A commotion had broken out across the heavens.
A young god had lost himself entirely — rampaging through the celestial realms, tearing apart sky and stone alike, his screams shaking the foundations of creation. Gods scrambled in every direction, some attempting to restrain him, others simply fleeing the storm of his grief. Friend and foe meant nothing to him now. Only pain did.
Then Zeus arrived.
The Elder God surveyed the destruction with the calm of someone who had seen civilizations rise and crumble. "What is the situation," he said. Not a question — a command.
A lesser god stepped forward, breathless. "His parents were killed by the Damned One. The moment he found out, he snapped. He's been attacking everything in sight ever since."
Before Zeus could respond, the sky split open.
A formation of angels descended in perfect unison, their wings cutting the air like blades of light. In seconds, they had wrapped the young god in chains forged from pure radiance. The moment the restraints locked, the chaos stilled — the young god hung suspended, hollow-eyed, the fight gone out of him all at once.
The leader of the formation landed before Zeus. Michael, Archangel, commander of the heavenly host, regarded the Elder God with quiet authority.
"The Creator requests your presence," Michael said. Then, without waiting for a response, he gestured to his angels. The young god was carried away.
---
**At the Throne of the Creator**
No words could properly describe the Creator.
To say he sat upon a throne of light would be accurate but insufficient. The light didn't come *from* the throne — it came from *him*, pouring outward in all directions, warm and absolute, filling every corner of the vast chamber until shadow had nowhere left to hide.
When he spoke, his voice didn't simply travel through the air. It *settled* — deep and resonant, the kind of voice that didn't demand attention so much as make all other sounds feel irrelevant by comparison.
"It is time," the Creator said, "to fulfill the prophecy."
Zeus said nothing. He was rarely at a loss for words, which made the silence all the more telling.
The Creator's gaze moved to him with patient certainty. "Zeus. You will find the siblings of this unfortunate young one. You will assign guardians to each of them. You will see that they are trained." A brief pause. "They will be needed. Fate has already decided this."
Then the Creator turned to the young god — still bound in chains, still vacant, whatever was left of him barely present — and extended one hand.
The transformation was instantaneous. Where a broken deity once hung suspended in light, there was now only an egg, pale and impossibly still.
The Creator looked to Michael.
"Select the fastest among your host," he said. "Have him deliver this child to the first realm — personally. He is to fly the distance himself."
Michael nodded once and withdrew. Zeus lingered a moment longer, watching the egg, a rare crease of unease forming between his brows. Something in the Creator's tone — that deliberate, unhurried certainty — felt less like the fulfillment of an old plan and more like preparation for something yet to come.
Something the Creator was not saying out loud.
---
**Among the Angels**
The task fell to Primox.
He was young for an angel, with long white hair that trailed behind him in the wind and four wings where most of his kind had two. Those wings were the reason he'd been chosen — four wings meant speed that bordered on absurd, the kind that made other angels stop mid-flight just to watch him pass.
He stood before his assignment with a look of polite, barely-concealed confusion.
Flying. Manually. Through the realms. Carrying an egg.
Angels could *teleport*. It was one of the first things they learned, one of the fundamental perks of the job. The idea of making what amounted to an enormous physical journey — through multiple realms, at altitude, holding a mysterious egg — was the kind of task that made you wonder if someone upstairs had a sense of humor.
But the order came from the Creator himself. Primox tucked the egg carefully under one arm, opened all four wings, and launched himself into the sky.
He didn't ask questions. That was probably wise.
---
He was somewhere between realms — that strange, in-between space where the borders of existence grew thin and the light turned a shade of color that had no name — when it happened.
No warning. No sound.
A hand tore through reality itself, fingers black as the space between stars, reaching from a wound in the air that should not have existed. It found his wings before he could react.
The pain was extraordinary.
Primox's scream tore through the void as he plummeted, the egg still clutched desperately to his chest, his remaining senses firing in every direction at once. The realms blurred past him — second, third — and then there was blue sky, clouds, and below that, fast approaching, a small and unremarkable blue-green planet.
He had just enough awareness left to think: *this is going to hurt.*
Then he hit the atmosphere, and thought became secondary to falling.