The silence after battle tasted like ash and ozone. Zeus stood in the wreckage of what had once been a stable stretch of the Asphodel, his brother's broken form heavy against his shoulder. Hades breathed in ragged pulls, each exhale carrying whispers from the millions still trapped inside him. The green cracks across his chest pulsed like a second heartbeat—Persephone's light fighting for room in a vessel never meant to hold it.
"You're slipping," Zeus said quietly. No thunder in his voice now. Just the raw exhaustion of a man who had toppled one tyrant only to watch his brother become something worse.
Hades laughed, the sound wet and fractured. "Slipping? Brother, I drowned a long time ago." His eyes flickered—black void one moment, spring green the next. "She's in here. Closer than she's been since… since before everything went to hell. But every time I reach for her, more of them fight back. The dead don't like sharing their king."
