(Back to the time when Hades ended his battle with Lapetus, Pallas and Atlas)
In the unknown dimension, Cronus opens his eyes. He stretches his arms, joints cracking after eons, and releases a deep, rumbling yawn. His gaze falls upon a small, empty vial. A slow, satisfied smile touches his lips.
"This potion is most effective," he murmurs to the silence. "To think it could even reduce the effect of Gaea's Curse."
His eyes gleam with blue radiance. 'Chronal Vision.' He wills the past to unfold before him. The history of his absence rewinds in his mind: Hades defeating Lapetus and Atlas, the gods' assault on Mount Orthys, the Titans' victory. He closes his eyes and the vision ends. Cronus breathes rapidly, sweat streaming from his temples. He opens his blood-reddened eyes.
A roar of pure, undiluted fury tears from his throat, a sound that could shatter worlds.
His divine scythe, a weapon forged by Gaea herself, materializes in his grasp. He slashes the air, and the dimension splits open with a shriek of torn reality. Cronus steps through the wound.
---
Meanwhile, on the island of Crete.
The sun has fallen, replaced by a beautiful, indifferent moon. Inside the villa's hall, no one appreciates the view. Shoulders lock tight, jaws sit rigid, and every breath comes sharp and shallow. The air hangs thick with the silence of impending judgment.
Hestia's gaze traces the beautiful full moon. 'This night will decide everything,' she thinks, a cold knot tightening in her stomach. 'If we win, a new world awaits us. If we lose...' Her eyes fall on her sisters. 'Then, only something worse than death awaits us.'
Suddenly, Rhea's eyes fly open. A violent cough wracks her body, spattering golden ichor across the floor.
"Mother!"
Her daughters scream,rushing to her side. She grabs Hera's arm, her grip desperate. "R-run!" she stammers.
Before anyone can process the command, the answer arrives before them.
The roof and front wall of the villa shatter, dissolving into dust and splinters. Through the cloud of debris, Cronus walks inside. His scythe rests in one hand, fresh golden ichor dripping from its tip to sizzle on the floor. His body is spattered with blood, his face a mask of woken fury.
In his other hand, he holds a struggling Kouretes by the neck. He exerts a slight, casual pressure.
Crack.
The struggling ceases. Cronus dismissively tosses the corpse aside. He takes a knee, bringing his blood-reddened eyes level with Rhea's.
"Rhea! My, oh my, Rhea," he croons, his voice a deep, chilling rumble. "Did you think a simple space-time distortion could hide you from me?" He extends his hand. "Come back home, Rhea. Our palace has faded in your absence." Then his blood-red eyes divert to her daughters. "Oh, my dear daughters, you will also join us."
Rhea's response is a raw scream of defiance. She summons her sword and slashes, a crescent of pure energy flying at his face. Cronus doesn't move his feet. He merely tilts his scythe, and the attack dissipates against the blade with a pathetic fizzle.
"RUN!" Rhea shrieks, tearing a portal open behind her.
Hera and Demeter stand frozen, the deep-seated fear sown in their souls now flowering into pure terror, turning their limbs to lead. Hestia, shaking, shoves them toward the portal.
'Sacred Flare!' Hestia cries, a golden inferno showering down on Cronus.
But he is already behind them, his hand reaching out to grab them. Suddenly, their own shadows writhe and rise, taking the form of a shadowy Hades. One shadow lashes out with a chain, binding Cronus's arm, while another lunges with a spear. Cronus blocks the charge and yanks the chain, sending the first shadow crashing into the second. A sweep of his scythe cuts them both down, dissolving them into dark hexes.
Another shadow leaps from Hestia's feet, opening a new portal, its dark hands pulling them toward safety. But Cronus is faster. He grabs Hestia's ankle, his scythe severing the connection to the shadow. He drags Rhea and Hestia back. He creates another portal to the palace, then drags them through it.
He throws them into a prison of writhing, sharpened thorns. Another slash in the air, and Hera and Demeter tumble out from the rift, joining their mother and sister.
The thorns pierce soft skin. The palace echoes with the sound of screams and the sight of golden ichor pooling on the floor.
---
Meanwhile, at the Northern Pillar.
Hades looks upward as the arcane explosion fades. Then, he feels it—a backlash as his shadow clones are unmade. "Cronus…" he murmurs.
He closes his eyes, using a secret divinity to seek his family. The vision that fills his mind is a portrait of agony: his mother and sisters, imprisoned in a cage of thorns, their divine blood watering the floor, their screams a symphony of despair.
For a single, eternal second, Hades's mind rests perfectly, terribly silent.
Then, his mind breaks.
The thirteen gates of the Obillion, the prison he built within his soul to contain one of the world's most dangerous calamities, shatter inward simultaneously.
The calamity tears through the wreckage of its prison, flooding into him, becoming him.
It is now unleashed.
A corrosive darkness, no longer contained at his hands, floods his veins, blackening his skin, consuming him from the inside out. He closes his eyes.
When they open, they blaze with a solid, unforgiving purple.
Hades's head lifts and his gaze locks on the peak of the mountain.
"KWAAAA!!!"
A sound tears from his throat.His form dissolves into a vortex of shadow and twilight flame, from which the Black Phoenix beats its wings.
As the calamity arrives, ominous events begin to happen near him and slowly spread outward. The oceans near Mount Orthys boil into a black sea. Lush grass and trees wither instantly, replaced by forests of sharp thorns. The wind howls with a new, ominous cold. Ghosts and demonic beasts awake, howling with amplified power.
The Black Phoenix ascends, reaching the peak in a heartbeat. It glares at the castle, gathers energy in its beak, and releases a devastating beam of blue flame.
The majestic castle melts in a mere breath. Stone flows like water, towers slump into molten slag. White fumes rise from the burned stone, exposing the throne room within. Cronus sits on his throne, his scythe held before him, a remnant of blue flame sputtering out on its blade.
He stands, his movement a jolt of pure violence, and runs, building momentum before launching himself into the sky. The Black Phoenix dives to meet him, transforming back into the apocalypse that is Hades. Helkarion materializes in his hand, its golden blade now consumed by a void-like blackness, radiating intense energy. Cronus's scythe rages with white light.
Their weapons meet in mid-air.
It is more than a clash of blades; it is the collision of two absolute domains—Time and the Underworld. The resulting shockwave erases the peak of Mount Orthys. Cronus's palace, his throne, everything, vaporizes.
Rhea and her daughters, gravely injured, are blown into the air, free-falling toward the black ocean. Hecate teleports into the chaos, her form a blur. 'Psychic!' An arcane energy envelops the falling women, halting their descent. 'Teleport.' She vanishes with them, a heartbeat before the collapsing mountain would have claimed them.
Zeus and Poseidon, climbing the ascent, are caught in the shockwave and hurled back down to the foot of the mountain.
Hades and Cronus land on the one stable piece of ground left, a newly formed plateau of shattered rock. They charge with pure and hateful instinct.
"Clank!"
Cronus's scythe comes down in a vertical arc. Hades parries, the impact ringing up his arms, and instantly counters, driving his elbow into Cronus's jaw with a sickening crunch.
"Heuk!"
Spittle and blood fly from Cronus's lips.He wipes his mouth—a feint. As Hades swings Helkarion horizontally, Cronus is already moving, catching the blade with his scythe and twisting, locking their weapons. He yanks Hades forward and smashes his forehead into Hades's face. The sound of breaking bone is sharp and clear.
Staggered, Hades feels black ichor pour from his nose. Cronus pulls again for another headbutt. This time, Hades meets him with his own. The sharpened edges of his horns slice into Cronus's temples, and golden ichor streams down the Titan's face. Hades also takes damage as black ichor drips from the roots of his horns. They stumble apart, both wounded, both breathing in ragged, furious gasps.
Hades's voice is cold, emotionless, and final. 'Life Harvest.'
His body engulfs with twilight flame. The very life force of Mount Orthys, from the smallest insect to the mightiest Titan, begins to seep out, streaming toward Hades in a visible river of green energy. Even Cronus feels a tug at his core.
Cronus watches the life force of the world drain into Hades, and the fury on his face melts into a look of stark, brutal understanding. The chaos he sees is not the rash anger of a child, but the calculated abyss of a peer.
"So," Cronus's voice cuts through the maelstrom, low and resonant. "You have also unlocked one of the forbidden secrets."
A grim, approving smile touches his lips as he raises his scythe. There is no joy in it, only the cold respect of one monster for another.
'Paradoxum Temporis' he roars, slamming the weapon into the ground. As the temporal field erupts around them, his eyes lock with Hades's. "At last, you have given me a reason to acknowledge you. You are worthy to be called my son."
A vast, white ring expands from him, engulfing the entire island. The world begins to slow, its colors draining, becoming a dull, monochrome parody of itself.
"This will end it all—flora, fauna, the world, reality and dimension!" Cronus shouts. "Let us see who remains at the end!" 'Time Reverse.' A white radiance envelops him, renewing his life force and healing his wounds.
And they charge again, two mad divine beings set on destroying each other and the world with them.
With immense difficulty, Zeus and Poseidon escape the life-draining aura of the mountain. Zeus looks back at the cataclysm, his face pale with a terror he has never known. "They've both gone mad!" he shouts.
Poseidon watches as the fabric of the world itself begins to fray at the edges of their conflict. "If this continues," he murmurs, "there will be nothing left."