The silence didn't last. Sound rushed back in like a tide—the groan of wounded titans, the crackle of dying fires, the low, shaky breaths of gods and monsters trying to process what they had just witnessed.
Zeus stood alone in the center of the crater, the last remnants of primordial chaos bleeding from his knuckles like smoke. His body felt hollowed out, a vessel used and discarded. Every muscle screamed, every old wound throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He just stared at the empty space where Lucifer had been. There was no satisfaction in it. Only a cold, heavy weight, like he'd just buried something immense.
