I observed my fallen body. A vertical cut, clean and perfect, sliced through the Adamas of my robe and the divine clay that formed my physical vessel. Ichor streamed from the wounds, and within the shattered parts of my head, I could observe a "brain" crafted from Mercury, Gold, and Crystals. The light that had once resided within it had vanished utterly, and I could feel my mind receding further and further away, my consciousness abandoning me.
Arrogance.
That was the only word echoing in the hollow chambers of my fading thoughts. We had thought it would be easy to face Kronos. He would merely accelerate himself using time, he would rely on his physical form, and while we wielded our Domains, we would constrain him.
Pure and Stupid arrogance.
The gods in mythology had defeated him; logically, we would fare even better than the tales. I had helped them train and grow stronger within the Titan's body. Even if we couldn't defeat him outright, it shouldn't have been a one-sided slaughter.
How did the gods defeat someone who could manipulate time itself? His final strike – I hadn't even been able to shield myself. There was no way to evade it, for the attack had already occurred, its conclusion etched into reality before my senses could register its beginning.
I gazed upon the Titan, who was now utilizing his Domain to slowly, methodically destroy the remnants of my physical form. Apparently, not even immortal beings could ultimately triumph over time. My body dissolved into shimmering golden sand, each grain subsequently absorbed by the insatiable Kronos.
"Come out, Hades. Reveal yourself." His voice echoed through the void left by the dissolution of my body and possessions.
"I can stay here with you for eternity, you know," he continued, leaning casually on his scythe as if devoid of a single care in the world. "I'll still emerge in time to deal with the other children."
He had slain me, utterly annihilated my form, and now he demanded I reveal myself? I possessed not a single drop of Divinity remaining to fuel regeneration. And even if I did, there was no longer a body to regenerate into.
I strained to command my Domains, to forge a new vessel, to anchor my unraveling mind. But there was nothing – not even the faintest spark to serve as fuel for such abilities. My soul seemed to drift, indifferent to my desperate will, incapable of manifesting anew to continue the fight.
"Coward. Is this what I feared?"
Kronos's words pierced the very core of my drifting soul. He was calling me a coward? From the moment I emerged into this wretched existence, I had done nothing but fight. Fight against the encroaching shadows, fight against the very limitations of controlling my own borrowed form, preparing relentlessly. I had loathed every moment. I hated him.
Countless hours spent trying to forge a material capable of wounding him. Eons spent nurturing my robes, empowering them to aid me in confronting him. Over a hundred failed experiments, failures compounding upon failures.
Perhaps this was the inevitable result. I was destined to fail in this life, despite striving for my utmost. Maybe living perpetually within the shadows during our time inside Kronos's stomach was the catalyst that fueled the others to become powerful enough to overthrow him. My choice, my foolish choice to bring light and comfort, might have been the key to our defeat.
Perhaps next time... next life... I would have better fortune.
I felt my soul beginning to be tugged by an inexorable force. It was like sinking into a bath of impossibly hot water, my essence descending slowly, enveloped in a profound, seductive comfort, an all-encompassing tranquility.
My vision started to darken, the sensation flooding all my remaining senses.
With one final, phantom exhalation, I embraced the darkness. It felt profoundly comforting in that instant, yet simultaneously, it was something I utterly refused to accept. I wanted to try again. I needed to show Kronos that in trying to flee his prophesied fate, he had only succeeded in sealing his own doom.
After these defiant thoughts, everything fragmented. The last vestiges of human mentality clinging within me struggled to comprehend the sensations: being dragged through a vast, dark lake, then violently breaching a wall of roaring flames, only to be cast into a shallow pool. It was the place where I had once drunk to slake an immense, consuming thirst. I climbed a mountain, arduous and steep, and at its very peak, I found the path.
Kronos was directly before my eyes the next moment I became aware. The shaft of his scythe slammed into my head, hurling me against one of the temporal dome's shimmering walls. I was alive. Naked. And likely to die again within the next heartbeat.
Seeing him approach, the scythe poised to cleave my head from my shoulders, I commanded my body. It shifted, morphing instantly into the massive serpent form I had mastered. I slithered through the gaps between his immense legs before reverting to my humanoid shape. My hands clasped together, channeling energy, forging a spear of gleaming Titanium tipped with volcanic Obsidian. The energy of the dead, cold and implacable, flooded the obsidian point.
Kronos turned just in time to see the spear hurtling towards his chest. And through his widening eyes, I saw the spear pierce my own chest instead.
The river had guided me. The flames had purified me. The water had transformed me. The climb had rebuilt me.
The scythe's blade was centimeters from my face...
Carried by the river's current, I heard the river's lamentations as it witnessed my suffering.
A wave of raw divinity shattered my fragile, reborn body...
Amidst the searing flames, I heard the fire's mocking laughter as it witnessed my torment.
A boulder was split by the scythe, followed immediately by my own sundered form...
Drinking from the pool, I heard the tears falling, merging with the water as they witnessed my agony.
Kronos held me by the throat, his grip crushing...
During the arduous climb, I looked back, and finally understood why I endured this suffering.
One of my hands erupted in viridian flames, intercepting the descending scythe blade with a thunderous clang, deflecting it away from my vulnerable body.
Looking around with the first moment of true clarity I'd experienced in what felt like an eternity, I saw that the entire landscape where I had battled Kronos had been replaced by a colossal crater, as if struck by a meteor. The mountain was gone. Only Kronos and I remained amidst the desolation.
The Titan's eyes studied his scythe intently before snapping back to me. Driven more by instinct than conscious thought, I molded my body. A pair of immense, leathery demonic wings burst from my back, propelling me violently into the heavens.
The space I had occupied mere fractions of a second earlier was engulfed by a web of intersecting slashes. Kronos materialized amidst the fading cuts moments later.
"Behold," I heard my own voice declare, laced with a newfound, biting sarcasm, "the mighty Kronos, incapable of slaying his own son." It took me a moment to realize the words had come from my mouth.
"I see you've finally found a shred of pride to face me," Kronos retorted, his voice a low rumble. He raised one foot, displaying it stained thickly with drying ichor. "I was growing weary of merely trampling you, child."
The conversation ended there. His scythe hurtled towards me with blinding speed. With a subtle touch upon my Domains, I conjured a small, dense lump of lead beneath my bare foot. I stepped onto it, using the minute leverage combined with a powerful beat of my wings to accelerate sideways, narrowly evading the spinning blade.
Only to immediately contort my body, twisting frantically to avoid another scythe attack materializing from thin air. My eyes widened in disbelief as the number of simultaneous attacks I needed to evade escalated exponentially. At times, I dodged four distinct blades slicing through the air. At others, my entire field of vision was replaced by a lethal storm of slashes. I used the viridian flames wreathing my left hand to block the strikes impossible to evade.
Dodge. Block. Dodge. Counterattack. I repeated these actions so many times, ingrained them so deeply into muscle and instinct, that I began to find fleeting moments to experiment. Discharging the flames as projectiles proved inefficient; they were far more potent as a defensive shield or for imbuing weapons. Forging weapons – swords, spears, axes from condensed shadow and will – and imbuing them with the chilling energy of the River Styx caused wounds that seemed to consume disproportionate amounts of the Titan's energy to regenerate.
The Domains of Treasure and the Dead intertwined and overlapped, their boundaries blurring. And all of it was controlled by something deeper, something different from a mere Domain. More powerful, yet paradoxically more vulnerable. Something impossible to possess at birth, something that had to be seized, earned through struggle and sacrifice.
Authority.
It was Authority I now wielded to face the Lord of the Heavens, the Titan of Time.
I could see cracks forming in the very fabric of the sky and the scorched earth beneath us. Kronos's body bled streams of golden sand, while my own wounds no longer wept ichor. Instead, cuts and gashes exhaled plumes of dark, greasy smoke, like foul soot.
I could still feel my energies draining, but now I understood why Kronos seemed inexhaustible. He fed upon the heavens themselves; the entire planet channeled divine energy into him. And now, he faced an equal. The Underworld poured its vast, ancient strength into me, my body becoming a conduit for the immeasurable power that churned beneath the world's crust.
Kronos danced through time, flickering in and out of existence, creating wounds on my body that hadn't existed a moment before, or healing grievous injuries on his own form almost instantaneously. Meanwhile, every time I neared my absolute limit, every time he attempted to consume me whole once more, I commanded my body to undergo the reincarnation process anew. I would plunge through the veils of the Underworld, enduring the purifying flames, the transformative waters, the arduous climb, only to emerge reborn, revitalized, and immediately re-engage in the ceaseless combat.
The cracks in the sky and the earth continued their relentless expansion, spider-webbing across reality, until their ragged edges finally began to touch and strain against the temporal barrier Kronos himself had erected to contain our battle.
Transforming my body into its angelic form – the one radiating deceptive serenity – I imbued every single feather with veins of enchanted bronze, quenched in the sacred, memory-laden waters of the Styx. With a guttural cry that echoed across the shattered battlefield, I unleashed a storm of these empowered feathers towards the Titan's colossal form. But with a mere, contemptuous step, he vanished, reappearing at another point within the vast arena. My feathers pursued, shredding the air and cratering the ground where he had stood.
"Give up, Hades," his voice boomed from a point high above me, resonating with absolute certainty. "Even having gained sovereignty over the Underworld, you remain a weak god."
An immense pressure slammed down upon me, crushing me against the fractured earth. My body exploded into a cloud of acrid smoke. Instinctively, I scrambled up the spectral mountain within the Underworld's embrace, my essence clawing its way back. I reconstructed my physical form mere centimeters from the spot where I had just perished.
Kronos hovered in the air, observing me. And just like at the beginning of this brutal conflict, I was struck by a blinding, humiliating revelation.
Arrogance.
I had chosen to take flight against the literal Sovereign of the Skies.
"Kronos. Father." My voice was steady, cold, carrying across the distance. "It is not I who is trapped here with you. Quite the contrary. You are trapped here with me." Kronos stared at me as if I were a profound idiot for a long, silent moment. Then, he began to laugh. It wasn't a chuckle, but a deep, earth-shaking, sky-rending bellow of pure, unadulterated amusement. The ground trembled; the fractured heavens seemed to vibrate with the force of his mirth.
He didn't even deign to offer a verbal retort. He simply vanished. In the next instant, he materialized directly in front of me, his scythe already a blur of deadly motion. Scythe clashed against conjured shield wreathed in green fire. Blades of shadow met fists of compressed time. Evasion, deflection, desperate blocks – the furious exchange escalated until I felt my back press against something solid and unyielding. The temporal barrier.
I conjured a shield, layering it thick with the viridian flames, reinforcing it with sheer will, just as his fist, wreathed in temporal distortion, connected. My body was caught, pinned for a terrifying microsecond between the devastating impact and the unforgiving barrier. Then, something gave way. The Shield and the barrier shattered like glass. And my body was hurled away from the titan like a discarded doll, bones snapping, consciousness flickering.
A strong, steady grip caught me mid-flight, arresting my chaotic trajectory. Guiding hands deposited me gently into warm, soft arms. As the world slowly stopped spinning moments later, I realized Zeus had caught me and placed me securely in the embrace of Hestia. My sister held me tightly, her gentle flames, warm and comforting, already flowing over my broken form, knitting flesh and bone.
"Leave it to us now, little sister," a familiar, boisterous voice called out, sounding distant through the ringing in my ears. I turned my head towards the sound and saw Poseidon. But what truly captured my gaze wasn't his familiar, determined face. It was the object held firmly in his grasp.
A Trident.
We hadn't won the battle against Kronos in the myths. Not alone.
Encircling Hestia and me, I saw my brothers and sisters. All clad in gleaming armor, wielding weapons that hummed with nascent power. Demeter, stern and protective. Hera, radiating fierce authority. And Zeus, standing tall, crackling energy coalescing into a jagged bolt of pure lightning held aloft in his hand.
"If you had died," Hestia whispered into my ear, her voice trembling with a terrifying mix of relief and fury that made me shiver despite her healing warmth, "I would have descended into the Underworld and killed you all over again." My sweetest sister would never normally say such a thing. Demeter, likely sensing the intensity of the moment, extended a hand, helping me to stand on still-wobbly legs.
The family reunion is touching," a cacophony of voices spoke in unsettling unison, yet strangely recognizable. "But perhaps you could lend a hand?"
Three truly gigantic beings, each possessing far more arms and heads than seemed necessary or natural, were fully engaged with the Titan, their countless limbs a whirlwind of brute force holding him momentarily at bay. That explained why Kronos hadn't pressed his attack.
Exchanging grim, determined glances with my siblings, I felt a palpable wave of bloodlust, of shared purpose and long-suppressed rage, saturate the air around us. The time for solitary struggle was over.
Poseidon and Zeus were the first to surge back into the fray. Their attacks now carried more than mere physical might or divine energy; with their newly forged weapons in hand – the lightning bolt crackling with cosmic fury, the trident humming with the power of the deep – it was as if Destiny itself had taken up arms beside us.
Perhaps it truly had.
Hera was next. Her abilities manifested not as brute force, but as intricate weavings of energy, complex patterns that disrupted Kronos's temporal manipulations and shielded her siblings. They resembled Divine Domains, yet carried a purer, almost primal essence, something that felt older and more fundamental, even strangely human in its complexity. It made me wonder if this was the very origin of magic itself.
Demeter and Hestia remained by my side for a heartbeat longer. Hestia gave Demeter a subtle, almost imperceptible nudge towards me.
"So, Hades, I..." Demeter began, her voice unusually hesitant. She swallowed hard. I raised an eyebrow, glancing towards Hestia, who quickly pretended to be engrossed in observing the distant battle, a faint blush on her cheeks.
"I... I asked the Cyclopes to prepare something for you," Demeter stammered, finally meeting my gaze. A tentative smile touched her lips, and she stepped closer, closing the distance until she was mere centimeters from me. I could smell her scent, a delicate, sweet fragrance like blossoms on a fruit tree in spring. Her eyes darted away from mine, lingering for a fraction of a second on my lips. She raised her hands, her touch surprisingly gentle as her fingertips brushed my cheek, tracing a path down my jawline to my neck. It was almost an embrace, almost the prelude to a dance.
My hands instinctively found her waist, holding her steady as she reached behind my neck. For a suspended moment, she stood there, her eyes locked with mine, her gaze flickering between my eyes and lips, a silent question hanging in the charged air between us. Then, a tremendous crash shattered the moment. Poseidon had been hurled from the melee, embedding himself deep into the cratered earth before roaring and charging back into the fray.
"It's a gift," Demeter breathed, her voice regaining its usual strength, though her cheeks remained flushed. "It will keep you safe. Just... grasp it." She pulled back slightly, allowing me to look down. Hanging around my neck was a pendant. The cord was fashioned from a material that gleamed like gold, yet possessed a deeper, more ethereal beauty. I couldn't identify it at first, until realization dawned – it was woven from Demeter's own hair, meticulously forged and strengthened into an unbreakable golden thread. The pendant itself was a small, exquisitely crafted serpent, coiled and ready to strike – the very creature whose form I had mastered.
"Thank you," I said, offering her a genuine, weary smile even as my fingers closed around the cool metal of the serpent. Instantly, I felt a profound shift. My body seemed to fall slightly out of sync with the material world, my soul and physical form merging even more intrinsically. It granted me an unnerving ability to move unnoticed, like just another spirit passing unseen through the mortal plane.
From that point onward, the battle, while still fierce, felt anticlimactic in its inevitability.
My brothers and sisters had already vanquished the other Titans. Leaderless without Kronos, divided by ambition and fear, they had been unable to mount a coherent defense worthy of their lineage. Kronos himself, bereft of reinforcements, abandoned by his kin, and with Destiny manifestly arrayed against him, was overwhelmed. Zeus delivered the final, symbolic blow, castrating the Titan King with his own cursed scythe. Then, together, we tore him apart, rending his immortal essence into pieces, and sealed each fragment deep within the lightless, suffocating prisons of Tartarus, far below the roots of the world.
And so, time passed.
I stood observing the celebration. Gods, allied Titans who had turned against Kronos's tyranny, and various other powerful beings who had thrown their lot in with us, feasted and reveled. Zeus and Poseidon, wielding their mighty symbols of power, were naturally the centers of boisterous attention, their laughter loud, their tales grand.
Yet, despite the apparent joy, I couldn't help but smile a small, knowing, and slightly weary smile. Because amidst the revelry, the glances exchanged between one god and another, the looks occasionally directed towards me in the shadows where I stood… they carried the unmistakable scent of nascent ambition, simmering rivalries, and future problems yet to unfold. The victory was absolute, but the peace, I knew, would be far more fragile.