Chapter One – The Lord of Hours
Section I – Origins
The world was not born in thunder.
It was not born in seafoam, nor in the flare of a Titan's rage. Before the first spark, before the first breath, there was only a rhythm. A pulse. The endless current of Time.
When that current chose to take shape, to fold itself into flesh, the universe shivered. The Moirai—the weavers of all destiny—paused in their weaving and felt the loom tug against their hands. A new thread had appeared, one they had not spun, one they could not measure.
The thread called itself Percy shortform of Perseus,the destroyer because Time is destroyer of everything.
Later, men would call him Percy Chronos.
The First Step
He emerged on a nameless shore, where waves dragged silver light across black sand. The earth trembled faintly beneath his feet as though in greeting. Above him, constellations flickered in strange, shifting patterns, moving in ways they had not moved in a thousand ages. The stars themselves seemed to lean closer, curious, cautious, reverent.
The sea whispered welcome. The mountains bowed far inland. The night sky shone brighter.
Percy walked, and with every step the world recalibrated around him.
Time did not begin with him—it had always been—but in him it found a face.
The Three Domains
It was not long before gods whispered of his domains. For Percy carried three, each vast enough to define an age, yet bound together in one impossible being.
Earth. His footsteps sank into stone, and mountains rose taller, as if unwilling to be lesser in his presence. Trees bent toward him, leaves whispering secrets older than Olympus. Crops flourished in places he lingered, while deep caverns glowed faintly with an unspoken recognition. Gaia herself stirred in her long sleep, murmuring, my child has returned.
Stars. The sky above bent differently when he raised his eyes. The constellations danced away from their fixed paths, trembling like courtiers before a king. He could scatter them with a thought, draw new ones into existence, and write omens no prophet could read. Astronomers centuries later would wonder why the heavens did not match their charts—none would guess it was because Percy Chronos had gazed upward.
Time. His true dominion. His essence. Time bent at his will, stretched, shortened, paused. He could still a heartbeat into eternity, or let a century collapse into the space between breaths. Unlike the gods of Olympus, whose domains were bound by oaths and laws, Percy's was boundless. Outside. The loom of the Moirai could not touch him. Destiny could not bind him.
This was what made him feared. Not his strength, nor his patience, but his freedom.
The Loom Shattered
It was Atropos, the eldest Fate, who first tried to cut his thread.
When Percy walked into the high hall of the Moirai, their black-veiled heads turned as one. Clotho spun, Lachesis measured, and Atropos lifted her shears.
"You do not belong," hissed Clotho.
"You have no measure," muttered Lachesis.
"You must be severed," growled Atropos.
She struck.
The shears met a thread that was not a thread. Light and shadow burst, the loom cracked down its middle, and the Moirai shrieked as their own tools betrayed them. The thread of Percy remained unbroken, glimmering faintly with starlight, rooted in stone, humming with the pulse of hours.
"You are outside us," the Fates spat. "Unwritten. Unmeasured. Unending."
And Percy, calm, young yet impossibly old, only smiled faintly. "So it will be."
From that moment, the Fates never touched him again.
The Whispering Gods
On Olympus, whispers spread faster than fire.
"Who is he?" asked Demeter, watching her fields grow greener where he walked.
"An abomination," Zeus thundered, though his lightning bent slightly away from Percy whenever they met.
"Dangerous," Hades muttered, for the dead in his realm sometimes stirred and lingered longer when Percy's shadow passed.
Poseidon only squinted. "He feels of the earth, yet not of me. A rival?"
Only Aphrodite smiled knowingly. "Not a rival. A lover. Wait and watch."
The council muttered endlessly, but Percy never answered their suspicion. He was not a rival to thrones, nor a suitor to crowns. He was inevitability, and inevitability did not bargain.
The Phoenix of Midnight Flame
Kaal came with him.
From a fissure of broken stars, the great phoenix descended—black-feathered, wings vast enough to blot constellations, flames the color of midnight and dying suns. Where Fawkes, in ages yet to come, would heal with golden fire, Kaal burned with time itself. His flames aged stone to dust in seconds, or restored it to youthful marble. He was Percy's herald, his companion, his equal.
When Kaal screamed, the stars shifted. The Olympians flinched.
Mortals saw him rarely, and when they did, they built temples in awe and fear. They called him "the bird of endings." They did not know he was also the bird of beginnings.
The Lonely God
And so Percy Chronos walked, earth firm beneath him, stars bending above him, time itself unfolding at his will. Gods whispered, mortals bowed, the Fates turned away. He was free, unbound, unrivaled.
Yet, in all his dominion, he was alone.
Eternity is vast. Immortality, unbearable when endured in solitude. And even Time itself longed for companionship.