Chapter 33 – Into the Crimson Maw
The descent felt endless.
Kratos' chains burned against the shifting stone as he and Atreus slid downward along the jagged cliff, the crimson glow below growing brighter, angrier. The chasm breathed — air moving in and out like the lungs of something massive and ancient. Every pulse carried whispers, faint but layered, hundreds of voices overlapping like a choir of the dead.
Atreus clung to Kratos tightly, his fingers trembling despite the boy's efforts to hide it. "Father… is this thing alive?"
Kratos didn't answer at first. He wasn't sure.
The walls around them pulsed like veins, glowing with red energy. Whenever the light flared, shadows crawled across the stone — shapes that resembled faces, twisted, screaming, reaching toward them.
Finally, Kratos spoke.
"No… not alive."
A pause.
"Not dead either."
As they neared the bottom, the ground rumbled. A tendril of black smoke spiraled upward from the depths below, thick like tar, warm like breath. Atreus swallowed hard. "The Nine… they're connected through this… thing?"
Kratos grunted. "This is the heart of their power. And their prison."
The last of the cliff fell away and they dropped into a vast underground chamber. The air was heavy, hot, and smelled of iron — the unmistakable scent of blood.
Atreus landed, knees bending, arrow already drawn. Kratos hit the ground like a falling boulder, blades ready. Light swelled around them, revealing the full horror.
The cavern was a massive dome, its ceiling lost in shadow. The floor was covered with a thin layer of swirling red mist. At the center stood a colossal pillar of flesh-like stone, wrapped in chains thicker than Kratos' torso. The chains vibrated, glowing with the same red hue as the fissures above.
Atreus whispered, "Father… something's inside."
A heartbeat answered him — slow, thunderous, shaking the cavern walls.
BOOM.
A pause.
BOOM.
Kratos' jaw tightened. "Move with caution."
They crept forward, each step sinking slightly into the mist, which curled around their feet like fingers. Whispering. Pulling. Pleading.
Atreus stopped dead. "Father."
His voice quivered.
"I hear… Faye."
Kratos froze.
A woman's voice drifted around them, soft, warm, painfully familiar.
"Atreus… my son."
Atreus' bow dropped slightly, breath shaking. "Mother…? Is it—?"
Kratos stepped in front of him so quickly the mist rippled. His voice was low, dark.
"No. This place uses memory as a weapon."
The voice changed.
"Kratos…"
This time deeper. Commanding.
Zeus' voice.
"Have you come to kill what is left of us?"
Kratos' teeth clenched. "You are nothing but echoes."
The mist erupted upward as if insulted.
Three figures emerged from the swirling crimson fog — silhouettes formed of smoke and red light. One towered with a broad chest and crackling lightning. Another carried a trident of water-like shadow. The third was barely visible, shifting constantly like something between forms.
Atreus gasped, stepping back. "They followed us—?"
Kratos snapped, "No. These are not the phantoms we fought. These are—"
The shifting third figure completed his sentence.
"—the originals."
Atreus' breath froze. "The real Nine…? Their souls?"
The Zeus-shaped figure drifted closer, eyes glowing like molten gold.
"You slew our bodies. But you did not end us. The death of a god is never clean. Never complete."
Poseidon's echo followed, voice rippling like waves against cliffs.
"We were absorbed by the Heart — the source of the Nine. Bound together for eternity."
Atreus' beads of sweat trailed down his temples. "Then why show yourselves now?"
All three spoke at once — their combined voices a vibration in the bones.
"Because the Ninth awakens."
The cavern shook.
The pillar at the center cracked. A piece of its outer shell fell away, revealing something beneath it — something flesh-like, pulsating, massive as a mountain heart. Each beat shook dust from the ceiling.
Kratos gripped the Leviathan Axe. "What is the Ninth?"
Again, all voices spoke.
"The forgotten one. The god never allowed to be born."
Atreus blinked. "Never allowed—? But how can a god exist before it exists?"
Poseidon's shape twisted.
"Because the realms create what they need. And sometimes… they create too much."
Zeus stepped forward, lightning dancing around his ghostly form.
"When Olympus rose, a tenth power tried to rise with it — chaotic, formless, unbalanced. We sealed it away, bound its essence here, splitting its nature among us."
Kratos' face hardened. "You stole its power."
Zeus smiled with dead arrogance.
"We regulated it."
Poseidon snarled.
"We prevented it from destroying reality."
Atreus whispered, "So… the Nine… are fragments of this one thing?"
A fourth voice answered. A new one.
A voice that sounded like every voice and no voice at all.
"I am what remains of what you tore apart."
The pillar shattered.
The entire cavern blasted with red light.
The Ninth emerged.
It was not a god.
Not a beast.
It was a shape of shifting limbs, faces, claws, wings, all appearing and dissolving. From its surface sprouted the features of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, all the others — twisting in and out as if the phantom of each was trapped inside.
The Ninth's voice boomed:
"I am every piece you carved out of the world. I am the wound that never closed."
Its head — or what resembled one — turned toward Atreus.
"And you, little giant-god hybrid… you are the perfect vessel."
Atreus staggered back. "What?! No— I'm not—"
Tendrils shot forward like lightning.
Kratos intercepted them with a roar, swinging the Blades of Chaos in blazing arcs. Sparks flew as tendrils of flesh and shadow collided with fire and steel. The heat scorched the mist, but the Ninth only screamed in fury and grew larger.
"Father!" Atreus called, firing rune arrows. The arrows exploded into blue light, ripping small holes in the Ninth's monstrous form — but each hole sealed instantly, healing with speed unnatural even for gods.
The Ninth bellowed:
"You cannot kill what is made of death!"
The ground cracked. Red liquid — not blood but something thicker — surged upward like a rising tide. The mist turned violent, dragging at their feet, trying to pull them inward.
Atreus fired arrow after arrow. "It's trying to consume the room!"
Kratos shouted: "Do not let it touch you!"
The Ninth lunged again — this time with a tidal wave of limbs, mouths, shadows. Kratos grabbed Atreus and rolled aside as the mass slammed into the stone, carving a crater where they stood.
Lightning flashed — Zeus' ghost form struck the Ninth from behind.
"You want your power back? TAKE IT!"
Poseidon followed, slamming his watery essence into the creature. Hades' shadowy form rose behind them, stabbing at the Ninth's spine with a spectral blade.
Atreus gasped. "They're… helping us?"
Kratos didn't trust it. "They do not help. They act for themselves."
He was right.
The ghosts' attacks were not weakening the Ninth — they were being absorbed.
Zeus screamed as the Ninth dragged his essence into itself.
"NO— YOU WILL NOT—"
But he was swallowed whole.
Poseidon followed, then Hades, their forms ripped apart and devoured.
The Ninth doubled in size, glowing brighter.
Atreus whispered, terrified,
"Father… it's absorbing gods."
Kratos' eyes narrowed, rage settling like armor around him.
"No."
A beat.
"It is absorbing power."
The Ninth turned its many-faced head toward them.
"Now… GIVE ME THE BOY."
Atreus stepped back, heart racing.
Kratos roared and charged.
The Ninth struck first — a blast of force that shattered stone, throwing Kratos through the cavern wall. Dust exploded. Atreus screamed.
"FATHER!"
He ran toward the rubble—
—but Kratos was already rising, blood dripping from his face, eyes full of controlled fury.
"Atreus," he growled, voice steady.
"You run. Now."
Atreus shook his head violently. "I'm not leaving you!"
The Ninth surged again.
Kratos stepped forward, blades burning.
"Atreus…" his voice deepened, ancient and absolute.
"RUN."
The Ninth roared and the cavern shook—