Harry leaned back as He felt the cold, biting edge of the blade whistle past his throat, close enough to sever a few stray hairs.
Even with his mountain of confidence, Harry wasn't stupid. He was a Campione, a beast compared to even some divine being, who usually treated divine weapons as minor inconveniences, but that sword was not something he was willing to gamble against.
It wasn't just the normal celestial bronze or tempered steel that Luke used in the beginning when he started working with Kronos, no, it was reforged from the reassembled shards of Kronos's original scythe.
This was the tool that had unmade Uranus, the personification of the Sky itself. It was a weapon designed by Gaea specifically to reap the souls of immortals, slicing through the conceptual essence of a being rather than just their physical form.
'Yeah. No thanks,' Harry thought, a cold shiver tracing his spine. 'I like my soul right where it is. I'm not testing if my Authorities against this when I'm the one being harvested.'
He twisted midair, his boots finding purchase on nothing but the air, and fired a blast of lightning from his palm. A concentrated pillar of lightning blasted off at his target.
Kronos didn't even flinch. The Titan swung the sword in a casual, backhanded arc—and split the lightning bolt clean in half. The energy split as it blasted beside him.
"Pathetic," Kronos sneered.
Two beasts appeared beside the Titan. They were large, shifting masses of teeth and claws, seeking to drag the King as they roared, biting onto the titan's body.
Kronos didn't even turn his head. His golden aura flared, not even giving the beast a chance to show off their power, as they seemed to rapidly age before turning to dust and vanishing.
"Do you think mere dreams can stop Me?" Kronos roared.
Harry clicked his tongue and leapt back, preparing a more substantial counter, only to feel the world suddenly turn still. The air grew thick, then solid. His body froze mid-air.
It was a terrifying sensation to be honest, his mind was racing at full speed, luckily, he could still think in the frozen time.
Kronos blurred forward. The sword was raised high, prepared to bisect Harry while he was helpless.
'Move, damn it! Move'
Harry forced his divine power to surge, burning through his reserves. It was like pushing through a wall of solid diamond. He broke free a millisecond before the blade connected, summoning his spear in a flash of light to parry the blow.
CLANG!
The impact sent a shockwave through the throne room that shattered the ground and sent the nearby demigods stumbling from the force that blasted through the room. Harry was blasted backward, flipping through the air and skidding across the debris-strewn floor for twenty yards before digging his heels into the marble, carving twin trenches in the stone.
"Yeah… I really, really hate that trick," Harry muttered, spitting a glob of metallic-tasting blood onto the white floor. That had not been the first time Kronos had used this trick in their fight, and it was getting annoying fast.
He looked up, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed his opponent. Luke Castellan's body was reaching its absolute breaking point. The skin was no longer just pale, it was translucent in places, cracking like fragile porcelain. Golden light leaked from the fissures, and the scar across his face was oozing a thick, shimmering liquid, divine ichor that looked like molten gold.
The Titan was getting stronger with every passing second.
The pressure in the room doubled, then tripled. Harry tried to lunge forward, but his arm froze mid-swing again. The "Time-Stops" were becoming more frequent and harder to predict. As Kronos's blade descended toward Harry, just as a translucent pink barrier snapped into existence in front of him, taking the hit for him.
CLANG!
The shield shattered instantly under the Titan's strength, but it bought Harry the half-second he needed to break free and roll out of the way. He wasn't fast enough to escape the follow-up, however. A bolt of divine lightning struck him point-blank in the chest.
"Ghh—!"
Harry crashed into a massive decorative pillar, the stone splintering behind him into a thousand jagged pieces. He coughed, forcing himself upright as his body at him.
"Oh, right…" he groaned, wiping soot and blood from his forehead. "I was so focused on the 'Time Lord' gimmick that I forgot you're a 'stacked deck' kind of god."
Kronos stepped forward, and the throne room seemed to age a thousand years in a single step. Stones crumbled to dust where his shadow fell. Metal fixtures rusted and snapped.
This was the Titan of the Harvest, Fertility, Growth, and Time, the God of the Ages. He controlled fire, water, frost, shadows, and the very decay of the earth. He was everything his children were, the lightning of Zeus, the earth-shaking of Poseidon, the shadows of Hades. Sure, he didn't have the sheer power they had in those elements, but he still had them, and that was something.
"I do not understand," Kronos said coldly, his voice starting to sound less like a man and more like scratches on a board that hurt his ears and sent vibrations in Harry's very marrow.
Suddenly, it was like watching a video in "fast-forward" as he instantly appeared in front of Harry. Before the Campione could react, a pale hand with golden lines gripped Harry's face.
BOOM!
Harry was slammed into the floor, the marble cratering into a web of cracks beneath him.
"I do not understand how you defeated Hyperion with such… mediocrity," Kronos sneered, lifting Harry up by the head as if he were a trophy. "Prometheus spoke of you as... something more impressive. A threat to our rebirth. I see only a struggling insect who doesn't even know how to crawl correctly."
Harry grinned, blood staining his teeth a dark, messy red. "Maybe he was just weak… like his King. Or maybe I'm just a slow starter. I like to let the mark get confident before I pull the rug."
Harry moved his hands with a subtle, flickering motion. Shimmering, near-invisible threads manifested from around his hands, wrapping tightly around Kronos's near golden arm. Harry kicked off the Titan's chest with both boots, sending him flying back, using the momentum to pull the strings taut.
BAM!
He yanked the Titan forward, meeting him with a brutal punch to the jaw.
Pull—KICK!
Pull—PUNCH!
He played the King of Time like a marionette, using the strings to manipulate the Titan's balance. But the joy was short-lived. Kronos let out a roar of fury, his aura exploding outward. He sliced the strings apart with a mere thought and swung his sword.
"ENOUGH!"
A barrage of ice shards struck Kronos from the side, followed by a torrent of pressurized water and a jagged bolt of silver lightning. Harry glanced back. Percy and Thalia were still there, battered, bleeding, but their eyes were burning with heroic defiance that even Harry had to respect.
"Persistent kids," Harry muttered.
Kronos stepped through the elemental storm untouched. He looked at the demigods with genuine annoyance, then something darker.
He could feel it. The so called Great Prophecy, something had been changing for the past few days, he didn't really care much at first since he was already winning the war, but now, here he could feel that things were changing, he could feel it in time.
Something was up with fate, and the proof of that was what was currently happening with him, even he knew that he was regaining his powers too fast, his vessel was growing at an incredible rate, and he could only guess that something had affected the fates. Those accursed strings around him were loose, and he was taking advantage of it.
Something was not right, but he didn't care, he was not losing anything, in fact, gaining, and the only thing that stood in his way was these kids, so he just had to kill them, and then he knew in his very essence that he would rule again. But for some reason, they were annoying, he would be lying if he said he wasn't really trying to kill them but they were strong he'd admit that escpecially this so called son of pandora but even if he couldnt kill them now he just had to keep them stalled until he regained all his power and then it would be over in an instant.
He grinned a mad grin as his eyes glowed, oh victory was so close. He rushed forward, he'd at least kill one of these fools even before his powers fully returned, if not just to gloat about it.
The battle reignited. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours as Harry, Percy, and Thalia did their best to kill the titan king. Kronos was growing fast, so fast all of them could feel it now, and they didn't want that.
Then, Harry made his move.
High above, the sky twisted and changed. Harry channeled every bit of his remaining power into a single point, forming a massive, dense sphere, a miniature moon, glowing with a sickly, violet light.
"Go to sleep, you bastard!" Harry roared, dropping the orb.
Kronos raised a single hand, his eyes bored. This was now getting too easy.
The moon froze in mid-air, its downward momentum cancelled as it froze in time. With a flick of his wrist, Kronos shattered the moon into harmless dust.
But Harry was already there above him. He had used the distraction of the falling "moon" to close the gap, charging in. Kronos smirked, thrusting Backbiter forward as he came down at the titan.
The blade pierced straight through Harry's chest.
Silence fell over the throne room, heavy and suffocating.
"…No…" Percy and Thalia's voices broke.
Annabeth, watching from the side, felt her breath hitch as her world crumbled at what seemed to be their best chance. Blood dripped down the length of the sword. Harry stared down at the blade protruding from his sternum, his eyes wide as blood pooled in his mouth.
Kronos leaned in, his face inches from Harry's. "Guess you were never that special after all, 'Son of Pandora'. You die like any other mortal."
He lifted Harry by the throat, holding him up like a broken doll for the others to see. Percy charged, his face a mask of grief-stricken rage, but he was too far away to make a difference.
Harry looked Kronos in the eye. And he smiled.
"Gotcha," as he summoned strings to wrap around Kronos ' arm and use the last of his strength to push back while dragging the arm with him.
"…What?"
Kronos froze. A sharp, searing pain erupted under his left arm, his one true weak point, the spot where the Curse of Achilles was most vulnerable. He slowly, agonizingly turned his head. He was still, after all, in Luke's body, and it seemed he had forgotten since a lot of his power returned.
Another Harry stood there beneath his arm. This one looked perfectly fine, his clothes uncharred, his expression calm. His arm with a dagger was buried deep into the Titan's side.
"H…how—"
The Harry that Kronos was holding suddenly dissolved. It turned into shimmering strings of golden light that flowed back into the second Harry's body.
"Nice trick, right?" Harry said, his voice casual. "To think I originally developed that 'Doppelgänger' technique just so I could be with all my wives simultaneously on our wedding day. Who knew it'd be the thing to take down the King of Titans? Arrogance is a hell of a drug, Kronos."
"sinc....since when?" Kronos croaked out.
"Since the beginning," Harry told.
He had split his essence before the fight even reached the throne room, leaving his copy to fight and take the hits while the real him waited for the perfect moment. He had literally gambled on the Titan's ego.
Harry twisted the blade.
"No… I am… the Lord of Time… I am eternal…" Kronos's voice stammered out.
"Not today," Harry whispered, his green eyes flashing. "As I said, old man… back to the pits you crawled out of."
He ripped the blade out. A geyser of golden light erupted from the wound, blinding everyone in the room. Kronos's body, Luke's body, convulsed one last time before the golden light died out, leaving only a broken, dead boy sprawled on the floor.
The essence of the Titan King gone, pulled back into the depths of Tartarus with his defeat. The barrier around olympus falling with his death.
Silence fell. The heavy, oppressive pressure of the titan that filled the room vanished.
The throne room went still.
Percy, Thalia, and Annabeth simply stood there, their weapons lowered, their mouths hanging open. They looked at the room, then at the dead Luke, and finally at Harry.
Harry rolled his shoulders, his joints popping, and wiped a speck of dust off his jacket as if he'd just finished a mildly annoying chore.
"So," Harry said, looking at the stunned demigods. "Wars over, I guess."
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