The massive black gates creaked shut behind Mike as he passed through the last of the torchlit arches. The heat from the green flames didn't touch him. Cold soaked into his bones, but he didn't flinch. His eyes burned with molten red as he pressed forward into the throne hall.
The architecture shifted the deeper he went, less carved, more grown. Obsidian pillars bent like twisted trees, curling with bone-like roots into the vaulted ceiling. The throne at the far end was unlike anything mortal or divine he'd ever seen. It looked like it had emerged from the ground.
And on it, sat a female he assumed was the queen.
No crown. No jewels. Just black silk that shimmered like smoke, draped across a body unmoved by time. Her skin was pale marble. Her eyes held no warmth, no arrogance, only stillness. The weight of eons pressed down from her gaze alone.
Mike walked until he stood before the steps of her dais. He didn't bow.
He didn't speak.
Neither did she.
Not at first.
"I am Persephone and you are broken from the pattern," Persephone said at last, her voice soft but terrible. "You are what should not return."
Mike's voice was quiet. Flat. "Then tell me how to leave."
"That is not your choice."
Mike's jaw clenched. His fists curled. "I don't give a fuck about choices anymore."
She stood.
"You brought that dragon's essence into my husband's realm. You dragged the bones of Kur into the land of the dead. Do you think the underworld can simply absorb such violence without consequence?"
"I didn't choose to come here," Mike said coldly. "I'll leave when I find out where that bitch Hecate went."
"No. You won't."
The room shifted.
Vines crept from the floor. Thorns glistened with blood. The shadows thickened, deepened, until they wrapped around the edges of the dais like hunting dogs.
Persephone descended a single step.
"You are an unbound storm. The kind that tears order apart. The last time your kind walked these halls, a pantheon burned."
"I'm not Kur," Mike growled.
"But you are becoming him," she said. "Piece by piece."
He stepped forward. The fire behind his eyes blazed.
"Where is she?" he demanded. "Hecate."
Persephone's gaze narrowed.
"Gone from this place. But not beyond reach."
Mike's claws cracked from his fingertips, his control slipping.
"Then get out of my way. Or I'll rip through this palace and every damned soul inside until someone does."
The vines froze.
The torches flickered.
Persephone's voice dropped to a whisper, but it struck harder than a scream.
"She was once my handmaiden. My servant. A priestess, chosen to light the halls of the dead. And she betrayed me."
Silence.
"Hecate stole from my vaults. She carved the old runes beneath Tartarus. She opened the door when no one else could even find the lock."
Mike's eyes narrowed.
"Then we want the same thing."
"No," Persephone said. "You want blood. I want balance."
Mike laughed once, a short, vicious sound. "Balance? You let her roam. You let Olympus fester. You sit in this dead temple while the surface burns."
Persephone stepped down the final step.
"You will not speak to me like that."
"I will speak however the fuck I want," Mike snarled. "I've bled in every realm your gods abandoned. I've burned for the people you forgot. You think because you wear death like a cloak that I'll kneel? You're nothing but another coward behind stone."
Persephone didn't move.
But the room began to shake.
"Then I will make your sentence plain," she said. "You are to remain here. Hecate's magic bound you to this realm. That seal was not a curse. It was a tether. She cast it through my domain because she knew I would not let you go."
Mike's breath hissed through his teeth.
"She imprisoned me?"
"Yes," Persephone said. "And here you will stay."
Flames erupted from his skin. His form surged.
But before he could shift, before the rage could boil over a door appeared.
A tall black arch of bone and ember, flanked by torches that lit themselves.
And through it walked a man.
Tall. Bare-chested. His skin pale like the dead, but his eyes were deep pits of old power. His beard was dark, his shoulders broad. He wore no crown, but he carried the presence of a king.
Hades.
The room bowed with his entrance. The shadows hushed.
Even Persephone turned, the edges of her posture softening by a hair.
"You took your time," she said.
Hades looked only at Mike.
"You know time is meaningless to me," he said.
Mike didn't flinch under his gaze. "Another god come to chain me?"
"No," Hades said while looking through Mike with a dead emotionless stare, not answering for what felt like an eternity.
"Oh I see." Turning toward Persephone.
"Release him."
The goddess of death tensed. "You oppose my judgment?"
Hades stares at her without saying anything with another long pause. Regret begins to form on Persephone's face, slowly turning into fear.
Hades finally speaks again in the same dead emotionless voice, yet this time louder. "Pets of mine do not get pets of their own. That thing is neither dead nor Kur. It does not belong here. You will be punished for acting on your own."
He stepped down beside her, eyes never leaving Mike.
"Save your rage little one."
Mike remained silent.
"You will need it later. It has no effect on me. Your fire cannot yet burn where there is nothing to burn."
Mike didn't move, looking at him puzzled.
"If I release you, will you send me many souls?" Hades asked.
"Yes starting with Hecate," he said, voice like gravel. "And any other god who gets in my fucking way."
Hades considered that then said.
"Good."
Persephone's voice turned sharp. "You would unbind him? Even knowing what his rage awakens?"
Silence as her head rolls to the floor.
Mike's eyes widened as he looked up at Hades.
"Don't worry she'll grow back" Hades said as a sinister grin appears on his face for a brief moment before returning to his emotionless expression.
"But you'll need more than wrath to survive what's ahead."
Mike's voice was flat. "I don't need advice."
"Then listen anyway," Hades said. "You're in the Deep Veil now. The space between the Underworlds. From here, you can go deeper. Or you can find a way out. But not alone."
Persephone's body crossed her arms. While her head spoke from the floor. "You would guide him?"
"No," Hades said. "But I'll point."
"I want to go where Hecate is located and kill that bitch permanently." Mike growled.
Hades turned toward a black staircase descending from behind the throne.
"There's a gate that leads to Hecate's true essence. What you cast into Tartarus was just a mere vessel."
Mike tensed. "I can destroy her there?"
"Yes," Hades said. "You'llneed to destroy her fragments and essence to erase her soul or consume them like your predecessor."
Mike took a step forward. "What is beyond those gates?"
"The Hollow," Hades said. "But the path isn't clean. She left pieces of herself there. Guardians. Echoes. You'll fight through every scrap of her will."
"Fine," Mike said.
Persephone's voice came cold again with her severed head looking up at Hades. "And if loses himself in the Hollow, what wakes up instead?"
Mike turned away, heading towards the path to the Hollow.
Hades watched him go.
"He'll either save us," the god of the dead said, "or burn the world down trying."
Persephone didn't speak.
Behind them, the torches dimmed.
And ahead of Mike, the black staircase waited.
Descending deeper than any hole he'd ever seen. Down into pitch black. Wisps of green flame dotted the walls.