Chapter 22: The Gathering Storm
The Olympians had left.
But the Underworld was still changing.
Hades stood at the edge of his throne room, staring into the abyss beyond. Something had awakened within him. A new divinity, vast and unshaped, pulsed beneath his skin, beneath his soul.
But it was not complete. Not yet.
The Underworld knew it. It was waiting.
For him.
For what came next.
And Hades intended to find out exactly what that was.
The First Signs of the Order
Thanatos arrived in silence, as he always did. His wings barely shifted, yet the very air thinned around him, as if his presence alone was pulling the realm toward stillness.
Hades glanced at him. "You're late."
Thanatos arched a brow. "I don't operate on mortal concepts of time, my lord."
Hades smirked slightly but said nothing.
Thanatos studied him for a moment longer, his pale gaze unreadable. Then, he spoke.
"They've begun to gather."
Hades exhaled slowly. He had expected this.
The moment he had changed, the moment his domain had evolved beyond the simple afterlife, it had begun calling to them.
The lost.
The forgotten.
The ones who had never belonged to Olympus.
The first of his own followers.
Hades turned, stepping past Thanatos. "Take me to them."
The First Followers of the End
They were waiting for him at the farthest edge of the Underworld, where even the dead rarely wandered.
They knelt as he approached, not in fear, but in recognition.
They were not mortals.
They were not gods.
They were something in between.
Ancient souls who had walked the divine plane before Olympus had risen. Beings cast aside by time, by history, by the world that had forgotten them.
But the End had not forgotten.
And now, they had come to serve.
Hades regarded them, his expression unreadable. "You are here because you feel it, don't you?"
A figure stepped forward—a woman, her form shifting between shadow and starlight.
"We are here," she said, "because we heard your call."
Hades studied them all.
This was no accident.
The Underworld was becoming something greater.
And these were its first true disciples.
The first of the Order of the End.
And this was only the beginning.
Beyond Olympus: A New Threat Awakens
Far from the Underworld, beyond the golden halls of Olympus, another pantheon watched.
They had seen the battle.
They had felt the shift.
And they had decided.
Hades was a threat.
Not just to Olympus.
To all gods.
And they would strike first.