"Is this what you called the 'Sun'?"
At the top of Olympus, behind the palace of the Divine King, amidst the ruins, Apollo gazed at the treasures that hovered in mid-air.
Without a doubt, any treasure that could survive even a casual attack from Typhon was no ordinary object. Yet, while the three orbs of light before him indeed exuded the aura of the Sun, Apollo hesitated to approach.
"Are you sure they can be used? To me, they seem just as uncontrollable as the power of Typhon."
Apollo had encountered similar powers before but did not equate these with the divine fragments scattered across the land.
He had not yet been born when the ancient God of Sun was dismembered; Apollo had considered those divine fragments akin to Divine Blood. However, the entities before him undoubtedly radiated an aura belonging to a True God.
It was some kind of qualitative change, yet upon them, Apollo also sensed vibrations similar to a curse.
"Nothing is unusable, Apollo. Even Typhon's power can be controlled, let alone that I do not intend for you to contain it," Atropos said with a smile, prodding the ground with her wooden staff. Strictly speaking, the shattered sceptres before them were also a source of disturbance in fate, and using them could undoubtedly mitigate this chaos.
"One third of the day, they each symbolize the [Morning Sun], the [Noonday Sun], and the [Evening Sun], I do not know how they came to be, but they undoubtedly originated from a Titan Deity older than Helios, and they are closer to the essence of that supreme celestial body," Atropos explained.
"If you drive them with the Chariot of the Sun, using this Divine Artifact as a medium to wield them, you can become the new Sun God—at least, the one that mortals believe in."
Looking at the three golden orbs before him, flickering and flowing like fire, Apollo hesitated.
Until today, Apollo hadn't cared much about faith, but as his own Origin had been inexplicably wounded, this external force he once disregarded suddenly became important.
"Even with a Divine Artifact to navigate, it won't be easy," he mused.
After a moment of contemplation, Apollo finally made his decision. But he still wanted to hear what the craftsman who claimed to tailor fate had to say.
"Then you'll have to figure out a way on your own, or rather—the Divine King should find a way for you."
Atropos' expression remained unchanged as she saw Apollo's indecision, and she simply smiled in response.
Guided by fate, Atropos knew that if these three sceptre fragments from the ancient Sun God were to form a true Sun, the person using them could potentially become entangled with the Titan Deity's destiny.
And with the passage of time and the propulsion of faith, there might even occur some changes that Atropos herself could not foresee. Yet, the Fates did not warn Apollo because the mortal realm indeed needed the Sun, and they had no better option.
'Fortunate that all this is a matter for a distant future...' Atropos sighed inwardly, aware that her action could indeed compensate for the distortion in fate but was nothing more than a short-term solution.
But that was all she could do—after all, there are generally three ways to resolve debts:
Continually pay off old debts with new ones, as long as one can still borrow, there will be no problem; or let someone else pay the debt for her, which is also a way. And the last method, naturally, is to solve not the debt but the individual to whom the debt is owed.
For Atropos, the last option was clearly impossible, so her choices were limited to the first two.
As a point of light rose from Mount Olympus, the land that had darkened due to the absence of sunlight finally welcomed the light once again.
The rising sun slowly ascended from the pillar in the East, as if dispelling the calamity brought by Typhon's disaster.
The light climbed higher and higher and finally halted near the original place of the Zodiacal Star Domain. It dared not ascend any further and chose instead to traverse sideways. Just as it did with every sunrise and sunset before, the sun once again rotated across the mortal realm.
From daytime to nighttime, from nighttime to daytime. When one cycle completed, the laws appeared to acknowledge the existence of this new 'sun.' After all, in essence, it was indeed one and the same with the one before.
Returning to Mount Olympus, Zeus felt as if he was in a different era.
In other corners of the Mount of the Gods, the deities who had previously departed were also returning one after another.
"Zephyrus, how goes the tally?" Zeus asked lightly as he stood before the collapsed great hall.
"Not great, my lord. Aside from a few who were sealed, suppressed, or captured, most either fled or are still rampaging across the land—those with reason are manageable, but the rest seem to have abilities that are almost undying," Zephyrus, the God of West Wind, reported respectfully, standing a step behind.
With the sun's ascendancy lasting a week, the disorder in laws brought about by Typhon's descent and the collision between fate and order finally drew to an end.
The power that had once limited the deities rose again from the land, divine powers unavailable for use—and this time, it seemed to be even stronger.
Perhaps after several disasters, the laws of the mortal realm had triggered a more stringent self-defense mechanism. At this moment, every sentient divine force was suppressed by laws that were several magnitudes stronger than before.