Chapter 177: “Hide from me, god. I will find you.”
The sun had not risen clean.
Its light broke against the smoke that smothered Athens, turning gold into red, dawn into ash. What once was a proud city groaned like a wounded beast—streets cracked, temples blackened, rivers choked with debris.
Athena descended into it.
Her sandals touched the cracked stones of the agora, and her cloak swept dust from the ground. Where her feet landed, the rubble stilled, and the air grew softer, as if the city itself recognized its daughter. Her gray eyes swept over the ruin. Statues of her likeness lay broken, her temples gutted, the cries of her people echoing from every shattered street.
Her heart twisted, but her face remained calm.
"Children of Athens," she whispered, and her voice carried like a breath of wind through smoke.
Mortals crawled from hiding—bloodied, soot-streaked, clutching one another as if to anchor themselves in the wreckage. They saw her, and many fell to their knees, their tears falling freely.
"Save us," one man begged, his voice raw. "The Spartan—he destroys everything. We prayed, we begged, but the gods did not answer."
Athena knelt, her hand brushing his shoulder. Warmth seeped into his skin, closing the gash across his chest. He gasped, staring at the wound that no longer bled. "The gods hear you," she said softly. "I hear you."
–––
From the ridge above, Zeus watched.
His cloak billowed, sparks drifting across his shoulders. His blue eyes burned brighter than the flames still licking at Athens. He saw his daughter kneeling in ash, lifting mortals from ruin, her calm defiance steady even as despair clung to her city.
For a moment, his jaw tightened. He could feel her sigh ripple across the valley even before it left her lips. She knew he was there. She did not look up, but she knew.
And still she chose Athens.
Zeus exhaled, heavy as a storm breaking over the sea. His gaze lingered once longer on her gray eyes, her hands healing the wounded, before he turned away.
The time for comfort belonged to her.
His would come later.
–––
Athena moved through the city.
She stepped into the marketplace where charred beams still smoked. She raised her hand, and water burst from a cracked cistern, sweeping over fire, cooling the stones. She passed through narrow streets where children cried for mothers who did not answer, and her cloak wrapped around them, carrying them into the arms of the living.
Everywhere she went, Athens lifted its head again. Slowly. Painfully. But it lifted.
Yet even as she healed, her eyes grew harder. She had seen battles. She had stood against other gods. But this—this ruin, wrought not by god or beast, but by one man—cut deep.
Her voice was low as she whispered to herself, "Father, what have you done, letting him roam free?"
And the wind carried no answer.
–––
Kratos walked elsewhere.
His body still dripped with blood, his chest heaving with the weight of his rage. The Blades of Chaos rattled against stone as he dragged them, sparks flaring in his wake. His voice had grown hoarse from shouting Ares’s name, but the vow in it had not dimmed.
He looked at the sky and spat. "Hide from me, god. I will find you."
–––
It was then that the storm shifted.
Zeus stepped onto the path before him, silent, tall, his cloak dark against the morning light. Lightning flickered faintly around his frame, but he did not wield it. He only stood, his blue eyes steady.
Kratos froze, his blades still in his hands, his chest rising and falling. "Another god," he growled, voice raw. "Come to mock me? Or to die?"
Zeus’s voice rolled like distant thunder, low but carrying. "Neither."
The Spartan’s grip tightened on his chains. "Then what?"
Zeus looked at him, not as king of Olympus, not as storm made flesh, but as a father who had seen too many sons fall to ruin. "I come to guide you."
Kratos barked a laugh, bitter, broken. "Guide me? You are gods. You gave me chains. You gave me Ares. You gave me this curse." He lifted the Blades of Chaos, their edges still black with blood. "Why would I trust you?"
Zeus stepped closer, his eyes never leaving Kratos’s. "Because I do not come to bind you. I come to offer you what you want."
The air grew heavy. Even the flames seemed to pause.
"What I want," Kratos spat, "is Ares."
Zeus nodded once. "Then Ares you shall have."
–––
The words hit Kratos harder than any blade. His breath caught, his fury stumbling. He searched Zeus’s face for deceit, but the storm there was steady, calm.
"You would betray your own?" Kratos asked, his voice sharp, suspicious.
Zeus’s jaw tightened. "He betrayed more than you. He betrayed Olympus itself with his cruelty. He toys with mortals like dice, turning loyalty into madness, blood into chains. That is not war. That is rot."
Kratos said nothing, but his blades lowered slightly.
"You want revenge," Zeus said, his voice rumbling softer now. "But revenge without guidance devours itself. I have seen it. I have watched gods burn their own thrones chasing it. If you would strike Ares down, you will need more than fury."
Kratos’s teeth ground. "Then what?"
"Wisdom. Purpose. Control." Zeus stepped closer, his hand brushing the air between them. Sparks leapt, curling harmlessly around Kratos’s arms. "I can show you the path. Not as a god to a pawn. As a father to a son."
The words hung in the air.
Kratos’s chest heaved, his jaw clenched, his eyes bloodshot. He wanted to spit, to roar, to strike—but something in him hesitated. For the first time since the fire took his family, his rage paused.
He said nothing.
Zeus let the silence linger, then turned his back. "Find me when the rage cools enough for you to hear. I will be waiting."
–––
The storm walked away.
Kratos stood, his chains rattling softly, his breath harsh in the stillness. The fire behind his eyes did not fade, but it no longer burned without shape. Now it had a direction. A path.
And above the city, Athena raised her gaze to the heavens, her sigh carried into the smoke. She had not seen her father depart, but she felt the shift in the air.
The storm was moving.
And it had chosen the Spartan.
–––
Athens smoldered, its people weeping, its goddess tending to wounds.
Beyond the ruins, Kratos’s eyes still burned red, but in them lay something new. Not just grief. Not just fury.
A shadow of purpose.
And in the distance, Zeus’s cloak faded into cloud, sparks trailing like fireflies across the dawn.
He had left his daughter to heal the city.
He would heal the Spartan another way.
Not with pity.
With a path.