Divine Ascension: Reborn as a God of Power
Chapter 89: Theomachy (Part 26) - The End

Chapter 89: Theomachy (Part 26) - The End

The upper halls of Olympus were shattered ruins now, cracked marble soaked in divine ichor, shadows flickering where once glory stood eternal. Hermes stood amidst the chaos, chest heaving, his grip around his caduceus trembling—not with fear, but fury.

Poseidon and Hades were walking away, their towering forms marked by battle, ichor streaking down their arms, as if they carried the weight of justice twisted into execution. Athena and Apollo lay broken but breathing somewhere behind Hermes, and yet his eyes were locked on the two gods who had done it. Who had killed Zeus.

He stepped forward, barely breathing.

Another step.

Then suddenly—

A figure blocked his path.

Akhon.

Dust clung to his silver hair, his chestplate was scorched and cracked. One side of his tunic was torn open, stained red with dried ichor. But his presence was steady. Grounded. Golden eyes met Hermes’, not with hostility—but with something worse.

Understanding.

"Move," Hermes growled, his voice raw, nearly shaking. "Now."

Akhon didn’t budge. He raised one hand—not in aggression, but like a wall Hermes had no hope of breaking through.

"If you fight him again," Akhon said quietly, "you won’t survive."

Hermes clenched his jaw, stepping to the side to bypass him.

Akhon moved with him.

"I don’t care!" Hermes snapped. "What does it matter if I die?! We’re enemies now anyway, aren’t we?!"

His voice echoed, cracked, desperate.

But Akhon didn’t yell back. He didn’t lift his weapon. He just... looked at him. Calmly. Like he was seeing something Hermes himself had forgotten was there.

"That’s not true," Akhon said.

Hermes stopped. The words hit harder than any blade.

"What?" he said, voice low, disbelieving.

"This war—this idiotic, senseless war—doesn’t erase what we are. You and I. All of us. I don’t care what side Olympus says we’re on. I don’t see you as my enemy."

Hermes faltered. The heat of his rage collided with something heavier. Something colder.

He looked away, shoulders tensing.

"I knocked out Eros," he muttered, eyes fixed on the blood on his own hands. "I don’t even know if he’ll wake up."

"I’ve killed too many to count," Akhon replied softly. "We’re all bleeding, Hermes. Inside and out. But none of that gives you the right to throw your life away just because you’re hurting."

Hermes tightened his grip on the caduceus—but it felt heavier now. Less like a weapon and more like a burden.

"Why?" he whispered. "Why do you still believe in any of this? After what we’ve all done. After what we’ve lost."

Akhon took a step forward.

"Because if I stop believing it, then there’s nothing left to fight for."

Silence dropped between them, thick and stifling. The kind that only happens between two people who’ve already lost too much to keep pretending.

In the distance, Poseidon turned his head slightly, eyeing the scene from afar, but said nothing. Hades didn’t even look.

Hermes breathed out slowly. His shoulders slumped. The caduceus dipped in his hand.

"You... you still call me a friend?" he asked, voice barely audible.

"I never stopped," Akhon said. "Not even now."

Hermes didn’t respond right away. His eyes shimmered, but he blinked the burn away. The rage had cracked. Beneath it, only guilt and grief remained.

He finally lowered his staff completely, letting it rest at his side. His body sagged under the weight of exhaustion and sorrow.

"Eros is still alive," he murmured. "Barely. I didn’t mean to hit him that hard."

"Then let’s go find him," Akhon said.

Hermes nodded once. No dramatic gesture, no heroic declaration. Just two worn gods in a shattered world trying not to lose one more person they cared about.

They walked in silence, the cracked stones of the battlefield crunching beneath their feet. Smoke drifted like ghosts through the shattered ruins of Olympus. The skies, once filled with lightning and celestial glory, now hung heavy with ash and silence. The wind had stopped carrying sound. No bird called, no divine song echoed. Even the cries of the dying had faded.

Hermes clutched his bruised side, blood dripping from his fingertips, every step sending a jolt of pain through his ribs. Beside him, Akhon walked with steady purpose, his blue eyes clouded with something deeper than exhaustion.

Regret. Or maybe something worse—understanding.

Hermes cast a sideways glance at him.

"You didn’t have to stop me," he muttered.

"You wouldn’t have survived that fight," Akhon replied calmly.

Hermes scoffed. "Maybe I didn’t want to."

Akhon halted. "And you think I would’ve let you throw your life away? Just because this war turned friends into enemies?"

Hermes stared at him, disbelief flickering across his dirt-streaked face. "We’re not on the same side anymore, Akhon."

"That doesn’t mean I stopped caring about my friends."

Hermes opened his mouth to speak, something bitter and defensive ready on his tongue—but it never came.

Because then something changed.

A tremor. Not loud, nor violent. It was like a soft ripple, like something immense shifting beneath the surface of reality.

They both felt it.

Hermes turned toward the east, confusion tightening his brow. "What was that?"

Akhon narrowed his eyes. "Something’s coming."

Far on the horizon, just above the jagged remnants of Mount Pindus, a light began to rise.

Pale at first. It was gentle, almost beautiful. Like dawn cracking open the edge of night.

But it wasn’t dawn. And it wasn’t Helios neither.

The light intensified. This light wasn’t golden or warm like the sun. And it pulsed with a strange rhythm—too perfect, too clean, as if it didn’t belong to this world at all.

Hermes took a step back. "That’s... not sunlight."

"No," Akhon said, voice tight. "That’s not Helios either."

The wind shifted.

And for the first time since the war began, it carried nothing.

Not heat, nor sound.

Just... absence.

The light began to consume the sky. Slowly at first, but with a terrible certainty. It did not roar. It did not thunder like the wrath of gods. It moved with the quiet indifference of inevitability.

A line of brightness stretched across the horizon, swallowing mountains and trees in a single breath. Forests disappeared. Rivers turned to dust. The heavens, still bruised from battle, split apart as if torn by invisible hands.

The ground shook beneath them.

From the distant north, Poseidon and Hades turned their heads toward the radiance. Even gods who had just slain Zeus—who had brought Olympus to its knees—stood frozen in awe.

Or dread.

"What in Tartarus is that?" Hermes whispered.

Akhon didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

He felt it in his bones. In the air. In the rhythm of the world itself.

This light didn’t belong to this world.

And it surely wasn’t the light of rebirth.

It was removal. The erasure of everything.

The battlefield began to disintegrate. Stones cracked into powder. Weapons dissolved midair. Trees collapsed not with fire, but into light, their forms crumbling into motes like memories being erased.

Hermes turned, eyes wide. "We have to run!"

But there was nowhere to go.

Because the light wasn’t chasing anything.

It simply was.

Time bent strangely. Akhon felt seconds stretch like hours, then collapse into nothing. The sky buckled, revealing distant stars—and then swallowing them, one by one.

He saw gods fleeing in the distance.

But they didn’t get far.

The light reached them and they vanished without a scream or flash. They were just gone.

The ocean began to rise, as if to fight back.

Poseidon summoned a tidal wall miles high. It surged forward with all the fury of the sea, bearing down on the light like a final act of defiance.

The wave struck and disappeared.

It hadn’t shattered or turned to mist.

It was simply removed from existence.

Seeing this, Hades tried stopping it by summoning the dead.

Souls filled the skies, shrieking as they surged toward the light. An army of a thousand eras, all sacrificed in vain.

The light met them. And then... silence.

The souls were gone.

Akhon turned to Hermes. The god’s face was pale, eyes glazed.

"We..." Hermes said hoarsely. "We need to do something."

"There’s nothing we can do."

The light advanced faster now, spreading like cracks in porcelain. Cities fell. Mountains folded into themselves. The stars vanished from above.

Then Akhon felt it.

Something inside him—the thread of fate woven into all divine and mortal things—snapped.

His knees buckled.

Hermes gasped, grabbing his chest as if trying to hold something together that was no longer there.

The fabric of reality had been cut.

The fates, wherever they were, had lost control.

He didn’t know how he knew that, he just knew that the tapestry of destiny was gone.

And now, the loom was being dismantled.

Hermes stumbled and Akhon caught him.

The ground beneath them cracked. Light spilled through the fractures, tendrils of brightness reaching upward like fingers eager to touch their skin.

Akhon met Hermes’s eyes.

"I’m sorry," said Hermes

Akhon just nodded. "Me too."

The light reached their feet and then, the world vanished.