OLYMPUS REBORN — BOOK ONE: ZEUS REINCARNATED AS A TEENAGER
Volume: One — The Awakening
They sent everyone home early.
"Structural damage," the principal announced over the intercom, using that specific, strained pitch adults employ when they mean we have absolutely no idea what just happened and we're terrified.
"Gas leak," muttered a senior near the lockers.
"Seismic activity," claimed the news reporter who materialized twenty minutes later, saying the word unprecedented like she'd just won a blue ribbon for it.
I walked out the front entrance at 1:15 PM, backpack slung over one shoulder, nursing the very specific sensation of being watched. Not by the school's security cameras. By something that didn't have eyes. Or maybe had too many. One of those.
I didn't look around.
Here is a piece of wisdom I acquired approximately four thousand years before the invention of the backpack: Looking around tells a predator that you know it's there. Once it knows it's been spotted, it stops waiting. It starts eating.
I kept my pace casual. Just a normal, frustrated teenager heading home early. No divine heritage, no internal storm, nothing to see here. I took a sharp left toward the side gate—quieter, more shadows.
It was the worst decision I'd made all day, and I'd already had a ceiling fall on my head.
Thirty feet past the gate, the air thickened. It didn't get cold, and the sun didn't go out, but the atmosphere felt like it was holding its breath. The silence was heavy, like wool.
I stopped. I didn't have my Bolt. I didn't even have a pocketknife. "Okay," I said to the empty air. "Come on, then. Let's not make a day of it."
It came from above.
Of course it did. I always tell people to look up, and I never, ever look up.
It slammed into the asphalt ten feet ahead of me, the impact webbing the ground all the way to the curb. I stared at it. It stared back. With far, far too many eyes.
Once upon a time, this had been a Drakon—one of the great serpent-dragons of the elder world, creatures sacred to gods whose names I won't utter because they don't deserve the publicity. Back then, they were majestic. Terrifying, yes, but magnificent.
This thing was a corpse that had forgotten to stop moving.
Centuries drifting in the Void between worlds had rotted its soul. Its scales were dark and iridescent, like motor oil on a rain-slicked puddle, but angrier. Its eyes—dozens of them, blinking in a chaotic, nauseating rhythm—physically hurt to look at. It had been eating nightmares in the dark for a long time, and it had grown bloated on the diet.
It opened its jagged maw, and the sound that vibrated out was almost a word. Almost my name.
I genuinely, deeply hate that.
"Alright," I said, dropping my bag. "Let's do this."
Here is the problem with being Zeus in a teenage frame: The power is there, but it's trapped. It's like a word on the tip of your tongue—you know the shape of it, you know the weight of it, but you can't make the sound. It's a dead battery in a Ferrari. You can turn the key all you want, but if the spark doesn't catch, you're just sitting in an expensive chair.
The Drakon charged.
I dove sideways—hitting the pavement with the jarring, pathetic impact of a regular human body. I rolled, coming up with gravel embedded in my palms and a scraped elbow that burned like fire.
Ow. Human skin is a design flaw.
The Drakon pivoted with impossible speed. Battery, I thought, reaching deep into the marrow of my bones. Come on, spark. Work.
It lunged again, a blur of oily scales and teeth.
And then—
The lightning came out sideways.
It wasn't a majestic bolt from the heavens. It was a jagged, desperate arc that shot out toward the ground and hissed into the Drakon's left flank. It was embarrassing, frankly, but it worked. The beast shrieked that almost-word and recoiled.
My entire right arm went numb to the shoulder. That... definitely didn't used to happen.
The Drakon began to circle. It was being cautious now, which made it ten times more dangerous. I shook my fingers, trying to coax the feeling back into them. One more shot, I told myself. Make it count.
"Left side."
I spun around.
Demi was standing by the gate. Her school blazer was still covered in cafeteria dust, and she was wearing the exact expression she used when she was about to correct my lab notes.
"The left flank," she said, her voice eerily calm. "The scales are fractured where you hit it. Hit it there again. Harder."
The Drakon swung its heavy head, presenting exactly that spot as it coiled for a final spring.
"Why are you still here?" I demanded.
"I saw this happening," she said, as if she were describing a weather report. "I was at the bus stop and I just... I saw it. Thirty seconds before it hit the ground." She pointed. "Now. Hit it now."
I didn't argue. I reached for everything—every scrap of thunder I could harvest from this mortal shell—and shoved it forward.
The lightning was less than "King of the Gods" caliber, but it was enough.
The bolt found the crack in the scales. The Drakon didn't bleed; it dissolved. Ancient horrors don't leave bodies when they die in this realm; they leave an absence—a hole in the air where something terrible used to be. Then, even that faded.
The parking lot went quiet. My hands were vibrating.
I picked up my backpack, trying to look like I wasn't about to collapse.
"We should talk," Demi said.
"I need to leave." I brushed the gravel off my jeans. "This is going to keep happening, and I can't let it happen here. People will get hurt."
"Where are you going?"
I looked at her. Her brown eyes were steady, watching me with a frighteningly sharp intelligence. That spark of recognition moved through my chest again—the one I'd been shoving into a box since the first day of junior year.
Not now, I told myself. Focus.
"I have two brothers," I said. "I need to find them. It's a long trip. It's going to be ugly." I paused. "Go home, Demi."
She didn't move. Instead, she reached down and picked up a bag I hadn't noticed. It wasn't her school bag. It was a hiking pack, stuffed to the seams.
"You packed a bag," I said, dumbfounded.
"I had another vision while I was waiting for you," she said. "You. A long road. Somewhere in the West. And I was there with you."
"That doesn't mean you should come—"
"You need a navigator who can see thirty seconds into the future, Jason. Or whatever your name is." She looked at me with a terrifying certainty. "You know you do."
The most frustrating thing about Demi—the thing that's been grating on me since September—is that she is always right. I don't know why I trust her. I don't know why her voice feels more like home than my own memories.
"Fine," I said. "But when I say move, you move. No questions."
"Within reason."
"That's not how 'No Questions' works."
"Within reason," she repeated.
I looked at the sky. It was bruised and heavy. My brothers were out there somewhere, likely in bodies as fragile and annoying as this one.
I started walking. Demi fell into step beside me, her stride matching mine.
"Your name isn't actually Jason," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No."
She nodded, processing. "Mine isn't actually Demi, either," she whispered.
She wasn't saying it to me. She was saying it to the air, testing the weight of the secret. I didn't answer. But I noticed. I always notice.
It's a blessing when you're ruling an empire. It's a disaster when you're trying not to fall for your lab partner.