The sisters spread the parchment across their worktable, its edges curling like dried leaves. Moonlight filtered through the oiled linen window, casting a milky glow over the instructions—deceptively simple, yet humming with unspoken significance.
The list was ordinary to the point of suspicion.
Common herbs bundled with red twine. Seven iron nails forged during a waning moon. A vial of seawater collected at high tide. These they acquired within hours at Ophiomer's bustling agora, where merchants hawked everything from Babylonian spices to Thracian amber. The city's prosperity meant even obscure items could be found—if one knew which smoke-stained stall to approach, which gold-toothed trader to bribe.
But the pithos...
Pherodoro traced the diagram with a calloused finger. The specifications were exacting: a bulbous body exactly two handspans wide, neck tapered to precisely three finger-widths. The clay must be Attic red, unglazed, fired at a temperature that would make the kiln stones sing. Most peculiar was the lid—not the typical flat disk, but a hollow dome that echoed the curve of a woman's breast.
"Like Hestia's own storage jars," Pheropyr murmured. The comparison sent a shiver down her spine. They'd seen such shapes painted on ancient vases depicting the goddess's temples—vessels meant to hold more than grain or oil.
For two days they haunted the potter's quarter, watching artisans throw lump after lump of clay onto spinning wheels. Most creations cracked in the kiln, the clay splitting as if rejecting its purpose. Finally, an old craftsman with hands like knotted olive wood produced the perfect vessel. When he lifted it from the ashes, the fired clay rang with a clear, bell-like tone.
The cost made Pherodoro gasp—three silver drachmae, nearly a month's earnings.
Yet as the craftsman wrapped the pithos in lamb's wool, he refused payment. "That clay came from the sacred deposits near Eleusis," he said, eyes darting to the sisters' Hestia-marked shawls. "Consider it an offering."
They worked through moonlit nights, assembling components with ritual precision. The herbs were tied clockwise. The nails were driven into oakwood without hammer strikes—pressed in by palm pressure alone. All the while, the obsidian shards in their original jar pulsed with a slow, sleeping rhythm, like the heartbeat of some great beast.
The temple remained dark.
No glow pierced the mountain's silhouette at dusk. No phantom warmth lingered on the repaired path—now overgrown again, as if their ascent had never happened. Only the scroll's existence proved it wasn't some shared madness.
On the third evening, as they packed the final item. The sisters moved through their temple duties like shadows, their hands performing familiar rituals while their thoughts dwelled on the sacred pithos hidden in their quarters. The clay vessel sat enshrined where their household altar normally stood, its unglazed surface drinking in firelight like thirsty earth.
When Kleon arrived at dusk, his sharp eyes immediately noted their exhaustion and the sacred vessel's prominent placement. Without ceremony, he presented a priest's blessing: hearth-baked flatbread, grape-leaf wrapped cheese, and equinox wine.
"Owls have gone silent on the Ophiomer," he remarked casually. The sisters exchanged glances - in Athens, silent owls signaled divine displeasure.
Pheropyr's fingers tightened around a frankincense measure. "The east wind carries strange sounds these nights."
Kleon leaned forward, firelight carving his weathered face. "Delphi's sacred spring runs cloudy." He produced two terracotta tokens stamped with Hestia's serpent. "My runners will take your duties tomorrow. The temple will assume women's mysteries."
Pherodoro accepted the disks with trembling hands. "You risk much for us, Hiereus."
"I risk nothing," Kleon corrected, rising. "I invest in light against coming darkness." As he departed, an unseasonable wind rattled the shutters, carrying the scent of burning cedar.
The sisters turned to the pithos. In the flickering light, the vessel seemed to breathe.
"You came."
The woman's voice slithered through the temple's gloom as the sisters hesitated at the threshold. She stood cloaked in darkness as before, but now a bronze ship emblem gleamed at her collar—a tiny, incongruous spark against the void of her garments. The symbol caught the dim light strangely, its edges too sharp, as if it might cut anyone who dared touch it.
"Closer." She crooked a finger, the motion fluid yet unnaturally precise, like a marionette's string being tugged.
Pheropyr forced her legs to move, each step sending vibrations through the stone floor that traveled up her bones. Pherodoro followed so near that her sister could feel the tremors in her breath.
"May we know who you are?" Pheropyr hated how small her voice sounded in the vast chamber.
The woman settled onto a basalt bench, her movements economical as a blade being sheathed. In one hand, her gnarled oak staff; in the other, a vase so delicate its porcelain seemed to breathe—its surface painted with a scene of drowning sailors reaching for absent gods. With a click that echoed too loudly, she joined the two objects, the vase's neck slotting perfectly into the staff's hollowed apex.
"Not a demigod."Her lips barely moved. "Human, like you. My story is irrelevant. These acts are my choice alone."
As she spoke, the joined artifacts began to glow—first a pallid white, then deepening to the orange-red of molten iron. Heat radiated in visible waves, making the air above the staff shiver. Pheropyr's eyes watered; whether from the sudden warmth or the woman's next words, she couldn't tell.
"What I show you now are the boundaries that must never be crossed. The prohibitions that have culled civilizations."
Her eyes—*gods, those eyes*—locked onto them. The pupils weren't black but the deep violet of a fresh bruise, the irises shot through with silver filaments that pulsed in time with the staff's glow. They held the weight of drowned cities, of forests petrified mid-scream.
"Zeus shows no mercy."The staff's light flared with each syllable. *"Not when the Cyclops forged his thunderbolts in blood. Not when Atlantis sank beneath his wrath. Not even Hades, who gathers the pieces, can shield you from that storm."*
The sisters nodded, their throats too tight for speech. The vase's painted sailors seemed to twist in agony as the heat intensified.
She rose in one fluid motion, the staff now blazing like a captured sunset. The light painted grotesque shadows across the walls—figures with too many limbs, mouths stretched in silent wails.
"Remember." The word seared itself into their minds.
The temple trembled.
The stone slab beneath their feet suddenly began to rotate. Pheropyr instinctively clutched the clay jar to her chest as the circular platform they stood on started descending with a metallic groan. Chains thicker than a man's arm rattled in the darkness, accompanied by the grinding of ancient mechanisms - like some primordial beast stirring from slumber.
When the vibrations ceased, they found themselves in a subterranean sanctuary undocumented in any mortal text. The air carried the mingled scents of sea salt and sulfur, while bioluminescent minerals embedded in the walls cast an eerie blue glow. The mysterious woman tapped her staff against the ground, its echo reverberating unnaturally through the cavernous space.
"Cyclops craftsmanship, taught by Arges himself." She ran fingers along a pillar carved with wave patterns that suddenly began weeping actual seawater. Droplets traced intricate channels in the stone before pooling into luminous rivulets on the floor. "They never completed the murals."
At her words, the wall before them split open to reveal a hidden passage. The sisters gasped at the flanking columns - each appeared to be a crashing wave frozen in time, their translucent cores preserving schools of silver fish in eternal motion. Such artistry surpassed human capability.
"The only way to understand, is to enter the titan realm." The woman turned abruptly, her black robes swirling without wind. Her pupils had contracted into vertical slits that caught the dim light like a cat's. "The dangers there make our mortal world seem like a nursery tale." She held up three fingers. "Remember: never reveal your mortal origin, never speak any Olympian's name, claim only Hestia as your patron. The reasons will become clear... if you survive long enough."
Pherodoro's fingers dug into the clay of her jar as they nodded, swallowing their questions.
The passage ended at an enormous rectangular table hewn from marble, its surface etched with silver constellations. The woman positioned their jars into depressions that fit perfectly, as if made for this purpose.
When all preparations were complete, she spoke in a voice that resonated with ancient power: "Though passage from the Mortal Realm to the Titan Realm could be summoned directly, we must avoid alerting certain... presences. Therefore, another shall guide you - one who moves unseen between worlds. Show this being the respect you would show the earth itself when it trembles, for its patience is not without limits."