The sword dissolved into me like smoke, folding into the pit of my divinity until there was nothing left in my hands but cold air. Shadows licked at my skin in restless tendrils, eager for movement. I didn't fight them.
I stepped forward into them.
The world inverted—light swallowing dark, sound imploding into silence—and then the shadows spat me out again.
I stood on the edge of a cliff in Greece.
Or what was left of it.
The wind carried the smell of ash and iron, thick enough to taste. Below me, the once-green valleys were a sprawl of fire and ruin, rivers running red with something that wasn't water. Entire stretches of farmland had been carved into smoking craters. Forests were reduced to blackened skeletons of trees, their branches clawing at a sky the color of bruised steel.
And moving in the wreckage… things.
At first I thought they were the usual suspects—hydras, chimeras, the usual beastly vermin that crawl out when gods stop watching. But no. These things were new. Their shapes were wrong. Too many limbs, too many eyes, jaws bending in directions, jaws were never meant to bend. Some were the size of wolves, others the size of city walls, their hides glistening with something like oil that shimmered with sickly rainbows in the dying light.
Typhon's handiwork.
My gut twisted.
He'd bred them well.
I scanned the land with my senses, reaching out for the familiar hum of my brothers and sisters. Nothing. Not even a flicker of Zeus' relentless thunder or Poseidon's deep oceanic pulse. The air was empty of them, as if Olympus itself had swallowed their light.
I told myself they could still be alive, that they were hidden somewhere, conserving their power for a strike. But even I didn't believe that. Not entirely.
In the distance, Mount Olympus rose like a knife driven into the earth. A dark storm coiled around its peak, spiraling in endless circles. Lightning the color of black blood flashed inside it, lighting the silhouette of the mountain in stuttering bursts.
That storm wasn't natural. It was a throne.
I could feel him there.
Typhon.
Sitting at the heart of it all, drawing in the chaos like a spider at the center of its web. Not charging down the mountain. Not rampaging through the cities. Just… waiting.
And why wouldn't he? He'd already won, or so he thought.
"Guess you've been busy while I was gone," I muttered to the wind. My voice sounded strange in the silence, too loud, like speaking in a tomb.
Something moved in the shadows at the base of the cliff. I thought at first it was a trick of my vision, but then it stepped into the open—lean, spined, with eyes like molten gold and a mouth too wide for its head. It sniffed the air, then made a sound halfway between a hiss and a laugh.
"Not your land to guard," I said.
It crouched low, muscles bunching, tail lashing.
I smiled, humorless. "Fine. Let's see what your creator taught you."
The thing lunged, fast enough to blur. I let the shadows grab me and reappear behind it, one hand snapping out to grab its throat. Its skin burned cold under my fingers, like holding a piece of frozen metal. It clawed at my arm, raking deep furrows, but the wounds sealed as quickly as they came.
I tightened my grip, shadows coiling around my arm and up its neck. The creature thrashed, limbs bending wrong, but I didn't stop until the light went out of its molten eyes and its body hung limp.
When I dropped it, the thing dissolved into a puddle of black sludge that hissed as it soaked into the dirt.
Even in death, Typhon's creations tainted the land.
The wind shifted, carrying a sound up the cliff—a low, deep rumble, like distant laughter. I looked back toward Olympus.
No one else would have heard it. But I did.
It wasn't a storm. It wasn't the earth. It was him.
I could feel his attention on me now, stretching across the land like an invisible thread.
"Yeah," I said under my breath. "I see you too."
I didn't move toward the mountain. Not yet. I let the shadows curl at my feet, restless but waiting for my word. Tartarus had told me not to rush in. That mastery wasn't about speed, but certainty.
But every instinct I had screamed to go now, to rip that storm apart and drag Typhon off his stolen throne.
I forced myself to look away from Olympus and take in the devastation again. There were still people here—somewhere under all that fire and ruin. There were monsters roaming free.
Typhon could wait a little longer.
Because when I went to him, it would be the last time.
🙛🙚🙛🙚🙛🙚⯡🙘🙙🙘🙙🙘🙙
The shadows welcomed me back like old friends—cool, silent, endless—and for a heartbeat, I almost convinced myself that I'd step out into the Underworld I remembered.
I was wrong.
The instant my boots touched the black soil, my chest tightened.
The Underworld… was gone.
Not gone in the sense of absence. Gone in the sense of desecration. The dark plains were cratered, split open like shattered glass. Rivers of souls had been scattered, their flow broken into stagnant pools where whispers rose like steam. Towers of obsidian had been toppled. Bridges lay in pieces. The great gates? Nothing but twisted iron, still sparking faintly from whatever force had ripped them apart.
And the silence…
The Underworld was never truly silent. There were always the murmurs of the dead, the low roar of the Styx in the distance, the heartbeat of my realm thrumming in the stone beneath my feet. Now there was only the brittle rasp of wind through rubble.
I walked. Slowly.
The further I went, the worse it became. Black sand was mixed with white dust—bone, I realized. Not just mortal bone, either. Some of these fragments belonged to things far older.
By the time I reached my castle, I almost wished I hadn't come.
The once-mighty walls were crumpled like wet parchment. The grand obsidian gates were nowhere to be seen. Statues lay toppled, faces shattered, their gazes blind.
And the throne room—my throne room—was open to the sky.
Half the roof was gone. Sunlight, pale and anemic from filtering through the Underworld's permanent gloom, spilled across the debris. My throne itself was still there, somehow, but it sat in the middle of a jagged island of rubble, surrounded by broken pillars. The sight was absurd. A lone seat for a king who had no kingdom left.
I stepped over the wreckage and lowered myself into what was left of my throne.The once-smooth stone was fractured beneath me, long cracks spiderwebbing out from the base like the veins of a dying heart. It groaned faintly under my weight but, stubborn as I was, it held.
The silence was heavier than any crown I'd ever worn. No voices of my shades whispering in the halls. No steady, comforting pulse of the realm's lifeblood flowing beneath my feet. The Underworld was… hollow. Dead.
I don't know how long I stayed there—minutes, hours. Time had always been a vague thing for me, but here, now, it felt frozen. My eyes roamed the shattered columns, the blackened scorch marks along the floor, the jagged gap in the vaulted ceiling where the sky of the living bled in a sickly gray light. Every broken stone felt like a bone from my own body.
That was when she appeared.
A flare of blue-white light sparked at the far end of the ruined hall, bright enough to throw the debris into sharp relief. The air shifted with it—sharp, electric, like the pressure drop before a storm breaks. The flare folded in on itself, twisting into a ripple of magic, and Hecate stepped through.
She was clad in full battle armor, each piece fitted to her like it had grown from her skin. Her helm was tucked under one arm, and her black hair spilled over her shoulders in loose waves, catching the silver light from the runes engraved in her pauldrons. The armor itself was wrought from polymythril steel—so rare most smiths wouldn't even dare speak its name—etched with warding runes that pulsed faintly as if breathing. Across her back was strapped a spear longer than she was tall, its blade wrapped in bands of dark leather to keep its magic banked. She moved with the sure, grounded ease of someone who had been wearing it for days, maybe weeks, never letting herself rest.
"My lord," she said—then stopped mid-step.
Her gaze ran over me, head to toe, and something unreadable flickered in her eyes. She tilted her head, narrowing them in appraisal. "You…" She let the word hang there for a moment before finishing, "You look… different."
I raised an eyebrow. "Different?"
"Good difference," she said at last, her tone balanced somewhere between surprised and grudgingly impressed. "Stronger. Taller. Your presence… It's heavier. I'd almost say you're a different person."
A short, humorless laugh escaped me. "Tartarus has that effect."
Her faint smile faded, her attention drifting to the ruin around us. She took it all in—the fractured walls, the overturned braziers, the black stains burned deep into the marble. "You've seen what's left, then."
I nodded slowly. "What happened?"
Her jaw tightened. "Typhon happened."
The name alone brought a taste of iron to my mouth.
She stepped closer, her boots crunching over rubble, the sound echoing in the vast emptiness of the hall. "He's been busy. Not content with the monsters already prowling the world, he bred and unleashed over a hundred new races of beasts. Things I'd never seen before—and I have seen almost everything. They are… wrong. Not just in form, but in essence. Twisted."
Her voice dipped lower, edged with something colder than anger. "He led his first wave here, to the Underworld. Your armies fought until they were nothing but dust. When he was done, there was nothing left worth taking." She gestured broadly to the ruins. "He didn't even bother to claim it. He tore it apart for the satisfaction of the act. To show he could."
My hands curled into fists on the cracked arms of the throne, nails biting into stone.
"When he was finished here," she went on, "he turned his attention to Olympus. With the numbers and strength of his beasts, and with no time for the gods to rally, he broke through their defenses. He didn't just push them back—he crushed them."
My head snapped up, eyes locking with hers. "The gods? All of them?"
"They fled," she said, her tone flat with the weight of the truth. "Out of Greece entirely. Every last one. They've gone to Egypt—to Ra's domain—to seek refuge and plan their next move."
The throne room seemed colder after her words, though the air was still thick with the heat of destruction. I looked past her to the shattered gates of my realm. For the first time in an age, the Underworld had no king in its halls.
And Greece… had no gods at all.
The word "every" twisted something in my chest. "Everyone?"
She hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. Even Zeus, though he was nearly ripped in half before Poseidon came to his senses and pulled him out of Typhon's grasp. If your brother hadn't returned to himself when he did…" She let the rest hang.
I exhaled slowly. "But no one died?"
"No," she said. "Not yet."
Relief warred with the simmering fury in my gut.
I rose from the throne. "Then we're going to Egypt."
Her brows rose. "Now?"
"Now." I stepped down from the rubble, closing the distance between us. "If my family is alive, I'm not wasting another moment."
She nodded once, no argument.
I wrapped a hand around her arm, shadows flaring up at our feet. The Underworld dissolved.
We emerged into sunlight so bright it felt like a blow to the face.
After over a year in the tropical forests in South America, the light was almost hostile—blinding, searing straight through my skull. I threw a hand up to shield my eyes, but even then the heat pressed down like a living thing.
The air was dry and scorching, each breath tasting faintly of dust and salt. A wind hissed across the open expanse, carrying grains of sand that rasped softly against my skin. Before us stretched the endless desert—rolling gold dunes that shifted with every whisper of air, jagged cliffs clawing up in the far distance. The horizon rippled, as though the land itself was breathing.
And yet… it was wrong.
I'd walked this desert before—once, long ago, when I was a child in my old life. One of the only expensive family vacations I took.
Now there was only emptiness. No pyramids. No cities. Only bare sand and silence. The weight of time pressed heavy on my shoulders.
"This is the border," Hecate said quietly, her dark eyes scanning the dunes. She turned to me, her voice steady but edged with wariness. "And how exactly do we get in?"
I tilted my head toward the burning sun, squinting against its glare. "We ask."
Her brow arched, equal parts doubt and curiosity. "Ask?"
I stepped forward, boots sinking into the sand, and raised my voice—not in challenge, but with the kind of measured respect reserved for those who cannot be commanded.
"Ra, Lord of the Sun," I called, my words carrying across the wasteland, "I am Hades—King of the Underworld of Greece. This is Hecate, Titaness of magic and guardian of crossroads. We come seeking to reunite with our kin, who now shelter in your realm."
Hecate muttered beside me, just low enough for only me to hear. "And if that doesn't work?"
I allowed the faintest smirk. "Then we improvise."
The desert was still for one long, breathless moment. Then the sunlight changed.
It didn't just grow brighter—it ignited. The air around us warped as though the very sky had been set aflame. Shadows fled. The heat roared, pressing in from every direction until the world itself seemed to bow beneath it.
And then—impact.
Two figures dropped from the heavens, hitting the sand with a sound like distant thunder and the whisper of vast wings. Gold dust billowed around them, caught in the burning wind. They were tall—easily a head taller than me—and armored from throat to heel in plates of hammered gold inlaid with deep bands of lapis lazuli.
At first, I thought they wore helms shaped like the heads of falcons. Then I realized they were falcon-headed, their eyes sharp and unblinking, their curved beaks gleaming in the merciless light. Every movement they made was deliberate, precise—predators that had never once doubted their place at the top of the food chain.
One stepped forward, wings folding in a slow, deliberate sweep. His voice was deep, resonant, carrying the rolling weight of a summer storm across the dunes.
"Pharaoh Ra," he said, "has heard your call. By his will, you are granted entry to the Duat."