Zeus watched his son from the throne chamber and could not name what the boy wanted. Below him, Olympia stretched in gold and cloud. Above, the sky held its breath. Aether stood on the marble landing outside the tower doors, drawing thunder down without asking permission. Each strike answered him before it answered Zeus. The other gods had begun to notice. Zeus had overthrown his own father to sit on this throne, and he had not forgotten how that worked. He needed Aether bound to him before the pantheon learned to prefer the son over the king. Zeus descended the marble stairs. His eagle followed, wings crackling, and settled on the rail beside them. Aether did not turn. He flexed his fingers inside his gauntlets and a thin bolt of gold split the air over the columns, then unraveled into nothing. "You could ride with me today," Zeus said. "The chariot is ready. I will show you the routes I keep." "I know the routes." "Then ride for the company." Aether finally looked at him. His face was calm and closed. "You want to give me something. Say what it is." Zeus had prepared three offers on the climb down. He chose the largest. He lifted his palm and a streak of gold lightning gathered above it, humming. "A seat at the council. Permanent. Your own vote. No god will speak over you again." Aether studied the light in his father's hand. He did not reach for it. "That is what you would want," he said. "It is not what I asked for." "Then tell me what you asked for." "I have not asked you for anything." He said it without heat. "That is the point." Zeus closed his fist. The lightning died. He tried again, smaller. "Then a hunt. Just us. Artemis will lend the woods." "I do not hunt with people who are measuring me." The eagle shifted on the rail. Zeus felt his temper move and held it down. He had come to bind the boy and was being read like a scroll. He tried the last offer, the honest one, and hated the taste of it. "Stay in the tower tonight. No council. No gods. Whatever you want to say, I will hear it." Aether was quiet for a long moment. Then he pulled the gauntlets from his hands and set them on the rail between them, careful, deliberate. "Keep them," he said. "Apollo is expecting me." He walked down the white stairs without looking back. Thunder rolled once over the columns, his, not Zeus's, and faded toward the lower halls where the other gods lived. Zeus stood with the empty gauntlets under his hand. His son had refused three offers and named a fourth god in the same breath. The eagle watched him. Zeus watched the stairs. Whatever loyalty he was going to buy, he would not buy it with gifts, and he would not buy it alone.

Zeus still held Aether's empty gauntlets when the vision took him. His son's power had left a mark on the air, and Zeus reached into it to feel where the thunder had gone. The sky opened behind his eyes. He saw through Aether, the way one sees through clear water. He saw Olympus in ruins. He saw every throne fallen, his own crown rolling across cracked marble. Odin had once warned him of this fall. Now Zeus watched it. His hands shook. The gauntlets dropped and rang on the floor. He did not sleep. By morning he had summoned the other kings to his palace. They came because kings answer other kings when the message says the gods will fall. Zeus stood beneath the gold columns and told them what he had seen. Hades arrived first, staff in hand, the golden eagle at its top catching the light. He listened without moving. "You saw your own end," he said. "The dead do not lie about such things. If you saw it, it is coming." Atum-Ra came wrapped in fire that scorched nothing. He heard Zeus out and gave no comfort. "I fight my end every night," he said. "One night I will lose. Yours has a face. That is worse." Dracula stepped in last, careful to wait at the threshold until Zeus waved him across. "You called us to save your house," he said. "I have spent centuries trying to pull one soul out of the dead. Houses are harder. Tell me what breaks first." Zeus looked at them. "My son breaks it," he said. "The power I saw was his. The fall runs through him." Then Odin spoke. He had stood silent by the columns, spear planted, one gold eye fixed on Zeus. "You want us to help you cage the boy," he said. "That is not why I hung from the tree for nine days." "I want to stop the end," Zeus said. "You cannot." Odin did not raise his voice. "I traded my eye to see the future. I saw my own death. It comes anyway. Fate does not bend because a king begs it." Zeus felt his temper rise and forced it down. "Then why come?" "To tell you the truth." Odin stepped closer. "The vision showed the boy destroys you. It did not show why. You are already treating him like the weapon. You will make the prophecy true with your own hands." The words landed. Zeus said nothing. One by one the kings left. Hades paused at the door. "Bind him with fear and you lose him," he said. "I have seen enough sons come to my realm hating their fathers." Zeus stood alone in the great hall. He had called the council to find allies against the fall. He had found none. They agreed only on this: the fall came through Aether, and Zeus himself was pushing it. His plan to cage his son had become the very road to his ruin. He would have to win the boy without force, or lose everything.