The God of Underworld

The endless sand of Underworld was silent in the strangest way possible.

Not because there was no sound, but because the sound itself seemed to be irrelevant here.

Conceptual forces were clashing, authorities colliding, forces that no mortal ear could ever register were being thrown and blasted.

The rift pulsed like a black sun, each beat tearing faint cracks through the surrounding space.

The being beyond reached through it with mechanical certainty, as if the tearing of this reality was simply a matter of procedure.

Hades moved among the Primordials, Desmos flashing in arcs of his authority.

And while he and the Primordials attacked, his Twelve Patrons spread themselves across the rift's edges, holding it in place.

Hecate's voice rang sharp over the din.

"Keep the rift stable! Every tear it makes expands the breach, you let go for one moment, and it's over!"

The patrons answered her in unison, each one using their full authority to keep the rift from even expanding.

Meanwhile, the Primordials clashed with the limbs.

Aether cut swathes of space into geometric prisms of light, reshaping reality so the limbs could not occupy certain angles.

Pontus shifted the metaphysical "ground" beneath them, drowning the limbs in an endless undertow of abyssal drag.

Hemera wielded the raw force of day, burning the creature with its light.

Eros' chains of paradoxical attraction and rejection looped around joints that had no physical counterpart.

Tartarus tore pieces of the battlefield into himself, swallowing sections of space the limbs might have used to gain leverage.

And yet…

The being wasn't hurt.

Where cuts formed, they simply reversed as if they had never been struck.

It was less like regeneration and more like rewriting history. No, even far beyond that.

Khronos' voice came over the commotion, his tone urgent but eerily even.

"It's not regeneration. It's rejecting phenomenon."

Nyx narrowed her eyes, "... that's ridiculous. So unless our attacks transcended the concept of phenomenon, that thing can just shrug it off?"

That was when Hades' eyes narrowed.

His mind immediately thought of his greatest, something he had created for his transcendence.

The Breakdown Sphere.

With a sweep of shadow, it appeared in his hand.

This orb is still incomplete. He was missing something that he has yet to discover.

But, this thing can still be used. For a brief moment, once enough divinity was poured into it, the orb can do its job.

He had only used it to gain limited omniscience to find Nyx and limited omnipresence to completely transcend boundaries and appear in wherever corner of the universe.

Without hesitation, he poured into it every thread of his authority — death, darkness, spirits, curses, mortality, all that he is, he poured it without pause.

The sphere flared in his palm, glowing as if it was about to burst.

And then… Hades was gone.

Not invisible, no. His figure can still be seen. But his presence...it was just...gone.

Even the Primordials blinked, their perception momentarily scrambling to try and find him.

They could see him, but they can't feel anything from him. As if he had transcended this plane of existence.

Khronos, never pausing in his efforts to anchor time itself around the rift, murmured in awe.

"He... transcended."

Nyx felt the ripple in her own senses and frowned, her emotions complex.

"The realm I failed to reach... "

The being paused for the first time, its countless eyes refocusing on the God of the Dead.

And that was when Hades moved.

There was no motion to track.

One moment Desmos was still.

The next...

Nothingness.

Several of the being's limbs simply ceased.

It was neither destroyed nor severed in traditional sense, but simply ceased to exist.

It was erased.

No trace left behind, not even the concept of their existence remained in this reality.

The attack had already exceeded the concept of phenomenon and became a 'law'.

At this moment, Hades had touched the realm that all Primordials seek to reach.

Tartarus let out a deep, echoing rumble.

"By the abyss… he did it."

Aether and Hemera turned towards Hades, their faces showing their shock and awe.

"So this is the power of a transcendent." Pontus muttered.

Eros stared at Hades with hearts in his eyes. As the primordial god of sexual desire, all kinks originated from him. When it comes to matters in making love, Zeus is like an innocent maiden to him.

And at this time, looking at the heroic figure of Hades, he couldn't help but fall in love.(Not a ship. Don't even think about it)

But the triumph lasted only a breath.

At this mount, countless more limbs—thicker and stronger—flooded to the world and seems to want to cover the sky to capture Hades at once.

Nyx's voice cut in sharply. "Hades!"

Hades stumbled, his divinity was burning up rapidly. Achieving a temporary transcendence was taking too much out of his divinity.

Khronos' voice carried to him over the battlefield, taut with urgency. "Hold on for a bit. Everyone! Distract it! Give Hades a chance for another strike!"

The Primordials didn't need further explanation. They moved in tight coordination, forcing the limbs into predictable arcs.

Aether's light-cages narrowed the angles.

Pontus' drag slowed their reach.

Eros' paradox-chains tangled them together.

Tartarus crushed entire vectors of movement beneath his gravity.

And then, the opening appeared.

Dozens of limbs struck at once, an all-consuming wall of alien flesh and geometry that left the being open for attack.

Hades stepped forward, Breakdown Sphere blazing so bright the air hissed and warped.

Then, Desmos struck.

Silence.

A swath of limbs was erased outright, leaving a gaping void in the rift's edge.

The being recoiled for the first time, its advance slowed to a crawl.

Hades immediately reverted back pre-transcendence. Then, the backlash ripped through him, his knees buckled, blood spilling from his lips as uncontrolled shadows burst from his form.

But the path was open.

"NOW!" Nyx shouted.

The Primordials surged forward, pouring their combined Authorities into the exposed rift.

The Patrons intensified their stabilizing lattice, locking it down while the gods above reality drove the being back.

The rift shuddered under the combined pressure of the Primordials' assault.

Every Authority bent toward one singular purpose, to push it back and seal it away.

The being's countless limbs writhed violently, its mouths howling in voices that did not echo in the Underworld's air but rather inside the soul of every god present.

Its eyes, endless in number, shifted and swiveled, their alien pupils dilating in strange patterns as they studied the ones who dared to resist it.

Hades stood among the storm, still breathing hard from the Breakdown Sphere's backlash, but his grip on Desmos was steady.

Black ichor from his earlier strike still dripped into the sand, each drop hissing as it was swallowed by the Underworld.

Nyx's voice reached his ear, low and deliberate. "Hades. Can you do one more strike? In transcendence."

Hades narrowed his eyes.

"I'll try."

He stepped forward as the Breakdown Sphere once again glowed, and his presence transcended to a higher dimenions.

Shadows coiled at his feet, rising up like living serpents.

As he approached, the being's eyes all turned toward him.

The vast limb nearest to the breach twisted into an incomprehensible angle, reaching for him with an intent that felt personal.

But Hades stared it, and simply vanished.

Not in the sense of moving quickly, he simply ceased to exist where he had been and reappeared within the rift itself, standing on nothing, surrounded by an infinity of alien flesh and light.

One eye loomed before him, larger than mountains, its iris shifting through colors no mortal spectrum could describe.

It was not merely sight, the gaze pierced into identity, stripping away layers until only the raw truth of the soul remained.

Hades grinned, the corner of his mouth curling with defiance.

"You like to watch, don't you? Then watch this."

Desmos flashed.

Not a thrust nor a slash, but a conceptual strike.

The Spear of Death took from the being what Hades willed.

An eye.

The strike was an inevitability, reversing causality so that the result came first: the eye was already gone before the spear moved. And enhanced to infinity by his transcendence.

A scream tore through the rift, show its pure alien outrage.

Hades grinned as he grabbed the eye he had just tore out, then with a strike using all his power, he pushed the being out of the universe and back into the rift.

The surrounding limbs convulsed violently, the geometry of the space distorting as the being reacted to the theft.

However, Hades had already pushed it back.

Without wasting more time, he turned around to return, only for his whole being to shiver.

Slowly, he turned back, and his soul felt like it left his body.

There was being he couldn't describe. The size, the shape, everything about 'it' was incomprehensible.

The being they used all their powers just to hold back flew towards the incomprehensible entity, and merged.

It turns out it was just a small piece of a much more terrifying whole.

Hades was sure he wasn't being observed. The being remained motionless...or was it? He couldn't describe. It seems to be doing nothing while doing everything at the same time.

Hades couldn't tell.

But he knew, that being didn't even see him. One can even say the being doesn't have any interest since it didn't even know that Hades existed.

Quickly, Hades escaped back into his universe and landed back in the Underworld, shadows recoiling into his frame.

In his hand, wrapped in a cocoon of black chains and sealed under layers of his authority, floated a fragment of impossible size compressed into a mortal's grasp—the stolen Eye of the Outer Horror.

Nyx's expression shifted from shock to something darker, a knowing glint in her eyes.

"You took a piece of it…"

Hades nodded, but chose to remain silent, especially about what he saw. He has a feeling once it was mentioned, the being would immediately notice.

Khronos' step his forward, his stone stern and strict, "Seal the rift now!"

"Hecate!" Hades quickly called out.

The Primordials obeyed without hesitation.

Aether bent the walls of reality inward.

Pontus flooded the breach with currents of nothingness.

Tartarus swallowed the anchoring points of the rift

.

Hemera layered it with light that blinded even alien perception.

Eros bound it with paradoxes that rejected its presence.

Khronos froze the breach in a moment that could not pass.

The Twelve Patrons poured all their strength into locking the space, and the rivers of the Underworld wrapping like veins of oath-bound steel around the closing wound.

The stolen eye pulsed violently in Hades' hand, as if calling to its owner.

"Stay sealed," Hades muttered, forcing another layer of his authority over it. "I have uses for you."

With one final, thunderous pull, the breach collapsed in on itself.

The light bent inward, space folded, and then, silence.

The rift was gone. The entity was kicked out.

The battlefield was still, the sand around them scorched black where concepts had clashed.

The Primordials remained watchful, their gazes lingering on the space where the breach had been, as though half-expecting it to reopen.

Nyx floated closer to Hades, her eyes on the sealed fragment in his grasp.

"You've just invited the interest of something that should never have noticed us."

Hades smirked faintly. "It already noticed us. Now it has a reason to remember my name."

Tartarus rumbled low, an ancient warning in his voice.

"That eye will never stop calling to its master. Keep it hidden… or use it quickly."

"Oh, I intend to use it," Hades said, his tone almost amused. "But not yet."

The gathered gods looked between one another, the air heavy with the knowledge that this was not the end, only the first battle in something far larger.

Far above them, beyond the safety of reality, the being that Hades saw turned its gaze to where he was.