The Underworld, between the thrones.
The air was heavy and cold.
Hades sat upright, his gaze falling upon the prophet who usually lay prone on the ground but now knelt in an almost humble posture—Prometheus.
"Father," Prometheus's voice had lost its former clarity.
"I beg you, give me the Scythe that can slay a god."
Hades was well aware of Prometheus's intentions.
To sever his divine body, to strip away his divinity, and to integrate himself, in the most complete way, into the fragile yet infinitely potential world of mortal life.
This son of his had chosen the most deviant path.
Frankly, Hades himself held neither strong praise nor criticism for it.
The world needed both rules and variables to function. Prometheus's choice, in his view, was merely one option among countless.
But the problem was, the Scythe capable of cutting primordial law was no longer in his possession.
"No." Hades's voice was low, but it echoed between the thrones with the cold, compelling force of the Underworld itself.
He offered no explanation, and he was not obligated to. Refusal was its own answer.
Yet, as the resonance of this refusal still hung in the air, a woman's voice, tinged with a hint of playful amusement, interrupted the stalemate:
"Oh? I think... perhaps that won't be possible."
The light and shadows shifted slightly, and the form of Metis gracefully emerged from the darkness beside Hades's throne.
Hades glanced sideways at her, his eyes deep and unreadable. She had come to 'participate'.
At the same time—in another part of the Underworld, far from the edges of the central power.
Boreas, the god of chance and turning points, calmly toyed with a set of knucklebones.
Opposite him stood Tyche from another world.
"Look," Boreas said, tossing the bones and watching them fall, not looking at the result, but at Tyche's eyes, which were full of confusion and caution.
"Things like these bones have many faces. You stand on the left and see a three; he stands on the right and might see a four. Which side is 'real'? Both, and neither."
Tyche's brow was furrowed tightly, like tangled tree roots. "Lord Boreas, do you mean..."
He tried to grasp some kind of prophecy from these seemingly random words.
Boreas seemed not to hear his question and continued speaking to himself, his eyes wandering as if gazing into an unseen dimension. "Life has countless ways of living, like vines—some climb upward, others put down roots. What about the world? There are countless directions, a fork in the road—turn left? Turn right? Go straight ahead... Who knows?"
He chuckled softly.
"The bones are cast. So be it."
Such vague and rambling rhetoric irritated Tyche, who was used to order and logic.
"Forgive me, I don't understand."
"No, you do."
"You don't need me to understand?" Tyche's voice rose slightly, a single eye blazing with mocking anger.
"What is that supposed to mean!"
Boreas shrugged, his voice relaxed and almost ruthless: "It means nothing. Just as the wind blows through a stone, must the stone understand why the wind blows it?"
This completely ignited Tyche's anger. He felt he was being treated like a fool.
As Tyche's chest heaved, and he was about to hurl a sharp retort, Boreas suddenly looked over Tyche's shoulder and blurted out: "Ares?"
Ares? Tyche's mind jolted, and he instinctively, almost reflexively, turned his head.
But behind him was only the eternal, dim light and shadow of the Underworld, along with the faint whispers of the dead from afar.
There was no one there.
He had been tricked!
Tyche whipped his head back around, anger nearly bursting from his chest, but where was Boreas's figure? The spot where he had stood was empty.
Deep within the Underworld, in a valley Kronos had chosen as a temporary dwelling place, a place even wandering shades instinctively avoided.
Time itself seemed to stand still here, stretched and distorted.
The figure of Boreas silently materialised like a ghost. Unlike the other gods who kept their distance, he approached the enormous figure directly.
Kronos's eyes slowly opened and fell upon Boreas. He recognised this grandson, the young god who symbolised possibility and turning points.
"When water meets an unyielding stone, it parts," Boreas spoke, his voice clear yet carrying a faint tremor, as if the very threads of fate were being plucked.
"Fate has quietly diverged."
Kronos's colossal form did not move at all, but a barely audible snort of disdain escaped his nose, as if to say this was merely common sense.
"Go on, I'm listening." His posture still held the languid indifference of a former King of Gods.
Boreas took no offence; he seemed merely to be stating an interesting phenomenon, and continued: "Time flows into nothingness, and a fledgling matures."
"Rhea?" Kronos's body, which seemed fused with the mountain rock, trembled violently.
He straightened up.
Rhea, his sister, his wife, the only woman who had dared to deceive him, who had protected Zeus during those mad years when he devoured his own children.
Time could heavily erode memory, but some names were engraved into the very marrow of a King of Gods.
Boreas observed his grandfather's reaction, the smile on his face deepening slightly, and he continued in a prophetic tone: "Some kings will return, in the company of time."
"Return... In the company of time..." Kronos murmured to himself. A boulder had been thrown into the dead lake of his heart.
He had been imprisoned for so long he had almost forgotten the touch of a throne.
But the word 'return', and everything evoked by the name 'Rhea', caused his dormant power to simmer silently.
He was no longer seated.
He rose to his full height!
In an instant, his shadow engulfed Boreas.
"You," Kronos's voice was no longer dry, but filled with a suffocating weight, like lead, and his chaotic gaze was fixed on Boreas.
"What do you want me to do?"
Faced with his grandfather's almost soul-shaking stare and question, Boreas simply smiled. His smile was as pure as a child's, yet as deep as a sea of stars.
He did not answer immediately, simply watching in silence, as if admiring the ambition and power kindling within Kronos.
Silence spoke louder than any words in that moment.
After a long while, just as Kronos's patience was about to fray from the silence, Boreas finally spoke again. His voice was still gentle, but carried an unshakeable certainty:
"Fate needs a helmsman..."
He paused, as if laying down his final and most important piece, the words like a final psalm, a mantra of divine revelation:
"Ashes bury new stamens, and the celestial fire makes them flourish."