The journey back to New York was a blur of sea, sky, and silent contemplation. Nicholas no longer needed dramatic displays of power.
His mastery over the wind was now so complete that his passage was a sustained, intent-driven glide, the air itself cradling him as a service to its favored son.
The newly-bound book rested against his chest, it's weight that felt less like an object and more like an extension of his own mind, now burdened with terrifying, world-shattering truths.
He landed in the pre-dawn gloom on the lawn of the Aldridge mansion. The protective enchantments he had woven years prior recognized him instantly, the grey mist of the ward shimmering for a moment before parting like a curtain.
He entered through the library window, the familiar scent of old paper and polished wood a stark contrast to the cosmic revelations festering in his thoughts.
He found Jonathan not in his bed, but in the grand study, hunched over a sprawling map of Europe. The older man looked up at the sound of his entrance, a familiar, eager light in his eyes.
"Nicholas! You're back. Tell me everything. What did you learn?"
But as Nicholas stepped into the lamplight, Jonathan's enthusiastic expression faltered, replaced by a slow-dawning uncertainty. He was looking at his son's face.
The boy he had sent away was gone. In his place stood someone older, his youthful features hardened into a mask of cold, grim resolve.
The clever, curious light in Nicholas's grey eyes had been extinguished, replaced by a flat, assessing stare that held no joy of discovery, only the weight of a terrible burden.
"Father," Nicholas said. His voice was the same, yet the tone was different. Flatter, heavier, as if each word weighed a ton. "We were children playing with matches in a powder keg. Circe showed me the keg."
"Everything we believed, father," Nicholas said, his voice low and heavy with a gravity that was not consistent with age. "Everything we deduced about the Gods, the demigods, the nature of this world... it was a child's sketch compared to the monstrous reality. Circe didn't just teach me magic. She gave me a history lesson that would make the Gods weep."
He didn't wait for a response. He began to pace, the words, the terrible, beautiful logic of it all, finally pouring out to the one person he could trust with it.
He started with the Primordials, not as conscious creators, but as concepts given life by the most primitive human belief.
He explained the Titans as the first independent beings, limited and desperate, who overthrew their mad father only by stealing his worship.
He detailed the Olympians' rise, not as a righteous victory, but as a coup by beings who learned to systemize faith, to filter it, and to use it as fuel.
Jonathan listened, his face pale, his scholar's mind grappling with the scale of the heresy. He sank into his chair as Nicholas described the true purpose of the Underworld and the River Lethe, not a place of judgment, but a divine refinery, processing human souls into pure, usable belief.
"And us, father?" Nicholas's voice was like ice. "The demigods? We are not beloved children. We are faith-farming tools. We are lightning rods for worship. They install us as kings and generals, we create legends, and they siphon the belief directed at us. We are their filters, their intermediaries, their... livestock."
The study was silent save for the crackling of the fire. Jonathan looked utterly shattered, his life's work as a scholar of religion turned on its head, revealed as a carefully curated lie.
"This... this changes everything," Jonathan whispered, his voice hoarse. "But Nicholas, if this is true, then your path... your mother's interest in you..."
"Is an investment," Nicholas finished coldly. "She has invested a significant portion of her own power in my birth, creating the perfect strategic weapon to wield in the coming war. She expects me to become a great leader, to amass a legend, so she can harvest faith. She is planning to make me her pawn in the Gods' next great scheme."
He stopped his pacing and stood before his father, his grey eyes blazing with a terrifying light. "But I will not be a pawn. I have seen the board, and I refuse to be a piece on it."
He then laid out the second half of his discovery: the path to godhood. The ritual that could use faith to strip a demigod's soul of their divine parent's mark and forge it into a new, independent Immortal Essence. The need for an artifact to filter the corrupting influence of belief and maintain sanity.
"This," Nicholas said, gently placing the grey-bound book on the desk between them. The silver eye on the cover seemed to gleam in the firelight. "This is the first step. The essence of two forgotten fate goddesses, willingly bound. It allows me to read the ledger of probability, to see and manipulate the threads of cause and effect. It is the ultimate strategic tool."
Jonathan stared at the book as if it were a live serpent, understanding dawning in his horrified eyes. "You're not planning to defy them. You're planning to join them. To become a God yourself."
"To become untouchable," Nicholas corrected, his voice flat and final. "I was born into a world where my destiny was pre-ordained by callous, selfish beings. A world where my worth is measured in the faith I can generate for my mother. I refuse to be a commodity. I refuse to have my life's meaning be someone else's fuel."
He let the silence hang, allowing his father to absorb the sheer, terrifying scale of his ambition.
"The war is coming, father. And I will not enter it as Athena's errand boy. I will enter it as a new force in my own right. But to do that, I need the one thing the Gods have always wanted and that mortals instinctively revere. I need a platform and reputation."
"The first step of that is getting an education. Something impressive to allow me to make my first steps in creating my reputation and starting my journey into politics."
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