Unexpected 2/3

Unexpected 2/3

"No—"

Almost the instant Aphrodite went missing, Hephaestus, the god of fire, felt a sudden pang while trapped in the fissure between spaces. Tears streamed down his face before he could stop them.

"What happened?" Athena asked in alarm beside him.

"Aphrodite... Aphrodite... she's probably fallen!" the poor fire god sobbed, collapsing to the ground and beating his head against it.

As Aphrodite's lawful husband, he had always been a simple, hapless god. His wife had cheated on him countless times, taking lovers throughout the entire pantheon, yet he remained hopelessly in love with her.

A hideous, wooden-headed fire god who was also a god of craftsmen could never hold the heart of the wild and wanton Aphrodite, but he had remained infatuated with her all the same.

Yet no one had expected that, when this great upheaval struck, Aphrodite would be the first of the Twelve Main Gods of Olympus to fall.

The gods might have doubted whether it was true, but Athena instinctively believed it.

With the Holy Mountain fallen, this made her the second major deity to die.

The first victim had been Dionysus, the god of wine. Although he wasn't one of the Twelve Main Gods, the goddess of the hearth, Hestia, had long been considering stepping down. Of the candidates to replace her, Dionysus had been the frontrunner.

Now three of the Twelve Main Gods were gone, along with a potential replacement. Whether they announced that all had fallen, or said that two had died and two had defected, the loss was undeniably severe.

Athena couldn't help looking toward Zeus, who sat cross-legged with his arms folded.

Their eyes met for just a moment before she looked away.

The cold, sinister look in Zeus's eyes was chilling.

He had sacrificed the Holy Mountain