I tear myself free from the dream, the psychic bonds snapping like brittle threads. The true world bleeds into view, sharp and unforgiving.
Noctandrath hangs in the sky, a grotesque, veined eyeball the size of a small moon, suspended in the mist. Ancient, throbbing capillaries pulse across its surface, and dark tendrils twitch lazily, siphoning the very essence from our still forms.
Faint, silvery trails of energy stream from my chest and Hecate's, flowing toward him. It is feeding on us, gorging itself on our drained souls while we lie trapped in its nightmares.
As I rise, it seems to sense its meal being interrupted. Several tendrils lash out, psychic hooks attempting to drag me back into the illusion. I grit my teeth, my will a solid wall, and push through the assault.
Rage, cold and purifying, focuses my mind. I concentrate my power, drawing on my divinity. In my hand, a spear of pure obsidian materialises, its surface etched with swirling patterns of soul-fire.
I hurl it.
As the spear finds its mark, a final understanding flashes through me. Its power is a grand deception, a fortress of illusion built around a core of pathetic weakness. Stripped of its nightmares, it is less than nothing, and it unravels before my true strength like rotten cloth in a gale.
The result is instantaneous.
Noctandrath explodes in a burst of viscous black fluid and shattering, painful light.
I don't watch its demise. I am already moving, falling to my knees beside Hecate.
She lies twisted on the cold ground, her breathing shallow. Her body is wracked with agony, every muscle taut. Beneath her skin, I can see her soul, fractured and writhing like a trapped thing.
Noctandrath is gone, but its curse clings to her, a psychic poison still eating away at her essence.
I approach slowly, my own heart hammering. I kneel and place two fingers gently upon her brow. Channelling my Sleep Divinity, I let my consciousness flow forward, a delicate probe.
A direct assault on the curse could shatter her. This, entering the nightmare itself, is the only safe path. The only way to reach her.
---
Inside Hecate's Dream
The sky is an endless, dark velvet, with countless brilliant stars embedded in it. This is the realm of constellations, a place of distant, celestial bodies. Below, a magnificent temple of flawless white marble spires towards the heavens.
It should be bustling, but it feels hollow. Servants glide past like ghosts, and at its centre, a happy, beautiful couple. They are Hectate's parents, beaming at each other with joy and care like a newlywed couple.
And in a shadowed corner of the vast, cold hall, I see her.
Hecate. As a child.
Her small form is hunched, her three faces. She is in her nascent triform divinity form and she is crying with silent tears. She is utterly alone.
He, her kin, her parents pass near her without taking a glance at her. They simply look through her, their eyes gliding over her as if nothing were there.
She is a ghost in her own home. She is forgotten and invisible.
She hugs her knees, her little fingers trembling against the cold stone.
I step toward her slowly, the dream-muffled sounds of the temple fading away. I gently kneel before her and I rest a hand atop her head, a calm, steady warmth pouring from me, my divinity a quiet shield against her despair.
"They may not care about you," I say, my voice low but firm, "But that doesn't mean you don't exist."
"You've already accomplished more than most gods could even dream of. The world knows your name. It whispers it in fear and respect. Why let a few blind souls convince you that you're unworthy?"
She looks up, her three sets of eyes, still swimming with tears, focus on me. She is listening. Truly listening. Slowly, the tears stop. She breathes breath breathes a shuddering, then a steadying breath.
"Hades," she whispers, her voice small but clear. "You really don't know how to comfort people."
A pause. Then, a fragile, beautiful smile breaks through. "But…thank you."
It is the most radiant thing I have ever seen.
The world flares blindingly white, and I am violently expelled from the dream.
---
My eyes snap open. I am back in the mist-shrouded valley, Hecate still before me. She seems peaceful, asleep.
But I can still feel it. A deep, structural damage. The nightmare is gone, but Noctandrath's power has scoured her soul, leaving it unravelling at the edges. If left untreated, the fractures will spread. She will fall into a sleep from which there is no waking, or worse, simply fade from existence entirely.
There is only one way to save her.
A fragment of my own soul can act as an anchor, a graft to heal hers.
The cost will be catastrophic. To sever my own soul will cripple me, perhaps irrevocably. I could lose power, divinity, everything I have fought for.
I stand frozen, hesitation a cold knot in my stomach.
Then an image flashes in my mind: her smile. Her true, unguarded smile from the dream. And with it comes a flood of memories, battles fought side-by-side, quiet moments of understanding, heated arguments, shared laughter. A film reel of a partnership that has become the foundation of my new existence.
"If I can't save even my closest ones, then this strength, power, divinity, rule… it is all nothing."
The truth of it settles in my bones. True strength isn't in the power I wield; it is in what I am willing to give up for it.
I take a final, deep breath, and make the choice.
I reach inward, past layers of shifting divinity, to the very core of my being, a swirling nebula of power and self. And with a thought that feels like tearing my own heart from my chest, I sever a fragment of my soul.
Agony, not of the flesh but of the spirit, rips through me. It is a cold, silent scream in the void of my own essence. I feel my divinities fracture, their intensity dimming, my power plummeting from the mid-level of a Chief God to its lowest tier. The vibrant connections to Sin, Fear, and Drea, grow faint and cold.
But I endure.
Cradling the shimmering, agonizingly beautiful fragment of my soul, I wrap it in a gentle cocoon of underworld energy and stabilise it with soul-fire. With the last of my strength, I press it gently into Hecate's chest.
Her body stills. Then, it pulses with a soft, golden light, the foreign essence taking root, grafting itself to hers. She is healing.
I collapse backwards, my breath a shallow rasp, my vision swimming. But my gaze remains steady on her.
---
(Hecate's Point of View)
There is nothing.
A void of sensation. A sea of numb collapse.
I drift in the emptiness until something touches me.
Warmth.
A painful, searing warmth that is agonizingly real.
My soul, fractured and frayed, begins to knit itself back together. A surge of life which is potent, familiar, yet not my own. It flooks the broken places, sealing them with golden light.
It is impossible. No one can give of their soul essence without being utterly destroyed.
Unless…
"Hades…" The name is a breath, a prayer, a curse.
Silence.
I am whole. I am me.
I sit up, movements slow and cautious, every sense hyper-aware.
He is nearby, slumped against a rock, motionless. His eyes are half-lidded, glazed with a pain so profound it steals my breath.
There is no need to ask. The truth resonates within my newly healed soul, a harmonic echo of his sacrifice. It strikes me with the force of a bolt.
He has done something recklessly, stupidly noble.
He has given me a piece of himself.
I stare, a thousand warring emotions—guilt, awe, a flash of anger at his self-destruction, a profound, humbling respect crashing through me.
And something deeper, something that terrifies and exhilarates me in equal measure.
But words fail me. I remain quiet, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done.
And then I feel it. A deep, sickening cracking, a mirror of the damage I have just endured. It is coming from him. His soul is fracturing, dying from the wound he has inflicted to save me.
'I can't live with this guilt,' I think, my chest tightening, making it hard to breathe. 'I won't.'
A terrifying, brilliant thought seizes me. 'If his soul could heal mine… perhaps mine can now stabilise his.'
It is a desperate gamble. I act on instinct alone. I draw a sharp ritual blade from my belt and slice my palm open. My blood, golden and shimmering with magic, wells up. I press my hand to the earth and make a ritual circle from it. I begin to recite words of power older than the Titans. Each word resonates with the circle I have drawn, making it glow with a fierce, bloody light.
The circle lifts from the ground, hovering in the air before compressing into a single, pulsing red wisp of pure intent. It shoots toward us and vanishes into us, into the space where our souls now touch.
Then comes the pain. Excruciating. A red thread, fine as silk and burning with my essence, begins to unravel from the core of my being. I grit my teeth, enduring the pain, and guide it into Hades. I push my life into him.
Inside him, his own soul, what remains of it stirs. Recognising the familiar essence, his soul flares in response, not rejecting me, but guiding me. His innate power enhances my thread, minimising the amount of my soul needed and quickening the repair.
After a moment that feels like an eternity, the fracturing in his soul ceases, the damage sealed by my essence.
But it doesn't stop there.
In response, a thread of deepest obsidian, shot through with specks of starlight, emerges from his chest and seeks me. It is his soul, now offering a piece of itself back to me.
The two threads, crimson and obsidian, meet in the air between us. They do not just touch, they braid together, pulsing with a light that is both and neither of us.
A filament of combined essence erupts from my chest and connects to his, and another from his to mine. They twist together, forming a permanent, unbreakable cord that thrums with shared power and seals the last of our wounds.
And in that moment, I feel not just my own heartbeat, but his. A steady, familiar rhythm now intertwined with my own, a double drumbeat marking a bond that can never be broken.