The days passed, and the child remained calm, waiting under the shadow of a tree.
Because of the ocean sky, the light cast by his mother's sun was fragmented, and the shadow didn't stay still. He would have to reposition himself every now and then, searching for the darkness.
Each day, he took his time inspecting the view. And each morning, he would feel awed at how sincere and creative he had been a long time ago, too long for him to remember where this nostalgic feeling nagging in his chest had come from each time he looked at the sky for too long.
He didn't know what had caused his hands to move and turn the world around, but to him, who woke up every day anew and had to spend a long time pondering in the shadows before remembering what he was supposed to do, this whole setting was…
'Annoying.'
The only way for him to avoid his mother's pestering gaze was in the darkness. And this place was specifically designed not to have any.
Irritation made him resent the architect he had once been. His frustration led him to believe that the whole layout had been planned as if he didn't want his future self to remember or as if the previous him had been serious about surrendering his powers to Aphrodite.
'Granted, my past self probably didn't know he would end up confined here, but…'
Truly, why did an old vestige of his own self keep inconveniencing his plans over and over again? Had he not suffered enough because of the actions of that madman?
Forget overthrowing Zeus for whatever incoherent reason he had chosen to do so.
A perpetually sun-bathed mountain residence with an ocean for a sky?
'Was he nuts?'
To him, that person and his current, childish self were not related at all. Except for probably how much they both equally liked and hated this view, according to the throbbing pain in his chest.
He quickly averted his eyes from the sky, a headache starting to form in his left temple.
'Did I use to be a morning person?'
He could hardly imagine that to be the case. The boy liked darkness too much for that to be his reality. Not only because it was the only place Aphrodite's powers couldn't reach, but also because he always woke up nourished by good dreams, despite his forgetfulness as to what they had been. And what his whole life had been, for that matter.
Thankfully, he had finally found something that he could use to his advantage and would help him replenish his strength faster than waiting in the shadows for a thousand years had.
"You… want my System?" Is what a very flustered Zephyr had said the moment they met for the first time in over a thousand years.
He had been momentarily confused as well, not knowing what the god of wind meant. But he quickly sensed what it was as his guest unveiled the bluish, cold, and neutral energy he had sensed once before.
'Is that the name mortals had given the voice of god?'
"System," he quietly muttered to himself, reminiscing about the encounter as he toyed with the steam of a rose.
The word left a bitter taste in his mouth, just like anything related to the Tower always did.
The child absentmindedly wondered how much the lower floors would've changed. The last time he wandered outside of his current residence, there had only been around three hundred floors or so. He did want to see what the newer floors had to offer, and just how many worlds had been welcomed into the Tower.
But he would not do anything to satisfy his curiosity.
He merely wanted to know if the lower floors would have what he was looking for, and that was it. Anything else would be a truly incoherent decision on his part.
To him, simply looking at that half-transparent square in front of his mother had been a kick to the gut. It would be the same kind of feeling a painter realizing his paintings were modified without his consent would have.
The Voice of God was a skill personal to each god, akin to a limb. Or at least that is what it had been, not whatever mechanical, impersonal artifact the other gods were using.
He had tested it twice already. Once, when he was using Aphrodite's screen on an impulse, and the second time when he asked Zephyr for his. The last time, he had watched, secretly overcome with horror at the way the other man had simply gifted him one.
No ritual, blood, or animals had been sacrificed in the process.
And when he asked how such a thing could be possible, Zephyr had merely shrugged, like that was just the way things were and he had to accept it.
Zephyr had laughed at his reaction.
"You're acting like an old man who just discovered a cellphone." He said.
Although the child didn't know what a cellphone was, he knew the other man was making fun of him. But if that device and this "system" were any similar, he did not find it insulting. Rather, he would prefer to be called an old man.
The dissonance could only mean one thing: whatever this power was, it wasn't theirs. And yet, even the higher gods like Aphrodite used borrowed power as if they weren't submitting their greatest vulnerability to an enemy.
'Fools.'
He wondered how many of them paraded around using such a foreign power, silently nurturing it more and more without anyone noticing. And how much stronger the Tower had become in his absence, devouring gods' and men's powers greedily, never satisfied and not stopping for many decades.
He hadn't dared to use it too much, only when he was certain that the screen would not take much power from him and that there was no risk of getting caught when using it.
And he had decided to test it: Using the borrowed screen, the child had created a barrier above his own room and the chamber where Zephyr currently waited.
Zephyr's presence and Aphrodite's normal behavior were the answer to his experiment: The fact that the goddess had not reacted to another god contacting him and even staying at his abode only proved him right: either Aphrodite's power could not reach Zephyr's residence or the "System" acted as a blocker as much as if it functioned as a screen.
He still had to wait and see before he could be certain.
However, an unexpected variable he had not considered showed up.
The child finally broke the end of the stem he had been playing with, and threw each half of the rose in opposite directions as he stood up and walked towards the castle, his meditation finally coming to an end.
The more he remembered, the longer he could maintain his real form. Thus, as the metaphorical night approached in Aphrodite's realm, he became wider awake, and both his mind and body regressed to those of an adult.
While the figure that ran along the grass under the waves was a child, the one who entered the palace was that of a man. He lowered his head to get through one of the few entrances that had not been adjusted to his normal height and walked along the corridors, all the way to the farthest and tallest tower.
Such had been the punishment cast on him by Zeus himself.
And while waking up each morning as a child with no memories was especially annoying, his mind was occupied with a different matter that threatened his advances.
'I can't restrain myself.'
The System was an important part of the new plan he was concocting. But it would all be for naught if he couldn't use it to its full advantage because his judgment was clouded.
First, he had to make sure that what had happened a couple of days ago wouldn't repeat itself.
Two weeks ago, he had killed a human.
Even if it had happened without Aphrodite noticing, his mother could merely punish his physical self, fearing her rage for such a small, isolated act was meaningless.
What he felt towards his punisher was not fear; it was rage.
Although condemned and ostracized by his fellows, he was still a god nonetheless. But the Tower had noticed his actions all the way to the first floor.
And he had been punished accordingly.
Or at least he thought that was the explanation for his recent behavior.
How else could he explain his uneasiness whenever he remembered the look on the white-haired man when he saved him?
How was it that he couldn't control his hands whenever they looked at the screen, only to make sure he was alright?
He refused to believe that the only reason his subconscious mind would risk losing everything he had worked for over a thousand years was merely that he wanted to wish a human good night.
"Are you there?"
But nonetheless, as soon as he reached his chamber and used the System unknowingly, the screen immediately defaulted to the white-haired man's room.
And he could clearly hear the human call for him.
Without even knowing how or why, he immediately scattered some of his carefully restored energy towards the screen.
'Ah, I must be nuts.'
He was almost certain that his child self would curse him tomorrow morning while pulling his hair, and this time he had to agree with him.
However, as soon as he saw the guy's eyes close as he prepared to go to sleep and his lips part to give the air a bright, tender smile, he felt all of the flexed muscles in his body relax.
"Good night," the human said.
-Sighhhhh.
He didn't even know when he had started holding his breath.
This time, he made sure not to use any of his power, no matter how much his body wanted to act without his permission.
"Good night," he replied to no one, despite himself.