In the silent, star-dusted void of the Sky Realm, the Giant Chasm hung like a wound in reality, sutured shut by throbbing threads of radiant white light. An elite guard of celestial soldiers stood watch, their divine armor gleaming beside anchored artillery that hummed with lethal power enough to destroy any stars.
The unit's Captain floated near the edge, a deep unease knotting in his gut. "Report," he barked.
"Everything nominal, sir!" a guard replied.
The Vice-Captain drifted closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "You seem troubled, Captain."
"An ill feeling," the Captain muttered, massaging his temple. "A pressure in the air that shouldn't be here. This suffocation…" He loose his helmet strap.
The Vice-Captain smiled, a gesture that didn't quite reach his eyes. He gestured to their formidable array. "What could possibly threaten this? Not even the gods of the Underworld would dare step here."
The Captain nodded, unconvinced, and settled onto a small asteroid to gaze into the infinite dark. He did not see the subtle change that came over his second-in-command. The Vice-Captain's posture straightened, a strange fluidity entering his movements. His smile settled into something colder, more knowing.
'Perfect,' thought the consciousness of Zaegarus, observing through this distant clone's senses. 'The gatekeepers are complacent. Chaos's key turns smoothly.'
It walked the clone's body to the very lip of the Chasm. No one stopped it; this was the trusted Vice-Captain. "The Olympians' negligence is my opportunity," the clone murmured, the words a faint echo of its master's voice. With a motion that was both reverent and clinical, it withdrew three marble orbs from within a hidden fold of its own celestial armor. The orbs pulsed with a dull, dangerous red.
"Hey! You! What are you doing with the binding threads?!" The Captain's shout echoed across the void. He was already pushing off the asteroid, hurtling toward his subordinate.
The Zaegarus did not hurry. It pressed the final marble against a complex knot of light. The clone then turned, a look of serene acceptance on its borrowed face. It plugged the Vice-Captain's ears with its fingers and closed his eyes.
The Captain grabbed the clone by the breastplate, lifting him. "What is this?!" His eyes dropped to the blinking marbles tied into the sacred weave. His divine senses shrieked a warning. "No—!"
The explosion was a moment of pure, silent white. It consumed light, sound, and matter. The Captain, the clone, the elite guards, and their mighty artillery vanished into annihilating brilliance.
When the light faded, the sacred threads were severed. They began to unravel.
First came the Hymns of the vengeful spirits, spirits of rage pouring through the gap. Then, a dripping sludge golem, Flans, bristling with jagged stone and glowing yellow eyes, hauled itself into the void. Behind it came the hulking, horned beast Eurynome, its blue muscles rippling under plates of rock.
Then, a claw the size of a fortress gripped the torn edges of reality and wrenched.
The being that pulled itself through dwarfed the others. The upper torso of a titan, arms of scaled dragon-flesh, a scalp writhing with venomous serpents, all tapering into a coiling serpent's lower body. Typhoon drew his first free breath in eons.
"Mother… I am returned…hiss," he hissed, golden serpentine eyes snapping open.
A pressure wave of pure malice radiated from him, forcing the other escaped monsters to their knees, their forms trembling. He ignored them. With a sinuous motion that warped gravity and sent shockwaves through the fabric of the Sky Realm, he began his descent toward the temple of Gaea.
Far away, in a dark dungeon, the original Zaegarus felt the distant death of his clone—a sharp, satisfying pop in his awareness. He smiled. 'The curtain rises.'
---
Iris, the messenger goddess, rush in the throne room of Olympus in a disheveled burst of rainbow light. Her hair was wild, her chiton drenched in sweat. "My Lord! The Sky Chasm—the seal is breached! Monsters are unleashed!"
Zeus's fist slammed down on his throne, the sound like thunder. "WHERE IS KRATOS?!"
"Battling the mortal rebellions, my Lord!"
Zeus rose, lightning crackling in his beard. "MOBILIZE THE ARMY! IRIS, SUMMON HELIOS AND ALL HIS LEGIONS!"
Zeus walk away from throne room. His jaw locked, eyes blazing with fury as every muscle in his body coiled, ready to strike. He murmer "I will do this myself."
---
As the order echoed through heaven, a different tremor shook the base of the world.
On the crowded banks of the River Styx, where Apate and the kind-hearted Titan Epimetheus managed the endless queue of souls, the earth suddenly erupted.
THOOM!
A wall of the underworld fortress shattered. From the dust and debris emerged Morvud, the Devourer. Dark blue scales glistened over its muscular form. A long, corrosive tongue licked razor-sharp teeth, droplets of saliva sizzling holes in the stone floor.
Epimetheus paled. "By the Primordials… Morvud."
"Protect the souls!" Apate shouted, her voice cutting through the panic. "Form a barrier! The rest of you, with me!" Soldiers leaped into action, shepherding terrified shades away.
ROOOAARR!!!
A warning horn blared three times, its mournful note drowning in Morvud's answering roar.
SPLASH!
The River Styx itself reacted. From its center, the personified goddess Styx rose, her face a mask of fury. She thrust her hands forward. 'Corrosive Water Bind!'
The acidic waters of the river surged upward, coiling around Morvud like living chains. Black smoke rose as the water ate into its hide. Morvud bellowed, thrashing. Black ichor dripped from its wounds, each drop morphing into a skittering, lesser fiend.
With a monumental heave, Morvud snapped the watery bonds. Its blazing eyes locked onto the dense crowd of souls. It charged.
Apate stepped into its path, hands weaving. 'Infernal Flame Barrage!' A continuous stream of blue fire streaked toward the beast's face.
Morvud flinched, howling in pain, but its momentum was unstoppable. One massive, clawed paw swept aside the fire and lashed out towards Apate. She froze, the shadow of death falling over her.
---
CLANK!
The metallic shriek of dagger on sword echoed in the shattered dungeon. Druvak strained, his skeletal body a web of cracks, the sapphire core in his sternum fissured and dim. The soul-fire over his skull was a dying ember.
Through his hazy vision, he saw Julie—her body a canvas of self-destruction. Black ichor wept from ruptured skin, her eyes and nose glowing with the corrosive power of her own runaway divinity. 'She's burning herself out. She has minutes left.'
He glanced at his own cracked core. A memory surfaced, unbidden: a younger, prouder self lecturing a newly-crowned Hades on the nature of resolve.
A dry, rattling laugh escaped him. "I once lectured a god on resolve… and now I falter." The laugh died. His grip on his sword tightened with finality. He pointed the tip at her. "Come."
They charged, two broken beings. Julie's stab was a straight, desperate line for his core. Instead of parrying, Druvak dropped his sword and spread his arms.
Julie's crimson eyes flew wide with shock. The dagger plunged into the fractured sapphire gem.
Agony, white and absolute, consumed Druvak. The last of his soul-fire blew out. Yet, with the final shreds of his will, his skeletal arms wrapped around Julie in a firm, almost gentle embrace.
His core disintegrated into a cloud of emerald particles. They hung in the air for a moment—a glittering, ethereal fog—before streaming into Julie's eyes, ears, and mouth.
Her Slaughter Divinity, ever-hungry, surged to consume the immense essence of the Death Knight. Julie's body convulsed. Power, vast and ancient, flooded her veins. Her divinity solidified, its resonance deepening, elevating to the tier of a Mid-Level God.
Her wounds sealed shut, skin smoothing over. The crimson faded from her eyes, replaced by clear, horrified awareness. Warm tears, not ichor, streaked down her face. "M-Master…?"
Druvak's skull tilted. His voice was a faint, grating whisper. "You're… back." A skeletal hand, already crumbling at the edges, rose to wipe a tear from her cheek. "Why… cry? You… granted my wish."
His legs dissolved into white ash. "You freed me… from the curse. From the duty… from the grief." His other arm fell away. "Live… fullest."
"Master! NO!"
Her scream tore through the cavern as he collapsed entirely into a pile of inert, grey dust, leaving only his rusted sword behind. She fell to her knees, fists pounding the stone until her knuckles bled. "Why didn't you kill me?! Why?!"
From the deep shadows, Zaegarus watched, a connoisseur of despair. "A costly lesson," he cooed, his voice full of false sympathy. Dark energy coiled around his hand, condensing into a bolt of annihilating black light. "Let me end the pain." 'Ruin Bolt.'
He hurled it at her exposed back.
A spear of black obsidian pierced the air, intercepting the bolt in a silent explosion of shadow. Julie looked up, stunned, at the weapon embedded in the ground before her. "Helkarion…"
The very light in the cavern dimmed, swallowed by a growing sphere of absolute darkness. It burst, and Hades stood within, his obsidian wings stretched wide, his expression colder than the void between stars.
He glanced at the weeping Julie, at the dust, at the sword. A snap of his fingers.
A wave of supernatural drowsiness overwhelmed Julie. She slumped, unconscious, as a pool of living shadow welled up beneath her and Druvak's sword, swallowing them both.
Helkarion shuddered and flew to its master's hand. Hades leveled it at Zaegarus. "You."
Zaegarus felt it—a primal fear he hadn't tasted in millennia vibrating in his very bones. He looked at his own trembling hands and smiled, a wide, ecstatic gash across his face. He stepped forward and gave an elaborate bow.
"A pleasure to meet you, King of the Underworld. I am Zaegarus, Harbinger of—"
A crescent wave of darkness severed his head from his shoulders. It hit the ground with a wet thud, expression frozen in mockery.
"You may hide from my vision," Hades stated, unmoved. "But you cannot hide from domnion of my divinity. Show yourself." Hades turn around and stare at the shadow of caverns 'Sin.'
ahahahaha!!! Ahahahahh!
Eerie laughter multiplied, echoing from every shadow. Dozens of Zaegarus clones stepped forth, each raising a hand crackling with ruinous power. 'Ruin bolt'
Hades simply tapped the butt of Helkarion on the ground. 'Metal Surge.'
As Zaegarus about to hurl bolt at Hades. Earth trembles. Then earth erupted. Jagged spikes of black iron shot upward, impaling every clone.
AAAAAAA!!!
The cavern filled with their unified screams, the floor flooding with dark ichor. Only one remained, having used a Ruin Bolt to blast aside the spike meant for him.
Hades was already moving. Zaegarus snarled, weaving an illusion—a colossal black dragon materialized, maw gaping, and unleashed a torrent of soul-melting breath.
Hades flew straight into it. The fire parted around him like a curtain. He passed through the dragon's illusory head and slashed at empty air.
SHLICK!
A spray of real blood followed the sound of tearing flesh.The illusions shattered. Zaegarus stumbled into view, a deep gash across his torso, clutching his innards.
Desperate, he raised a trembling hand. 'Emotion Manipulation!' A sickly haze slithered toward Hades.
Hades appeared before him in a whisper of movement, the cold edge of Helkarion resting against Zaegarus's throat. "You try to serve Sin to the god who rules it?"
Zaegarus's hand dropped. He smiled through the pain. "A dying man… tries anything." He coughed, blood flecking his lips. "Don't you want to know… the presents…that I prepared."
"I will tell you…" His eye stare at Helkarion blade "If you let me…go."
"Not a chance. You killed one of my most loyal and trusted general." Hades slightly pressure the Helkarion blade over his neck. A smooth stream of blood flows. "You are alive because I have planned a better things than easy death."
"But I want to know few things from you. Who freed you? How can you able to hide from my secret divinity?" Hades asked. Zaegarus keep his mouth closed.
Hades's voice deepened, resonating with the authority of the Underworld itself. "Sin. Answer your King."
Zaegarus's body went rigid. His heart hammered against his ribs. His jaw clenched, muscles bulging, but the compulsion was absolute. Words fought their way up his throat. "The… the power… it sleeps in…" With a gargantuan effort, he bit down hard. Something cracked in his mouth. Three small, blinking red marbles—identical to those used in the sky—fell from his lips and clattered on the stone.
Hades's eyes narrowed. "You ingested your own weapons."
Zaegarus, grinning maniacally around a mouthful of blood, nodded. His stomach began to glow with the same fierce, white light that had vaporized the Sky Chasm guard.
"Reckless fool," Hades spat, stepping back and raising a shield of condensed shadow.
Zaegarus's final words were a gurgling whisper of devotion. "I love… Chaos…" The light consumed him. The explosion was silent but vast, vaporizing stone and carving a smooth, glassy crater into the earth.
Hades lowered his guard. His eyes glowed with amethyst light, scouring the area. Nothing remained but scorched essence and the faint, dissipating taint of chaos. "Gone."
Hades again scan all the area and search for Zaegarus through his secret divinity. But he found not single trace of him just scorched essence of him.
He beat his mighty wings and ascended through the vaporized ceiling into the sky above. He dismissed it as residual fallout.
Far below, in a small, prosperous village untouched by shadows of war, a pregnant woman stirred in her sleep. Unseen, a subtle, dim red glow pulsed once within her womb, then faded into quiet dormancy.