Chapter Summaries

Theseus told Andrea that Demophon had betrayed him and named her the next king of Athens, then gave her counsel and prepared her to rule. He sacrificed himself to forge his divinity into his longsword, leaving Andrea alone in the Great Hall with the weapons.

• Andrea entered the Great Hall and found Theseus pale and gravely wounded by a dagger infused with an evil entity’s power.
• Theseus told Andrea that he was going to die and declared that she would succeed him as king of Athens.
• Theseus revealed that Demophon had sided with the gods and explained why Andrea’s human loyalties and ties to Hell had changed his choice of heir.
• Theseus warned Andrea to distrust gods and devils, urged her to use force to unite Athens, and promised to leave her what she needed to rule.
• Theseus sacrificed his soul and body to forge the God of War’s remaining power into his longsword, then vanished and left Andrea alone in the Great Hall.

After Theseus died, Andrea rejected the ultimatum imposed on Athens and began using force to claim authority for herself. Ryan arrived in Athens as dawn approached, sensing that the events foretold by the Prophecy were unfolding at the royal palace.

• Andrea took up the sword that had absorbed Theseus's power and left the rear hall to face the nobles.
• A minister told the nobles that foreign kingdoms, city-states, merchants, and churches demanded Theseus's abdication, Athens's political and religious concessions, and acceptance of Demophon as king within three days.
• Andrea asked what would happen if Athens refused the terms, then declared that she would become a king like Theseus.
• Andrea killed the Earl who challenged her and raised her sword against the nobles who would not submit.
• Ryan entered Athens near dawn and sensed that the Prophecy's foretold scene was taking shape at the royal palace.

Ryan entered the royal palace as Andrea put down a rebellion, then helped her address the gathered citizens. Andrea called for war against Eleusis and the Various Kingdoms, while Hermes sent Solomon to help suppress the rebellion.

• Ryan bypassed the palace guards and entered the royal palace by using Andrea's aura to deceive its defenses.
• Andrea executed three influential rebels and forced the nobles in the central hall to submit.
• When the Legion Commander asked how she would handle the crisis, Andrea decided to address the citizens with help from Ryan.
• Andrea told the citizens that Athens had been betrayed and called for war against Eleusis and the nations interfering in the conflict.
• The citizens cheered Andrea's speech, and Hermes ordered Solomon to join Athens's army in suppressing the rebellion.

Zeus learned of the upheaval among the gods and the mortal kingdoms, then visited Heracles on Cithaeron and revealed his plan to force him into becoming a hero. The chapter ended as Zeus used his power over bloodlines to make Alcmene’s visit the beginning of Heracles’s deadly trial.

• Zephyrus told Zeus that the King of Athens had fallen, the Heavenly Queen planned an alliance against Athens, and Hestia had left to seek Rhea.
• Zeus sensed that Khaos was nearing the end of a world-changing upheaval and decided that unifying the mortal world had become urgent.
• Zeus brought Zephyrus to Cithaeron and identified the herdsman Heracles as the hero he had once intended to make ruler of the divine descendants.
• Zeus explained that he needed to provoke Heracles into striving and fighting, and decided that Alcmene’s death could serve as the motive.
• As Alcmene approached to visit Heracles, Zeus plucked the strings of his bloodline and began arranging her deadly trial.

Zeus manipulated Heracles’s divine blood to provoke a deadly outburst, then arranged for Zephyrus to blame him for parricide and set him on a path of trials. Zeus kept Alcmene’s soul, intending to use it as a new shackle for Heracles.

• Zeus explained how divine blood gave heroes power while binding them to their ancestral gods, and he used his influence to affect Heracles.
• Heracles, struggling to control his growing strength, shot three wolves that had approached his flock.
• Zeus praised Heracles’s talent and told Zephyrus to guide him, while Zephyrus warned that the plan could be dangerous.
• As Zeus’s influence faded, Heracles discovered the three wolves were people and erupted in grief and rage, killing the flock and shaking the land with his strength.
• Zephyrus agreed to claim that Heracles had committed parricide and to arrange trials that would awaken his potential.
• Zeus gathered the three souls and kept Alcmene’s soul to serve as a new shackle for Heracles.

Zeus set Heracles on a path to investigate the Abyss, the Underworld, and the spirit realm, while Ares saw a chance to challenge Athena’s authority through war. After debating fate and fairness with Chiron, Achilles graduated and set out to test his indestructible body against the gods, beginning with Ares.

• Zeus recalled asking the Three Goddesses of Fate about the strongest demigod and trusted Zephyrus to prepare Heracles for the trials ahead.
• Ares sensed war stirring and resolved to use a conflict involving gods and mortals to challenge Athena’s dominance over war.
• Achilles questioned Chiron about divine authority and fairness after hearing that the gods’ incarnations had fought King Theseus in Eleusis and Ares’ incarnation had been shattered.
• Chiron argued that talent, personality, and upbringing shaped ability, then told Achilles that he had graduated and could choose his own path.
• Achilles revealed that Thetis had immersed him in the Styx’s hatred, leaving his entire body impervious, and decided to seek out Ares and test the prophecy that he would die in war.

Chiron inspected the Life Deposit ritual protecting Achilles’s heart and reflected on the forbidden soul-partition magic that had inspired it. In Athens, Andrea faced the work of organizing the campaign against Eleusis after the crowd accepted the call to advance.

• Chiron visited Esrea at Fallen Star Lake, confirmed the Life Deposit remained stable, and found Achilles’s heart preserved in the crystal.
• Chiron explained how Achilles’s heart let his Styx-baptized body remain immortal and why the Life Deposit could protect him from harm.
• Chiron recalled the wizards who invented soul-partition magic, their failed attempt to become liches, and the spells’ banishment as forbidden arts.
• After the speech in Athens, the crowd did not oppose the advance on Eleusis, while Andrea worried about the practical work ahead.

Andrea struggled to prepare for war against the newly independent Eleusis Kingdom, so Ryan explained how Zeus’s order of kingship constrained powerful beings during conflicts between kingdoms. The chapter left Andrea with a clearer understanding of how Athens’s national power could help her face the coming war.

• Andrea searched for guidance on military affairs so she could avenge Theseus and deal with Eleusis, but Ryan warned her that Theseus might not have left any instructions.
• Ryan explained that Zeus’s kingship depended on preserving the systems of the Twelve Main Gods and mortal kingship, which limited his freedom to overturn those orders.
• Andrea inferred that Zeus punished rebellious kings personally while allowing their devout heirs to inherit, because replacing the institution of kingship would undermine his own authority.
• Ryan explained that the order of kingship drew strength from mortal rulers and their subjects, giving kingdoms power that restrained gods and demigods during wars.
• Ryan told Andrea that this power grew as people recognized a conflict, so powerful individuals could influence battles but could not decide them alone.

Andrea learned how the Order of Royal Authority constrained powerful beings and received Ryan’s advice on how to handle the rebellion in Eleusis while preparing for threats from abroad. As Athens mobilized its forces, Hermes quietly left the High Tower to pursue experiments and explore beyond the World-Encircling River.

• Andrea concluded that the Order of Royal Authority restrained the gods and demigods beneath the God King while preserving the established hierarchy.
• Ryan advised Andrea to use elite royal troops to swiftly suppress Eleusis, reinforce the western border, seek southern allies, and guard against threats from the east.
• Andrea announced a war order, and Athens began conscripting armies while the royal city’s Knight Order assembled.
• Hermes watched Solomon from the High Tower, sent his student with the army, and prepared to travel beyond the World-Encircling River.
• Hermes took a crystal stone and vanished from the High Tower, intending to leave and return without drawing attention.

Hermes traveled beyond Khaos to test a method for awakening the consciousness inside a crystal, unaware that Amon had secretly attached himself to it. The experiment succeeded, and the newly awakened consciousness named itself Amon.

• Hermes used a space-time gate to cross the World-Encircling River and ventured into the void beyond Khaos.
• Hermes found the void seemingly empty and began an experiment, using his blood and a strand of soul to connect with a crystal.
• Amon, drifting aboard a fragment of the shattered Hermenu World, noticed Hermes and secretly replaced his soul strand with shapeless mist.
• Hermes's rune connected with the crystal, and its dormant consciousness awakened without resistance.
• Hermes asked the consciousness for its name, and it answered that it was Amon.

Hermes brought the newly awakened Amon back to the High Tower, believing him to be a grateful and manageable Star God, while Amon secretly left an avatar behind. The Seven-Segment Bookworm studied Blood Sacrifice, chose a god to approach by rolling a die, and headed off as events on Nissa Mountain hinted at the coming war.

• Hermes explained Zeus's rule and the dangers of the new era to Amon, then took him from the World-Encircling River back toward the High Tower.
• After Hermes left, a Seven-Segment Bookworm emerged from a sea serpent and used Blood Sacrifice to learn how the ritual converted bodily life into Spirituality.
• Amon revealed that he had left an avatar behind and planned to gain power by targeting one of the gods Hermes had mentioned.
• Amon rolled an icosahedron to choose his target, saw that it had landed on her, and plunged into the sea.
• Atop Nissa Mountain, the repairers of Fate worried that they could not steer the approaching war back onto its proper course.

The Moirai discovered that an Ancient Star God's fate was unexpectedly correcting itself in Hermes's domain in Athens, prompting Lachesis to investigate how it happened. Meanwhile, Athens had declared war on Eleusis, and Demeter confronted Aphrodite as Athenian troops approached the city.

• Atropos cut 1,782 fate threads that had been corrupted, and Lachesis warned that this pollution was growing more dangerous.
• Lachesis told Atropos that an Ancient Star God's fate was returning to its proper course in Athens, in Hermes's domain, and said she wanted to investigate.
• Lachesis wondered how Hermes had become a human, while the Moirai's mistaken assumptions about fate threatened to draw them to Athens.
• The gods watched Athens as the conflict intensified, and Athens declared war on Eleusis, accusing its people of being bewitched by an Evil God and murdering the King.
• Demeter blamed Aphrodite for the failed assassination plot and mocked her after Athens's elite troops advanced toward Eleusis.

Aphrodite abandoned Hera’s plan to persuade Demeter and prepared to deprive Eleusis of its supplies by using the captive Hippolyta. Days later, Ryan’s army reached Eleusis, and he ordered a probing attack as the city’s defenders braced for a siege.

• Aphrodite left her meeting with Demeter and visited the imprisoned Hippolyta, intending to use her in a plan against Eleusis.
• Aphrodite left Eleusis for Olympus, while the city’s defenders spent several days preparing for the approaching Athenian army.
• Ryan’s army surrounded three sides of Eleusis, and Ryan discussed Hermes’ experimental wall-breaking weapon with Solomon.
• Ryan ordered a probing attack, and the Divinity Users began casting a War Divine Art to restore the marching soldiers’ strength.

Athens began its assault on Eleusis while Solomon completed Hermes’s ritual to revive three giant beasts as controlled weapons. As the beasts advanced toward the city, Sai Wei and Hera’s priestess judged that Eleusis was nearing defeat.

• Athens’s army advanced under combined War Divine Arts, while Ryan sent Solomon to finish calibrating Hermes’s war machine.
• Sai Wei told Hera’s priestess that Athens was powerful but appeared to be attacking at a poor time under an inexperienced commander.
• Sai Wei and the priestess saw three enormous demons awaken on the plain and concluded that Eleusis’s fall would come sooner.
• Solomon placed the final crystal and silver liquid into the three beasts, completing Hermes’s Blood Sacrifice and binding them to his commands.
• Solomon sent the revived beasts to break through Eleusis, explaining that the bloodshed would help restore the trace of soul power Hermes had left behind.

As the Athenian assault breached Eleusis, Aphrodite’s power turned Hippolyta into an Abyss-infused demon that attacked Demeter and set the city ablaze. Demeter fled the destruction, vowing to make Aphrodite a laughingstock in Heaven and on Earth.

• Solomon watched the monster corpses batter Eleusis’s walls and considered, then dismissed, the idea of building giant steel colossi.
• Ryan sensed Abyss Aura rising from the center of Eleusis as the attackers pushed into the city.
• Demeter stayed in her temple, hoping Eleusis would hold, while refusing Hera’s request to use her authority against Athens’s harvest.
• An Abyss-infused Hippolyta tore open Demeter’s temple and attacked her, spreading flames through Eleusis.
• After the flames destroyed the city and its grain stores, Demeter fled and vowed to make Aphrodite a laughingstock in Heaven and on Earth.

Ryan's forces captured Eleusis, where Solomon's blood-sacrifice ritual succeeded, and Ryan gave him a book of witchcraft to aid his research into emotions. Demeter escaped the pursuing demon and prepared enchanted incense, intending to use the golden arrows' power to free herself from past humiliation.

• Ryan ordered his army to enter Eleusis after its gates fell, and Solomon explained that the war machines had been his teacher's work.
• Ryan questioned Solomon about alchemy and emotions, then gave him a book describing witchcraft that could collect emotions.
• Ryan left Solomon to manage Eleusis and announced that the army would march west in two days.
• Demeter escaped the demon and remembered that she had killed her adopted son Demophon, though she felt no regret.
• Demeter lit the incense she had prepared to draw someone to her and planned to use the golden arrows' power for more than revenge.

Demeter enlisted Voros and Eros to forge a golden love arrow, abandoning her plan to target Athena after they warned that its effect on the goddess was uncertain. The next day, Ryan investigated a prisoner in Eleusis who claimed to be Heracles and said he had come to rescue Demeter.

• Demeter asked Voros and Eros about their arrows’ limits and chose Athena as her target, hoping to gain an ally in Athens.
• Voros warned that Athena’s wisdom might suppress the arrow’s effects and that its result was unknown, so Demeter changed her choice.
• Demeter drove the golden arrow into her own chest, using her blood and hatred to empower it as Voros and Eros watched.
• Ryan examined the ruined temple in Eleusis and questioned Solomon about a captured man who had been lurking near the Temple of Agriculture.
• Solomon told Ryan that the prisoner claimed his name was Heracles and that he had come to rescue the supposedly captured Goddess of Agriculture.

Heracles was brought before Ryan after being imprisoned while investigating the absent Goddess of Agriculture. Ryan challenged Heracles’s ideas about crime and morality, and Heracles asked him to reveal how mortals could return from death and escape it.

• Heracles reflected on how the Athenians had protected the temples and allowed himself to remain imprisoned so he could meet their learned alchemist.
• An officer identified Heracles, removed his shackles, and escorted him to Ryan in the temple.
• Ryan questioned Heracles about crime and punishment through the history of the Agricultural Church, leading Heracles to admit that wrongdoing could exceed the law.
• Ryan told Heracles that his task of rescuing the Goddess of Agriculture no longer existed and asked what he would do next.
• Heracles asked Ryan for the secret of returning from death and avoiding death, pledging to repay him by defeating his enemies if it did not violate Heracles’s morality.

Ryan explained three ways Heracles might recover a dead person's soul, warning that the method someone had promised him was unlikely to succeed safely. He revealed the first two paths and began describing a third, leaving Heracles facing a ruthless temptation.

• Ryan accepted Heracles' promise and showed him a painting of the world and its many realms.
• Heracles explained that he wanted to recover a dead person's soul, and Ryan said the promised journey into the Spirit World might be possible in theory but perilous in practice.
• Ryan proposed imprisoning descended gods and bargaining with the God King, stirring Heracles' desire to defy the gods, though he held back.
• Ryan presented the Primordial Gods Mother of Night and another ancient divinity as possible helpers, but said Heracles would need wisdom to move them.
• Ryan revealed Tartarus as the focus of his third method and told Heracles it required only a ruthless heart.

Ryan rejected Heracles’ offer of slaughter as the price for resurrection and sent him toward the true Spirit World, where his wish might be granted. He named Prometheus as the mentor Heracles needed, while the Midgard Serpent reached the eastern sea and considered how to free the imprisoned Titan.

• Heracles resisted the temptation to pay for resurrection through mass slaughter and felt his resolve strengthen.
• Ryan told Heracles to travel west to Mount Othrys and journey through the true Spirit World to seek the Lord of Spirituality.
• Ryan said Heracles needed a mentor and identified the imprisoned Prometheus in the eastern sea.
• The Midgard Serpent sent a small incarnation through the Underworld to the vortex where Prometheus was imprisoned.
• The Midgard Serpent regretted that Heracles had not pursued a path of slaughter and noted that freeing Prometheus would require overcoming the God King's authority.