The plain still trembled beneath his steps.
Each breath of the colossus stirred clouds of ash and blood.
Around him, corpses already lay in heaps—divine soldiers, sacred beasts, heroes of Olympus. All had fallen to his fury.
And yet, he still stood.
His veins burned.
His bones cracked.
But his hammer still throbbed with unquenchable rage.
One more step, and he could have dragged half the pantheon down with him.
The gods knew it.
That was why they no longer attacked.
They waited.
Clad in their frozen light, their eyes fixed upon him, with a fear they could not fully hide.
— Bend the knee, Mimas, thundered Zeus. Offer us your strength, and your kin shall live.
His fists clenched.
Everything in him screamed to leap, to crush these traitors in one final cry of glory. He still had the power. He could die dragging Olympus with him.
But behind him... the weeping.
The voices of women.
The eyes of children, searching in him for a salvation he could never grant through war alone.
The choice etched itself into his very entrails.
A choice harsher than any battle.
He sank to one knee.
The ground split beneath his weight.
His head bowed.
— Spare them, he said. I am yours.
Silence.
Then a divine whisper, smooth as a blade already laid upon his neck:
— So be it.
The chains fell.
Forged by Hephaestus himself, they were black and gleaming, carved with burning runes that writhed like serpents.
They were not mere bonds: they breathed.
Each touch against Mimas' skin drank his essence, glowing with a fiery light as they tightened still more.
The colossus did not flinch.
He offered his massive arms, let himself be bound.
His people would live.
It was the price to pay.
Around him, the Olympian soldiers burst into laughter.
Their triumph rang false, like carrion birds too cowardly to face the giant fairly.
Mimas lowered his eyes. He did not listen.
Let the dogs bark. His choice was just.
But a cry split the air.
Not his.
Hephaestus'.
— What are you doing?! he roared at the divine assembly. He surrendered! You swore! The innocents were to be spared!
Mimas raised his head.
His chains trembled.
His heart clenched.
He turned his gaze...
And what he saw shattered his world.
Olympian flames already fell upon his kin.
Villages consumed in torrents of divine fire.
Women screaming, clutching children reduced to ash in their arms.
Elders crushed, their cries drowned by thunder.
No mercy.
No survivors.
The promise had been a lie.
His eyes veiled with blood.
Black tears rolled down his colossal cheeks.
Each drop struck the earth like a funeral rain.
Then the ground began to quake.
The chains drank his Magia, but they had not been forged to contain such hatred.
With each pulse of rage, the plain shuddered.
Mountains quaked.
A dormant volcano in the distance rumbled, resonating like an ancient heart.
Hephaestus looked away.
He knew.
He had forged the chains, but even they were splitting under such wrath.
He stepped back, ashamed. For he too saw the inexcusable.
The others did not yield.
Zeus raised his arm.
— Take him.
And so they dragged the chained giant to the volcano's summit.
Each step carved trenches in the earth.
Each cry of his slaughtered people echoed in his ears, like ghosts that would never fade.
They hurled him into the yawning crater.
The chains sank into molten rock.
The mountain closed over him like a tomb.
Zeus' voice thundered one last time:
— Should your wrath ever break free again, this volcano shall awaken. And your cry shall shatter your own grave.
Then the gods departed.
And silence returned.
A silence... broken by a growl.
Not of pain.
Not of fear.
A growl of hatred, so heavy it shook the mountain's very core.
Then he heard it.
A voice, clear and glacial, rising from the darkness.
— I know your suffering.
Mimas lifted his head.
In the shadow of cooling magma, a figure took form.
Black wings.
A thin smile.
Eyes burning with a cold flame.
Samael.
— They betrayed you, he said. They stole your honor, your people, your reason to exist.
— But I... I can offer you something else.
He raised his hand. A black flame leapt forth, vivid, ravenous.
— Become my Emissary. Abandon what remains of your name, and take what the gods denied you.
— Not peace. Not redemption. But a weapon. Eternal Wrath.
The chains shivered.
The volcano roared.
Mimas lowered his eyes. He knew. He would never again see his kin.
Then his tears turned to embers.
His cry to an earthquake.
His heart to a tremor.
A damned titan, bound to Samael, whose every step echoed like an apocalypse.
Years slipped away, unseen.
Chained at the volcano's heart, Mimas ceased to be a giant... and became an ember that refused to die.
Each pulse of his chains drank his Magia.
But what they drank, they did not destroy.
They recycled it, coursing it through the rock, feeding it back into his flesh.
An endless cycle of torment, his essence hammered again and again on the anvil of the gods.
The Corrosion.
His skin cracked, blackened, hardened by lava.
His veins glowed red, rivers of fire beneath stone.
His tendons, devoured by volcanic acid, reforged into rigid cables, stronger than steel.
Each muscle calcified, shattering under the heat, only to return as something denser, harder.
No flesh left—only living stone.
The Fusion.
His heart, swollen with hatred, burst within his chest.
But it did not cease to beat.
It fell, rolling into magma, soaking in molten rock, compacting, densifying.
Centuries refined it, purified it like a precious ore.
It became a titanic gem, a stone of fire pulsing with pure wrath: the Heart of Magma.
Each beat shook the volcano.
Each throb a war drum echoing through the earth's depths.
The Metamorphosis.
The void left in his chest was no weakness: lava coursed through it like new blood.
His bones became basalt columns, jagged and unbreakable.
His lungs turned to furnaces, each breath exhaling ash and flame.
His eyes became burning embers, veined with cracks of black, blazing with undying light.
Even his chains, forged to bind him, fused with his flesh.
They sank into his skin, became extensions of his body, serpents of metal thirsting for Magia.
Thus Mimas was no longer merely prisoner of the volcano.
He was the volcano.
His pulse made the earth tremble.
His wrath stirred the world's bowels.
When Samael returned to him centuries later, he did not find a chained giant.
He found a raging mountain, a colossal carcass vibrating with condensed hatred.
— You are no longer Mimas the Giant, whispered the fallen angel, offering him the black flame.
— You are my Emissary. My scourge. My Wrath.
And Mimas roared.
A roar that split the walls of the volcano.
A cry so heavy it reached the heavens, reminding the gods of their betrayal.
From then on, his name was no longer that of the defeated.
He was Mimas, Emissary of Wrath.
A colossus whose blood was lava, whose bones were stone, whose heart was an eternal volcano.