I Am Zeus - Chapter 230

Chapter 230: “Let’s dance.”
The air went still. Not peaceful, but dead. The constant, low-grade screaming of Hell had cut out. The only sound was the crackle of cooling rock and the heavy breathing of the divine army.

Zeus stood, his knuckles white around his spear. The feeling was like a drop in pressure before a hurricane, but wrong. This wasn’t a storm brewing. It was a tomb opening.

Hades materialized beside him, his face grim. “They’re here.”

Poseidon planted his trident into the glassy ground. “Not from the pits. Deeper.”

Odin joined them, his single eye scanning the bleeding sky. “This power… it’s old. It’s what Heaven locked away and hoped we’d forget.”

A sharp grin split Zeus’s face, but there was no joy in it. “So the Morningstar finally plays his last card.”

Wukong dropped from a broken spire, landing lightly. “About time! I was getting bored with the cannon fodder.”

“They’re not fodder, monkey,” Athena said, her voice calm but her grip tight on her spear. “They are the Watchers. The first to break the laws of creation.”

“Ooh, law-breakers!” Wukong chuckled. “My kind of people!”

“They are not ‘people’,” Hades intoned. “They are concepts given form. Arrogance. Forbidden knowledge. Rebellion.”

As if summoned by his words, the sky tore. Not a jagged, hellish rift, but a clean, silent split, like a razor through silk. A figure fell through. Then another. And another.

They landed without sound, their feet not even cracking the ground. They looked like angels, but… broken. Their wings were made of shifting, geometric patterns that hurt the eyes. One had wings of living math, equations burning in the air. Another had wings of silent screams, mouths opening and closing in its feathers.

The one in front stood. He was tall, with features too perfect to be real. His eyes were the grey of forgotten stars.

Samjaza.

His voice was soft, yet it carried to every god on the plain. “We have watched you from the dark. You play at being lords of creation. You have no idea what you are meddling with.”

Zeus took a step forward, lightning crawling up his arm. “We’re meddling in your end.”

Samjaza smiled, a cold, condescending twist of his lips. “You are a flicker. We are the void that remains when the flame gutters out.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very spooky and ancient,” Wukong called out, spinning his staff. “Can we skip the speech and get to the part where I punch you?”

Samjaza’s gaze didn’t waver from Zeus. “The child is loud.”

Thor hefted Mjolnir, electricity crackling. “Let’s see how you handle a little thunder, feather-brain.”

He launched forward, a blur of red cape and rage, bringing his hammer down in a arc that could shatter worlds.

Samjaza didn’t move. He didn’t block. He simply looked at the hammer.

And it stopped.

It froze in mid-air, an inch from his face. The energy around it died. Thor strained, muscles bulging, but he couldn’t move it.

“Your thunder is a borrowed toy,” Samjaza said softly. He flicked his fingers.

Thor was thrown backwards as if swatted by a giant, invisible hand, crashing through a line of giants.

A collective gasp went through the army.

“See?” Wukong said, his bravado slightly strained. “Always with the cheap tricks.”

Nezha shot forward, his fire-tipped spear aimed at Samjaza’s throat. A Watcher with wings of shifting mirrors interceded. The spear hit the mirror-wing and… reversed. Nezha cried out as his own attack slammed back into his chest, throwing him to the ground.

Ares roared and charged. Another Watcher raised a hand, and the ground beneath the God of War turned to thick, black tar, swallowing him to his waist.

“This is not a battle of strength,” Samjaza said, his voice still calm. “It is a lesson. You wield power. We are the laws that power obeys.”

Zeus’s face was a mask of cold fury. He raised a spear, and the sky above Hell answered. A storm gathered, not of clouds, but of pure, concentrated lightning.

“You talk too much,” Zeus growled.

He threw the spear. It wasn’t a throw; it was the release of the storm itself. A pillar of white-hot energy screamed towards Samjaza.

For the first time, the Watcher moved. He brought his hands together.

The lightning bolt hit an invisible wall and splintered, fracturing into a thousand smaller bolts that rained down harmlessly around him.

Samjaza didn’t even flinch. “Is that all?”

The silence that followed was heavier than any defeat. This was different. This was something they didn’t know how to fight.

Wukong cracked his neck, his playful grin gone, replaced by a focused scowl. “Alright. No more playing around.”

Across the field, the Watchers stood, silent and unmoving, their very presence a challenge to reality itself.

Zeus watched Thor struggle to his feet and Ares clawing free of the tar. A cold calm settled over him. This wasn’t a fight for an army.

“Enough,” he said, his voice cutting through the chaos. He turned to the pantheon. “Listen to me. All of you. These Watchers are mine. The Kings of Hell are yours. Find them. End them.”

His eyes swept over them, a final command. “But you stay away from Lucifer. He is my concern. No one else touches him.”

Wukong opened his mouth to protest, but one look at Zeus’s face made him shut it. He just shrugged. “Fine, fine. You get the big boss. We’ll handle the help.”

Hades gave a slow, grim nod. “As you wish, brother.”

With a final, collective glance at the silent, waiting Watchers, the pantheon moved. They flowed around Zeus like a river parting around a rock—Titans, Vanir, Gods, all turning their fury towards the spires of Pandemonium, leaving him alone.

Utterly alone.

Before the army of Watchers.

Zeus turned back to Samjaza. He rolled his shoulders, the air beginning to crackle, the very light bending toward him. A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips.

“Alright, you pretentious bastards,” he said, lightning igniting in his eyes. “Let’s dance.”