After Zagreus returned to his body he woke up to discover he was covered in a soft fabric in a room next to another baby who was sleeping peacefully next to him.
"Well I guess I'm not the only one that was born yesterday"
He was—strangely—excited.
To start with, his main attribute was his perseverance against a challenge... which was not truly unique, but a start is a start.
Gods were born with immortality. Even death was temporary for them. Cast into the River Styx, reform after some time, return as if nothing had happened. Unless they were forgotten entirely… though that was only a theory Mother Nyx had once mentioned in passing.
'I guess I'm a simple copy from the others. No special power over the clouds or the seas, or even the underworld at all'
What really made him special?
...
'Well, this is depressing'
He turned his head toward the infant beside him—his younger brother.
He hadn't truly processed it until now, but…
He had a family again.
A real one this time. One he could grow with. Protect.
He had always wanted a younger sibling.
'I wonder if I can still come back after dying…'
Time to find out.
Without hesitation, Zagreus rolled himself over the side of the crib.
The fall was short.
The pain was not.
His vision vanished instantly upon impact, followed by a wet warmth spreading across his face. Somewhere far away, something cracked. Then everything went quiet as blood pooled beneath his ruined body.
For a moment—
Nothing.
Then the blood shifted.
It rose, trembling, before curling inward like unseen arms wrapping him in an embrace. The pool deepened, swallowing him whole.
And just as quickly—
It released him.
Zagreus lay once more beside the fading stain, gasping as air rushed back into newly formed lungs. His face was intact. His sight restored. Not a single mark remained.
'That did _not_ need to hurt that much.'
He breathed in again, experimentally.
Zagreus breath again now regenerated with the face intact, as if nothing had happened to begin with.
'Well that's a beginning'
His connection to the Underworld remained.
Chaos had been right—his soul was still divine.
His body, however…
'What does this world even have to offer me? Just a mortal life…'
But there had to be a reason Chaos had sent him here.
'What does this world even have to offer to me. It's just a life between mortals. But there must be a reason of why Chaos chose this place...'
He started to organize his ideas
1. Find a way to become a god by his own.
2. Why Chaos chose this realm to train?
3. Protect his new family.
'Yeah that should be it'
For now he would sleep and hope to find an answer soon enough.
------------------
Two weeks later.
'Where is my answer'
Two weeks had passed since he came to this world and nothing had given him a clue of why Chaos chose this world for him.
Worse yet, he couldn't understand a single word anyone said. He was picking up the dialect quickly, of course, but not nearly fast enough to learn anything useful.
The world itself, though…
That was different.
Fresh air. Warm sunlight. The steady rhythm of night and day.
Ah—this was the mortal life he had always dreamed of.
Worth killing a father for.
Best of all, the Styx wasn't calling him back every fifteen minutes, nor did he feel the agonizing pull of death dragging him toward the Underworld.
But still—
No answers.
Aside from that, Zagreus hadn't realized mortal babies could be so… active at night.
His brother—Arthur—had developed a routine.
Every night, without fail, the crib would creak softly as Arthur arranged a pillow beneath the railing to soften the fall. Then, with surprising precision for someone who had existed for barely more than a week, he would tumble down and make his silent escape toward the library to read.
He would be caught after an hour most often.
It was quite surprising to see. As far as he new, when he was a baby the most he did was play with Cerberus and bother Mother Nyx with questions about the underworld and stuff.
He started taking sword lessons with Aquilles just when he was two, but his baby brother was just a week old and reading like no tomorrow. Mortal babies were quite surprising.
'I guess is because they have shorter life's that they need to learn more faster?'
Yeah, that must be it.
While I was lost in thought, cradled in my mother's arms, Arthur was being twirled around playfully—until, by accident, Father's grip slipped, and Arthur's foot slammed against the edge of the door.
"Uh-oh… someone's in _big_ trouble," I thought, watching as Mom gently set me aside. Her expression was sharp, the same look Mother Nyx used to give me back when I swapped Skelly's skeletal crane with Dusa. Just younger me doing as I please. *Good old days*.
But to my surprise, when Arthur started crying, the hand of mother started to shine green, and the scratch started to heal instantly.
"There! All better!" The older woman said while holding Arthur high in her arms.
'... What in the Hades just happened.'
I finally found the answer of why Chaos sent me here. The magic that mother showed just now. The final clue of the puzzle. Honestly, it made way more sense than anything else I'd been thinking. Maybe Chaos just wanted me to… figure things out for myself. Typical Chaos. Classic.
Well, with that figured out. I can start learning this new... magic. It didn't look anything of what I knew about magic, which to be honest with myself. It was pretty much non-existence. Mother Nyx tried to show me once how to conjure spells, but I preferred the lessons given by Achilles.
I regret it.
Not that learning weaponry and hand to hand combat was a mistake. But I should have learned beyond that. Just like Chaos wants me to do just now.
Time to mend my mistake.
'You are still here!? I missed you narrator' Zagreus started to laugh while the rest of the people in the room looked at him.
"How cute. You like moms magic Rey?" Alice said while holding Zagreus in her arms.
'Is that my new name? Rey? Really? Is like they didn't have any new ideas after Arthur and came with whatever was closest to the word rey-diculous.
He was kind of pissed about his new name.
Two years passed
Good news: his name was not, in fact, _Rey_. It was **Rhaegar**.
…Which wasn't really better, but at least it sounded intentional.
The _other_ good news was that after another two years, he had finally learned the full dialect of this new world. It took extra lessons at night—reviewing vocabulary in his head and practicing how to write by tracing letters into the floor with blood from his fingers when no one was looking.
He had never felt so proud.
Well—aside from the first time he killed Father.
Now, magic—that was… complicated.
For the past week, he had been trying to concentrate on his surroundings. To feel something—anything—unnatural in the air. Some kind of energy. Some trace of whatever passed for sorcery here.
Nothing.
Until one of his walks with Mother and Arthur.
They had passed by a dead dog in the street.
Ignoring the immediate wave of sadness—courtesy of certain three-headed memories—it felt like the body was… calling to him. Not with sound, but with something else. Something faint that seeped out from it and into the air around him.
Energy.
It reminded him of the Underworld. Of the quiet pull beneath everything.
At first, he thought it was a soul. Probably about to be picked up by Thanatos.
But the energy didn't leave.
It stayed there. Immobile.
So he just… ate it.
Or maybe absorbed it.
He wasn't entirely sure.
The sensation was like eating without actually eating—like pulling something in through a mouth he didn't have. He reached out with his hand on instinct, and the energy followed. It came apart from the body easily, drifting toward him before sinking in as though it had always belonged there.
'Perhaps is because I'm a Chthonic God?'
Irrelevant for the moment.
He would work on this energy later that night.
Author's Note:
Yo just some clarifications before I continue the story.
Since mana is the energy of the 'living' I though that Zagreus would not be able to manipulate it, since he is a Chthonic God, thus kind of dead in a sense. So mana would just reject him.
Now Aether, that's another story. Energy of the dead, remember? Cool stuff.
I plan to do some cool dynamic between Arthur and Zagreus.
Now the elephant in the room. Rhaegar, ehhh well I didn't have any ideas. So that's 1, and I didn't want to keep Zagreus, because who would ever call their son Zagreus in medieval times. That's a Greek name.
I don't want to give out too many spoilers. Special about Zagreus future powers. Or romantic interest (No Harem).
Some may argue that - as a Greek god- Zagreus would have at least 2 romantic interests, like in the game. Although I thought about it, I disagree with the idea. Call it personal preference. So one will be it. I'll take in consideration who (if anyone leaves a comment).