The Underworld was no longer a resting place.
It had become something greater, something eternal.
And far beyond its borders, the gods who had ruled since the dawn of time had taken notice.
They had seen the shift.
They had felt the change.
And they had made their decision.
Hades would not be allowed to exist.
They would strike first.
The Sky of the Dead Breaks
It began with a sound.
Not thunder.
Not wind.
Something deeper. Something older.
A vibration in the air, a hum that echoed through the bones of the Underworld. It was not an attack. It was a presence.
Hades stood at the edge of his throne room, watching as his sky fractured.
Not like glass. Not like a mere storm.
Like reality itself was rejecting what was about to enter.
Thanatos appeared beside him, silent as always. His vast wings, darker than the abyss itself, stretched outward as he observed the cracks forming in the heavens.
"They're here," he murmured.
Hades said nothing.
He already knew.
The Gods That Should Not Be
The rift tore open, and they stepped through.
They were not Olympians.
They were not mortal gods.
They were something else.
The first to arrive did not have a shape that could be comprehended. It was not a being. It was a mass of golden eyes, shifting and expanding, each eye blinking at a different speed, each movement warping the air around it. Reality itself struggled to accept its presence.
Beside it, a second entity descended—a beast, vast and towering, covered in writhing limbs. Its head was crowned with spiraling antlers, their tips dripping with liquid starlight.
And the last…
The last one had no body at all.
It was a voice.
A whisper that existed everywhere at once.
"Hades."
The name did not echo. It was simply known.
Hades met their presence with cold indifference. "You are far from your domain."
The golden-eyed entity shifted. Its voice was not sound, but understanding.
"You are a mistake."
Thanatos' expression did not change, but the air around him froze.
Hades tilted his head slightly. "I disagree."
The antlered beast exhaled, and the weight of its breath alone shattered the mountains in the distance.
"You expand beyond your place."
The whisper spread across the Underworld, pressing into the souls of the dead. Even they felt it.
"You are becoming something unnatural."
Hades closed his eyes for a brief moment. He could feel the truth in their words.
He was changing.
The Underworld was no longer just death.
It was something else.
But that did not mean he would stop.
He opened his eyes. They burned with abyssal light.
"And you came here thinking you could stop me?"
Silence.
Then, they attacked.
A War Beyond Gods
The first blow came not from a weapon, but from existence itself.
The golden-eyed entity did not move, did not strike, yet suddenly space collapsed around Hades.
His throne vanished.
His palace vanished.
The Underworld itself warped, twisting, breaking under an impossible weight.
The mass of eyes watched, unblinking, waiting for him to crumble.
But Hades did not fall.
Instead, he simply stepped forward.
And the Underworld obeyed.
The collapse stopped. Reality reformed.
Hades exhaled, and the force of his breath alone dissolved the golden eyes nearest to him.
The entity recoiled for the first time.
Hades' voice was calm. Absolute.
"You are not the first to try this."
And then he moved.
The Order's First War
Far below, in the depths of the Underworld, the Order of the End had gathered.
They had seen the sky shatter. They had felt the weight of the foreign gods.
And they knew what had to be done.
One by one, they knelt, pressing their fists to their chests.
And together, they spoke their oath.
"We are the End. We fear nothing. We welcome nothing. We embrace the silence of eternity. We are the sword that strikes without mercy, the abyss that waits without end. We kneel to none but Death. We kneel to none but the Lord of the Underworld."
Their words did not just echo. They became reality.
The Underworld responded.
Shadows deepened. The rivers of the dead surged forward like a tidal wave, sweeping across the battlefield.
The Order of the End rose.
And they went to war.
Olympus Watches
High above, in the golden halls of Olympus, Zeus stood at the edge of his throne room.
Watching.
Listening.
Feeling.
The battle was beyond anything Olympus had ever seen. This was not a clash of gods.
This was something greater.
Athena stepped forward, arms crossed, her face unreadable. "They seek to erase him."
Poseidon exhaled slowly. "We should have seen this coming."
Zeus clenched his jaw. He had known.
And yet, for all his power, for all his wisdom, he had made the same mistake as the others.
He had thought Hades was still one of them.
That he was still bound by the same rules, the same limits.
But now?
Now, he was something else.
Hera's voice was quiet. "What do we do?"
Zeus turned away from the battlefield, lightning crackling across his fingers.
"We wait."
For the first time in his reign, he did not know who would win.
And that terrified him.
Foreshadowing: The War Expands
This was not the end.
It was only the beginning.
Hades had taken his first true step beyond godhood.
The divine plane had begun its war.
And soon, all of existence would feel it.