The return to Olympus should have felt like a triumph. Zeus stood flanked by the embodiment of rebellion and the spirit of war itself. Sun Wukong bounced on the balls of his feet, staff over his shoulder, eyes gleaming with the promise of havoc. Kratos stood like a granite cliff, his silence more threatening than any war cry. They were a nucleus of pure, defiant power.
But the air on the mountain was wrong.
Hera was there, as expected, her posture regal and tense. But she wasn't alone. Beside her stood Hades. And the look on his face shattered any sense of victory.
It was a look of utter, soul-crushing defeat. The careful stoicism he'd maintained in his underworld throne was gone, stripped away to reveal a raw, naked grief so profound it seemed to leach the color from the world around him.
Zeus's eyes went past his brother, to the ground at his feet.
There, on a bier of grey stone, lay Persephone.
