Hades sat in his office. The air within was deathly still, save for the soft humming of countless fragmented souls suspended midair before him.
A constellation of memory shards, regrets, identities fractured beyond repair.
He observed them in silence.
He was trying to see if he can uncover the creature who has been trying to implant knowledge beyond this era into the minds of mortals.
But it yielded no result.
However, he did confirm his guess that something or someone was already eliminating any influence of that creature.
Although it might seem ruthless, but Hades would rather have that than some 'alien' lifeform completely wrecking havoc in the overworld.
As he thought that, he felt a tremor from the overworld.
A fight have broken out.
Far above, beyond the veil of the Underworld and through the skein of divine perception, a flare of power rippled across reality—distant, but unmistakable.
A goddess against a giant.
His niece Athena, against one of his children, Enceladus.
He tilted his head, feeling like due to his bloodline, the giants have gotten quite stronger than they are supposed to be.
Even Athena, arguably the strongest Olympian after Zeus and Poseidon, was struggling against Enceladus, who wasn't even amongst the strongest giants.
"How noisy..." Hades whispered, sighing.
Although their fight haven't reached the underworld, but Hades can perfectly feel and hear it.
Despite so, Hades didn't make a move.
He merely watched, eyes glowing with that quiet, timeless light that had outlived empires.
The battle had begun—the first true battle of the Gigantomachy.
Athena against Enceladus.
His pale gaze lingered on the celestial echoes for a moment. Then he exhaled a long, weary breath and returned to the floating puzzle before him.
Souls twisted in silence.
He had been collecting them for weeks now, even halting his usual duties to study their essence.
He traced one shard with his finger. A mother's soul, torn in half. Her memories flickered: laughter, sunlight, a child's name—and then…
A voice not her own speaking through her.
Then, knowledge that went beyond this era poured into her mind, completely driving her into madness.
Hades couldn't see what the woman have seen as something seems to be erasing its presence.
She couldn't handle the knowledge and what she had seen and lost her mind, eventually taking her own life.
And this wasn't just a first case, there were many others like her.
It feels like they were used as an experiment to see how humans would react when forcefully inserted with knowledge beyond understanding.
"What touched you?" he murmured.
He had returned to Nyx's domain thrice already, hoping to ask the Primordial of Night if she had sensed the same disturbance in the darkness.
But she had been absent, her throne empty, her realm colder than usual.
He wasn't really disappointed, after all, Nyx has always been aloof. Hades himself had never seen her after they had their first 'intimate' moment.
But still, having her, the first creation to appear in the cosmos and the closest to chaos, would certainly help him uncover all these mysteries.
He pressed two fingers to the soul shard again and whispered an old incantation of Truth-Revealing—a spell created by Hecate that only worked in the Underworld's core.
It showed him layers beyond identity.
And just like that, that eerie feeling of being stared at by something one cannot see engulfed him.
Something not from this world.
It was like something had stitched a foreign language into the soul, not just memories but command lines, infecting the very code of being.
And it was spreading. Fast.
If he wasn't holding into these souls, they would slowly disintegrate and vanish from existence.
No after life. No reincarnation. Nothing.
They'll just... Disappear.
Hades cancelled the spell and leaned back on his office chair.
Suddenly, the massive obsidian door to his study opened with a slow groan.
Hades did not turn. He already knew the scent, the gait, the soft pulse of wheat and warmth in the air.
His sister stepped inside, dressed in robes of deep gold and olive, her face unusually grim.
No flowers in her hair. No scent of harvest on her breath.
She said nothing at first, simply looking at him. Hades didn't press, he waited for her to speak.
Finally, after a moment, she spoke.
"I need to return to the overworld," she said. "Something… urgent has come up."
Hades studied her. She stood stiffly, fingers clutched at her sleeves, gaze not quite meeting his.
"Is it because of the giants?"
She hesitated, but replied. "Yes."
But she said no more.
Hades nodded once, without prying further.
Demeter blinked in mild surprise, as though she'd expected resistance. Instead, he turned his gaze back to the fragmented souls.
His voice, though calm, carried weight. "I won't stop you. But be careful. The overworld is… you know, currently in a state of war."
Demeter's expression softened.
She walked forward, placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Thank you, brother."
Then she turned and left, golden robes trailing behind her like falling wheat stalks.
Hades remained still for a long time.
Then he lifted a new shard.
This one belonged to a soldier, a proud warrior who had once defied death to save his comrades.
Now the shard trembled, as though it were alive, and whispered a sound in a language Hades did not recognize.
He placed the soul into a floating bronze casing, sealed it with primordial script, and locked it within his sanctum.
Whatever is happening in the overworld, will surely shake the very cosmos.
And he wasn't talking about the Gigantomachy.
But the foreign thing that gave those knowledge to humans.
He doesn't who or what it is yet, but since it's hiding itself, it means it wasn't confident on taking on the strongest beings of this universe just yet.
Hades will make sure it stays that way.
He will never allow anything to mess up the world's order.
Hades finally stood, walking to his darkened balcony that overlooked the vast Core Section of the Underworld—his great city, Nox, glittering beneath him like an inverted constellation.
He stared upward through the blackened dome of the sky, eyes unblinking.
"Hide. Hide whatever you are. Because once I found you, I will carve your screams to the void and make it echo for eternity."