The portal didn't just close—it crashed shut, like the whole world had decided to drop an iron curtain with zero warning. The sound was brutal, way too loud for a place already this empty. For a second, the echo felt like it was going to shake the stones loose, but then it just sort of bled out, leaving behind a hush so deep it made your ears ring. This wasn't normal silence. This was the kind that feels like it's watching you, waiting to see what you'll do next. Old, heavy, almost resentful. You half expect the shadows to start whispering secrets they've been holding since before the first god took a breath.
Hades slouched back on his throne, looking like he was trying to get comfortable but not really managing it. His fingers tapped a lazy rhythm on the obsidian armrest—nervous energy, maybe, or just habit. The flames dancing along the walls? They shriveled up, barely burning at all, like even fire knew when to keep its head down around him. If you'd been there, you'd feel the temperature drop, like the room itself was holding its breath.
And that damn system notification. Still hanging there, bright evil red, like a mosquito you can't swat:
> [You Have Been Marked by the Upper Pantheon]
Divine Bounty: 100,000 Soul Crowns
Status: Outlaw of the Realms
He stared at it, lips curling into this crooked grin. The kind that says, "Yeah, I see you, but you're not scaring me." If anything, the label fit him like a favorite jacket. Outlaw. That's not an insult down here. That's bragging rights. You get the sense Hades would've worn it on a T-shirt if he could.
Underneath the throne room, things started to go sideways. The dungeon core, buried in the stone and shadows, started beating hard and weird—like it was about to crack open and spill something ugly all over the place.
> [WARNING: Presence Detected – Ancient Curse Reactivated]
—Category: Taboo Name Protocol—
Somebody, somewhere, must've whispered a forbidden name. That was all it took. The locks that held it back—locks older than the gods themselves—started to groan and snap.
A sibilant hiss snaked its way up from the deepest cracks in the realm. Hades stood, and all the game left his posture; gone was the smug, unbothered king. Now he moved like he remembered something heavy and sharp.
Air got thick, dust drifted up, and right under the throne, blood-red symbols began to flicker in a spiral—marks nobody had seen since before dungeons, before the System, before gods even had names.
> [System Glitch: Core Anomaly Detected]
—Accessing Lost File...
THE NAME: ████████
His vision went weird—like a film skipping frames. Images tumbled in, raw and jagged. Screams. Betrayal you could taste like iron. A golden blade breaking in two. The gods, in all their shining hypocrisy, turning on one of their own—not for ambition, but for the cardinal sin of being impossible to leash.
That name. That core of everything they were afraid of.
> He wasn't just Hades.
He'd been more—something they tried to erase, as if deletion could fix their mistake.
---
Meanwhile, somewhere so far above the mortal world it'd make your brain melt, the Council of Nine held court in a place that's probably what happens when someone with too much power designs their own afterlife. Marble and fire everywhere, halos floating like they're chained to nothing, and reality itself just… bending, like it can't quite keep up.
The Fate Goddess, face hidden under her blindfold, golden threads leaking like tears, spoke first—her voice a mix of pity and "I told you so." "He remembers," she said, and you could tell she'd warned them before. "Idiots. All you did was hide his name. Thought that would fix it? Please."
The War God wasn't having any of it—he slammed his hammer down, the kind of move that says "I solve things with violence." "Doesn't matter if he remembers. We'll end him."
The mood turned arctic. Then, like a glitch in the universe, He appeared.
The Sealed One. Guy looked like he'd fallen out of a starstorm, face hidden behind a veil that shifted if you tried to look at it. Nobody dared say his name—they all acted like just thinking it would get them deleted from existence. He only said:
> "Send… her."
That sent a ripple of panic through the chamber.
"No—" Fate started, voice shaking, "she's still bound—"
"Not anymore," the veiled god cut her off, cold as the void. "We need the Betrayer of Light."
---
Back in the underworld, Hades reeled from the core like he'd just been gut-punched.
> [Name Lock Partially Lifted – Fragment Recovered: VOX—]
He cursed. Out loud. "Damn it…"
His vision snapped back just as a new tear opened up—not gold and holy, but black, slick, and whispering all the things you never want to hear at 3 a.m.
A figure stepped out. Bare feet. Walked like she owned the shadows, not a sound. Chains, violet and alive, coiling around her; hair inky and impossible. She moved with that slow grace that says, "I've seen the end of all things, and it wasn't that impressive."
Her eyes—man, her eyes—looked like someone bottled up the night sky and all the heartbreak in the world. Broken, black wings arched behind her, each feather a story of loss.
The system just lost it.
> [IDENTITY ERROR]
[DANGER LEVEL: UNKNOWN]
[Title Detected: The First Traitor. The Angel Who Devoured Fate.]
You could see Hades recognize her, a flicker of old memory in his face. Nobody forgot her. Couldn't. She was the bedtime story that made angels check under their beds.
> Lirael. The Angel Who Betrayed the Gods to Save a Mortal.
She stopped in front of him, head tilted, voice soft but sharp as broken glass wrapped in velvet.
> "Hello, Vox," she said, and the name cut deeper than steel. "Do you remember me?"
His eyes went wide. That forbidden name, burning in the back of his skull. But her—her presence, her sorrow—dragged up the stuff he'd buried: memories from before the world broke.
> Memory.
Pain.
A kiss under a shattered moon.
A promise sealed with blood and hope.
A war lost, not to power, but to treachery.
> [Core Unlock Triggered: Dungeon Expansion Available – The Forgotten Citadel]
He took a breath, and for the first time in an eternity, his smile was different. Not mocking, not cruel—just… full of old longing. Nostalgia, or maybe regret.
> "Yeah," he whispered, voice rough. "It's all coming back to me now."
And in that moment, you could feel the whole underworld lean in, waiting to see what would happen next. Because when old names come back and old debts get remembered, nothing stays buried for long.