Hades did what no god dared to do: he let the darkness and sin consume him.
He welcomed the voices that whispered in his soul.
He stopped resisting.
And as he did, something ancient awakened inside him.
His divine form shattered, bones cracking, flesh melting into shadow. His body collapsed, only to be reborn, fused with the Primordial Energy of the Underworld. It seeped into every cell, every thought, until even his heartbeat echoed with oblivion.
He rose.
Stronger.
Hollow.
He became a new primordial god—an Underworld Primordial God.
And he spoke a whisper that echoed across all realms. "Let the corruption begin."
The Underworld responded to his order and began to corrupt the upper world.
The oceans blackened, turning the seas into pitch-black water. Coastal cities sank beneath waves choked with rot. Ships dissolved into splinters.
The Earth's forests withered, once-green lands reducing to cracked soil and thorned branches. Animals mutated, growing extra limbs, razor spines, glowing eyes, and turning on all they once coexisted with.
Volcanoes erupted across the continents. Fire rained from the skies. Smoke swallowed the stars.
And from the Underworld, Hades emerged in the form of a Black Phoenix, larger than any Titan, his wingspan stretching across the sky. Black haze poured from his feathers.
He rose higher than the clouds and swallowed the Sun in one gulp.
The world fell into eternal darkness.
Ghosts, the undead, and the most horrific demonic creatures rampaged unchecked, spreading chaos and destruction. What was once a beautiful, peaceful world turned into a land of apocalypse—a living nightmare.
From the fractured horizon, Gaea and Pontus manifested. The ground solidified under Gaea's feet, the corrupted seas stilled at Pontus's command. Their primordial forms, embodiments of earth and sea, were visibly strained against the pervasive corruption.
"Hades, cease this!" Gaea's voice was a demand, woven from the bedrock of the world, shaking with a grief that came from seeing her own essence defiled.
Hades remained silent. The Black Phoenix form was a monolith of destruction. At its beak, a point of blue light ignited and contracted into a sphere of absolute cold. It pulsed with a dead light, draining sound and warmth from the surrounding air.
"His sanity is gone," Pontus stated, his voice the low groan of a dying ocean.
Gaea responded by wrenching a mountain from the earth, shaping it into a colossal spear of granite and obsidian, and hurling it with tectonic force. At the same time, Pontus gathered the remains of his seas into a concentrated jet of water moving with the pressure to crush continents.
Hades' retaliation was total. The blue flame shot forward, a wave of annihilating cold. It did not meet their attacks—it erased them. The stone spear flash-froze and exploded into dust. The water jet turned into a frozen sculpture in mid-air and shattered on the ground. The wave of cold hit Gaea and Pontus, encasing them in a thick shell of magical ice that cracked their divine bodies.
Understanding the threat was existential, the united pantheon arrived. Zeus, Poseidon, Cronus, Iapetus, Hera, and a host of other deities and Titans materialized. Their combined power formed a barrier against the void. Lightning, tidal waves, distortions of time, and raw divine energy—a unified assault from all of creation—flared against the blue wave and held it back for one second.
The victory was temporary. Hades issued a deafening screech that ripped the sky apart. He drew power from the corrupted Underworld, forming a new sphere of dark, negative energy that distorted space around it. He fired it directly at the vulnerable Primordials.
Gaea and Pontus raised their hands, pulling on the last reserves of their power to defend themselves.
It was useless.
The beam struck them, and their scream was one of existential unraveling. Their divine forms flickered at the edges. Golden ichor flowed from deep wounds. Their power was broken, their very beings brought to the edge of life.
"AHHHHHH!!"
Gaea and Pontus hung in the air, shattered and fading. Hades did not pause. His beak opened, the cold fire gathering for the final blow.
A miniature star—a compressed sphere of plasma and pure light—slammed into the side of his head. The impact was concussive. The energy he was gathering detonated early in a shockwave that threw him backward. For the first time, a stream of black, thick ichor seeped from a fracture in his Phoenix form.
Hades turned. His attention focused on the new threats: Aether of the bright air and Hemera of the day, their hands still glowing from the conjured sun.
They immediately formed another star and hurled it. Hades beat his wings, releasing a wave of gravitational force and necrotic energy. The shockwave neutralized their miniature stars. The diluted force hit Aether and Hemera's hastily conjured shield of light and air.
The shield shattered like glass, though the weakened force only made a single drop of golden ichor drip from Hemera's nose. She touched it, staring at her blood.
"What is this?" she whispered.
Aether, breathing heavily, answered. "Our worst nightmare."
SKREEEEE!!
Hades roared again. The earth quaked. A tsunami of solid shadow, filled with the faces of the damned, rose from the black sea. Gaea's eyes widened in pure terror. She slammed her hands on the broken ground, screaming for her domain to obey.
Her earth was dead, its heart corrupted. Her command was a whisper against the corruption.
From the ground, lances of sharpened Stygian iron erupted. They pierced everything—mortal, beast, god, and Titan on the earth or in the sea. One lance erupted directly beneath Gaea and impaled her.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
A river of golden ichor poured from her wound, forming a pool at her feet. She took a wet, ragged breath, her eyes clouding with despair as the soul-fire within the lance began to burn her essence away. She was being erased.
A rift tore open in the air. Nyx and Erebus emerged from the void between realms. Behind them, something massive appeared.
Tartarus, the Primordial of the Abyss, stepped through. His body was made of molten rock and tectonic plates, lava flowing in the cracks. He held a giant sword carved from the foundation of the world.
Hades fired another blue flame ray. Aether, Hemera, Nyx and Erebus combined their failing power—light, air, night, and darkness—into a single beam of black and white energy. The forces collided and held in a struggling stalemate.
Tartarus charged. The ground broke under his steps. He leaped, his abyssal sword held high. "Die, monster!" His swing, powered by the abyss, connected with Hades' chest. The blow was huge, cutting through feathers and divine flesh, releasing a flood of black ichor. The combined beam of the other Primordials hit him simultaneously, blasting him off his feet and into a mountain range.
Aether sagged, his light dim. "Is it over?" he gasped.
A heavy silence fell over the world. It was the silence before the end. Then, a light green flame flickered on the chest of a dead being. Then another. Then millions—billions. They rose from all the corpses and flew toward the crater where Hades had fallen.
"No! Stop him! Now!" Nyx screamed. She understood. It was a harvest.
Every remaining primordial, god, and titan launched their most powerful spells in a panicked volley at the crater.
It was too late.
The Stygian iron lances ripped themselves from the ground. They shot through the air, interlocking and merging into a giant, jagged shield of black metal over the crater just as the attacks hit.
BOOOOM
The explosion was the end of the world. A lightless fireball expanded, vaporizing everything within a hundred kilometers. Dimensions tore open, creating unstable black holes that sucked in the debris.
As the fire faded, the Primordials stared at the epicenter. The giant shield was gone.
From the swirling smoke, two points of purple light glowed. A huge shadow emerged. It was Hades in a new form: a towering, bipedal demon clad in armor of bone and shadow. Large horns curved from an obsidian crown. His hands were claws that could tear reality. In his grip was a giant sword, its blade burning with the collected soul-fire of every being he had slain.
He moved instantly. He was before Tartarus, the soul-blade already swinging.
Tartarus roared and brought his primordial sword up to block.
CLANK… CREEEK
The abyssal sword shattered. Hades' blade did not stop. It cut through Tartarus's weapon and then through his chest, carving a deep canyon. Hades reversed his swing and took Tartarus's head. The soul-fire erupted, consuming the Primordial of the Pit instantly, burning him to ashes. There was no time for pain.
The other Primordials were pale with horror. All hope was gone.
They attacked. Spells of light, darkness, and daybreak broke against his new form like water on stone. He ignored them.
Hades raised a clawed hand. Chains of Stygian iron appeared from the shadows, each link etched with binding runes, each tip burning with soul-fire. They struck like snakes. They pierced Aether, Hemera, Nyx, and Erebus at once. Their forms stiffened as the fire raced through them, and they were extinguished into ash.
Silence.
Hades turned to the remaining gods and Titans—his family. They knew they would die, but they stood for a final fight.
He shifted to his humanoid form, but the power was the same. He wore twisted, obsidian armor that absorbed light. His eyes glowed with a void. A spear of mineral divinity was in one hand; spells of ruin swirled around the other.
He charged. It was not a battle. It was an end.
He was a force of destruction. No army could stop him. No god could halt him.
Every step was a death. Every turn was a killing blow. He moved with storm-like fury and absolute precision.
Divine blood soaked the floating continents. Gods fell. Zeus died. Poseidon died. Cronus was destroyed.
Nothing could stop him. No Titans. No gods. Not fate.
Only Rhea remained.
She knelt in the ruins of her family, her robes soaked in her children's blood. Her eyes were empty, her hands shaking too much to lift.
"My son… what have you become?" The question was a faint breath.
Hades did not react. His vacant eyes showed no recognition.
Without a word, he raised his spear and cut off her head with a clean motion.
The world was silent.
Only Hades was left.
He stood alone in the ash and ruin and walked to the Throne of the God-King. He sat. The silence was total.
Then it hit him.
A pain deeper than any wound.
Clarity returned to his eyes. With it came a horror so vast it almost destroyed him.
"What have I done…?"
He had killed his mother. His brothers. His sisters. Every god. Every mortal. He had destroyed the world.
The silence was louder than thunder. He clutched his chest, his heart in torment. Grief consumed him. He reached for his spear again, this time to turn it on himself. It was the only justice left.
But as the tip touched his chest, the Underworld divinity inside him trembled.
A low, familiar pulse. A divine hum that was his alone. It stirred, not to fight him, but to wake him.
In that instant, with the clarity of that connection, Hades understood.
This was not real.
It was a dream—a detailed, torturous illusion created by Noctandrath's power.
But it had taught him more than any war or book.
He had touched the absolute darkness of what he could become. He had become it.
And by surviving that self, by feeling the horror of it, he now understood his own divinity and himself on a deeper level.
His connection to his divine domains surged. The experience forged his spirit in the fire of apocalypse. His power solidified, rising to the mid-level of a Chief-Level God.
With this new strength and understanding, he focused his will. He saw the flaws in the false reality, the psychic walls of his prison.
He used his Secret Divinity to find the truth.
With a sound like breaking glass, he tore open the veil of illusion.