Hermes and Meltiy tumbled through the dimensional fissure, reality twisting around them like a kaleidoscope of broken physics. The space between spaces had no color, no substance, just the sensation of falling through infinite nothing while simultaneously standing perfectly still.
Then they hit solid ground.
The 9th Dimension.
Hermes collapsed immediately, his essence depleted from the exertion of moving at impossible speeds while carrying another being across dimensional boundaries. His Messenger ability protected him from the worst of it, but even he had limits. His breath came in ragged gasps, unnecessary for a god, but the body remembered mortal patterns when pushed to extremes.
Beside him, Meltiy lay still on the crystalline surface of the 9th Dimension's substrate. The ground here wasn't stone or metal or any material that existed in lower dimensions. It was compressed possibility, reality in its most fundamental form, waiting to be shaped by divine will.
Too still.
Hermes rolled toward her, his muscles screaming in protest. "Meltiy?"
She didn't respond.
He pulled her into his arms, and that's when he felt it. Her skin was cold. Not the pleasant cool of divine flesh, but the deep, wrong cold of something dying. Something ending.
Around her throat, where the silver crow pendant had hung, a mark spread. Black corruption, divine poison, creeping across her skin like ink spilled in water. The veins beneath her flesh turned dark, visible through her translucent divine form.
The pendant hadn't just been a spy device.
It had been a trap.
A failsafe.
When removed, when taken through dimensions, when its function was disrupted, it activated. Released whatever Odin had bound into its construction as insurance, as paranoia made manifest.
"No." Hermes pulled her closer, his hands glowing with divine essence as he tried to heal her, to push back the corruption, to undo what was already done. "No, no, no. Stay with me."
Her eyes opened, unfocused, struggling to find him in the golden haze of the 9th Dimension's ambient light. "Did we... escape?"
"Yes." His voice cracked. "You're safe. We're safe. I got you out."
"Liar." She smiled weakly, and even dying, even fading, it was beautiful. "I can feel it. Spreading. The poison. Odin's... insurance policy."
"I'll fix it." Hermes pressed his forehead to hers, essence flowing from him into her, trying to shore up her failing divine structure. "I'll find a way. I can..."
"Hermes." Her hand touched his cheek, and her fingers were already starting to dissolve at the edges, particles of light beginning to separate. "My mother. She's in danger. Zeus is going to her sanctum. He'll try to stop her, consume her children, reclaim the essence she gave away."
"I don't care about..."
"Listen." Her voice gained strength for a moment, drawing on reserves she shouldn't have. "She has one more child to birth. The eighteenth. Computer Science. The youngest. The most important." Her eyes locked onto his with desperate intensity. "Zeus can never find him. Never. Promise me."
"I promise," Hermes said immediately, without hesitation. "I'll protect him. I'll keep him hidden. I'll..."
"I love you." Her smile was fading now, like watercolor in rain. "I'm sorry I won't see how this ends. Sorry I won't see what the mortals become. Sorry I won't see if mother was right."
"You're not dying." But even as he said it, her essence scattered. Particles of light drifting upward like inverse snow, returning to the cosmic cycle, to the raw material of divinity that would eventually, after centuries or millennia, reform into something new.
But it wouldn't be her.
It would never be her again.
Hermes sat holding empty air and screamed.
The sound carried across dimensions, grief made audible, loss given voice. In the 10th Dimension, gods paused mid-battle. In the 8th, demigods felt a chill. In the lower dimensions, mortals experienced a moment of inexplicable sadness, tears falling without knowing why.
In the Hall of Gods, Zeus paused mid-strike against Thor. He heard that scream. Knew what it meant. Knew his son's voice carrying the weight of absolute loss.
For a moment, just a fraction of a second, something flickered across his face. Regret? Pain? The ghost of the father he'd been before ambition consumed everything else?
Then it was gone, buried under layers of political necessity and cosmic authority.
"Enough." Zeus's voice carried absolute command, divine will made manifest. The word rippled through the hall, through the fighting gods, through the very concept of violence itself. "ENOUGH."
Divine force rippled outward in a wave of pure authority. Everyone froze. Greek, Norse, demigod, elder god, it didn't matter. Zeus's will pressed down on them like gravity, like inevitability, like the weight of reality itself saying "stop."
The fighting ceased instantly. Weapons halted mid-swing. Spells dissipated mid-cast. Even Ares, lost in the joy of combat, found himself frozen with blade raised.
Thor stood breathing heavily, Mjölnir still crackling with power but no longer moving. Blood, golden ichor that passed for divine blood, dripped from a dozen wounds. His armor was cracked, scorched, barely holding together. But his eyes still burned with defiance.
"Leave," Zeus told him, his voice carrying finality. "Tell Odin that Greek business is Greek business. Tell him interference means war. Tell him the Titan Accords still hold, and we will enforce them."
"And Meltiy?" Thor asked, though from his expression, he already knew.
"Dead." Zeus gestured to the crow pendant lying on the floor where Meltiy had torn it free. The silver had tarnished, turned black, the obsidian eyes now dull and lifeless. "The crow's failsafe triggered. Odin's paranoia killed her. Not me. Not the Greeks. Him."
He picked up the pendant, held it up for everyone to see.
"Take this back to the All-Father," Zeus continued. "Let him see what his caution cost. Let him understand that trust cannot coexist with insurance policies. Let him know that his daughter died because he couldn't believe in her innocence enough to send her without weapons disguised as gifts."
Thor stared at the pendant in Zeus's hand, and horror crossed his face. Recognition. Understanding. The terrible realization that Zeus might be right, that Odin's characteristic paranoia had created exactly the tragedy it was meant to prevent.
"He didn't..." Thor began, but the words died. Because Odin would. Odin always hedged his bets, always planned for betrayal, always assumed the worst and prepared accordingly.
It was what made him a great king.
And a terrible father.
Thor took the pendant from Zeus's hand, his grip gentle despite his strength, as if it were something sacred rather than cursed. "I'll bring this to him. He needs to see what his caution cost."
"Go," Zeus said, his voice softer now but no less absolute. "Before I change my mind. Before grief turns to rage and I decide the Norse pantheon needs to learn a lesson about respecting territorial sovereignty."
Thor gestured to his surviving warriors. Many lay scattered as essence, their divine forms destroyed, their consciousness dispersed across dimensions to slowly reform over centuries. But some remained, battered and bleeding but alive.
"We're leaving," Thor announced.
Hela stepped forward, shadows still writhing around her. "We came for her. We're not leaving without.."
"She's dead, sister." Thor's voice was heavy. "The pendant killed her. There's nothing to retrieve but memory."
Loki appeared beside them, his usual grin absent. For once, the trickster god looked serious, looked almost human in his grief. "Odin needs to know. Needs to see what his gift became."
One by one, the Norse gods withdrew through dimensional portals, tearing holes in reality to return to Asgard. To deliver the news. To show Odin the blackened pendant. To begin their own reckoning with what had happened here.
Until only the Greeks remained in the ruined hall.
Silence fell like a shroud.
"What now?" Athena asked, cleaning ichor from her spear. Her armor was barely scratched, she'd fought with precision rather than power, strategy rather than strength.
"Now we end this." Zeus stood at full height, his form no longer expanded, returned to merely imposing rather than reality-warping. "Athena, Poseidon, Hera. With me. We go to the goddess of Knowledge's sanctum. We demand she recall her children, undo what she's done, submit to judgment for violating cosmic order."
"And if she refuses?" Poseidon asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
"Then we make her comply." Zeus's eyes glowed with inner light. "By force if necessary. By example if possible. The other pantheons are watching. They need to see that destabilizing reality has consequences. That we enforce order, not suggest it."
"And Hermes?" Hera asked, her voice carrying something that might have been concern beneath the political calculation. "He betrayed you. Chose her over his duty. Over his pantheon. Over his father."
Zeus was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral, stripped of emotion.
"Hermes is no longer my concern. He made his choice. There are consequences for betrayal, even from family. Especially from family." Each word was sharp as broken glass. "Someone has to maintain standards. Someone has to show that love doesn't excuse treachery."
"He's your son," Athena said quietly.
"He was my messenger," Zeus corrected. "That role is now vacant. We'll find another. Train another. Replace what was lost." He turned toward the dimensional portal forming behind his throne. "Sentiment is a luxury gods cannot afford. We are eternal. Relationships are temporary. Power is what endures."
The portal stabilized, showing a glimpse of somewhere else, a sanctum beyond normal space, a library holding infinite knowledge.
"Come," Zeus commanded. "The goddess of Knowledge has had two decades to prepare her defense. Let's see if her legendary wisdom extends to knowing when she's lost."
He stepped through, followed by Athena, Poseidon, and Hera. Other gods moved to follow, creating a procession of divine power marching toward confrontation.
The portal closed behind them.
In the hall, lesser gods began the work of repair. Gathering scattered essence. Mending dimensional rifts. Cleaning ichor from sacred stone. The work of gods continuing after gods departed, the machinery of divine bureaucracy grinding forward regardless of tragedy or triumph.
Elerie, the goddess of Time, remained standing at the edge of the platform. She'd been silent throughout the aftermath, watching, observing, calculating probabilities across temporal streams.
She raised one hand, and time around her bent. The repairs happening in normal sequence accelerated in some areas, slowed in others, creating a pattern only she could perceive. The hall would be restored, but the timeline would reflect what she needed it to show.
"Interesting," she murmured to herself, her clock-face eyes seeing through dimensions, through possibilities, through the branching paths of what might be. "Very interesting indeed."
She opened a temporal portal, preparing to depart. Her role here was complete—the damage contained, the breach prevented, Sequential Time restored in the lower dimensions.
What happened next between Zeus and the goddess of Knowledge was not her concern.
Not yet.
She stepped through and vanished, leaving the lesser gods to their repairs, leaving the hall to its restoration, leaving history to unfold as it would.
The war had begun.
And somewhere far away, completely unaware of gods or wars or divine politics, a baby boy was being born in a small hospital in Ìlú Ìmọ̀, Nigeria.