Zeus, God of Thunder, ruler of the Olympians, found himself at home on Olympus for this grand tale of mortals. For once, none had caught his particular interest—no hero had defied him in a way that warranted intervention, no offering had stirred his favor. He had, however, just finished dealing out his own brand of justice to those who needed reminding of his rule.

  First, Hera. He knew her malice well—he even enjoyed it when it wasn’t directed at his own lineage. But her last attempt to unseat him had been a mistake. He had bound her with the very same ropes she had once used against him, leaving her to stare endlessly into the abyss until she surrendered. He had all but coerced her into a vow never to try such treachery again before finally releasing her.

  Then there was Poseidon, his ever-defiant brother. If not for the fact that Poseidon had been instrumental in overthrowing Cronus, Zeus might have let him rot as a mortal indefinitely. But the seas needed their ruler, so he had been lenient—relatively speaking. Stripping him of his godhood for a time had been necessary. And what better way to drive home a lesson than to make him a slave?

  Apollo, too, had needed humbling. And so, Zeus had cast them both down to Troy, stripped of divinity, bound to the whims of a mortal king. He had watched—oh, how he had watched!—as they labored under Laomedon, forced to build the very walls that now stood so proudly.

  And now, Troy.

  Zeus leaned back, a slow grin curling his lips as his gaze drifted to the mortals below. How utterly predictable they were. He had once ensured a king of Troy thrived, only for his descendant, Paris, to steal another man's wife. Helen, already wed to Menelaus, King of Sparta, had been whisked away to Troy, and now the Greeks were howling for war. Fools in love do foolish things.

  He exhaled, the air crackling around him as his presence stirred the very heavens.

  Zeus’ hair was long, tied back in a neat braid,no longer the raw chaos of a storm, but a tempered force of nature. Darkened at the roots, gold veins flickered through like lightning bound within. Silver, tempered with time, faded into amethyst—the color of judgment. At the tips, crimson and emerald flared, a whisper of something ancient, something beyond Olympus.

  His eyes, once a chaotic swirl of lightning, but a tempered calm. They were a mix of gray and gold, like the quiet before the storm, the eye of a tempest. The stillness that inflicted more fear than the storm itself.

  There was no arrogance in his gaze, no need to prove himself. He was no longer just the storm incarnate. He had become something more. Something controlled. Something inevitable.

  And now, he would sit back and watch fate unravel.

  A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he exhaled through his nose. Ah. Hermes.

  The Messenger God was tall and lean, his build wiry but deceptively strong—like a runner poised for the next sprint. His hair was burnished gold, almost molten in hue, curling in waves that shimmered in the light. But it was his eyes that truly unnerved.

  Slitted pupils, reptilian in nature, pulsed with an unsettling intensity. Each flicker of his gaze was like a crackling spark, unpredictable and sharp. They shifted between shades of golden bronze, emerald, and deep crimson, the colors dancing like the heart of a flame.

  Zeus did not need to turn his head to acknowledge him. "Are they ready?"

  Hermes smirked, tilting his head slightly, his usual mischievous glint in his eyes. "They have been ready since the moment Paris took her."

  Zeus chuckled, rolling his shoulders as thunder rumbled in the distance. This was going to be entertaining.

  The gods had been watching this play unfold from the moment the fates had spun it into motion. And now, here they were—mortals locked in a struggle of their own making, each move leading them further down the path of destruction. He’d been waiting for this, the bloodshed, the inevitable consequences of love and war. And now the time had come.

  A ripple, like the shudder of a storm cloud before the thunder, echoed through the divine ether. It was the voice of Penelope, Spartan Queen of Ithaca. The vow she spoke was laden with an intensity that even the gods could not ignore.

  “I, Penelope, Spartan Queen of Ithaca, vow—upon my title and my blood—that if my husband does not return home to me, I will burn this world to ash. And should death befall my son, Telemachus, before his father’s return, I will carve a path to Troy myself, so Odysseus may know—and together, we will unmake the world.”

  For a moment, the air seemed to thicken with the weight of her words.

  Zeus barely reacted, his expression remaining impassive as he flicked his fingers dismissively. “A mother’s fury,” Zeus murmured, lightning crackling along his fingertips. He let the thought linger—for a breath, no more—before flicking his fingers in dismissal. “Nothing more.”

  But Hermes stood still, his expression momentarily shifting from mischief to something more contemplative. Penelope’s vow lingered in his mind, but it was the mention of Odysseus that truly caught his attention. He knew well the mortal’s legacy, having witnessed the cunning of the man over the years. Athena had always favored Odysseus, having guided him with a mentor’s hand, but Hermes was more detached. Still, his bloodline stirred something inside him—a distant echo of kinship, an unsettling reminder of how the mortal world, though beneath them, could still stir the divine.

  Poseidon stood in the wreckage of his underwater palace, his once-pristine domain now shattered and ruined beneath his wrath. The palace, a symbol of his reign over the oceans, had been left in tatters, stone pillars fractured, coral mosaics torn apart, the delicate undersea flora now choking in the wake of his fury. The salty scent of destruction hung in the water like a pungent fog.

  His heart pounded, the deep vibrations of his anger reverberating through the oceans themselves. Zeus. His brother. The one who had humiliated him more than any mortal ever could. Forced to serve a mortal king, to bend to the will of a human? Poseidon’s trident trembled in his hands as he tightened his grip, muscles straining with the effort to control the raging storm inside him.

  The sea, always a reflection of his will, seemed to react in kind, the waters swirling in violent motion around him. Poseidon raised his trident, the golden veins running through it flickering to life with power that surged through him once more, reminding him that his divine essence had returned after so many years of restraint.

  But none of it mattered.

  He could feel the power coursing through his veins, the weight of his forgotten immortality coming back to him in waves, but it didn’t change the simple truth: Zeus had bested him. And Poseidon was left to rage in the ruin of his own home, bound by the will of a mortal king, unable to lash out at the one person who had stripped him of his dignity.

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  The crashing waves mirrored his pain, sending ripples of destruction through the remains of his palace. Poseidon’s eyes flashed with fury, but they held nothing but emptiness. The more he thought of it, the more he seethed. He could not fight Zeus—not yet. Zeus held power over him still, and Poseidon was left with nothing but his anger and the devastation that would never truly satisfy him.

  Just then, in the distance, faint ripples of a vow began to reach him. The voice of Penelope, Spartan Queen of Ithaca, carried through the water. "I vow—upon my title and my blood—that if my husband does not return home to me, I will burn this world to ash. And should death befall my son, Telemachus, before his father’s return, I will carve a path to Troy myself, so Odysseus may know—and together, we will unmake the world."

  The words barely registered in Poseidon's mind, lost in the storm of his thoughts. He had no care for mortal vows, no time to entertain the words of a queen who spoke of vengeance. He had heard it before—mortals and their desperate oaths. It meant nothing.

  He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth as his gaze flickered to the endless sea before him. Penelope’s vow barely brushed the edges of his consciousness, as it was nothing compared to the overwhelming frustration that consumed him.

  She does not matter, Poseidon thought bitterly. No mortal can make me feel anything other than this shame. Zeus made me bow to a mortal king. And I will never forget that. Never.

  Poseidon let out a growl of frustration, releasing a violent surge of power into the water, shattering what little remained of his palace as he paced in the destroyed halls. He could feel his divine powers thrumming beneath the surface of his skin, but they did nothing to soothe the gnawing emptiness that had settled deep within him. He needed something. Anything. A way to wipe away this humiliation. A way to redeem himself.

  But for now, there was nothing but the ocean’s fury and his helpless rage.

  Hera sat motionless in her chamber, her form bathed in the dim light filtering through the golden lattice of her ruined sanctuary. Once, she had radiated like the noonday sun—her presence overwhelming, inescapable. Now, she was the eclipse, a celestial body shrouded in shadow, her light muted by the abyss Zeus had forced her to gaze into.

  Her once-pristine skin, kissed by divinity, now bore the cruel reminders of her suffering. Scars, faint but unyielding, latticed across her arms and shoulders, thin silver lines that shimmered like cracks in the sky before a storm. The deepest scar ran from her collarbone down to her sternum, a cruel reminder of the eternity she spent unraveling in the abyss, her own existence dissected and stitched back together by divine will.

  Her hair, once a rich, molten auburn, now carried the hues of an eclipsed sun—black at the roots, fading into deep crimson before flaring into a burning gold at the very tips. It cascaded down her back like the last embers of a dying star, flickering with a dim radiance that spoke of power long suppressed. Strands curled and twisted as if they had been singed by divine fire, unruly, unable to be tamed.

  Her eyes—once golden orbs that had commanded gods and mortals alike—had dimmed. The irises remained gold, but a deep, burning orange now rimmed their edges, like the corona of an eclipse barely holding back the consuming void at its center. They no longer blazed with defiance but carried the weight of hollow silence, storm-ridden and unfathomable, as if she had gazed too long into the abyss and found it gazing back.

  Her attire reflected the transformation. Where once she draped herself in robes of ivory and gold, now her gown was woven from twilight itself. The deep, shifting blue of a sky moments before an eclipse, threaded with burnt orange and crimson, like dying sunlight struggling against the dark. The embroidery on her mantle, once a radiant sun, now lay unfinished—golden threads fading into black at the edges, as though the light had been slowly consumed.

  Golden scars lined her fingers, jagged and lightning-like, creeping up her wrists—marks of divine retribution. The weight of her imprisonment had reshaped her. She was no longer the immovable force that once ruled Olympus with an iron will. She was something fractured. Something waiting.

  Her crown sat abandoned on the bedside table, untouched. She had not worn it since Zeus freed her. Perhaps it had become too heavy. Perhaps it had lost its meaning.

  Hera, the eclipsed queen. Humbled. Broken. But still standing. Still waiting.

  Waiting for what, she wasn’t sure. Time had lost its meaning in the darkness, her thoughts trapped in an endless cycle, her face streaked with gold and silver tear trails long since dried. Then, she heard it—faint, but undeniable. A mortal queen’s vow, raw with grief and fury, carried across the divine plane. A plea for her husband and son.

  For the first time since her release, curiosity stirred.

  Slowly, she pushed herself up, muscles stiff, joints popping in protest after so long in stillness. Each movement was careful, deliberate, like a newborn fawn testing unsteady legs. She crossed the chamber, pausing before her shattered vanity mirror. The fractured glass reflected fragments of herself—a queen undone, a goddess reborn.

  She placed her hand against the mirror’s jagged surface, a flicker of her essence slipping into it. For a moment, her eyes burned like a sunrise.

  “Show me the queen who seeks her family’s well-being,” she murmured.

  The shards shimmered, shifting, and through them, Hera watched—a proud queen with hair of black and platinum blonde, placing an infant boy into the hands of an elder woman.

  Something long-buried stirred within her.

  Still watching, Hera reached forward, and with a whisper of unseen power, wove a blessing of protection. "I am no guardian of faithful wives. I am no goddess of gentle mercies. But you…" Her voice was quiet, steady, laced with something akin to understanding. "You are a queen who does not break. A mother who does not yield. A woman who stands alone in a house of wolves and still commands the pack."

  A faint shimmer coiled around Penelope and the infant Telemachus, invisible to mortal eyes but present all the same.

  "By my hand, you will not stand defenseless. Until the eyes of my brothers turn upon you, may no false hand claim you. May no oath-breaker cross your threshold. May your child know safety in the shadow of your strength."

  The blessing settled like a whisper on the wind, weaving itself into the unseen fabric of Penelope’s world. It was not a shield of divine power—it would not stop gods, nor alter fate. But it was a promise, fleeting and fragile, that until the moment Olympus itself turned its gaze upon Ithaca, Penelope would not stand alone.

  Hera drew her hand away from the mirror, her breath shallow as the cool glass still echoed the touch of her fingers. She had given what she could. It would not last. But for now, it was enough. She hoped the Queen’s husband would make it back safe, but Zeus and Poseidon would have to remain oblivious to him.

  A flicker of something stirred deep within her. For the briefest moment, she felt a spark of her former self, a memory of a time when she stood at the height of her power, regal and unchallenged.

  Her fingers twitched, and the air around her crackled. A pulse of energy surged through her, something long forgotten, stirring her will. Hera closed her eyes, letting the power of her essence course through her, her own magic whispering through the scars that marred her skin. They had never been a true burden to her before, just a mark of the battles she had fought and won. The darkness of an eclipse still clung to her skin, her hair, but it was no longer something she simply endured. It was a symbol now, a symbol of her strength—of a Queen who would never bow, even in the face of all that had been lost.

  With a quiet sigh, she let the magic unfold. Her tattered robes shimmered and shifted, threads of silver and deep purple winding around her body, weaving into an intricate gown of shadow and starlight. A regal crown of darkened metal appeared atop her head, the stones set into it glowing with the faintest pulse of celestial power. The scars, though still visible, seemed to glow in their own way, woven into the very fabric of her appearance, like constellations marking the sky.

  Her hands, now adorned with rings of dark metal, touched her gown with a subtle satisfaction, feeling the strength return. She was Hera once again.

  Her pulse steady, her heart no longer trembling, Hera opened the door to the grand hallway of the palace she had shared with Zeus. The vast, silent space stretched before her, filled with reminders of what had been, of the kingdom she once ruled with an iron fist. Though it had changed in her absence, it still whispered of her reign.

  She stepped into the corridor, the weight of her presence undeniable. The shadows that clung to her seemed to bow in reverence as she walked, every step resonating with the power that she was reclaiming.

  Hera was back. And the world would feel it.