Hades had never been weak.
He had never bent beneath the weight of power—not against the Titans, not against Olympus, not against the countless souls that passed through his realm.
But now?
Now, he stood before something older than time itself.
A being that did not recognize him as a god. A force that did not care for his dominion.
And it was testing him.
The Colossus' Judgment
"You are not meant to exist here."
The voice did not shake the void. It reshaped it.
Where the Colossus' words fell, reality bent and shifted. Stars died. New ones were born. The fabric of time itself rippled and cracked under the weight of its speech.
Hades did not flinch.
Because he was not a god bound by Olympus. He was something more.
And now, he would prove it.
The Battle Without Form
The Colossus did not attack with force.
It attacked with existence itself.
Hades felt the weight of eternity press upon him. The universe itself was rejecting him, pushing him out of reality.
He was being unmade.
His essence unraveled, his power flickered, his very name began to disappear from the fabric of creation.
But Hades did not yield.
If he allowed himself to be erased—then he was never worthy to be here in the first place.
He did not fight the Colossus like he would a god.
He fought it like a force of nature.
Hades' presence surged forward—not in brute strength, but in inevitability.
The Colossus tried to erase him.
And Hades simply refused to be erased.
The Moment of Ascendance
The battle stretched beyond time.
A thousand realities flickered in and out of being as Hades and the Colossus clashed.
And then, something changed.
Hades stopped resisting.
Not because he was surrendering.
But because he had learned.
The Colossus was not a foe.
It was a test.
And now, he understood the lesson.
Hades stepped forward.
And the universe did not reject him.
It made room for him.
Because now, he belonged.
And for the first time, the Colossus acknowledged him.
"You are beyond the others."
It did not kneel.
It did not bow.
But it moved aside.
Because Hades was no longer just an Olympian.
He had taken his first step toward becoming something else.
Foreshadowing: The Path to the Unknown
Hades had survived.
But the Outer Gods were watching.
And soon, his brothers would arrive.
Not as gods.
But as something greater.