|Prologue: He Who Looks Down.|

You are Kampe.

You smell him even before he steps onto the first cliff. The air smells of ozone and ambition. This isn't Kronos. Kronos smelled of iron and fear. This one is fresh, sharp, like a shard of lightning.

You lie coiled around Tartarus's central stalagmite, your body a mixture of armored scales and human muscle, your arms ending in pincers capable of crushing granite, and long tentacles that can sense vibrations from a mile away hanging from your shoulders. Your eyes—yellow, with vertical pupils—don't blink. They never blink.

You hear his steps. You hear his heart.

He's descending the slippery slope. He's not afraid. Fool. Or hero. In Tartarus, they're the same thing.

You let him come within a hundred cubits. Then you exhale—and your voice is like the grinding of tectonic plates:

— Stop. From now on, it's only for the dead, or for the immortals who want to become so.

He stops. The lightning in his palm flares, but doesn't go out—he has it under control. Already better than Kronos.

"I am Zeus," he says, his voice echoing across the abyss. "Your master has fallen. I have come to free the Titans. You cannot stop me."

You slowly raise your head. Your torso is broad, riddled with scars that never healed because Tartarus doesn't allow them to. You smile. Your mouth is lined with needles.

“Free them?” You slowly slide down the stalagmite, your tail (long, muscular, with spikes at the end) wrapping around the stone. “Dear boy. Do you think these chains are made of iron? No. They are made of hope. I don’t guard their bodies. I guard their will. They don’t want to come out anymore. And you want to drag them out—out into the world where the sun burns, where the wind smells of life. They will fall apart in a second.

You take a step forward. Your height reaches the cave ceiling. You loom over Zeus, your shadow absorbing his light.

— But... I'm bored. For millennia, I've only heard moans and gnashing of teeth. You're the first entertainment I've had in five hundred years. So I'll give you a chance. Talk to me. Convince me. Or... fight.