The Hunger Returns

I. The Feast of the Immortals

They said Ambrosia was meant for the gods alone. I was a servant in the upper halls when I first saw it. The feast had stretched deep into the night. The air smelled of smoke and honey, and the torches threw long shadows against the columns. The gods sat in their places, bright and distant, their laughter echoing like thunder that never touched the ground.

They poured Ambrosia from bowls of beaten gold. It moved like sunlight caught in water. When the vessel passed near me, a drop spilled from its rim and fell to the marble floor. The glow began at once. Every sound in the hall stopped — no music, no breath, no movement. Even the flames bent toward the light as it crept through the stone. Ares reached to touch it, but before his hand met the surface, the light sank away. The crack in the marble was gone, as if time itself had retreated.

For the rest of the night, no one spoke of it. But the servants whispered that something in the hall had changed — that the air itself had begun to pulse, as though the stone had learned to breathe.

II. The Secret of Ambrosia

That was when I understood why they guarded it. Ambrosia wasn’t food. It was a fragment of creation, still alive and searching for what it had once shaped. The gods remained young because they fed on renewal itself. It was not pleasure that bound them to it, but fear — the knowledge that without it, even they would crumble.

I often wondered what would happen if a mortal ever tasted it. Would it heal, or would it consume? The gods spoke of purity, but I saw something else in their eyes each time the bowls were filled — something closer to addiction.

III. Silence Over Olympus

Years passed, and Olympus fell quiet. No torches, no song. The winds took the laughter, and ivy claimed the walls. When the last embers faded, I returned to the mountain. The air was thin and cold, but the ruins still breathed. Beneath the broken roof of the great hall, I found the shattered remains of the feast — bowls overturned, their gold dulled by ash. Yet one shard still gleamed faintly from under the dust.

The once-living mountain now felt hollow. But the air carried that same faint sweetness — a memory of warmth long gone. It drew me forward despite the ache in my chest.

IV. The Taste of Divinity

I brushed the dirt away and touched the fragment. Warmth spread through my hand. Against every warning that echoed in memory, I raised it to my lips. The taste was sharp and metallic, but it carried something I knew, though I couldn’t name it. My heart steadied. Breath filled my chest like the first fire after winter. The scars on my hands faded, and the ache in my bones went still.

For a moment, I was whole. Then came the pull — a hollow rising from somewhere deep, calling for more. The hunger that had built the gods had found a new vessel.

V. The Hunger Returns

The Ambrosia sleeps now, scattered and hidden, but it still remembers us. In every wound that closes, in every muscle rebuilt, in every life that refuses to yield.

The gods are gone, but their hunger remains. It waits beneath the stone, patient and watching, ready to rise when called by those who remember.