In KAOS, the Meander is a liquid consumed by the gods, but its origins are more sinister than divine.
The gods were once mortals, but by drinking the Meander, they can live forever. The Meander is produced on Mount Olympus, where Zeus resides.
Zeus has complete control over its distribution. When he grows distrustful of his family, he decides to stop sharing the Meander freely and begins rationing it.
In Zeus’ palace, there is a divine structure also named the Meander. As long as the liquid within it flows, Zeus’s reign continues.
The origins of the Meander
Zeus and his siblings hated their tyrannical father, who tormented them. After years of enduring this tyranny, Zeus attacked his father.
The attack was so violent and filled with rage that when his father died, Zeus absorbed his soul. This gave Zeus immense power, leaving him intoxicated.
Zeus was determined to understand how he was able to absorb his father’s soul. When he eventually figured it out, he began taking lives to absorb more souls.
Killing required violence, which Zeus eventually grew tired of, so he tasked Hades with inventing the Frame to harvest human souls.
Human souls go to the Underworld after death, and humans are told that passing through the Frame would renew their souls, allowing them to be reborn on Earth.
However, in reality, the Frame transports human souls to the Nothing, where they are harvested and liquefied into the Meander for the gods to consume.
The production of the Meander was industrialized and sanitized, enabling all the gods, not just Zeus, to absorb human souls for power and immortality.
The end of harvesting
Humans worship, please, and fear the gods in the hope of being renewed after death and having a better life upon rebirth.
The gods perpetuate these lies and myths because if humans discover that there is no renewal or rebirth, the gods will lose their followers.
As Riddy, Caeneus, and Ari begin to fulfill their respective roles, the lies of the gods start to unravel, posing a threat to Zeus’s reign and immortality.
Ari, the new ruler of Krete, loses faith in the gods after her family suffers due to her father’s blind obedience to them.
Meanwhile, Riddy and Caeneus uncover the truth about renewal and rebirth, leading to Riddy returning to Earth to join forces with Ari and expose all the lies.
Caeneus, on the other hand, stays behind and finds out that he has the power to renew the souls harvested in the Nothing for the gods’ consumption.
As a result, the liquid in the divine structure stops flowing, signaling the end of Zeus’s reign, and Zeus bleeds like mortals, his immortality stripped away.
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