Hades walked away from the world of gods and mortals, his stride measured, unhurried, inevitable.
The sky behind him crackled with Zeus' war cry, Olympian forces rallying for battle against the Titans. Poseidon, ever the warrior, had already taken up his trident. But Hades did not turn back. That war was theirs. His fate lay elsewhere.The whispers of the abyss grew louder.It was not mere instinct that guided him—it was a calling, a demand. Something ancient, something deep, was waiting for him. He followed no road, yet his path was clear. His feet carried him toward the edge of existence, where the land crumbled and shadows swallowed all light.
The air grew heavy. The wind stopped. The world held its breath.Before him, the earth split into a gaping chasm, a wound in reality. It was not of Olympus, not of the mortal realm. This was the threshold of the Underworld. And he was the first god to lay claim to it.He stepped forward.Darkness closed around him, but it did not consume him. It welcomed him. He fell, or perhaps he drifted—time lost meaning. Shadows curled against his skin like old friends. The deeper he sank, the more he felt his own divinity awakening. This place was his.Then, he was not alone.Figures shifted in the gloom—spirits, formless and lost. Some wept. Some moaned. Some stared with empty eyes.The first souls of the dead.Hades observed them, silent, unshaken. They were waiting, drifting without purpose. The dead needed a master.
But another presence loomed in the dark.A hunger. A force that had existed in this abyss before Hades' arrival.Something ancient and monstrous.From the shadows, a shape crawled forward.
Erebus.
Not a god, not a Titan. Something older. The embodiment of primordial darkness itself.
"You do not belong here," Erebus rumbled, his voice like dying stars collapsing into silence.Hades met his gaze. Unflinching. Unshaken. Unchallenged."I do now."