Scene One: Olympus – The Fracture Begins
The air above Olympus was unusually still.
Inside the great marble throne room, the gods waited in a circle
tension writ into the pillars, the silence thicker than clouds. Thunder simmered behind Zeus's eyes as he leaned forward on his throne, fingers tapping the golden armrest.
Then — a gust of silver burst into the chamber.
Hermes appeared, bruised, bloodied, and far less smug than usual.
He didn't bow.
He didn't joke.
He just stood there, breathing hard.
"Well?" Zeus demanded, his voice low and furious. "Is he dead?"
Hermes met his gaze. "No."
The throne room stirred — Hera's lips parted in shock, Athena's fingers coiled tighter around her spear. Ares muttered a curse.
Zeus rose slowly, the sky outside flashing with lightning.
"Explain."
Hermes sighed, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. "He was already mid-trial when I arrived. Something inside him was waking. I hit him hard. He hit back harder."
A pause.
"Too hard."
He reached into his cloak and dropped something on the floor — a shard of his own dagger, blackened and burned from where Megumi had snapped it.
"I saw it, Zeus. Not just the boy. I saw him. The King. The crownless one. The one you tried to erase."
Whispers spread like wildfire among the gods.
Zeus clenched his fists. "You're lying."
Hermes shook his head. "If I am, I want you to explain this." He nodded to his fractured ribs and bloodied cloak. "He wasn't ready… but the power inside him is waking fast. Soon you won't be able to stop him. Not even all of us together."
He turned toward the others.
"And when that happens… he's not going to kill you for vengeance. He's going to kill you because it's his right."
A bolt of lightning crashed outside the chamber.
Zeus didn't speak.
But the storm above Olympus had already begun to turn against them.
Scene Two: The Dream Corridor
Megumi's breath came slow and even. His body still lay unconscious in Leonidas's care — but his mind was no longer silent.
He drifted through a vast tunnel of black marble and obsidian, carved with the same ancient runes that lined the Vault of Thalos. The air hummed with an invisible choir. Each step echoed like it was being heard across eternity.
He walked barefoot, the stone warm beneath him.
There were no walls — just endless darkness pressing in from every side.
Only a light ahead, flickering like a dying sun.
A voice whispered behind his ear:
"You are not dreaming.
You are remembering."
Scene Three: The Throne Room of the Fallen
The corridor ended in a set of titanic doors — fifty feet tall, carved with scenes of divine war. Titans crushed underfoot. Gods impaled on spears of starlight. And at the center of it all, a shadowed figure in a jagged crown, cloaked in lightning and sorrow.
Megumi stepped forward.
The doors opened without touch.
Inside was silence.
The throne room was unlike anything in the mortal realm — vast and endless, a black stone coliseum ringed with broken banners and shattered sigils of the gods. Dead constellations hung overhead. Thrones for each of the Olympians lay toppled and crumbling.
And at the far end — on a dais of obsidian — sat a throne.
Tall.
Empty.
Until it wasn't.
The shadows moved.
And from them stepped a man.
No — more than a man.
He was wrapped in a torn cloak of silver and black, his skin like pale marble veined with cracks of burning light. His eyes glowed with quiet fury. His presence bent the air itself.
A crown of jagged metal hovered above his head, turning slowly.
The Fallen King.
Megumi stopped walking.
The King stared down at him in silence.
"So," the King said, his voice like two voices layered over each other — a man and a storm, a whisper and a command.
"You finally made it."
Megumi swallowed. "Is this real?"
"Real enough," the King said, descending the steps toward him. "This is what sleeps inside you. The echo. The inheritance. The war they tried to erase."
He looked Megumi up and down.
"And you're not ready."
Megumi frowned. "I fought Hermes."
"You fought like a mortal," the King snapped. "But they will not die from mortal rage. If you want to burn Olympus to the ground… then you must become something less than a man… and more than a god."
He stopped a few steps away, close now — their faces nearly aligned.
"You must become me."
Scene Four: Crownless
The King turned, pacing.
"I was the first to say no. The first to raise a hand against their arrogance. I tried to bring balance. They called it rebellion. They made war. And when they couldn't kill me…"
He gestured to the broken constellations overhead.
"They erased me."
He looked back.
"But the blood survived. You. A spark. A fracture in their design. They fear you because your very existence is proof that they are not eternal."
Megumi stepped forward.
"Then give me the Crown."
"Not yet," the King said. "You haven't earned it. Not here. Not yet."
"But I'll face them anyway."
"And you will lose."
"I'll keep going."
"And you'll die."
"I don't care."
The King studied him.
Then smiled.
"That… is why you will become me."
He extended a hand.
"Wake up, Megumi Valentine. Wake up… and burn the heavens."