The God of Underworld

The battlefield groaned beneath the sheer weight of divinity.

Black flames and corrupted mud clashed like writhing serpents across the scorched Underworld plains, boiling rivers of ichor carving new trenches into the ruined stone.

But through it all, Hades remained still, a statue of calm amid the storm, his cloak untouched by the chaos swirling around him.

Before him, Gaia charged like a demon, her mouth screaming wordless fury.

Her hair flailed in the wind, and her darkened skin cracked with veins of greenish mud pulsing like poison.

She was healing from every wound, regenerating limbs, reshaping her broken form. Even torn to shreds, she would rebuild herself in moments.

Hades had seen it all before. He had already grown tired of it.

And so...

He gripped desmos and went on a stance.

And activated an authority that had lain dormant for eons.

The air snapped.

The shadows trembled.

The sky above the Underworld cracked faintly as the authority surged through Hades like lightning through a divine conduit.

This was an authority he took from Iapetus. An authority that can bring fear and end to any divine and immortal beings.

The concept of "Mortality" itself.

With it, Hades could force the end upon any being. Be they gods, titans, or even Primordials.

He could make them mortal, strip them of their endless regeneration, their immunity to death, their fate of eternity, and bind them to finality.

"Immortality is a privilege," Hades whispered, his eyes narrowing. "And I revoke it."

He gripped his weapon tightly—Desmos, the Spear of Death.

Hades moved.

A single thrust.

And in that instant, the world seems to rewrite itself. Desmos struck Gaia before he had even thrown it.

Causality shattered, destiny buckled. The path of events rearranged to ensure the attack would always land, past, present, future be damned.

Gaia screamed.

Her corrupted form spasmed violently, her veins ruptured, her regeneration froze, unable to function under the pressure of imposed mortality.

With the curse of Desmos, along with the authority of mortality, any being struck by it would be erased instantly.

But Hades did not activate the full curse, he held it back. Because if he let Desmos consume her entirely, she would die without any chance for reincarnation.

And that would defeat the purpose.

Nyx was still working.

His job was merely to delay Gaia while Nyx try to save her. He was not meant to kill her until Nyx deemed it necessary.

Hades shifted his stance, keeping his distance, his expression neutral.

Gaia stumbled forward, snarling incoherently, barely able to keep her malformed body standing.

At that moment...

Nyx exploded from Gaia's back, emerging in a swirl of velvet black, her divine aura stretching across the battlefield like a second nightfall.

In her hands was a gently pulsing, green wisp, small, glowing, peaceful.

Hades' eyes flicked toward it, and immediately recognized it.

A soul.

Gaia's true soul.

Nyx met his gaze and smiled. She flew towards him and landed on his side.

"She's safe now," she said. "Do what you do best, destroy that abomination. I'll make her a new body after this."

Hades chuckled, just a soft breath of amusement. A grin tugged at his lips as he nodded.

"Very well."

He reached out, palm open, and summoned a chain of black iron—its links humming with divine energy, its tip ending in a cruel, spear-like blade.

It cracked the ground beneath him as it formed.

He spun it above his head for a few moments, before throwing it

The chain flew like lightning, piercing straight through Gaia's chest. Her body convulsed, mouth agape in a silent gasp.

Hades smirked.

"Get over here!"

Hades yanked the chain.

Gaia's body, still writhing and twitching, flew toward him, helpless against the pull of his authority.

As she drew near, Hades extended his other hand, forming blades of pure shadow, jagged and whirling like a storm of obsidian scythes.

In a blink, the storm struck.

The shadows tore into her.

Rip. Slash. Tear. Shred.

Gaia's body was dismantled, carved apart at the molecular level, her corrupted flesh reduced to ribbons of smoke and ash.

No scream came. There was no soul left to scream with.

Only her body remained, and now, not even that.

All that was left was dust.

Hades exhaled. He dismissed the chains and blades, stepping forward beside Nyx. His eyes briefly glanced at the soul she cradled.

"Good work," he murmured.

Nyx gave him a lopsided smirk. "You too, executioner."

They stood together, gods of night and death, at the center of a battlefield now finally quiet.

In Nyx's hands, Gaia's soul pulsed like a seed.

"Well, now that's everything's over with, let's take down the gate." Said Hades, "Hecate and the others are surely exhausted from maintaining it."

Nyx nodded. "I needed Hecate's help in creating a new body anyways."

But then...

The ground trembled.

And from the dust of the annihilated Gaia, something stirred.

"Tch!" Hades turned sharply, his eyes narrowing.

The black, squirming remains of Gaia's body, mere ashes of its true form, began to ripple and pulse.

Then, black liquid-like substance gathered, forming a single eye with countless tentacles.

"Damn you!" Hades summoned a torrent of shadows, intending to swallow the remaining piece of entity and kill it.

However, using the last bit of power as a tint fragment of an outer transcendent being, the entity remained unharmed.

And under the shocked eyes of Nyx and Hades, it tore apart a rift in space.

A violent rip in the very fabric of the universe burst forth like a wound bleeding black light, jagged and unnatural, revealing something impossible on the other side.

A place that should not be seen.

A place outside.

Hades acted instantly. Shadows surged from his form like a tidal wave, slamming into the fragment, trying to seal the breach.

But the rift was already open. It pulsed and widened, spasming like a living thing in pain.

Nyx's eyes widened. "No—!"

But it was already too late.

The fragment latched on, flailing tentacles stabbing into the void beyond reality.

It tugged, like an insect dragging open a cocoon, forcing the edges of the universe wider and wider.

Then...

Something appeared.

A single eye, the size of galaxies, appeared through the tear. Although, it seems to not notice them at the moment.

No sclera. No iris. Just an endless spiral of perception, an eye that did not see with light, but with concept.

An eye that understood you more deeply than you ever could. That knew you. That judged your existence as unworthy.

The entire universe shuddered.

Reality itself cracked, not visibly, but fundamentally.

Laws of physics buckled.

Stars flickered.

Even divine domains trembled.

The gods hiding in their realms suddenly screamed in terror, unaware of why.

Hades took a single step back.

He remembered. Long ago, he accidentally ventured into Chaos, the metaphysical plane of existence that exists beyond infinite dimensions, beyond the infinite universe, and had caught a glimpsed of these kinds of beings.

Incomprehensible horrors.

Beings existing far beyond the physical universe and divine understanding.

This one.... this eye...

It was being pulled closer by the fragment like a beacon. The entity had used its last breath to call out to its god.

And the god had answered.

The entity below the rift, the fragment trying to escape, let out a last desperate cry—a scream that wasn't sound but vibration.

The thing beyond the rift turned its gaze.

A single, silent observation. The eye hold no anger nor hatred. It turned simply because something caught its attention.

And the very concept of reality groaned.

Cracks formed in the sky—thin, pale fractures of white running across the heavens like breaking glass.

Mountains shook.

The stars above flickered unnaturally, some snuffed out entirely.

"S-Stop it!" Nyx shouted, her voice cracking for the first time in an eternity.

But she was already moving.

She unleashed everything, her full divine authority, the total weight of her dominion as the Primordial of Night.

A colossal wave of divine force, so vast it could snuff stars like candles, slammed into the fragment.

The fragment screamed, a horrible static screech that echoed across dimensions, its tentacles flailing wildly.

It resisted for only a second...

And then, it was annihilated, wiped from existence, as if it had never existed in the first place.

But the damage was done.

The rift still remained.

Worse, it was widening.

Hundreds, no, thousands of limbs, were now clawing through the rip.

Massive hands with eyeless faces in their palms.

Mouths with endless teeth lining their fingers.

Arms that bent in infinite directions, each grasping, tearing, dragging.

Trying to pull themselves in.

Nyx stepped back beside Hades, clutching Gaia's soul tightly.

The entity was dealt with.

But something far more terrifying was drawn in.