Hades does what no god dares to do: he lets the darkness and sin consume him.
He welcomes the voices that whisper in his soul.
He stops resisting.
And as he does, something ancient awakens inside him.
His divine form shatters, bones cracking, flesh melting into shadow. His body collapses, only to be reborn, fused with the Primordial Energy of the Underworld. It seeps into every cell, every thought, until even his heartbeat echoes with oblivion.
He rises.
Stronger.
Hollow.
He becomes a new primordial god, an underworld primordial god.
And he speaks a whisper that echoes across all realms. "Let the corruption begin."
The Underworld responds to his order and starts to corrupt the upper world.
The oceans blacken, turning the seas into pitch and black water. Coastal cities sink beneath waves choked with rot. Ships dissolve into splinters.
The Earth's forests wither, once-green lands reducing to cracked soil and thorned branches. Animals mutate, growing extra limbs, razor spines, glowing eyes, and turning on all they once coexisted with.
Volcanoes erupt across the continents. Fire rains from the skies. Smoke swallows stars.
And from the Underworld, Hades emerges in the form of a Black Phoenix, larger than any Titan, his wingspan stretching across the sky. Black haze pours from his feathers.
He rises higher than the clouds and swallows the Sun in one gulp.
The world falls into eternal darkness.
Ghosts, the undead, and the most horrific demonic creatures rampage unchecked, spreading chaos and destruction. What was once a beautiful, peaceful world turns into a land of apocalypse, forming a living nightmare.
From the fractured horizon, Gaea and Pontus manifest. The ground solidifies under Gaea's feet, the corrupted seas still at Pontus's command. Their primordial forms, embodiments of earth and sea, are visibly strained against the pervasive corruption.
"Hades, cease this!" Gaea's voice is a demand, woven from the bedrock of the world, shaking with a grief that comes from seeing her own essence defiled.
Hades remains silent. The Black Phoenix form is a monolith of destruction. At its beak, a point of blue light ignites and contracts into a sphere of absolute cold. It pulses with a dead light, draining sound and warmth from the surrounding air.
"His sanity is gone," Pontus states, his voice the low groan of a dying ocean.
Gaea responds by wrenching a mountain from the earth, shaping it into a colossal spear of granite and obsidian, and hurling it with tectonic force. At the same time, Pontus gathers the remains of his seas into a concentrated jet of water moving with the pressure to crush continents.
Hades' retaliation is total. The blue flame shoots forward, a wave of annihilating cold. It does not meet their attacks just erases them. The stone spear flash-freezes and explodes into dust. The water jet turns to a frozen sculpture in mid-air and shatters on the ground. The wave of cold hits Gaea and Pontus, encasing them in a thick shell of magical ice that cracks their divine bodies.
Understanding the threat is existential, the united pantheon arrives. Zeus, Poseidon, Cronus, Iapetus, Hera, and a host of other deities and Titans materialize. Their combined power forms a barrier against the void. Lightning, tidal waves, distortions of time, and raw divine energy. A unified assault from all of creation, flare against the blue wave and hold it back for one second.
The victory is temporary. Hades issues a deafening screech that rips the sky apart. He draws power from the corrupted Underworld, forming a new sphere of dark, negative energy that distorts space around it. He fires it directly at the vulnerable Primordials.
Gaea and Pontus raise their hands, pulling on the last reserves of their power to defend themselves.
It is useless.
The beam strikes them, and their scream is one of existential unraveling. Their divine forms flicker at the edges. Golden ichor flows from deep wounds. Their power is broken, their very beings brought to the edge of life.
"AHHHHHH!!"
Gaea and Pontus hang in the air, shattered and fading. Hades does not pause. His beak opens, the cold fire gathering for the final blow.
A miniature star, a compressed sphere of plasma and pure light, slams into the side of his head. The impact is concussive. The energy he is gathering detonates early in a shockwave that throws him backward. For the first time, a stream of black, thick ichor seeps from a fracture in his Phoenix form.
Hades turns. His attention focuses on the new threats, Aether of the bright air and Hemera of the day, their hands still glowing from the conjured sun.
They immediately form another star and hurl it. Hades beats his wings, releasing a wave of gravitational force and necrotic energy. The shockwave neutralize their miniature stars. The diluted force hits Aether and Hemera's hastily conjured shield of light and air.
The shield shatters like glass, though the weakened force only makes a single drop of golden ichor drip from Hemera's nose. She touches it, staring at her blood.
"What is this?" she whispers.
Aether, breathing heavily and answers. "Worst nightmare."
*SKREEEEE!!
H,ades roars agand ain. The earth quakes. A tsunami of solid shadow, filled with the faces of the damned, rises from the black sea. Gaea's eyes widen in pure terror. She slams her hands on the broken ground, screaming for her domain to obey.
Her earth is dead, its heart corrupted. Her command is a whisper against a corruption.
From the ground, lances of sharpened Stygian iron erupt. They pierce everything mortal, beast, god, and Titan on the earth or in the sea. One lance erupts directly beneath Gaea and impales her.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
A river of golden ichor pours from her wound, forming a pool at her feet. She takes a wet, ragged breath, her eyes clouding with despair as the soul-fire within the lance begins to burn her essence away. She is being erased.
A rift tears open in the air. Nyx and Erebus emerge from the void between realms. Behind them, something massive appears.
Tartarus, the Primordial of the Abyss, steps through. His body is made of molten rock and tectonic plates, lava flowing in the cracks. He holds a giant sword carved from the foundation of the world.
Hades fires another blue flame ray. Aether, Hemera, Nyx and Erebus combine their failing power light, air, night, darkness into a single beam of black and white energy. The forces collide and hold in a struggling stalemate.
Tartarus charges. The ground breaks under his steps. He leaps, his abyssal sword high. "Die, monster!" His swing, powered by the abyss, connects with Hades' chest. The blow is huge, cutting through feathers and divine flesh, releasing a flood of black ichor. The combined beam of the other Primordials hits him simultaneously, blasting him off his feet and into a mountain range.
Aether sags, his light dim. "Is it over?" he gasps.
A heavy silence falls over the world. It is the silence before the end. Then, a light green flame flickers on the chest of a dead beings. Then another. Then millions- billions. They rise from all the corpses and fly toward the crater where Hades has fallen.
"No! Stop him! Now!" Nyx screams. She understands. It is a harvest.
Every remaining primordial, god, and titan launches their most powerful spells in a panicked volley at the crater.
It is too late.
The Stygian iron lances rip themselves from the ground. They shoot through the air, interlocking and merging into a giant, jagged shield of black metal over the crater just as the attacks hit.
*BOOOOM
The explosion is the end of the world. A lightless fireball expands, vaporizing everything within a hundred kilometers. Dimensions tear open, creating unstable black holes that suck in the debris.
As the fire fades, the Primordials stare at the epicenter. The giant shield is gone.
From the swirling smoke, two points of purple light glow. A huge shadow emerges. It is Hades in a new form: a towering, bipedal demon clad in armor of bone and shadow. Large horns curve from an obsidian crown. His hands are claws that can tear reality. In his grip is a giant sword, its blade burning with the collected soul-fire of every being he has slain.
He moves instantly. He is before Tartaa rus, the soul-blade already swinging.
Tartarus roars and brings his primordial sword up to block.
*CLANK *CREEEK
The abyssal sword shatters. Hades' blade does not stop. It cuts through Tartarus's weapon and then through his chest, carving a deep canyon. Hades reverses his swing and takes Tartarus's head. The soul-fire erupts, consuming the Primordial of the Pit instantly, burning him to ashes. There is no time for pain.
The other Primordials are pale with horror. All hope is gone.
They attack. Spells of light, darkness, and day break against his new form like water on stone. He ignores them.
Hades raises a clawed hand. Chains of Stygian iron appear from the shadows, each link etched with binding runes, each tip burning with soul-fire. They strike like snakes. They pierce Aether, Hemera, Nyx, and Erebus at once. Their forms stiffen as the fire races through them, and they are extinguished into ash.
Silence.
Hades turns to the remaining gods and Titans—his family. They know they will die, but they stand for a final fight.
He shifts to his humanoid form, but the power is the same. He wears twisted, obsidian armor that absorbs light. His eyes glow with void. A spear of mineral divinity is in one hand; spells of ruin swirl around the other.
He charges. It is not a battle. It is an end.
He is a force of destruction. No army can stop him. No god can halt him.
Every step is a death. Every turn is a killing blow. He moves with storm-like fury and absolute precision.
Divine blood soaks the floating continents. Gods fall. Zeus dies. Poseidon dies. Cronus is destroyed.
Nothing can stop him. No Titans. No gods. Not fate.
Only Rhea remains.
She kneels in the ruins of her family, her robes soaked in her children's blood. Her eyes are empty, her hands shaking too much to lift.
"My son… what have you become?" The question is a faint breath.
Hades does not react. His void eyes show no recognition.
Without a word, he raises his spear and cuts off her head with a clean motion.
The world is silent.
Only Hades is left.
He stands alone in the ash and ruin and walks to the Throne of the God-King. He sits. The silence is total.
Then it hits him.
A pain deeper than any wound.
Clarity returns to his eyes. With it comes a horror so vast it almost destroys him.
"What have I done…?"
He has killed his mother. His brothers. His sisters. Every god. Every mortal. He has destroyed the world.
The silence is louder than thunder. He clutches his chest, his heart in torment. Grief consumes him. He reaches for his spear again, this time to turn it on himself. It is the only justice left.
But as the tip touches his chest, the Underworld divinity inside him trembles.
A low, familiar pulse. A divine hum that is his alone. It stirs, not to fight him, but to wake him.
In that instant, with the clarity of that connection, Hades understands.
This is not real.
It is a dream, a detailed, torturous illusion created by Noctandrath's power.
But it has taught him more than any war or book.
He has touched the absolute darkness of what he could become. He has become it.
And by surviving that self, by feeling the horror of it, he now understands his own divinity and himself on a deeper level.
His connection to his divine domains surges. The experience forges his spirit in the fire of apocalypse. His power solidifies, rising to the mid-level of a Chief-Level God.
With this new strength and understanding, he focuses his will. He sees the flaws in the false reality, the psychic walls of his prison.
He uses his Secret Divinity to find the truth.
With a sound like breaking glass, he tears open the veil of illusion.