Chapter 7 – The Strongman’s Tale

Chapter 7 – The Strongman’s Tale The gospel according to Zeus > They call him Samson. They called him Hercules before I corrected the record. Same hands. Same sinew forged in the furnace of my storms. I wrapped his bones in lightning, filled his veins with the pulse of my own heart, and set him loose among the faithless. You think strength comes from the flesh? No — it comes from my favor. My whisper in his blood when he tears down a city’s gates, my shadow in his eyes when he strikes the unworthy. They tell tales of plagues, of rivers running red and skies blotted black — they forget who commands the scourge. When I send locusts, they devour with purpose. When I loose pestilence, it carries my signature, a thunderclap in the marrow of the dying. But mortals… they are fickle. The strongman loved, and in that love grew careless. A name whispered on his chest became the blade at his throat. She took the secret I placed in his hair, the key to the vault of his might, and sold it to my enemies. Still… even bound, even blinded, my storm does not leave its vessel without one last strike. He fell with the pillars — and the pillars fell with me. Remember this: gods do not lose. They write endings.