Zeus's laughter did not resemble that of a man. It was a crash of tectonic plates, a dry thunderclap that shook the white marble columns of his celestial palace. Each peal of laughter made the pure ether vibrate, where clouds were only distant memories beneath the gods' feet.
On his throne of ivory and pure gold, the King of the Gods fixed his gaze upon a mirror of lightning suspended in the void. Within it, he observed Jormund's progress. What he saw was no longer a mere silhouette, but a disturbance in the fabric of the world: a dark, mineral mass moving with inevitable slowness through the roots of Tartarus.
— Look at this "Anomaly," Zeus exclaimed, his eyes burning with blue electricity that ran through his silver beard. He adorns himself in stone as if he could become a mountain. He has stolen a fragment of Chronos and believes that his weight is a new law. He thinks eternity can be bought with rock and flower's blood.
Around him, the council of Olympians remained strangely silent. Unlike their sovereign, they did not laugh. They felt, through the soles of their divine feet, that the foundations of Olympus groaned. Every step of Jormund, down there, in the absolute darkness, resonated here, in the eternal light.
Zeus rose abruptly. His stature seemed to grow, his shadow stretching to block the map of creation engraved upon the floor. With a sovereign gesture, he tore the air before him. The rift revealed a dark, icy mist, saturated with the smell of iron and ancient earth.
— Hades! thundered Zeus, his voice crossing dimensions. Your realm reeks of sedition. This creature of glass and time tramples your laws and devours the remains of our father before your eyes. Do you sleep upon your ebony throne, brother, while a second-rate Jötunn rewrites the end of our story?
From the void, Hades' voice rose. Calm. Sharp. Devoid of his brother's electric hysteria.
— He is no longer a soul I can judge, Zeus. He has become a physical variable. An anchor point. My specters flake against his skin, and my judges no longer know how to measure an existence that no longer flows. He is not "within" my realm. He has become the ground upon which my realm rests.
Zeus' laughter died instantly. A leaden severity fell across his face, dimming the very brilliance of the sun.
— Then he shall not be condemned, he decreed, his hand closing on the void. He will be erased. The Cosmos does not tolerate dead weight that refuses to follow the current. If your shadows are too smooth to stop him, my lightning will shatter him into a billion shards of glass.
Zeus raised his right arm, and the air began to groan. A bolt of blinding, pure, primordial white formed in his palm with the hissing of the end of the world.
— Prepare your legions for the spectacle, Hades. I shall descend personally to the deepest reaches of your chasm to transform his "eternity of stone" into an instant of ashes. I will show him that even a mountain can learn to tremble.
With heavy steps, Zeus left his pedestal, each step triggering storms across the mortal world, as he prepared to plunge into Tartarus.