The throne room had stopped shaking.
Not because the underworld had healed. Because it had run out of energy to tremble. The cracks in the floor still spread—slow now, like wounds that had given up trying to close—but the walls no longer groaned. The shadows no longer fled. Everything just... waited.
Hades sat on the edge of his broken throne.
Not the seat. The edge. The part that hadn't shattered when he fell. His hands rested on his knees. His head was lowered. His breathing was the only sound in the hall.
The souls were quieter.
Not calm. Exhausted. The endless flood had slowed to a stream. The stream had become a trickle. The dead still came—they would always come—but the pressure had eased. For now.
Hades didn't trust it.
He never trusted silence anymore.
He had been sitting here for hours. Maybe days. Time didn't move right in the underworld. It crawled. It looped. It stopped and started without warning. He had stopped trying to measure it.
His eyes were closed.
