CHAPTER 102: FINDING CLUES (PART 1)

The silence in the Olympus Library was not ordinary silence. It wasn’t the quiet of absence, but the kind that hummed with restrained knowledge, ancient secrets, and truths too powerful to speak aloud. Aphrodite’s footsteps echoed gently as she stepped past the towering marble columns and into the heart of the sacred archive. The polished floor beneath her sandals reflected the candlelight in soft golden hues, but she hardly noticed. Her heart was beating a little faster than usual.

It wasn’t like her to come here. This was Athena’s domain — all parchment and philosophy, history and divine law. Aphrodite preferred warmth, laughter, poetry, and love. But ever since her conversation with Akhon, something had unsettled her. He had visited her smiling, calm, polite — and completely unaware of what he had told her just a few days earlier. The Akhon who spoke to her then had been serious, almost vulnerable, and spoke of truths, not flattery. He had looked at her not as a goddess of beauty, but as someone who might understand what was wrong.

And now, he acted like none of it had happened.

That wasn’t forgetfulness. That wasn’t nerves. That was wrong.

She passed through the outer sections of the library — stories rewritten for mortals and simplified myths of divine conquest — and made her way to the sealed wing. These weren’t the tales that poets sang. These were the truths. The original scrolls. The books that not even gods could rewrite. Records woven by the Fates themselves.

She raised her hand, reciting a phrase she hadn’t used in centuries. "For truth unbent, for memory unbroken." The sigil on the sealed door shimmered violet and dissolved with a hum, allowing her entry.

It was cold inside. Not physical cold — spiritual. The kind of chill that reminded even a goddess of her place in the weave of destiny.

She walked to the furthest shelf, where the Chronicles of the Pantheon were kept. Heavy leather-bound tomes, pulsing faintly with divine energy, sat on wide stone pedestals. She ran her fingers over the spine of one marked with a golden lightning bolt — Age of Ascent: Zeus and His Kin.

The moment she touched it, a soft pulse traveled up her fingers.

Aphrodite opened the tome with reverence.

She flipped through the pages swiftly but carefully. The stories were as she remembered — the fall of Kronos, the rise of Olympus, Athena’s birth from Zeus’s head, the forging of Poseidon’s trident, her own birth from the sea’s foam.

Then she found a Chapter with a heading that froze her breath.

Akhon, God of Power and Storms. Son of Zeus. Protector of Olympus.

There it was, neatly written. As if it had always been there. As if he had always belonged.

But something was off.

She leaned closer, reading aloud softly. "Born of divine thunder, forged in battle. Recognized by the Council as one of Olympus’s most noble heirs..."

Her eyes narrowed.

It was too perfect. Too linear. Too clean. The records of other gods were wild, inconsistent, full of conflict and tragedy. But Akhon’s entry read like a story someone wanted to believe. And then, as she turned the page again, she saw it.

A seam.

The divine script changed — subtly, but clearly. The earlier entries glowed with that strange, timeless ink the Fates used. But midway through Akhon’s Chapter, the glow dimmed. The writing style shifted. The voice of fate turned into something softer, more... hesitant.

She flipped back and forth, confirming it wasn’t her imagination.

The divine thread of fate had been interrupted.

And worse, she noticed what wasn’t there. There was no mention of Kaeron. No mention of the mortal realm Akhon once protected. No trace of the growing cult that had declared him a protector. No mention of the Hespérides, or the divine missions he had been granted. No mention of his conflict with Nemesis, of his divine trials, or even the name Chaos.

All of it — gone.

She stood in stunned silence for several moments. The Fates didn’t forget. Their writings were final. Unchangeable. Not even Zeus himself could rewrite their threads.

So how was this page here?

And why did it feel like the truth had been stitched over with a lie?

She placed the book back on its pedestal slowly, her mind racing. Either someone had found a way to rewrite the unchangeable, or — more terrifying still — the book wasn’t lying. The book had been replaced.

Her gaze drifted up to the high ceiling, where frescoes of the gods danced in heroic poses. She had once looked at them with pride. Now, they felt like masks. Painted illusions over a deeper, hidden truth.

And Akhon — whoever he truly was — was trapped in it.

She took a deep breath and exited the sealed chamber, letting the divine barrier close behind her. As she walked past the main hall, she noticed a few other gods mingling in the distance — Demeter, softly humming while tending a scroll garden; Hephaestus muttering to himself while scribbling blueprints. None of them noticed her expression. None of them questioned.

But Aphrodite felt something heavy and dark blooming in her chest.

There was a reason she had remembered that conversation with Akhon so clearly. A reason why the look in his eyes had unsettled her. He had trusted her. And now, he was acting as if that trust had never existed. As if it had been ripped from him.

Someone had taken his memories. Someone had buried the truth.

And maybe... they had done the same to others.

She looked down at her own reflection in the polished marble floor, then back at the long hallway that led to the sealed records.

No one tampered with the Fates.

Unless they were trying to outwit them.

She turned and walked toward the eastern wing. She needed to find Athena. If anyone could verify inconsistencies in Olympus’ recorded history, it was her.

But she wouldn’t tell her everything yet. Not until she was sure. Not until she had answers.

---

Aphrodite walked slowly between the columns of towering tomes, fingers brushing their spines. She had been here for hours, pacing, reading, and rereading — searching for something she couldn’t yet name, driven by a sharp edge of doubt that had lodged itself deep in her mind since her conversation with Akhon.

He hadn’t remembered anything — not the things he’d said, not the intensity with which he’d spoken to her. That in itself wasn’t entirely strange. But the way he looked at her, like she was just another goddess on Olympus, gnawed at her.

She turned another page. The text was old, enchanted to remain unaltered by time, magic, or divine whim. These were records that had existed since the beginning of the pantheon. Not even Chronos, were he still free, could bend these volumes to a lie.

And yet... something didn’t make sense.

She narrowed her eyes at the parchment before her. The entry she was reading — one of many detailing the great destinies of gods and mortals — spoke of a siege on a city called Ilion. Heroes from across Hellas, both divine and mortal, drawn into a war that would shake the earth and alter the fate of empires. A man called Achilles, a queen named Helen, and a cunning king from Ithaca named Odysseus. All names she had never heard before.

Her heartbeat quickened. She flipped pages, searching frantically. Aeneas, Hector, Paris, Agamemnon — all strangers to her.

And yet, the book treated them like legends already passed.

"No..." she whispered.

She was no stranger to prophecy, but this wasn’t framed as something to come. The text was written in the past tense — the war had happened, these people had lived. But Aphrodite knew with a clarity no spell could fog that none of these events had ever occurred. The Age of Heroes — as it was labeled here — had not yet come to pass. There was no Trojan War. Helen of Sparta did not exist. The city of Troy wasn’t even built yet.

She slammed the book shut, then moved to another, one bound in silver and gold leaf, a historical record of divine interactions with mortals. It too referenced strange names, places, events that simply didn’t belong to her current understanding of the world.

Something was wrong.

She checked the enchantment on the tomes again. No interference. No signs of tampering. The truth should have remained preserved. So why were these books recording future events as if they were past?

Unless...

Her breath caught.

Unless they had already happened — just not in this version of the world.

She staggered back a step. It was impossible. No one could rewrite time on such a scale. Not even the Fates would dare to—

Her eyes widened.

The Fates.

She remembered Akhon had been asking questions. Vague things. Unclear. Back then, she hadn’t paid attention, dismissing it as one of his cryptic divine moods. But now? With the fog in his eyes and her own mind pulsing with doubt?

What if he had found something? Or worse — what if someone had found him?

She sat down, her knees suddenly weak. Her hand trembled as she opened a third tome — a catalog of divine children. She scanned the list.

"Hercules... Perseus... Theseus..." she murmured.

All names she didn’t recognize. All sons of Zeus, born of mortals, already noted here.

But Hercules was only a faint rumor in the minds of the Fates. Perseus? Not even born yet. And Theseus... she had never once heard that name.

And yet, these books remembered them. Not as prophecy. As history.

She stood up so quickly the stool toppled behind her with a loud crack.

Aphrodite clutched the tome to her chest and turned in a rush, her golden sandals clapping against the marble floor. She ran her fingers through her hair, her heart pounding. This wasn’t just a minor temporal anomaly. This was an inversion of history. Whole generations of legendary heroes had been shifted in and out of existence.

And no one remembered.

No one but her.

She looked up toward the high ceiling of the library, as if the answer were written in the stars beyond. "What happened to the world?" she whispered.

No answer came.

But she already knew what her next step had to be. She needed to speak to the Fates — if they still existed. If they hadn’t been erased entirely.

And if they had...

Then whoever did this was more dangerous than anything Olympus had ever faced.