Oceanus descended into a realm of absolute negation. Here, in the abyssal plains where sunlight was a forgotten myth, the water was black and heavy, a liquid void that pressed in on all sides with the weight of entire oceans. This was the throne room of the primordial sea, a place where the very concept of light was devoured. He was alone, a king humbled before the source of his domain.
"Lord Pontus!" Oceanus's voice was swallowed by the immense silence, leaving only a psychic imprint of his presence. "I have come, as you requested."
The darkness before him did not move; it stirred. A consciousness as vast as the seabed itself shifted from its aeons-long slumber. A sound echoed through the abyss, a low, tectonic rumble that vibrated in Oceanus's very bones.
"Hmm… Umm…"
Oceanus felt his divine essence tighten. 'He is here. All around me. No… I am inside him.'
Two points of deep blue light ignited in the endless black, like abyssal whirlpools. Their gaze fell upon Oceanus, and the pressure multiplied, a physical weight of ages that sought to grind him into sediment.
"Oceanus…" The voice was the groaning of continental shelves, each word a monumental effort. "You know… the chasm."
"I do, my Lord," Oceanus replied, his mind flashing back to the day of his coronation, to the terrifying, glorious glimpse of the vertical wound in reality. "You showed me."
"I have… guarded it… sealed it with my essence… for aeons." The words were heavy with an exhaustion that was cosmic in scale. "It drains me… I am… empty. My slumber… comes. This old soul… asks a favour."
"There is no need for favours. Your will is my command," Oceanus answered, the perfect picture of a loyal steward.
The primordial gaze seemed to see through him, to the ambition that had festered for millennia. "I have known you… Oceanus. You are strong. Smart. A fitting… successor. The guardian's role… passes to you."
A thrill of triumph, sharp and cold, shot through Oceanus, perfectly masked by his reverent tone. "It is the highest honour to carry your burden and walk in the legacy you have forged."
The deep blue eyes held his for an eternity in a single second. "See that… you do." Then, the presence vanished with a sudden, profound absence, as if a fundamental force of the universe had just been switched off.
Breath out…
Oceanus let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He swam swiftly to a nearby fissure, a cave that led to the heart of the abyss. At its end, space was torn open. A vertical sheet of impossible calm, a mirror that reflected nothing but the pure potential of the void. The Giant Chasm.
A slow, triumphant smile spread across Oceanus's face. 'Soon, you will be mine. I remember the vision you showed me, that radiant trident, its power so immense it could be felt from the chasm.'
He moved closer, his own regal reflection appearing on the chasm's shimmering surface. 'Once Pontus sleeps, nothing will stand between me and the throne of true power. Not just the sea, but all that this chasm promises. I have waited millions of years. A few more years are nothing. Until then… I will be the good and peaceful king the world believes me to be.' With one last, longing look, he turned and left, the guardian of a secret he had every intention of exploiting.
---
Hades, still veiled in perfect invisibility, halted his flight. Before him, the air itself was sick, swirling with a dense, unnatural mist that defied the ocean winds.
'Found it,' he thought, diving in. For several minutes, he flew through a formless grey, getting nowhere. The spell was working as intended—a perfect, endless loop.
He stopped, his form shimmering back into visibility. "A pointless exercise," he murmured. He raised a wing, and a pulse of pure, dark energy with the essence of revelation washed out from him in a silent wave. The mist recoiled and dissolved, but what it revealed was not an island. It was a tapestry of woven stars and fractured time, a dense, dark blue field of distorted space. A labyrinth of the void itself.
"Space-time distortion. Mother's strongest barrier," Hades acknowledged, a flicker of respect in his gaze. "Impressive. But all constructions have an end."
"Wifey, lend me your strength," he whispered to the air.
'Silver Flame.'
The air around him froze. A serene, terrifying silver fire erupted from his phoenix form. This was not a flame of heat, but of extinction—the embodiment of the Underworld's final, absolute judgment on all that exists.
He dove forward and passed through.
The barrier reacted. Warped stars hurtled toward him, and loops of time sought to trap him in an infinite yesterday. They crashed against the Silver Flame and were unmade. They were erased, their existence negated upon contact with the concept of ultimate endings.
The barrier fell apart and revealed the jagged, mist-shrouded island that had been hidden at its core. Hades descended, his form shifting back to his humanoid form as his feet touched the stone. His Secret Divinity had already mapped every inch of this place. He walked directly to the mountain face and, without hesitation, stepped through the solid rock as if it were a curtain of water.
Inside the hidden dungeon, with its multiple caves and mazes, he moved without hesitation, for he already knew its blueprint. At the cavern's end hung a magnificent golden spear with a blade of blue crystal. He took it, felt its weight. "A perfect, useless replica."
With a sharp, deliberate motion, he brought the spear down across his knee. It snapped like a dry twig, hollow and worthless. He stomped the broken haft on the ground repeatedly until, with a clink, a luminous Sky Pearl rolled out.
"Clever, mother. Hiding a treasure within a decoy. But this is not what I came for." He pocketed the pearl. Then, he turned to the wall from which the spear had hung and drove his fist into the stone.
RUMBLE!
The mountain trembled. Cracks spider-webbed out from the point of impact, and a section of the wall crumbled away, revealing a hidden passage. He walked into the new path.
At its end rested a small, unadorned box of black wood. He opened it. Inside, four velvet indentations held only three vials. Each was a sphere of glass containing a miniature, swirling vortex of energy—one blue, one green, one violet—all pulsing with forbidden power. But the fourth spot was empty.
"Four potions from the Giant Chasm itself," Hades whispered, a rare note of grim awe in his voice. "Each is capable of magnifying power fivefold. She used one to defy Father for Poseidon's sake." He closed the box, the weight of its contents and their history settling upon him, and stored it away. The last piece of his mother's legacy was now in his hands.
Transforming back into the black phoenix, he shot into the sky, his next destination clear: the North Pole.
He arrived at the roof of the world in a heartbeat. It was a vast, desolate expanse of shifting ice under a pale, sickly sky. Jagged ridges of blue ice carved through the landscape, a continent of utter stillness and cold.
He flew to the highest peak, where the river of lamentation was frozen in the form of its guardian. There coiled Cocytus, a monstrous dragon. Its body was a rugged landscape of jagged, crystalline spikes and armored plates of frozen misery. Its wings were tattered sheets of permafrost, and its tail ended in a blade of soul-rending cold. An aura of profound grief and fury preceded it.
As Hades approached, one piercing blue eye, a frozen star of hatred, slid open. Then the other. Its head lifted, and the glacial silence of the pole shattered with a roar that could be heard from a thousand kilometers.
"ROAARRR!!!"
Without warning, it unleashed its frost breath. Hades met the attack with an exhalation of his own. A beam of dark blue flame shot forth from his beak. Where the two forces collided, the world broke. The air itself crystallized and then exploded, shards of frozen reality and supercooled fire raining down upon the ice fields below.
The battle between Dragon and Phoenix began.