The Titan War God Returns

The Titans

The bar had emptied in chaos, leaving broken chairs and spilled drinks behind. The acrid scent of beer mixed with smoke clung to the air. Glass crunched underfoot as Athena pushed past the stage curtains with Iron close behind. Her pace never faltered. Her long coat swept the floor as if she knew every step by instinct.

“Keep up,” she said sharply, not once glancing back.

Iron adjusted his stride, tall frame barely fitting through the narrow backstage. The music equipment lay scattered—abandoned cables, dented speakers, overturned mic stands. But Athena ignored it all, weaving through with the certainty of someone who had walked this path countless times.

Instead of stopping at the end of the stage, she slipped between two towering stacks of amplifiers. Iron frowned when she pressed her hand against the wall behind them.

“What are you—”

Her fingers found a seam in the stone. She pulled, and the panel shifted soundlessly aside. A breath of colder air spilled out, like a grave opening. Without hesitation, she stepped in.

Iron followed. The gap closed behind them, cutting off the faint glow of the ruined bar. A narrow corridor stretched ahead, the stone pressing close on both sides. It slanted downward, swallowed in darkness. The deeper they descended, the heavier the air grew, thick with something ancient—older than dust, older than memory.

The only sound was their footsteps, steady and echoing. Iron reached out, brushing the wall. It thrummed faintly under his touch, as though it carried a pulse.

“How much farther?” he muttered.

“Far enough,” Athena replied, her voice calm but taut, like the string of a drawn bow.

At the end of the passage, she stopped before another wall. Her steps slowed, and for a moment she stood still, as if weighing the threshold ahead. Then Athena raised her palm and pressed it flat against the bricks. At first, nothing stirred. The stones were cold and unyielding. But then the surface rippled like water disturbed, red light flickering in the cracks like veins coming alive. The wall trembled and dissolved, melting away into smoke that curled and vanished into the air.

Without hesitation, Athena stepped through the opening, her figure swallowed by the glow.

Iron clenched his jaw, his eyes narrowing as he followed.

The change was immediate. The air itself shifted, denser, heavier, thick with a power he hadn’t felt in years. The silence of the mortal world faded behind him as though it had never existed. What replaced it was something older—something eternal.

He emerged into a chamber that felt removed from all existence.

The walls glowed faintly in shades of red and black, their surfaces etched with runes that pulsed like veins carrying fire. A circle of figures sat cloaked in shadows at the center, unmoving yet alive, their faces hidden, their forms shifting like silhouettes pulled from forgotten myths. Each breath in the room seemed to echo, swallowed by the vastness of the chamber.

The atmosphere carried the weight of ritual, of judgment, of something timeless. A low hum filled the air, steady and alive, as if the chamber itself drew breath and watched.

No ordinary human could ever reach this place. The threshold itself would have devoured them. Only those chosen, only those marked, could stand within these walls.

This was the seat of the most secret order on earth.

This was Titans.

The figures rose as Iron stepped forward. The hum deepened. Cloaked heads bowed low, hands pressed against their chests. Respect filled the chamber, and something heavier—fear.

At the center stood a single stone seat raised above the circle. Carved into its back were symbols no tongue had spoken for millennia. A throne, waiting.

Athena stopped at its base and lowered her head. “Lord Dante,” she whispered, her voice carrying across the chamber.

The title rippled through the circle, whispered by every cloaked figure.

“Lord Dante… Lord Dante…”

Iron’s gaze hardened. He had not heard that name in years. It carried weight, too much weight—both a burden and a curse. Slowly, he stepped forward. The whispers swelled, then fell silent as he lowered himself into the throne. The stone was cold against his back, but the chamber seemed to shift around him, as if the seat itself recognized its master.

The members of Titans bowed deeper. Their silence carried meaning: acknowledgment, reverence, and the hunger of disciples waiting for a leader who had abandoned them too long.

Iron rested his hands on the arms of the throne. His presence alone commanded the room. He had been gone for years, but no one had forgotten who he was.

Whispers stirred again.

“He has returned…”

“Lord Dante lives…”

“The balance can be restored…”

Iron ignored them. His mind had already slipped elsewhere, dragged backward into memory.

They all knew why he had vanished. The scars of the war between old gods and new had never faded. Betrayal still burned like fire beneath his skin.

Prometheus had started it.

Iron remembered his voice, sharp as a blade, echoing across the great council. “The old ones are unfit to rule. Your age is done. Step aside, or be crushed.”

Arrogant fool.

Iron had answered that insult with blood. He still remembered the strike—how his hand tore through immortal flesh, how Prometheus screamed as fire spilled from his veins. Iron killed him with his own hand. That single act lit the spark of war.

The old gods stood with him. The new ones rose in rebellion. The sky itself burned with their clash. Rivers turned black. Mountains fell. Mortals called it a storm, a calamity. They never knew the truth.

And in that chaos, Hera, his beloved fell.

Iron’s jaw tightened. The chamber faded before his eyes, replaced by a field of ash. Hera’s form lay in his arms. His wife. His teacher. His fiercest warrior. Her lifeless eyes stared upward, her lips parted as if to speak one last word.

He had closed those eyes with trembling fingers. His hands had been soaked in her blood.

He swore vengeance over her body. He promised the skies he would burn every traitor, crush every coward, break the rebellion until the earth itself screamed.

But when he rose to fight again, there was no one left. The battlefield had become a grave. His army scattered. His enemies gone. The corpses of gods, both old and new, lay strewn in silence.

That silence had broken him.

He vanished from the world.

Years passed. He wandered through shadows, carrying wounds that would never heal—of flesh, of soul, of heart. The world believed him dead. Perhaps he wished it so.

Until the day he crossed paths with Nesse.

The memory surfaced like a flicker of light in endless night. A mortal woman with fire in her eyes. She had looked at him without fear, without reverence. Just a woman standing before a broken god, daring him to live again.

It was her voice that pulled him back.

“Rise,” she had told him. “If you can still breathe, you can still fight.”

That voice still echoed now as he sat on the throne.

Athena broke the silence, stepping forward. Her hood fell back, revealing sharp eyes that glimmered with fierce loyalty. “The circle has waited long, Lord Dante. The world has shifted in your absence. We can hold no longer. Your guidance is needed.”

The cloaked figures stirred, murmuring in agreement.

“Yes… he must lead…”

“The time has come…”

Iron let the words wash over him. He saw in their faces the same hunger that had destroyed the old order. They wanted him to be their blade again, their shield, their storm.

But Hera’s eyes still haunted him. Prometheus’s blood still stained his hands.

He leaned back into the throne, his voice low, steady, and edged like thunder.

“I have missed this company. That said, let's get down to business... The destruction of Helheim."