I knew it would get worse.
Cronus had been slipping for years — a slow, simmering descent that left its mark in silence, in the bruises of his mood, in the way he stopped looking any of us in the eye. There was a shadow growing inside him, and we all felt it, even if no one dared name it.
But when Mother announced she was pregnant again… the shadow split open.
The halls went quiet. Not the kind of stillness born from dread — not yet. At first, it was something softer. Hestia whispered more gently. Demeter smiled with a kind of private hope. Even Poseidon, as wild as he was, had begun to creep around the house instead of storming through it.
Rhea had life in her eyes again. I remember watching her walk through the garden with one hand on her belly, the other trailing over the tall flowers, humming some old lullaby under her breath. It almost felt like the old days.
Almost.
But Cronus…
The King of the Cosmos sat motionless on his blackened throne at the summit of the mountain, a statue carved from fear and silence. The fire in his eyes had dimmed, not gone out—but smoldered with something colder. Something unstable.
He didn't come for meals. He didn't speak to Rhea. When he walked, it was like a shadow was dragging behind him, heavier each day.
I passed his chamber once. Just once.
The door was cracked open. A low sound filtered through—raspy, sharp, broken like a saw pulled across stone.
"They're only going to get stronger," Cronus rasped, voice trembling like the last thread of a fraying rope. "Stronger than me. Stronger than anything. Just like I was… when I killed him."
His breath hitched, rattled, and then fell into silence.
"I see it," he hissed. "I see it like a vision carved into bone. They'll rise. My own children. They'll open me up from throat to gut, and spill me into the earth. They'll wear my crown and laugh over what's left of me. Just like I did to him. They'll cut me to pieces. To pieces."
His voice cracked.
Then, the laugh came.
It started deep—wet and hollow, like something buried trying to breathe—and clawed its way up his throat until it burst out, sharp and broken. It wasn't madness.
Not yet.
I backed away, slow, quiet, my pulse thundering in my throat.
I didn't tell anyone.
I should have.
Gods help me, I should have.
—
The storm came three nights later.
It began with a sound that I can only describe as the world choking.
I was in the courtyard training. Standing taller than Poseidon, which I used to my endless advantage.
We were sparring with a wooden staff. He kept trying to sweep my legs, but I was faster.
Until we both stopped.
The air had suddenly grown thick—so thick I could barely breathe. The sky started to dim, then came the roar. This eruption of energy burst out from our fathers chamber, god we could hear him scream in pain and fury.
Just then, it exploded, it exploded in a blast of gold and crimson light, sending marble and stardust hurtling into the air.
And from that ruin, he rose.
He was over two hundred feet tall now, his body warped and stretched like a titan born from nightmares. His limbs were far too long, too thin, like someone had pulled him apart and barely stitched him back together.
His skin—if you could call it that—was splitting along the seams. Ichor poured from several wounds. You could see the muscle tissue beneath, exposed and pulsing like fire in the forge.
And his face—
Gods.
His jaw unhinged as it tore open, split too wide, ripping the corners of his mouth all the way to his ears. Rows of teeth, serrated and dripping, lined his mouth like the maw of some leviathan.
When he screamed, the heavens shook.
Poseidon dropped his staff.
"W-What is that…?" he whispered.
"That is our father," I said. My voice was hoarse. My chest felt too tight.
"It can't be…"
But it was.
Cronus had finally broken.
And he was coming for us.
—
We ran.
We didn't ask questions. Didn't look back.
I grabbed Poseidon by the wrist and pulled him as fast as I could, sprinting down the outer hall toward the nursery where Hestia and the girls were playing.
Demeter saw us first, her face lighting up—until she saw mine.
"What's wrong—?"
"Run," I said. "Now."
And then the ceiling exploded.
Stone shrieked. Starlight burst like shattered glass. A hand tore through the roof—long and skeletal, twisted and wrong, its fingers like pillars carved from blackened bone and burning gold.
Screams. Screams everywhere.
I threw my arm around Demeter and shoved her behind me, heart pounding like war drums in my chest.
Poseidon dove across the floor, sliding into Hestia.
Hera stood frozen, eyes glassy with terror.
And then—
He roared.
The sound made my bones rattle.
And then he struck.
His hand moved with impossible speed, crashing down like a falling star—straight toward Hestia and Poseidon.
"No—!" I shouted, too late.
He seized Hestia, lifting her high like a doll. She screamed, kicking, clawing at his fingers. Poseidon leapt after her, only to be knocked away like nothing.
"LET HER GO!" Demeter shrieked, voice raw.
But he didn't.
Cronus's mouth opened—too wide, too dark, lined with rows of grinding teeth.
And he swallowed her.
Whole.
Alive.
The sound—gods, the sound—was like wet stone being crushed underfoot. Something inside me cracked.
Poseidon let out a strangled sob. Hera collapsed to her knees, whispering Hestia's name again and again.
Demeter screamed like her soul was being ripped out.
Then Cronus lunged again.
Two hands this time.
Demeter and Hera.
I ran. I swear I did. I pushed my legs to move faster than I ever had.
But I was too slow.
He snatched them out of the air like birds mid-flight.
"No—no—!" I roared, voice breaking.
They screamed once—Demeter's voice high and raw, Hera's choked and desperate—
And then silence.
Gone.
My younger sisters.
Gone.
Just like that.
And then he reached for Poseidon.
I moved before I could think.
No powers. No weapons. Just me.
I jumped—slammed into Cronus's fingers, grabbed one and sank my teeth into it like a wild animal.
His blood—if you could call it that—tasted metallic and burned my mouth
But I didn't let go.
He roared, flinging his hand back, and I crashed into the wall, pain exploding across my back.
But Poseidon was still there. Still breathing.
I crawled forward, coughing blood, vision spinning.
Cronus loomed above, eyes glowing like dying stars, chest heaving with each titanic breath. He reached again.
I screamed for Poseidon to run—but my voice was drowned by the thunder of Cronus's roar.
The sky itself seemed to flinch.
His hand came down like a landslide of bone and hate, crashing through roof and rock, and it closed around Poseidon with impossible force. The ground shook beneath my feet. Wind howled. Debris swirled like ash in a firestorm.
Poseidon's eyes locked with mine—wide, wild, pleading.
"Hades!" he choked, his voice cracking, raw with fear. "Please—!"
I lunged forward. My legs moved before I could think. I was screaming something, anything, I don't even know what—just noise, rage, panic.
But I was too slow.
Cronus dragged him up, higher and higher, toward that impossibly wide mouth—those jaws that had devoured our sisters like they were nothing.
Poseidon fought. He kicked, twisted, thrashed in that hand like a caught fish. His free hand reached for me, stretched out so far I thought it might dislocate. His fingers trembled, blood streaking down his arm from where Cronus's grip dug into his flesh.
I almost reached him.
Almost.
Then—
Snap.
Cronus bit down.
It was not a clean bite.
It was brutal.
Crunching.
Ripping.
Poseidon shrieked, high and raw, a sound I will never forget. His arm tore free in a spray of golden ichor, flung down like garbage.
I stared at it.
Still twitching.
Still warm.
My brother—my loud, reckless, laughing brother—was screaming, one arm hanging uselessly, the other gone.
And then Cronus finished it.
He swallowed.
Just like that.
Poseidon disappeared down his throat, and his screams faded into silence.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
The world was breaking. Splitting.
I felt it crack down the center of my soul.
The blood—Poseidon's blood—splattered across my face.
His arm lay near my feet.
Still twitching.
And I couldn't look away.
Cronus turned his gaze to me, and I felt the weight of his madness pressing down.
I ran.
The corridors of Mount Othrys twisted and warped as I fled, the walls seeming to pulse with a life of their own. Time itself felt distorted—moments stretching and contracting unpredictably.
I turned a corner and skidded to a halt.
Rhea stood there, frozen mid-step, her expression one of shock and fear. Around her, other Titans were similarly immobilized, caught in a moment that refused to pass.
Cronus had stopped time.
I was alone.
A chill ran down my spine as I realized the extent of his power.
I turned to flee, but the air thickened, my limbs growing heavy. Panic surged as I struggled to move, my body betraying me.
The corridors of Mount Othrys were no longer stone and gold—they had become a labyrinth of nightmares.
The walls groaned like dying beasts. My footsteps echoed, frantic and uneven, over the marble floors streaked with red—Poseidon's blood.
Every breath scraped my lungs. My ribs ached, cracked maybe. My body begged for rest, but rest meant death.
A low rumble echoed behind me.
Thoom.
Another.
Thoom.
Then a voice, warped by madness and impossible size.
"Haaaaaades..." Cronus sang.
It wasn't my name. It was the grinding of millstones. The crackle of a dying fire. The chime of a funeral bell.
"I see you, little god. I can smell your fear."
I ducked behind a crumbled pillar, hands shaking so violently I could hardly press them to my mouth to keep from whimpering. I could hear him sniffing—actually sniffing the air.
Then he laughed.
"You reek of death, boy. Of flesh that knows its fate."
I clutched my chest, my heart a drumbeat of sheer panic. I pressed into the shadows, willing them to swallow me again.
Nothing.
I had pushed too hard. Whatever gift I'd touched before was gone now, burned out like a dying ember.
Run.
I pushed myself up and ran again, every footfall a sharp spike of pain. The halls had changed—his power warping the geometry, bending space. Staircases led nowhere. Arches twisted in on themselves. Statues wept blood. Tapestries bled.
Time had no meaning here.
After all, my father controlled it.
Thoom.
Thoom.
Thoom.
"There's no one left but you, son. Just you and me now."
I turned a corner and gagged.
The floor was carpeted with arms, legs—remnants. Hestia's necklace lay cracked beside a bloody sandal. Hera's favorite ribbon. Demeter's satchel.
And Poseidon's arm.
Still twitching.
I dropped to my knees and vomited.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't see through the tears.
This was a massacre.
Thoom.
The walls cracked.
He was near.
I stumbled back to my feet, dizzy and blinded by pain and fear, the smell of bile and blood clinging to my skin.
"You're just like him, you know," Cronus called.
"Who?" I shouted hoarsely, my voice echoing in the twisted corridors.
"Uranus."
His voice twisted with venom, ancient and hateful.
"He thought he would rule forever. Until I slaughtered him and took his throne. And I can smell that same fear he had that night on you."
"I don't want your throne!" I screamed, slamming my fist into the wall. "I just want my family back!"
Silence.
Then a low chuckle.
"You don't even realize it yet, do you? What you are. What you will become."
His voice dropped.
"You are the beginning of the end."
I turned and ran.
The corridor stretched longer the faster I ran. My legs burned. My lungs screamed. My eye—my gods-damned eye—still throbbed where it had been torn from my skull. I could still feel the wet heat of it, the scream I hadn't had time to make.
"You can't outrun time, child."
Then I heard it.
The breath.
Hot. Rotten. Close.
I whipped around.
And froze.
He was there.
Cronus, fully revealed.
Titan of Time and Harvest.
He towered over me, over everything—two hundred feet of madness wrapped in dying flesh. His body was warped, emaciated yet monstrous, a reaper made real. Every movement cracked with the sound of breaking wood and grinding bone. His skin—where it hadn't sloughed off in ribbons—was brittle and pale, stretched over a frame of twisting muscle and exposed root-like sinew. Vines threaded through his chest, blackened and dead, like veins turned to rot. Wheat and rust sprouted from his shoulders in patches—mocking remnants of his old dominion.
And his face—gods.
A gaping maw where a mouth should be, lips split from grinning too wide, jaw cracked sideways. His hair hung like charred straw, tangled with mud, dried blood, and flecks of bone. His eyes…
Two voids.
Black holes ringed with molten bronze and dying stars, spinning too fast. You could hear them hum—like clocks that had long since broken, still ticking out the end of all things.
"I FOUND YOU," he thundered, the words shaking the mountain, the sky, the marrow in my bones.
He moved.
Not fast. Not at first.
He lunged like a wave crashing through stone.
I screamed, diving to the side—but I was nothing to him. He snatched me up in one hand like a child scooping dust.
I thrashed. Kicked. Drove my nails into his cracked skin. Bit down until I tasted golden ichor.
And yet, at this moment he didn't really seem to care.
He lifted me to his face—closer, closer—until his breath hit me like a storm of ash and fire. It stank of grave dirt, moldy grain, and something ancient… something forgotten.
"Let me show you your future. My dear son."
His voice was time breaking.
I opened my mouth to scream.
And he bit down.