The God of Underworld

Gaia screamed.

Her fall from the Overworld was like a meteor hurled from the stars, but no flame accompanied her descent, only a terrible, sickening silence and her roar kf anger.

Countless tendrils of chaos desperately latch onto the overworld, hoping to prevent her fall.

But it was no use. Although she survived the combined might of the gods in overworld, the shockwaves sent her hurling down.

Her tendrils broke and snaps, not even slowing down her fall.

Then, with a colossal thud, she landed, sending out shockwaves across the endless field of ashen dunes.

The whole underworld trembled.

She roared in anger as she looked up to the overworld.

Tendrils and malformed limbs flailed, seeking escape, but the moment her grotesque body made contact with the earth, a twelve-pointed star of radiant, divine light ignited beneath her.

It pulsed with ancient binding authority, locking her in place. Her tendrils that tried to reach for the overworld snapped and dissipated into ashes.

She was trapped.

Her thousands of eyes twisted and writhed, scanning the darkness, until they all focused on a single figure sitting atop a high-throned dais carved from obsidian bone.

Hades.

He sat leisurely, one arm on the throne's rest, his chin resting against his fist, watching her with a calm smile that bordered on cruel amusement.

Truly a king in his rightful domain.

Gaia screeched again, a noise that shook even the dead. She moved towards Hades, but found her body completely locked in place.

Hades exhaled softly through his nose and stood up.

"You're quite loud," he said casually, his voice echoing through the eternal dusk. "No need for dramatics."

He observed the corrupted figure of the primordial mother, "This is the first time we met face to face haven't we? Foreign entity."

He spread his arms wide, as if delivering a formal welcome.

"Welcome… to my Underworld."

Her response came instantly, dozens of chaotic tendrils exploded from her back, wild and mindless, surging toward him in a frenzy of primal hate.

Hades didn't flinch.

With a mere wave of his hand, Desmos, his pitch black barbed spear wreathed in ethereal flame, materialized in his grip.

In one sweep—shhhhrk!—he cleaved through every tendril. The severed limbs twitched and dissolved into ash.

Gaia let out another ear-splitting shriek.

"Poor manners for a guest," Hades remarked, spinning Desmos once before resting it against the ground. "Lower your head first. You are in the presence of a king, the throne is where I am."

Gaia did not respond(shocking), she simply roared in agony. Hades' spear inflicted her pain so great it sent shockwaves through her soul.

As Hades observed Gaia, a black wisp of power appeared from the shadows beside his throne.

And a beat later, another figure emerged from the wisp, graceful, tall, and crowned in midnight.

Nyx, the Primordial of Night.

Her gaze was calm, her black gown trailing into the void beneath her feet.

She observed Gaia, staring at her in sadness and pity before she turned to Hades and spoke, her voice low and clear.

"I will enter her soul, just like we planned. I will leave her body to you."

Hades inclined his head.

"Be careful," he said, not as a command, but as a request. "I'll handle her, don't worry. You can take as much time as you want."

Nyx's lips curled into the faintest of smiles.

Then, her form dissolved into mist, a living nebula of stars and shadow, and streamed toward Gaia's writhing form like liquid night.

The moment Nyx's essence pierced Gaia's body, the monstrous goddess let out a new scream, one of pain and rage.

She convulsed violently.

*

*

*

Within the depths of Gaia's soul, Nyx emerged like a storm of velvet shadows.

She had seen the souls of countless gods, titans, and monsters before. She had traversed the spirit realms of sleeping giants and the fractured psyches of mad primordials.

She had seen the dreams of fear itself.

But this—this was something else entirely.

The moment she manifested within Gaia's soul, the darkness greeted her not with silence, but hunger.

The air wasn't air. It was alive, or more accurately, infested.

Eyes.

Countless eyes. Floating, twitching, blinking all at once, filling every inch of the void around her.

Mouths.

Gnashing teeth of all shapes and sizes, babbling incoherently, speaking in lost tongues, chewing at existence itself.

They stared at her, and lunged, intending to devour her.

But they didn't get far.

The moment they drew close, Nyx's presence pushed them back, not through brute force, but through sovereignty.

She was Nyx, the Night Eternal. The first creation. The first being to exist in the cosmos. Born from Chaos itself.

And here, even in the twisted soulscape of a corrupted Gaia, she was untouchable.

A slow ripple of dark starlight radiated from her form, like moonlight gleaming on oil.

Wherever she stepped, the mouths shut, and the eyes looked away. They hissed and withdrew into the folds of the corrupted soul, unable to bear her radiance.

But they watched.

They always watched, waiting for a chance to devour her.

She walked calmly across the ever-shifting terrain.

There were no landmarks, just a drifting nothing filled with twitching limbs and globs of wet, pulsating matter.

The landscape reshaped itself in mockery of life, trees that bled, rivers made of bone and bile, statues of children screaming.

Nyx paid them no mind.

Her footsteps left behind traces of silent stardust, cleansing patches of the soul as she passed.

And then, she felt it...

A pulse, no, a heartbeat.

She followed it.

Deeper and deeper, down through layers of rotting thought and ancient pain, until finally, the monstrous walls pulled back, revealing the core of Gaia's soul.

Nyx halted.

Her eyes narrowed.

In the center of this vast chamber was a sphere of pure green aura, pulsing like a wounded sun.

Coiled tightly around it were massive tentacles, veined and twitching, each the size of mountains.

From the tentacles grew mouths filled with broken glyphs, and atop it all sat a single enormous eye, unblinking, watching, waiting.

And within that green aura, suspended and unmoving, was a small, sleeping figure.

It was Gaia.

Not the abomination outside.

Not the rotting mass that fought the gods.

But the real Gaia.

She was curled into herself, like a child in pain. Her long hair floated gently in the green aura, and her hands were clasped over her heart.

She looked… peaceful. Innocent. Fragile.

Nyx stepped forward, slowly.

At once, the great eye above her focused, and the tentacles began to stir.

*

*

*

Hades furrowed his brows as all of Gaia's eyes once again locked into him.

Then, from her fractured body, a torrent of dark purple mud erupted, it was vile and alive.

It spilled across the Underworld sands, bubbling, filled with eyes, fangs, and whispers.

Every grain it touched melted into ooze.

Hades's eyes narrowed.

The King of the Dead frowned in displeasure.

"You dare…" he muttered, voice low and venomous.

The purple mud crept forward, swallowing the star sigil, dissolving the bindings, infecting the very ground he ruled.

Hades raised his head.

His voice rose, proud and absolute as he declared. "This is my realm, abomination. Every speck of dust, every forgotten soul, every breath of wind belongs to me."

He raised Desmos and stabbed it into the ground.

Instantly, the shadows reacted. They twisted, warped, and rose like waves—an army of darkness crashing against the tide of corruption.

The underworld itself came alive, seeking to purge the filth.

But then, his frown deepened.

The mud fought back.

Where shadow clashed against ooze, the shadows were devoured. Slowly, surely, the infection crept forward.

Hades clicked his tongue. "How insolent."

His grip on Desmos tightened.

"Desmos."

The spear glowed, and time itself trembled.

Hades moved, but the spear struck before he moved. Cause bent to his will. The thrust came from a moment yet to exist, piercing ahead of reality, embedding itself into Gaia's central mass.

A surge of divine force shot into her, a curse of decay, a reverse chain of causality, its effect unfolding before its cause, unraveling her essence from within.

The curse took root. Her body began to blacken and peel.

The curse was something not even Uranus can resist.

But then, dozens of toothy mouths opened across her form, grotesque and unnatural.

They bit into the curse, ate it, chewed on the reverse causality like a predator devouring time itself.

Hades recoiled in mild disgust.

"I can't believe I had children with this thing…" he muttered under his breath.

Even for him, the irony of his past with Gaia, made this confrontation even more vile.

Now, every time he thinks of the past, he would surely remember this moment.

He shook his head once, then spun Desmos again.

"No matter," he said coldly. "Come. I will accompany you for as long as Nyx needed me to."

Darkness swelled beneath his feet.

In the skies above the Underworld, the stars dimmed.

Hades prepared for the next strike.

And Gaia screamed at him, preparing to unleash her full inner hell.