Sparta - Greece
YOU ARE ERASED FROM THIS TIMELINE.
The words did not echo. They did not thunder. They WERE. There was no pain because pain required existence. The sky COLLAPSED like a punctured eye. Stars SCREAMED as they inverted. Causality SHATTERED.
Axiomel felt the command TEAR through him like divine lightning. ERASE. INVALIDATE. OBLITERATE. This was no banishment or exile—this was outright erasure. It was a kind of metaphysical murder performed in such totality that even the instruments of murder would be executed as accomplices.
And yet—nothing ended.
For a heartbeat of impossibility, the universe didn't just stall. It CHOKED.
You were never sanctioned by this age, the voice continued — distant, absolute, divine.
Zeus
King of Gods.Bearer of Law.Executor of Finality.
Axiomel's consciousness should have been extinguished. He should have been less than dust. Less than memory. Less than nothing. And yet, in the HOWLING void, a single thought crystallized—not a whisper, but a BLADE.
NO.
Blood trickled from Axiomel's eyes, painting crimson trails down cheeks swollen purple with bruising. His right arm hung at an unnatural angle. Twenty paces in every direction, the ground lay scorched and empty, not even ash remaining where his companions had stood moments before.
The erasure SLAMMED into him again. HARDER. DEEPER. Timelines ruptured, Histories rewrote.Names were undone.
And still—the command FAILED.
The air above Olympus stilled as though the very winds had paused, and in the marble vestibule where gods reclined on thrones of sunlit ivory, even the flicker of torchlight seemed muted. Ares sat forward, steel plates at his shoulders catching ghostly glints, lips pressed into a thin line. He watched a single point of light far below—the boy who had defied his father—and felt shock curdle into something darker: possession, the hunger to claim or crush. He closed his eyes and extended a thought like a blade; in answer, a living shadow slipped from the pillars, coiling at his feet.
"Bring me his body—dead or alive," Ares whispered, voice low enough to rattle embers. The shadow bowed, its reply a hiss in the dark, then unfurled into nothingness. Around the hall, other servants—wraithlike messengers—vanished one by one, each bound for a secret errand dictated by a different god.
Far below, in Sparta's predawn chill, the city lay suffocated under a blanket of hush so complete even the guard dogs crouched silent in their kennels. Torches along the wide marble avenues sputtered as a rolling blackness crept down from the hills, swallowing sparks and muffling all but the faintest creak of carts.
In the palace, Leonidas paced before a high lattice window. His silk robe clung to him with sweat born of dread he could not name, and each breath felt too heavy for his lungs. He stared eastward, waiting for some portent from the sky—until the air trembled with a low, furious rumble.
Zeus stared down from above. "Such strong tenacity, if only you agreed to serve... oh well, an ant is still an ant."
A single crack split the darkness, and then an impossibly broad bolt of lightning, pale as a blade edge, ripped through the heavens. At its center stood the boy—Axiomel—stone-still, mouth opening in a silent scream. The bolt struck the heart of Sparta's main plaza with the force of a collapsing mountain. Stone fountains hissed into vapor, columns liquefied into rivers of white-hot magma, and ash roiled skyward in a choking cloud. Leonidas, shield in hand, could only blink in horror as the blast wave swept across the land, hurling chariots like playthings and shattering bones in distant villages with thunderous cracks.
High above, Zeus planted a booted foot on the rim of the world so hard the skies shivered. His voice boomed, freezing the storm in mid-roar: "Mortals have grown fat on arrogance—believing their prayers bind us. Pathetic." He raised a hand and the darkness peeled away like ragged sails, revealing charred ruins so far-flung even the horizon quaked. "We shall remake them as we please," he declared, tone sculpted from lightning and disdain.
In a nearby alcove, Apollo pressed a trembling fist to his lips, lyre strings humming with shock. At Ares's side, the war god laughed, a metallic ring echoing through columns. "Father, you knew this moment would come—and crushed it before it could breathe. Exquisite."
Across the sea, beneath waves churned to froth, Poseidon rose from his coral-carved throne. Saltwater dripped from his hair; discarded sea nymphs and mermen lay motionless at his feet, swept away by the final blast. He thrust out an arm, and a trident of storm-forged bronze appeared in his grip, water swirling in its tines. A tremulous attendant knelt on the ocean floor.
"My lord?" the servant stammered, eyes wide.
Poseidon's glare was colder than the deeps. "Summon my legions," he ordered. "Ascend to Olympus. And prepare another batch—this one proved far too fragile." With that, he turned, trident poised, as the sea around him boiled with wrath.
"At once, sire," the servant managed, bowing so low his forehead pressed into the sand.
Hephaestus stood hunched over his anvil, sweat beading like liquid bronze across his scarred forearms. The forge's crimson glow illuminated his twisted form, casting monstrous shadows against the soot-blackened walls. Before him stood an apprentice—one of Zeus's countless bastards, this one with mismatched eyes that reflected the dancing flames.
"Brother," the boy called out, voice cracking with terror, "Father didn't even raise his hand! The lightning just... appeared!"
Hephaestus brought his hammer down with a thunderous clang that made the apprentice flinch. "Father needs not gesture," he growled, his beard sparking with embers as he spoke. "He is king for a reason."
The boy fell silent, turning to gaze through the forge's open archway at the smoking crater that had once been Sparta. After a long moment, he whispered, "Could he—the mortal—could he survive that?"
Hephaestus's laugh was like grinding metal. "He survived erasure through some fluke, yes. But this?" He gestured with his hammer toward the devastation. "What you saw as lightning, I recognize as merely father's irritated exhalation. That, boy, is the difference between Gods and men."
Somewhere beyond the bleeding edge of existence, something ancient and TERRIBLE fixed its full attention.
And far beyond even that—something that should remain forever dormant OPENED ITS EYES.
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Hi Guys, Author here. So, first chapter, big moment, more to come anyway. Your thoughts and ideas are highly appreciated. If you want me to improve something for future reads, shout out in the comments.