broad-shouldered man at their head.
"No... what in the world is happening? Those are Spartans... and their leader is Kratos!!!"
She understood in an instant. He was the terrifying mortal who had killed Zeus once already, who had brought ruin upon the gods. But why weren't his men afraid of the Sandman's power?
Athena fell into troubled thought. Kratos's bald head gleamed, unmistakable even against the darkness.
"Move faster, all of you. If the world collapses before we're done, we won't be able to deal with the gods."
"Oh!!!"
"Charge in and destroy everything..."
Kratos and his men moved with such speed that even Athena couldn't understand how they'd appeared on Olympus so suddenly. Had they been planning this for a long time?
The thought alone was enough to send a chill through her entire body.
It took less than half an hour. The believers of the Eternal Faith reached the mountain of the gods and looked over the palaces lined up before them. Kratos grinned and said, "Except for the two goddesses I named, kill every other god here. Leave not one standing..."
"Yes, my lord!"
A man in a black robe and hood smiled a crooked smile, hefted his spear, and ran toward the temple of the god of war. The rest scattered to their own targets.
At that moment, a shimmering figure appeared before Kratos.
Athena stared at the black-robed man and cried out, "Fantus — so it was you all along... Aren't you a believer of Ares, god of war? Why—"
Fantus Ventus glanced back at her and sneered. "So the goddess of wisdom isn't asleep after all. How nice. Let me correct you — I believe in only one god now, the God of Eternity.
The god of war? Even mortals aren't afraid of him anymore. He's nothing but trash. Your whole Olympian pantheon is just a collection of failures wearing crowns. This world belongs to the believers of our Eternal God now."
The words had barely left his mouth when a torrent of thunder and lightning erupted around him, a display of power so overwhelming that even Athena was stunned.
Boom. A crack of thunder split the air. Fantus's fangs were already bared as he lunged. The temple of the god of war collapsed outright, and in the same instant Athena felt a flash of overwhelming lightning surge through it.
A scream tore across the sky.
Ares, god of war, had fallen — the first of the Lord Gods to die. His death shattered whatever illusions the others still held, and the assault on the Olympian pantheon began in earnest.
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, was torn to pieces on the spot. Hephaestus, the craftsman god, died beneath a wall of unyielding ice.
Athena's composure broke entirely. She fell to her knees before the towering, brutal figure of Kratos and begged him not to destroy the Olympian pantheon.
Kratos only looked at her coldly. "You think I'd listen to you? The weak don't even have the right to choose how they die. Fool..."
He had never seen his own original fate laid out in the long river of time. But the image of gods toying with mortals for their own amusement was already burned into his heart.
His daughter had been tormented to death by their hands.
How could he ever let the Olympian pantheon stand after that?
The sacred mountain kept crumbling around them. Every temple that fell marked the death of the god who had lived inside it. In some of those temples they even found love letters written by one goddess to some other god who was not her husband — proof, if any were needed, that the Olympian pantheon truly was as rotten as everyone said.
Disgusting, all of it.
As the followers of the Eternal Church advanced, Kratos made his way to the Temple of Zeus, standing at the very end of the sacred mountain, at its highest point. Lightning battered the temple without pause. Zeus himself had fallen asleep, but his residual power still kept intruders at bay.
Kratos only sneered, gathered his strength into his fist, and punched straight up into the sky. Every thundercloud above shattered at once.
"A little lightning, trying to scare mortals? That's how you fend off wild beasts, not gods."
He reached Zeus's side moments later. The god lay there in his resplendent robes, lightning still crawling faintly across his body.
Kratos turned to the men around him. "The Sandman's power is already eating away at the rules of this world, which is why the fall of the Olympian gods hasn't rippled out and shaken the world at large. Once we've finished with these gods, we move on the underworld and kill Hades and his wife together."
"Yes, my lord!"
The order was passed down the line. A chariot bound for the underworld was already being brought forward — the sun god's own chariot. Small as it was, it posed no trouble for the believers within the sect who commanded the theology of space; with a little reshaping, it could carry thousands.
Kratos turned back to Zeus and crushed the god's skull with a single punch.
Within two hours, eighty percent of the Olympian pantheon lay dead. Poseidon, god of the sea, happened to return home that very day — and died at their hands like all the rest.
Two female believers covered their faces as they worked: one carried the unconscious Pandora, goddess of doom, and the other carried a weakened Athena.
"You killed my father. I won't let this go, Kratos..."
"And when you killed my daughter, did you ever think a day like this might come? You gods live above it all, untouchable — but have you ever once stopped to think about what happens when you toy with mortals for sport?
It provokes wrath. It provokes hatred. The Olympian gods' own actions have already stirred up rage and resentment throughout this world, and until now, no living being had the power to answer it."
Athena had nothing left to say.
———
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