The battlefield was no longer a place.
It was a rupture in reality.
The Underworld had become something else—a domain where past, present, and future collided. The sky above was not merely broken, it was unraveling, revealing something beyond existence itself. The ground was no longer solid, shifting between matter and thought, refusing to obey the laws of any pantheon.
The war had reached its peak.
And Hades stood at the center of it all.
The Weight of a True God
Above the battlefield, the golden-eyed entity watched.
Its eyes moved in infinite directions at once, warping the air around it, turning seconds into centuries and minutes into forgotten histories.
It did not speak with a voice. It spoke with knowledge, with truth.
"You persist beyond what was ordained."
Hades did not flinch.
He did not answer.
Because he did not need to.
The antlered beast beside the golden-eyed god took a slow breath—and the Underworld screamed.
Entire mountains vanished.
The blackened rivers of the dead boiled away into nothingness.
Hades' own throne fractured, floating in the air as scattered remnants of its former self.
The Order of the End, Hades' first true warriors, braced themselves—but they did not kneel.
Instead, they spoke.
"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 voices did not just echo.
They became law.
And for the first time, the invading gods hesitated.
The Pantheon of the Underworld
From the abyss, they came.
Not mortals.
Not spirits.
Gods.
Forgotten gods. Banished gods. Deities who had once ruled the edges of existence before being cast aside by the newer pantheons.
But now, they had found a king.
And one by one, they bent the knee.
A god with obsidian skin and six arms, his fingers adorned with the chains of judgment, knelt. "I am Nyxal, the Bound Judge. I kneel to the Lord of the Underworld."
A goddess of sorrow and silence, her body woven from the shadows of every forgotten soul, bowed low. "I am Vaelis, the Keeper of the Unremembered. I kneel to the End."
A warrior with a blade too vast for mortal eyes to comprehend pressed his fist to his chest. "I am Morbryn, the Executioner of the Lost. My blade is yours, my will is yours. I kneel to none but the abyss."
And so they came.
One by one.
Gods without thrones. Gods without names.
They had been forgotten.
But now, they were claimed.
Hades watched.
And for the first time, the Underworld was no longer just a kingdom of the dead.
It was a kingdom of gods.
And he was their king.
The Storm and the Sea Awaken
Far above, Olympus trembled.
Zeus stood at the edge of his throne room, staring down at the battlefield below.
For the first time in his immortal existence, he felt small.
He had watched Hades rise. Watched him become something beyond what any god had ever been.
And in that moment, he knew.
If Hades was erased, Olympus would fall with him.
Not because of war.
Not because of power.
But because Hades had surpassed what it meant to be a god.
And if they did not change, they would all be left behind.
Lightning crackled across his fingertips. The storm stirred inside of him.
Beside him, Poseidon remained silent. But Zeus could feel it—his power shifting, deepening, pulling at the vast oceans of the divine plane.
For thousands of years, they had ruled the sky and the sea.
But now?
Now, that was no longer enough.
Zeus turned to his brother, his storm-filled eyes burning with realization.
"If we do not evolve, we will be nothing."
Poseidon's fingers clenched around his trident. "Then let's not be nothing."
The air cracked apart.
The sea roared in defiance.
And for the first time, the storm and the sea began to walk the same path as the abyss.
Their transformation had begun.
But Hades would always be ahead of them.
He was first.
And he always would be.
The War Reaches Its Peak
The foreign gods had come to erase him.
But now, the battlefield had changed.
The Order of the End stood.
The gods of the Underworld knelt.
And from Olympus, two brothers rose.
Zeus and Poseidon descended.
The war was no longer Hades' alone.
It was the war of the three kings.
And the divine plane would never be the same again.
Foreshadowing: The Dawn of a New Era
Hades was no longer just the Lord of the Dead.
The Underworld was no longer just a resting place.
Zeus and Poseidon were no longer just gods of Olympus.
And soon, the divine plane would learn what that truly meant.