I Am Zeus - Chapter 250

Chapter 250: The Trinity
The silence didn’t last. Sound rushed back in like a tide—the groan of wounded titans, the crackle of dying fires, the low, shaky breaths of gods and monsters trying to process what they had just witnessed.

Zeus stood alone in the center of the crater, the last remnants of primordial chaos bleeding from his knuckles like smoke. His body felt hollowed out, a vessel used and discarded. Every muscle screamed, every old wound throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He just stared at the empty space where Lucifer had been. There was no satisfaction in it. Only a cold, heavy weight, like he’d just buried something immense.

The others began to stir. Ares was the first to break the stillness, hefting his spear and turning to face the next potential threat, his movements stiff with awe and residual battle-fury. Kratos simply grunted, yanking his blades from the ground, his expression unreadable but his posture tense, ready for the fight to continue. They didn’t understand. They thought it was over.

A soft, pure light fell upon Zeus. He didn’t need to look up to know its source.

Michael stood before him. The Archangel’s armor was scarred and smudged with hell-soot, his magnificent wings were slightly frayed, but his presence was still an anchor of absolute authority. He wasn’t kneeling anymore. His face, usually a mask of divine resolve, was etched with something complex—a deep, weary sorrow, and a flicker of something harder. colder.

He didn’t speak at first. He just looked at Zeus, his gaze traveling from the new scar on his chest to the tired lines around his eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, meant for Zeus alone, but it carried in the hushed air.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

Zeus met his gaze, too exhausted for anger. “He gave me no choice.”

“He gave you every choice,” Michael replied, his voice tightening. “He got down on His knees and begged you. For the first time in all of eternity, He pleaded. Not as the Creator. As a father. And you looked Him in the eye and you spat on it.”

A few of the other gods were listening now. Odin leaned heavily on Gungnir, his one eye narrowed. Hades had gone very still, his shadows pooling quietly around his feet.

“He asked me to spare a cancer,” Zeus said, his voice rough. “A cancer that would have just metastasized again. I did what a king must. I protected my people.”

“Your people?” Michael’s laugh was short and utterly without humor. “You think this was about your people? This was about your pride. Your vengeance. You felt the blade he put in you, and you couldn’t let it go. Don’t dress it up in duty.”

The words hit a little too close to the truth. Zeus’s jaw tightened. “What would you have had me do? Forgive him? Welcome him back with open arms?”

“I would have had you listen!” Michael’s composure cracked, just for a second. A raw, frustrated pain showed through. “You had a chance to end this cycle. To show a mercy greater than his crime. Instead, you just proved him right. That at the end of everything, might is the only thing that matters.”

He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper.

“You think you’ve won? You’ve just made an enemy that makes Lucifer look like a tantrum-throwing child.”

“Your Father understood,” Zeus insisted, clinging to the memory of that sad, resigned nod. “He accepted it.”

“That wasn’t my Father,” Michael said, and the way he said it sent a cold trickle down Zeus’s spine. “Not the one you need to worry about.”

The air around them grew colder. The lesser angels, those who had been tending to the wounded, slowly stopped what they were doing and turned to face Michael, their postures shifting from relief to a grim, focused attention.

“What are you talking about?” Zeus asked, a deep unease beginning to uncoil in his gut.

Michael looked at him with something close to pity. “My Father… is complicated. You met the Son. The second aspect of the Trinity. The heart. The one who walks among his creations, who feels their pain, who would die for them. The one who believes in redemption until the very last second. That’s who you saw. That’s who begged you.”

He gestured to the empty space where Yahweh had stood.

“But the Trinity has three faces. The Son you just dismissed. The Holy Spirit, the breath of life and creation, who is… elsewhere. And then there is the first. The Father. The source. The will that spoke the first ‘I AM’ and set all of this into motion.”

Michael’s eyes hardened until they looked like chips of frozen sky.

“The Son pleads. The Father judges.”

A true silence fell this time, deeper than before. The hope that had briefly flickered after Lucifer’s end was snuffed out, replaced by a dread that was somehow colder and more profound.

“You were granted an audience with the most merciful aspect of God,” Michael continued, his words precise and sharp. “And you showed him the back of your hand. You took his son, his firstborn, from him, right in front of him. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Zeus felt the ground beneath him feel less solid. The other gods were now fully gathered around, a semi-circle of battered, anxious faces. Poseidon, Hades, Odin—all of them understood power. And they were beginning to understand the scale of the power Zeus had just insulted.

“He… He wouldn’t,” Odin grumbled, though he sounded unsure. “The balance… the other pantheons…”

Michael didn’t even look at him. His gaze was locked on Zeus. “You think this is about balance? This is personal. You didn’t just kill a rival. You murdered a son in front of his father after that father got on his knees for you. There is no treaty, no cosmic law that will protect you now. There is only consequence.”

He took a final step, until he was close enough for Zeus to see the countless battles reflected in his eyes.

“The Father is not merciful to those who threaten His own. And you, Zeus of Olympus, by your own arrogant hand, have just become the greatest threat He has ever perceived. You didn’t just kill the Devil today. You signed your own death warrant, and maybe the warrant for everyone who stands with you.”

Michael finally broke his gaze, looking around at the assembled gods, his expression unreadable. “The war for Hell is over. You won.” He looked back at Zeus, and the pity was gone, replaced by a cold, professional certainty. “Prepare yourself. The war for your own existence starts now.”

With a sound like a mountain sighing, Michael sheathed his flaming sword. He didn’t vanish in a blaze of light. He simply turned and began to walk away, his wings folding tight against his back. The other angels fell into step behind him without a word, a silent, grim procession.

They didn’t attack. They didn’t even look back. They just left, stepping through a tear in reality that closed behind them with a soft, final sigh.

The gods of Olympus and the other pantheons were left standing in the ruins of Pandemonium, the victory ash turning bitter in their mouths.

Ares was the first to break the silence. “He’s bluffing,” he said, but his voice lacked its usual bluster. “A scare tactic. He can’t mean to…”

“He means it,” Hades interrupted, his voice a dry whisper. He was looking at the spot where Lucifer had been unmade. “I have seen the hearts of fathers. When their children are harmed, the rational world ceases to exist. There is only the storm.”

Odin nodded slowly, his face grim. “The All-Father sees it too. This was not a battle. It was a trigger.”

Zeus finally looked away from the empty sky. He looked at his hands—the hands that had held chaos, that had unraveled a primordial being. They were just hands again. Tired, bruised, and shaking slightly.

He thought of the Creator’s face. The heartbreaking sorrow. The plea. And he realized Michael was right. He had seen only one facet of an impossible diamond. And he had chosen to smash it.

Hermes limped over, clutching his wounded shoulder. “So… not the ‘happily ever after’ we were hoping for, then?” he quipped, but his usual smirk was nowhere to be found.

No one laughed.

Wukong bounded over, uncharacteristically quiet. He poked at the ground with his staff where Lucifer had dissolved. “Sticky business, this family stuff,” he muttered. “Even the big guy’s got daddy issues.”

Poseidon approached Zeus, his trident dripping with the strange, oily water of the Styx. “What do we do, brother?”

Zeus took a deep, ragged breath. The hollow feeling was gone, replaced by a cold, solid certainty. He had made his choice. Now he had to live with it. Or die with it.

He looked around at his family, his allies, the weary, bloodied faces of those who had fought beside him. He saw the fear in their eyes, and the trust. However foolish, they were still looking to him.

“We go home,” Zeus said, his voice low but firm. “We bury our dead. We heal our wounds.”

He finally lifted his head, his eyes finding the cracked, red dome of Hell’s sky as if he could see through it to the white, judgmental light waiting beyond.

“And then,” he said, a spark of the old storm igniting in his gaze, “we prepare for war. Not against a fallen angel. Against Heaven itself.”

The words hung in the air, a terrifying and impossible promise. But as the gods looked at each other, at the cost already paid, they knew it was the only path left. The road home would be long, and the silence that accompanied them was filled with the ghost of a plea, and the coming thunder of a Father’s wrath.