The first thing Percy felt was the silence.
It wasn't peaceful. It was heavy—like standing at the bottom of an ocean where no sound could rise. The air pressed down on him with the weight of centuries, cold and still.
He opened his eyes slowly.
Above him stretched a sky of eternal twilight—neither day nor night, just an endless bruised horizon of fading gold and purple. Beneath his feet, a winding path of dark stone spiraled upward through a void of drifting threads—thin strands of light and shadow that shimmered in the air like veins snipped from a ghost.
There was no wind. No stars. Just a feeling—something was watching.
He didn't remember arriving here. No system message. No flash of transition. One moment, he'd been somewhere else—maybe dreaming—and the next, here.
Drawn forward by instinct or something deeper, Percy began to walk.
The ascent was gradual, but each step felt heavier than the last. Not physically—spiritually. Like climbing the spine of something ancient, something dead but still dreaming. The threads around him stirred gently, brushing his arms, curling near his face. They pulsed with strange energy—some silver, some black. Familiar. Dangerous.
He didn't like how they felt against his skin.
Eventually, the slope flattened, revealing a summit—a plateau carved into the peak of a colossal mountain that didn't exist in any world he knew. It was shaped like a forgotten temple. Cracked columns rose like ribs toward a ceiling that had long since collapsed, leaving only open air and the faintest glow of starlight filtering in through the broken bones of heaven.
At the center was a throne.
Massive. Carved from the remains of something older than Olympus. It wasn't marble or gold, not celestial bronze or divine crystal. This throne was built of cosmic stone—veined with gold, rimmed with ruin—and it pulsed faintly like a fossilized heart. Time itself seemed to fray around it. The ground nearby bent subtly under the weight of something immense.
And upon that throne… sat a man.
At least—he looked like a man.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, his form regal even in stillness. Silver hair fell in wild locks around his shoulders. His bare chest was scored with golden scars that flickered like starlight trapped beneath skin. Chains—thick, glowing, living—wrapped around his arms and torso, binding him to the stone. Each link was etched with sigils Percy couldn't read, but instinct told him they were old. Older than Olympus. Older than the gods.
The figure's head was bowed slightly, like one lost in thought.
Then—he spoke.
"You're early."
Percy froze.
The voice was deep, but not harsh. It wasn't cruel. It was… tired. Like an old king remembering battles long buried in dust.
"You're not the first to walk these heights," the figure continued. "The others came with fire. Or swords. Or crowns. But you… carry questions."
Percy's heart thudded once. Then again, slower.
He took a step forward.
"Do you know what this place is, child?" the man asked. "This ruin? This monument to silence?"
A pause.
"This is where time ends."
The words landed in Percy's chest like falling stones. His stomach twisted. Something in the air had changed.
He looked around—and noticed the threads again. Floating, curling. Some were tethered to the man's wrists, some on his chest. Others stretched into the void beyond sight, vibrating like strings on a cosmic harp.
"This is where the old king waits," the figure said.
Percy's mouth was dry. He opened it—but nothing came out.
"They don't speak my name anymore," the man murmured, voice quiet now. "Or if they do, they spit it like poison. As though history itself is ashamed."
His face lifted.
And Percy met his eyes.
They weren't fire or shadow. They were golden.
They were ancient—weathered by ages, burned by betrayal, and dimmed by sorrow. But still, they saw him.
"Perhaps you are different."
The man smiled, just barely. Not bitter. Not angry. Just… resigned.
"You are a child of gods. But not of them. Not truly. You've seen the cracks. Heard the lies. Watched the masks slip."
He leaned forward, just enough that the chains sparked with resistance.
"So tell me, boy… do you fear Kronos?"
The name struck like thunder in a void.
Percy staggered back a step, his fingers twitching.
[Observe] activated.
————————————————————
Target: Kronos – The Bound King
Race: Titan (Peak-Rank) / Fragment
Title(s): King of the Greek Golden Age | The Old Sovereign | The Fallen Crown
Status: Sealed by the Fates | Divine Authority Restricted | Temporal Influence Nullified
Description:
Once the ruler of the divine world before the gods, Kronos was the architect of the first age of peace. Betrayed by his children, condemned by the Fates, and sealed by the very threads of destiny he once wielded, his fall began the end of the golden age of Greece. Not evil—only broken. A symbol of how even kings fall to the weight of fate.
Note: This is not the evil version of Kronos described in the myths, this is the old Titan King who was loved by his people and brought prosperity to his land. But due to most beings not knowing about this version, he has never appeared in history.
——————————————————
Percy's breath caught.
This wasn't the monster they described in stories.
—————————————-
The name echoed.
Kronos.
Percy stood frozen before the throne of the bound king—mind reeling, heart unsteady. The myths had painted him as a monster. A tyrant. A devourer of his own children. But the figure before him… wasn't that.
Not entirely.
Chains wrapped Kronos like ceremonial ribbons—holy, ancient, absolute. And yet, his posture remained proud, as if not even the weight of divine law could truly break him.
"They say I ate them," Kronos said softly, gazing into the fractured horizon. "Zeus. Hades. Poseidon. My own blood. As if I chose to be the butcher of my line."
His voice was low, bitter—but not cruel. It cracked with weariness, not malice.
"Do you know what I remember of that day?"
"The smell of fire. The silence of the sky. And Lachesis weeping, because she knew what the threads demanded."
The name struck Percy like a hidden current.
The Fates.
Kronos turned to look at him again. There was no madness in his eyes—only memory.
"You think I was born a tyrant?" he asked, gently. "I was once a son too. The last child of Ouranos, the first to rise against the cruelty of heaven(Ouranos). We Titans were revolutionaries. Liberators."
His chains pulsed dimly with every word.
[Your Human Origin: Defiance, reacts slightly]
"And yet… the cycle does not end."
He gestured weakly, and one of the silver-black threads floating nearby curled forward, shimmering between them. In it, Percy saw something flicker:
A vision—faint and shifting.
A younger Kronos, wreathed in sunlight, raising a sickle of divine origin. His brothers and sisters behind him—Rhea, Oceanus, Hyperion. They stood against a vast, starry shape that loomed above the cosmos. Ouranos, the Sky Father, wrapped in galaxies and cruelty.
Then the image shattered.
"We overthrew a tyrant," Kronos said. "And became tyrants in turn."
"No," Percy muttered. "You became something worse. You devoured your children. You tried to destroyed the next age before it could begin."
Kronos exhaled slowly.
"Because the Fates decreed that my sons would overthrow me, as I did my father."
He looked away.
"What choice was left to me? Refuse fate—and the threads bind you tighter. Accept it—and you become the villain of the next story."
The chains trembled faintly, reacting to the bitterness in his tone.
"They were born divine," Kronos continued, "but children all the same. And when they rose against me, I did not fight back out of rage. I fought because I knew they, too, would be bound. That the blood I shed would shape the next era."
"Zeus calls himself king," he said, voice cold now. "But what is Olympus if not a reflection of my throne? The liberators of the previous era with thrones built on lies."
Percy stepped back.
It wasn't fear that made his skin crawl—it was understanding. A dangerous kind. The kind that tugged at the roots of everything he'd been taught.
"Why show me this?" Percy asked quietly. "Why now?"
Kronos studied him.
"Because you still believe in change."
He leaned forward again. The chains screamed softly in resistance. Threads curled tighter around him like prison bars made of light.
"But change requires more than power. More than defiance."
His gaze sharpened—bright as stars in eclipse.
"You must understand the truth of the divine order: it is a cycle. A wheel of betrayal, sacrifice, and war. And you—Percy Jackson—stand too close to its center."
Percy's hand curled into a fist. His instincts screamed.
"To stop the cycle, boy… you must never ascend. Never lose your mortality. For every god begins with justice on their tongue and ends with blood on their hands. The divine do not break fate—they become it."
He was being tested.
Then—like a whisper behind the wind—something shifted.
The threads in the air stilled. Every single one.
A cold breath swept through the mountain top. The sky darkened. And then—they appeared.
Three ghostlike shapes at the edge of the summit—cloaked, faceless, watching.
The Moirai.
The Fates.
Percy took a step back.
Kronos didn't flinch.
"They come when too much is said," the Titan King muttered. "They don't fear gods. Or kings. Or death. Only choice."
A thread slithered toward Percy, golden and gleaming. It looped once around his ankle, his wrists, his chest, his neck.
And then tightened.
[System Warning: You are being Bound by Cosmic Thread]
[Status Effect: Paralysis | Speech Locked | Mana Suppressed]
"They will silence you," Kronos said, his voice barely audible now. "They truly believe they can bind you? Right in front of me. ME. As though I were some senile relic, blind and deaf to their schemes."
"Arrogance. That is the Fates' true sin. They wove their little prophecies, declared their sacred cycles, and crowned themselves rulers over destiny itself. But even they… even they fear the unknown."
(His chains pulse dimly)
"You child of sea and storm you are not theirs to control. You do not belong to Olympus. Nor to Tartarus. You belong to the one domain that has always rejected control.
The ocean does not kneel. And it will not sit still while they wrap their threads around its chosen. Even if I can do nothing—even bound as I am. I can still see what they cannot.
And I tell you now: The tides will rise."
The thread began to rise, wrapping his leg, then his chest.
Percy felt himself being dragged into the web—like a fly snared in fate's design.
[Warning: Soul Integrity Fluctuating]
[Your Origin: Defiance reacts]
His heart flared. Not with fear—but rejection.
[Origin: Defiance – Resonating]
[You are not a thread to be woven. You are the storm that breaks the loom.]
Cracks sparked around the bindings. Blue light surged through Percy's veins. He could feel it now—the sea watching.
Far beneath the mountain… it stirred.
And as the bindings squeezed tighter, the ground bellow shattered.
A roar echoed—not of wind, but water—rushing, rising.
And the sea drowns.
The golden threads unraveled.
They slipped from Percy's skin like fading sunlight, dissolving into the water as if they had never been real—no resistance, no echo. One moment they bound him, impossibly tight, threaded through the marrow of his soul. The next, they were gone. Not snapped, not broken.
Rejected.
He floated.
Not in any sea he knew. The water was not cold. It was not warm. It simply was. Boundless and without weight, pressure, or sound. When he looked up, he saw sky—endless, brilliant blue, shining like the surface of a summer sea. But when he looked down—
There was no bottom.
Only abyss.
Not darkness, exactly, but something deeper. An infinite trench beneath all trenches. Stars hung in that blackness, not above, but below—as if the heavens had drowned and never risen.
A current brushed his cheek. It didn't ripple his clothes or push against his limbs. It moved through him, not around him, like something ancient remembering his shape.
"You are not what they think."
The voice was not a voice. It was the sea itself. Not spoken—felt. Like the pull of tide in bone and blood.
Percy's breath hitched. But he was not drowning.
"You are not a hero. Not a pawn. Not a son."
Another current coiled around him—gentler, curious. It caressed his thoughts.
"You are a fragment. A piece of us, bound in human flesh."
He turned, twisting in the waterless sea. There was no source for the words. No figure to confront. Just the feeling of being watched—not by eyes, but by the entire ocean.
Percy's chest tightened—not with fear, but with knowing. Something was being revealed, but not in words he understood. Not yet.
"Kronos was the fallen liberator. He rose against fate. And lost."
"You are the storm. The one that will unmake the sky."
His pulse echoed like thunder. He couldn't move—not because he was paralyzed, but because the moment itself was too large. The sea was too vast, too old. It was like standing inside a god's memory.
"Your human origin: Defiance. It was born from man, but nurtured in sea."
"The ocean does not obey."
The abyss pulsed below, and he felt it—not pressure, but presence. Not something hostile, but immense.
"We chose you. Not Poseidon."
"The sea chose you."
The sky above rippled, fracturing into pale reflections—dozens of versions of Percy, all drifting, all staring downward into the same abyss.
He opened his mouth, unsure if he could speak in this place.
"…Who are you?"
No answer came.
[Warning: The Abyssal Sovereign and the Endless Mother have entered the scene.]
[Their presence folds the world into ocean.]
[System Notice:You stand beneath the gaze of Primordial Sovereigns, beings beyond divinity ]
[The Primordial Sea shifts.]
[The Crowned King Beneath All Waters smiles.]
[She Who Births the Shores smiles.]
The ocean stirs with quiet amusement. It does not speak, but it remembers.
You are not a visitor. You are part of its tide.
Only silence, as if the ocean had asked a question of its own and now waited.