The other one was not.
Hades watched us from above. His figure, motionless, seemed carved from living obsidian, as if he didn't quite belong on this plane. He wore a dark cloak that fell like a liquid shadow down the sides of the throne, and a low crown, without jewels or gold, just a circle of wrought iron marked with ash. His eyes, deep as the Styx, rested first on Hecate, then on me... and finally on Demeter.
When he spoke, his voice did not fill the hall. It didn't need to. It was calm, effortless, but every word felt as if the air itself curved to carry its sound.
"You have come for your daughter, haven't you?"
Demeter did not answer. She climbed the steps slowly, without taking her eyes off him.
"I'm not surprised," Hades continued, without moving from his throne. 'I knew you would show up sooner or later... Although I expected you earlier, you took a while, don't you think?"
"Where is she?' she asked, ignoring her brother. Her voice was firm, but it trembled slightly at the edge, as if containing her fury was costing her more than the journey here.
"She is alive, safe, and more than that," Hades replied, raising a hand slowly. "She is sitting on the throne that is rightfully hers. Here, as my Queen."
Demeter clenched her teeth.
"She is no Queen. You stole her, Hades, you manipulated her and took her away from me. She never had a choice."
Hades turned his face away slightly. "She had no choice? Are you sure of that, sister? Do you have so little faith in your daughter's will? Do you know so little about who she is?"
The goddess of the seasons took another step forward. The atmosphere in the room changed. Something snapped in the air, like a string stretched beyond its limit.
"I didn't raise her to rot underground," she spat. "I didn't bring her into this world to wither among the dead. Give her back to me."
Hades stood up.
He didn't raise his voice, but each word now had a more concrete weight, like slabs falling on stone.
"Your daughter is not a prisoner. In fact, she is here by right. She came here of her own free will. I merely presented her with the option of coming and ruling the underworld by my side, and what do you think? She accepted without hesitation. She is now Queen of the Underworld, Demeter. Whether you like it or not. And if you don't believe me... look into her eyes when you see her. You will see that I do not lie."
The silence thickened. Even Hecate seemed to hold her breath.
"We can come to an agreement," Hades continued, slowly descending the steps, his hands open, as if offering a truce. "Let Persephone stay with me for part of the year. The rest of the time, she will return to you. It would be a natural cycle, Demeter, life and death, waxing and waning."
"A deal?" Demeter said incredulously. "You think you can barter my daughter like she's a thing?"
"It's not a trade. I'm offering you a choice so that you can have your daughter back and I can have my Queen. It's the only thing that will prevent the world from fracturing between your hunger and my shadow after all. Don't think I'm unaware of what this situation has caused in the mortal world."
But Demeter was no longer listening.
Rage overflowed.
"There will be no deal, give me my daughter, damn you!" she roared, and with a scream that echoed throughout the palace, she raised her arm.
Black, sharp roots sprouted from the floor, rising from the marble like living spears. The air filled with dust and dirt as a spiral of dead leaves swirled around her. Persephone's empty throne cracked from the tremor.
Hecate stepped back. I stood between the two deities, even though I knew it would be like standing between two colliding storms.
Hades stood up straight, expressionless.
"So much for diplomacy." Muttered the god, and his shadow rose.
Not as a simple veil of darkness, but as a living form that detached itself from his body and duplicated it, lengthening, growing, forming a spectral figure wielding a spear made of solid mist. With each step he took, the ground froze.
Demeter screamed and threw a sphere of golden energy, filled with divine fury. Hades' shadow intercepted it, and the clash shook the walls of the hall, causing pieces of ancient stone to fall. The pillars trembled, and the reliefs on the ceiling sparkled briefly with a reddish glow, as if the echoes of the ancient gods were awakening to the fight.
"Enough!" Hecate shouted, but her voice was lost amid the din. The war had begun, and no argument would stop the storm that motherhood and pride had unleashed.
The din had not yet dissipated when Hades took a step back, his shadow dispersing like smoke in the wind. Then, without a word, he raised a hand to his side and, with a fluid motion, brought forth the kuné—the helmet of invisibility forged by the Cyclopes at the dawn of the world. It was black as a starless night, its surface undulating, as if it absorbed light itself.
He placed it on his head, and in a blink... he disappeared.
"Coward." Demeter growled through clenched teeth.
But his gaze did not waver for a second. Almost immediately, he took a step back, standing on guard, and his hand slid under the fold of his tunic, just to the side of his hip. What he pulled out was a sheath that looked like it was made of braided bark, as old as the earth itself. With a sharp tug, she drew a sword of pure gold, gleaming like a ray of sunlight in the middle of the night.
The blade burned, not with fire, but with a kind of energy—it's hard to explain what she was seeing, but the blade resembled the shape of wheat. Every inch of its edge glowed brightly.
Then Demeter struck the ground with the tip of her sword.
And that's when the palace shook.
It wasn't a small tremor. The marble cracked, the pillars broke at their bases, and the reliefs on the ceiling split, causing ancient fragments to fall with a crash. She had just unleashed an earthquake that was shaking the entire place, probably the entire continent.
"Show yourself!" Demeter roared, spinning around, alert to every shadow. "I am not hiding from you, Hades! Neither will you!"
A sharp blow answered her challenge. Invisible, Hades attacked her from the side, his spectral spear cutting through the air with a high-pitched screech. But Demeter ducked in time, spun on her heel, and lunged into the void. The golden sword struck something—something unseen but felt—and a shockwave shook the foundations of the throne.
Black and gold sparks exploded in the air.
Then a voice came from nowhere, cold as a freshly opened grave:
"Did you know that the earth also feeds the dead, sister?"
Demeter gritted her teeth and struck the ground again. This time, golden roots sprouted from the broken earth, huge and sharp as spears, and began to weave a protective circle around her. A battlefield.
"And it can swallow you whole, Hades."
Another invisible blow. This time from the front. Hades' spear emerged briefly from nowhere as it struck the field of roots, tearing one of them, but without touching Demeter. The goddess swung her sword with both hands and cut through the air, releasing a golden wave that swept through the central aisle.
The impact knocked down two pillars. The debris fell with a dull crash, enveloping the hall in dust and shadows.
Hecate raised her staff, a circle of dark energy protecting us both from the partial collapse.
"They won't stop..." I murmured, watching the clash of titans with growing fear.
"No," Hecate said in a dry tone. 'Not while one of the two of them is still breathing."
A cold draft swept through the hall. The dust swirled and, in a subtle flash, Hades' helmet became visible... just before he threw it aside. He had left it there on purpose. He no longer needed to hide.
He stood before his throne, the ethereal spear spinning between his hands.
"The Queen does not need to be rescued, Demeter," he said, this time aloud, like a sentence. "But if you insist... you will taste the power of the Underworld in its entirety."
Demeter did not back down. She raised the golden sword, which now burned with an almost blinding light, and pointed it at her brother.
"I am not afraid of you, King of Shadows. I will shake your kingdom until my daughter returns to me, no matter if I have to turn it all to rubble to do so."
Then they both lunged forward.
The clash of their weapons did not sound like metal against metal. It sounded like worlds colliding. Light and shadow faced each other in the middle of the hall in an explosion of energy that forced us to take cover. The living roots moved like snakes, while the darkness of the ground responded with specters and black vapor. New cracks appeared in the walls, joining the existing ones. All this while we continued to feel a tremor that was probably one of the highest magnitudes on the Richter scale.