The light lingered long after the monsters were gone.
It clung to the broken nursery like dawn that had lost its way, settling into leaves, glass shards, and soil still warm from violence. Keith sat on the ground, back against an overturned bench, breathing like someone who had surfaced from deep water too fast. His hands would not stop shaking.
Apollo stood a short distance away, gaze fixed not on the destruction—but on Keith.
Not at him.
Through him.
“You should not exist,” Apollo said quietly.
Keith flinched. “That’s… comforting.”
Apollo didn’t smile. Instead, he stepped closer, sunlight dimming around him, becoming softer, more human. “I don’t mean that cruelly. I mean it truthfully.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “The prophecy I saw was incomplete. A shadow without a source. That alone should have been impossible.”
He reached out, hesitated—then gently took Keith’s wrist.
The moment Apollo’s fingers touched his skin, heat bloomed along Keith’s arm.
Light spilled outward, coiling like smoke made of gold. Symbols burned into view—not carved, not wounded, but revealed, as if they had always been there, waiting for the right eyes.
An ear of wheat, perfectly formed.
Wrapped tightly in thorns.
Keith sucked in a sharp breath. “I—what is that?”
Apollo’s face drained of color.
“No,” he whispered.
The symbol pulsed once, warm and alive.
“No,” Apollo said again, this time with disbelief sharp enough to cut. “That mark was erased. Hidden. Buried so deeply that even prophecy forgot it.”
Keith tried to pull his arm back. Apollo loosened his grip immediately, though his stare never left the mark.
“You’re marked by an old covenant,” Apollo said slowly. “One that predates Olympus as it stands now.” He looked up, sunlight flickering uneasily around his shoulders. “That symbol belongs to Demeter.”
Keith’s heart thudded painfully. “The… goddess of harvest?”
Apollo nodded. “Earth. Growth. Cycles. Birth and decay.” His voice lowered. “The balance that keeps gods alive as much as mortals.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
“That makes no sense,” Keith said. “I’m just—my dad’s a gardener.”
Apollo’s expression softened, just slightly. “So was she.”
The words settled like ash.
“There is an ancient prophecy,” Apollo continued, voice shifting—no longer conversational, but reverent. “Older than the Olympian order. One we hoped would never mature.”
He closed his eyes, and when he spoke again, the air itself seemed to listen.
When the Earth Mother falls silent,
her seed shall rise,
to break the famine of gods.
Keith’s mouth felt dry. “Famine?”
Apollo opened his eyes.
“Olympus is decaying,” he said plainly. “Not collapsing in fire or war—but rotting from within.” He gestured toward the nursery. “The seasons are slipping. Births are delayed. Death refuses to complete itself.” His jaw tightened. “The world feels it before we do. It always has.”
Keith thought of the endless summer.
Mrs. Lawson’s unborn child.
Plants growing too fast—or dying all at once.
“Demeter vanished,” Apollo said. “Days ago.”
The words struck harder than the harpies’ claws.
“Vanished?” Keith echoed.
“Taken,” Apollo corrected. “Or silenced. We don’t yet know how.” His voice darkened. “But without her, the cycle fractures. No renewal. No rest. Only imbalance.”
Keith looked down at the glowing mark on his arm, dread curling in his stomach. “And you think that’s… me?”
Apollo didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he looked at the earth beneath their feet—the soil still scarred from battle, already beginning to knit itself back together.
“I think,” he said carefully, “that someone hid you among mortals so thoroughly that even the gods forgot to look.” His gaze returned to Keith, sharp and searching. “And now, when Demeter is gone, the earth answered the nearest blood it had left.”
Keith shook his head. “I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for—any of it.”
Apollo nodded. “Neither did she.”
The symbol on Keith’s arm dimmed, retreating beneath his skin—but the warmth remained.
“Someone out there knows exactly who you are,” Apollo said. “They acted first. That means they’re afraid.”
He straightened, light sharpening around him once more.
“And Keith?” Apollo added quietly. “If Demeter truly cannot speak… then you are not just her son.”
Keith met his gaze, pulse roaring in his ears.
“You are her echo.”
Somewhere far beneath the world, the earth shifted again—
not in pain this time,
but in expectation.
And Olympus, starving and silent, waited.