The battle at the perimeter had descended into a frenzied, elemental meat-grinder.
Zeus stood suspended in the void, his form wreathed in a lightning storm so dense it forced the surrounding vacuum to convulse, ionizing into a sea of burning plasma.
The nothingness of space warped under the pressure of his presence; whole constellations flickered like candle flames in a storm.
Every bolt he cast vaporized thousands of the Silent Wailers, those abominations of countless eyed infants and flesh like smudged ink, their bodies rupturing into screaming nebulae of corrupted starlight.
Yet for every thousand erased, ten thousand more surged forward, crawling over the charred remains of their kin in a roiling tide of cosmic hunger.
They swarmed like locusts born from the throat of a dead universe, their collective shrieks gnawing at the very concept of sound.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the fabric of reality around Zeus with every swing of his thunderbolt.
