I Am Zeus - Chapter 259
Chapter 259: King Of Ghosts
The rain fell in solid sheets, washing the modern grime from Athens’s ancient stones. Zeus walked through the downpour, and not a single drop touched him. They parted around him like a respectful crowd, leaving a dry circle of air in his wake. People huddled under awnings, staring at the man in the impossibly dark suit who walked through the storm untouched.
He didn’t look at them. His eyes were fixed on a spire that stabbed into the low, angry clouds. A cross stood at its peak.
He pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside.
The air was still and smelled of old incense and wax. A handful of people sat in the pews, heads bowed. Their murmuring prayers were a faint, rhythmic hum. Stained-glass saints looked down with pitying eyes.
All movement stopped when he entered.
It wasn’t just his strange, dry clothes. It was him. The way he stood, the way he moved. He was too real, too solid for this place of quiet faith. He was a lightning bolt in a room of candle flames. An old woman crossing herself faltered, her fingers freezing halfway. A young man simply stared, his mouth slightly open.
Zeus ignored them. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor as he walked down the center aisle. His gaze was locked on the front of the church, on the large, carved figure of a man nailed to a cross.
He stopped at the foot of the altar. He looked up at the crucifix, at the face twisted in sculpted agony.
“Enough of this silence,” he said, his voice low, but it filled the entire building, vibrating in the wood and the stone. “You have my attention. Now show yourself.”
He didn’t shout. He didn’t demand. He simply spoke a single word, a name that was not a name, a sound that existed before language.
“I AM.”
The word left his lips, and the world stopped.
The old woman was frozen mid-cross, her eyes wide. The young man was a statue of shock. A fly hung motionless in a beam of colored light from a window. The very dust in the air stopped drifting. The only sound was the hammering of the rain outside, which had also stilled, every raindrop a frozen jewel in the sky.
Time ceased to flow.
From the stillness, a presence manifested. It did not arrive. It was simply there, as if it had always been. It was not the sorrowful Son, nor the terrible Father. This was the third. The breath between words. The space between stars.
It looked like the air shimmering on a hot day. A form of light and warmth, with no clear edges. Its voice was a soft rustle, like wind through dry grass.
“You have broken the stillness,” it whispered, and the voice was everywhere at once. “Why have you called me here, last son of a forgotten world?”
Zeus turned from the frozen crucifix to face the presence. “You know why. Where are they?”
“Gone,” the spirit whispered, a sigh of infinite patience. “The world forgot them. Belief is a river. When it dries up, the life within it cannot survive. They faded. It is the way of things.”
“Bullshit,” Zeus said, the crude word a crack of thunder in the holy silence. “That’s the story you tell. That’s the lie you let them believe. They didn’t fade. They were removed.”
“The heart of man turned from them,” the spirit murmured. “It was their choice.”
“Was it?” Zeus took a step forward, the chaos in him a contained vortex. “Or did you just make sure they had better options? A simpler story? One god, one rule, one path? You made it easy to forget. You made it comfortable.”
He gestured around the frozen church. “You built new temples on the bones of the old. You gave them a god who suffered for them, so they wouldn’t have to fear the ones who made them suffer. You tidied up the universe.”
The spirit did not argue. It did not get angry. It simply was. “I did not destroy them. I did not make war upon them. The current of time carried them away. I am the current. I am not the hand that guides it.”
“Don’t hide behind poetry!” Zeus’s voice rose, and the frozen stained-glass windows vibrated in their lead frames. “You are part of Him. The breath of His being. You were there. You saw what happened to my family. To Odin’s. To Ra’s. Don’t tell me you just watched.”
“I am a witness,” the spirit agreed. “I am the breath of life, and I am the silence that follows. I was there when their names were spoken for the first time. I was there when they were spoken for the last. I do not guide. I observe. I sustain what is, until it is not.”
“Then you are complicit,” Zeus snarled. “You sustained this world while He consumed all others. You are the peacekeeper of a genocide.”
“Is it genocide when the autumn leaf falls?” the spirit whispered. “Is it murder when the tide goes out? They had their age. It ended. This age belongs to humanity. And to my Father.”
“This age was built on a graveyard,” Zeus said, his hands clenching at his sides. “And I am the ghost who just dug his way out. He wanted me to kill his problem. I did. And then he took everything I loved. That wasn’t the tide. That was a plan.”
The spirit was silent for a long moment, the shimmering form pulsing softly. “What is it you want, king of nothing?”
“I want what’s mine,” Zeus said, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “I want my sky back. I want my family. I want the thunder to be mine again, not just a noise in the air.”
“You cannot have what is gone.”
“Then I’ll take something else,” Zeus replied, a cold fire in his eyes. “I’ll take this world back. I’ll remind them what it means to fear the storm. I’ll tear down these crosses and build my altars again. I’ll make them remember the name Zeus until it’s the only prayer on their lips.”
The spirit’s light seemed to dim slightly. “That path leads only to ash. You would become a tyrant in a dead world.”
“I am already a king of ghosts!” Zeus roared, and the church trembled. The frozen raindrops outside shattered. “What more can I lose?”
“You can lose what little remains of what you were,” the spirit said, its voice still soft, but now carrying an edge of finality. “You can become the monster the stories said you were. Is that the legacy you wish to leave? One of ruin?”
Zeus stood there, breathing heavily, the chaos within him warring with the memory of the god he used to be. The king. The father. The husband.
“Tell Him,” Zeus said, his voice quiet but iron-hard. “Tell the Father I’m coming. Tell Him the last weed in His perfect field is alive. And it’s coming for the harvest.”
He turned his back on the spirit and walked back up the aisle. As he passed the frozen people, he snapped his fingers.
Time crashed back into motion.
The old woman finished crossing herself. The young man blinked. The fly buzzed away. The rain continued to fall.
They all shivered, a sudden, deep cold passing through them. They saw the man in the black suit pushing the church door open, stepping back out into the storm. None of them could explain the feeling of absolute dread that settled in their hearts.
The spirit, unseen, remained in the church, its shimmering form contemplative.
It had delivered its message of peace. It had offered the comfort of inevitability.
And it had been refused.