The war was over.
But the world had changed.
The battlefield no longer resembled the Underworld. The rivers of the dead had shifted, transformed into something deeper, something infinite. The sky—if it could still be called a sky—was no longer the cold black void it had once been. It was a gateway to something beyond existence.
The divine plane struggled to stabilize.
And at its center stood the victors.
Hades.
Zeus.
Poseidon.
And the gods who had survived.
The Fall of the Invaders
The golden-eyed entity no longer spoke.
It could not.
Its voice, once woven into the fabric of fate itself, had been silenced.
The chains of Nyxal, the Bound Judge, still wrapped around what remained of it—a being that once dictated the rules of creation, now reduced to a prisoner in the realm it sought to erase.
The antlered beast had fled. Its power was great, but it had learned fear that day. It had seen the abyss, and it had turned away.
The foreign pantheon was shattered.
Some had fallen in battle.
Some had been erased by Vaelis, forgotten from existence itself.
Some had simply knelt.
Because they now knew who the true kings were.
The Ascension of Zeus and Poseidon
Zeus and Poseidon stood at the edge of transformation.
They had felt it in battle—the moment when they became something greater.
Zeus no longer commanded lightning. He was the storm. Wherever the sky opened, wherever thunder roared, he was present.
Poseidon no longer ruled the sea. He was the ocean. Wherever tides moved, wherever waves formed, his power existed.
They were no longer just gods of Olympus.
They were forces of reality itself.
But even as their power surged, they turned to Hades.
And they knew—
He was still ahead of them.
He had always been ahead of them.
Because he had walked this path first.
And now, they followed.
The Gods of the Underworld Kneel
The war had ended.
But something greater had begun.
From the abyss, Hades' pantheon took form.
Nyxal, the Bound Judge, knelt before the throne. His chains no longer bound the guilty—they now bound the laws of the Underworld itself.
Vaelis, the Keeper of the Unremembered, lowered her gaze. Her presence alone dictated which gods would be remembered and which would fade into nothingness.
Morbryn, the Executioner of the Lost, raised his blade once more—not in battle, but in oath.
More came.
More gods, more beings that had once been forgotten.
And one by one, they bent the knee.
Because they knew the truth.
Hades was not just the ruler of the dead.
He was something greater.
He was the End.
And he was not done.
The Gods Who Watch
Far beyond Olympus, beyond the Underworld, other pantheons watched.
They had seen the war.
They had seen the victors.
And now, they had a choice to make.
Would they kneel?
Would they fight?
Or would they be erased?
The divine plane was no longer stable.
Because a new power had emerged.
Not Olympus.
Not the gods who had ruled before.
But something greater.
And soon, the entire divine plane would have to face it.
Foreshadowing: The Next War Begins
The war was over.
But the real war was just beginning.
Because the gods had always feared the End.
And now, it had arrived.