Zeus moved first.
Not because he thought he could win clean.
Not because he had some secret answer.
Because standing still in front of that thing felt worse than dying.
He came in low this time. No wide swing. No roaring entrance. No trying to overwhelm the impossible with more impossible. He took Hades's terrible idea and made it his own. Chaos tightened around his body until it looked less like power and more like damage given shape. Black-white lines crawled over his skin, not wild now, but focused. Sharp. Meant to cut.
Hades went with him.
No hesitation.
No speech.
Just that bident in both hands and enough dead inside him to make the field under his feet dim.
The Tribunal watched them come.
One step.
That was all He took.
And the entire battlefield warped around it.
