The morning was quiet in New Jercy, the kind of peace that masked how thin the veil between worlds had become. The faint hum of magic from Black Mansion radiated into the air like invisible heat, bending light, distorting mortal senses, and making even wandering spirits steer clear.
And standing at the edge of its lawn was Hephaestus, god of the forge, his heavy boots leaving deep impressions in the damp soil.
He had followed the signal of the Blade of Twilight for nearly two days, crossing states and cities with inhuman speed, the bronze tracker on his wrist glowing brighter with every step. It was clear now—the weapon he had created, his masterpiece and his curse, rested inside this mansion.
But even a god could feel small before its wards.
Hephaestus extended a scarred hand toward the iron gates, his divine senses unfolding like a spider's web across the air. What met him wasn't mortal magic—it was something deeper, older. A mixture of divine power, wizardcraft, and runic design far beyond what most Olympians even understood.
The barrier pulsed in response, reacting to his touch.
Do not enter.
That was the message he felt—not words, but intent.
Hephaestus narrowed his one good eye. "Clever bastard," he murmured. "You've wrapped the place in living wards."
He pressed his hand harder, pushing his divine will against it. The air shimmered violently, a flare of blue light bursting outward and forcing him back a step. The god frowned, shaking off the sparks that danced across his gauntlet.
Even he—an Olympian—could not breach it.
That realization both impressed and unsettled him.
"Not even Zeus could force his way through this," he muttered. "You really are something, Potter."
Hephaestus waited. Patience was something that decades of work at the anvil had taught him well. He cloaked his divine presence and watched from afar, blending into the crowd that passed the nearby road.
He didn't have to wait long before he began hearing the whispers.
A local delivery driver spoke with another man near a café.
"See that mansion? Some say it's owned by a millionaire inventor or something. Name's Harry Black, I think."
"Yeah, I heard about him," the other man said. "Weird fellow. Keeps to himself. People say he runs some kinda fancy college lab project. But there's a kid too—a little boy. His son, maybe."
Hephaestus's brow furrowed.
A boy.
The tracker on his wrist pulsed faintly again, responding to the energy signature.
"Not a biological son," someone else added, this time a young woman walking her dog. "Godson, I think. But you'd never know. They're always together. The kid's adorable. Sweetest little thing you'll ever see."
Hephaestus's jaw tightened.
So it was true. The wielder was living as this man's child.
He turned his gaze back to the mansion, his mind racing.
Harry Potter.
He remembered that name now. The mortal who had helped ward Camp Half-Blood, who had drawn the admiration of many. A wizard who had merged magic with divine understanding.
And now the same man was protecting a child who unknowingly held a weapon capable of killing gods.
Hephaestus didn't move for hours. He waited, hidden, as the mansion remained silent behind its shimmering wards.
Even his divine sight couldn't pierce through. Inside, he sensed power layered upon power: the pulse of runes, the rhythm of living enchantments that worked together like gears in one of his own forges.
The wards were not just a defense—they were alive, reacting to thought and intent.
He finally exhaled slowly. "You knew I'd come," he whispered. "Didn't you, Potter?"
He sat on a nearby bench, his massive frame making the metal creak. He pulled from his belt a small metallic device, the size of a coin, and rolled it between his fingers. It was a divine locator, tuned to the Blade's resonance. The readings fluctuated wildly whenever the boy was near the wards.
That meant the sword wasn't just dormant—it was connected.
Hephaestus's heart was heavy. He could almost hear the echo of Zeus's words: End it swiftly.
But the thought of killing a child—the one his mother had sworn to protect—burned in his chest like acid.
He muttered under his breath, "You're not a craftsman if you destroy what you've made… you're just a weapon."
Still, he couldn't leave. Not yet.
Late afternoon bled into dusk. The iron gates opened briefly, and Hephaestus tensed.
From within the grounds came laughter—clear, bright, and innocent.
Through the shifting golden leaves, he saw a small boy darting across the garden, chasing a floating ball of light that danced like a will-o'-the-wisp. Behind him walked a tall man with dark hair, his eyes calm but watchful—Harry Potter, unmistakably.
And in that instant, Hephaestus felt it.
The power.
The air around the boy shimmered faintly with divine resonance. His movements—too fast, too fluid for a mortal child. Even the light itself bent slightly around him.
The Blade of Twilight's essence pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
Hephaestus's breath caught. "By the Forge…" he whispered. "It's true."
The night was quiet, unnaturally so. The stars shimmered faintly above Black Mansion, their light diffused by the powerful magical barrier surrounding the estate. The air itself hummed faintly—alive, alert, and dangerous.
Hephaestus stood beyond the fence, cloaked in shadows, his divine presence muted so thoroughly that even the mansion's enchantments could barely sense him.
In his chest burned the weight of Zeus's command.
End it swiftly. Make it look like an accident.
He had spent hours studying the wards, tracing their threads of magic, trying to find a weakness. But whoever crafted them—Harry Potter—was a genius. The layers were not static; they adapted, reading intent like sentient eyes.
He could not strike from afar. Any spell, any bolt of divine energy, would be reflected or absorbed.
The only way… was to do it by hand.
Hephaestus gritted his teeth and looked toward the faint glow of the windows. Through the glass, he could see movement—Harry, pacing the hallway, his face half-lit by candlelight. The wizard turned, vanished into another room, and the lights dimmed.
The god waited. Minutes stretched into an hour.
And then, through the garden, came the soft sound of footsteps.
Teddy.
The little boy was chasing a glowing ball of blue light—a toy orb Harry had enchanted for him. The child laughed as it bobbed through the air, completely unaware of the divine presence watching him from the shadows.
Hephaestus's heart clenched. For a brief second, the sight of the child—so alive, so innocent—reminded him of his own youth, of the first time he'd crafted something that breathed.
But Zeus's voice rang in his head again, hard and cruel:
Do it quickly. Before they know.
Hephaestus took a deep breath. "Forgive me," he muttered. "You don't deserve this. But Olympus demands it."
He moved faster than any mortal eye could follow—crossing the barrier at the one precise moment when its layers cycled between shifts, slipping through with a master craftsman's precision. His boots hit the grass soundlessly, and before the wards could react, he was already upon the child.
In one motion, the god drew his hammer. It gleamed like molten metal in the moonlight, carved with runes older than human memory.
"May it be painless," he whispered.
He swung.
The air cracked with the sound of thunder. The hammer, a weapon that had forged the armor of gods and shattered Titans' bones, came down toward Teddy's small head with unstoppable force.
Except—
Clang!
The strike never landed.
A blinding flare of red and silver light erupted around the child, forcing Hephaestus to stagger backward. A sharp ringing filled his ears.
When the light faded, his single good eye widened in disbelief.
In the boy's tiny hands, the Blade of Twilight had appeared—its black steel alive with runes that burned crimson, the same runes Hephaestus himself had carved eons ago.
The sword's edge had met his hammer mid-strike and stopped it cold.
Hephaestus stared at it, stunned. No god's weapon had ever failed him before.
Teddy stood frozen, eyes wide with terror, his little body trembling—but the sword's aura wrapped around him protectively, flowing like liquid fire.
The god's heart pounded. "No… no, this isn't possible."
He drew back, trying again, this time with more force—his hammer blazing with divine energy.
But the boy screamed, swinging the sword wildly, and a blast of raw power erupted from the blade.
It wasn't controlled—it was instinctive, desperate—but it was enough.
The wave hit Hephaestus full-on.
It was like being struck by a god's thunderbolt.
He was hurled backward through the garden, crashing into the iron fence with enough force to crater the stone. Sparks exploded through the air as the wards roared awake, surrounding the mansion in a storm of blue fire.
Hephaestus tried to move—tried to lift his head—but the world was spinning, the ground burning beneath him. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was Teddy's terrified face framed in that unearthly glow, the Blade's runes pulsing like a heartbeat beside him.
Then everything went black.
Hephaestus woke to the smell of hot iron.
For a heartbeat he thought he was still in his forge on Olympus—smoke, the hiss of steam, the dull ache in every joint—but the world that opened around him was wrong and small and unbearably mortal. He was bound to a heavy chair: thick black chains with sigils that seared cold against his wrists. Even an Olympian's arm, in full strength, could not budge them. He dragged his eyes up through a haze of sparks and saw a ceiling crisscrossed with runic bands of green light—Harry Potter's wards, old and perfect in a way the gods rarely witnessed outside Olympus.
Hammer-blows rang. Metal sang. Sparks flew in brief constellations that painted Hephaestus's wounded face in transient stars.
Across the room, at a battered anvil that looked like it had been lifted from a long-dead volcano, Harry worked with slow, terrible concentration. He was not the distracted tinkerer Hephaestus had imagined. He was a smith at war with fate, skin flushed, sleeves rolled, green magic flickering across his knuckles each time his hammer fell. Around him lay blades—dozens of finished swords resting in racks, their surfaces dark as midnight and threaded with pale runes that moved like living things.
Hephaestus tried to speak and found his voice sanded raw.
Harry did not look up immediately; he set the hammer, wiped his hands on a rag, then turned. The light in his eyes was the same cold, patient thing Hephaestus had seen in men who had held far too much responsibility for far too long.
"I know why you came," Harry said simply. His voice filled the small forge like a bell. "I know what you were sent to do."
Hephaestus's mind stuttered. "You—how—"
Harry's hand lifted, and the chains unmade themselves as if the link had been only a thought; the black iron wavered and dissolved into a spray of harmless sparks. Hephaestus sagged forward, expecting to crumple, but Harry was already there, steadying him with one steady hand.
"You think I don't feel Olympus breathing down my neck?" Harry asked. "You think I don't know what your kind calls protection? I know what they wanted—you and Zeus."
Hephaestus pulled himself upright, fists still trembling from the shock of it. Shame burned hotter than any forge. "Zeus commanded—"
"Zeus commanded a murder," Harry cut in, the words sharp as a newly whet edge. "And you came to do it."
The smith's chest tightened. "We—my king—he feared what the Blade does. He feared the division. He believed removing the wielder would return balance."
Harry laughed once, humorless. "Balance." He looked at the rows of swords, at the runes that crawled on them like delicate veins. "You could have asked for counsel. You could have found another way. Instead you crept into my home with murder in your heart."
Hephaestus wanted to protest that the world was more complicated—that gods had to act to prevent catastrophe—but the sight of Teddy's small, bright face at the edge of his memory—the scream before Hephaestus blacked out—did something to the forge-god that years of council decrees had not undone.
He shifted, then, denial into bargaining. "If Zeus thinks—if Olympus—if the council—"
Harry's hand flashed. He set a small, finished blade into Hephaestus's lap. Its metal was strange: not wholly mortal steel nor wholly divine bronze, but an alloy that thrummed with both wizard-magic and the echo of Hephaestus's own craft. Pale runes crisscrossed its length; when Hephaestus's fingers brushed them they burned like honeyed fire. The god inhaled sharply.
"These," Harry said softly, "are ten times more powerful than the Blade of Twilight."
Hephaestus looked up at him, incredulity and then a dawning, stomach-sickening recognition. "Impossible. The Twilight Blade—"
Harry's voice hardened. "The Twilight Blade is dangerous because of what it is. These are dangerous because of what they do. I built them for a reason: to give the meek an edge if the gods ever came for them. To tip scales."
Hephaestus's gaze flicked from sword to sword. Close now, he could see the craftsmanship: edges so thin they ate light, fuller lines populated with micro-inscriptions, bindings of charm-stuff Harry had no right to know. Each blade sang faintly a different song—one hummed with tide-energy, another veined with starlight, another with a cold that smelled of Tartarus.
He felt his knees go weak.
"You made godslaying swords," he whispered.
Harry inclined his head. "If something happens to Teddy—if a god kills that child and calls it a necessity—then I will hand these to any force that will stand against Olympus. Demigods, monsters, titans—whomever will pledge to fight. I will arm the enemies of Olympus until every one of you remembers what it is to fear." His voice did not waver. "You do this, Hephaestus. You let them try to take him, and you will set the world on fire."
Silence sagged heavy in the forge. The only sound was a soft, metallic sigh from the nearest sword as if it, too, listened.
Hephaestus picked one up with care that bordered on reverence and terror. He held it to the light. It accepted his touch and answered with a ripple that tasted of his own long-ago designs—some pattern he had scratched into prototypes in his youth and discarded as hubris. It was as though Harry had found those old marks, learned their geometry, and then bent them into a new method. The smith's throat closed.
Hephaestus's hand trembled. "Do you intend to use them?"
Harry's lips pressed hard. "If the gods take the child," he said, "I will not stand by. I will arm those who will stand against them. I will make Olympus remember what it is to be vulnerable."
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