The scream hit Zeus like a physical thing.

Not sound. Something deeper. A pulse of pain that traveled through the cracks in reality, through the thinning boundaries between realms, through whatever thread still connected him to the brother he had known for eons.

He was standing at the edge of Heaven’s broken plain when it happened. The gathering had dispersed. Athena was organizing her teams. Odin was arguing with someone about anchor points. The healers were still working, still moving, still trying to stitch the world back together.

Zeus stopped walking.

His hand clenched at his side. The chaos around his wrist flickered—once, twice—then stilled.

"Hades."

No one heard him. No one was listening.

He turned. Walked away from the noise, away from the arguments, away from the gods who kept looking at him like he had answers. No one called after him. No one tried to stop him.

He found a crack in the ground—not the small ones, the ones Athena was mapping. A deep one. A wound in the white plain that led down into darkness. It hadn’t been there before. Or maybe it had. Maybe he just hadn’t been looking.

Zeus stepped into it.

The descent was wrong. Not like falling. Like the world was folding around him, compressing, pulling him somewhere that didn’t want to be reached. The light from Heaven faded above. The darkness below thickened. The air grew cold—not the cold of winter, the cold of absence.

He landed on cracked stone.

The Underworld.

It had changed. The grand halls, the ancient pillars, the rivers that had flowed for eternity—all of it was wrong. The floor was split open in a dozen places, black cracks spreading outward like veins. The shadows moved erratically, twitching, uncertain. The air was thick with pressure, heavy with too many voices pressing against too thin walls.

Zeus walked forward.

His footsteps echoed in the silence. Not the good silence—the waiting silence. The kind that came before something broke.

He found Hades in the throne room.

The Lord of the Dead was on his knees.

Not in the center of the room, not on the dais. Just... there. In the middle of the cracked floor, head bowed, hands limp at his sides. His hair hung over his face. His breathing was shallow, ragged, wrong.

The throne behind him was shattered.

Not cracked. Not damaged. Shattered. Pieces of black stone lay scattered across the floor, some of them still smoking, some of them covered in frost. The throne hadn’t broken. It had been broken.

Zeus stopped a few feet away.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. He just stood there, looking at his brother, at the cracks spreading beneath his knees, at the shadows that seemed to be pulling away from him like he was something they no longer recognized.

"Hades."

No response.

Zeus stepped closer. Knelt down. Reached out and gripped his brother’s shoulder.

The touch was enough.

Hades’s head lifted slowly. His eyes were dark—not the dark of power, the dark of exhaustion. His face was pale, thinner than it should have been. Beneath the surface, something moved. Something that wasn’t him. A flicker of light, a whisper of voice, a thousand lives trying to look through one set of eyes.

Zeus saw it.

Didn’t flinch.

"Hades."

"Brother." The word came out raw, scraping against a throat that had screamed too much. Hades’s voice was thin, barely there, like he’d been hollowed out and only the shell remained.

Zeus tightened his grip.

"You’re slipping."

Hades almost smiled. Almost.

"I know."

The admission hung between them. No excuses. No explanations. Just the truth.

Zeus pulled him up.

Not gently. There was no room for gentle. He grabbed Hades’s arm, hooked it over his shoulder, and hauled him to his feet. Hades staggered, his weight pressing against Zeus, his legs barely holding.

For a moment, they just stood there. Two brothers in a broken world, leaning on each other because there was nothing else to lean on.

"I felt it," Zeus said. "The scream."

Hades didn’t answer.

"The souls?"

"Too many." Hades’s voice was quiet. "I thought I could hold them. I was wrong."

Zeus’s jaw tightened. "You absorbed them. All of them."

"What choice did I have?"

"None."

Hades laughed. Short. Ragged. Broken.

But the laugh didn’t sound fully like him. Something else lingered beneath it—a second voice, a third, a thousand voices, all trying to speak at once. The sound scraped against Zeus’s ears, wrong in a way he couldn’t name.

He noticed.

Didn’t comment.

Just gripped his brother’s shoulder tighter.

"You’re still in there," Zeus said. "Under all of... that."

Hades’s eyes met his. Dark. Tired. Almost gone.

"For now."

"Then hold on."

"To what?"

Zeus looked around the shattered throne room. At the cracked floor, the trembling shadows, the voices pressing against the walls.

"To me," he said.

Hades stared at him.

For a moment—just a moment—something flickered behind his eyes. Not the souls. Not the pressure. Him. The brother Zeus had known. The one who had stood beside him against Titans, against gods, against the end of everything.

"Don’t die before I fix this," Zeus said.

Hades’s mouth twitched.

"That’s not a promise I can make."

"Make it anyway."

The silence stretched. The shadows pressed closer. Somewhere in the distance, a soul screamed—not in pain, in longing. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Hades exhaled slowly.

"I’ll try."

Zeus nodded. Shifted his grip. Started walking, pulling Hades with him, step by step, toward the crack in the ceiling that led back to Heaven.

Behind them, the shattered throne sat in pieces.

The shadows watched them go.

And somewhere, deep inside Hades, a thousand voices whispered his name like a prayer they weren’t sure he deserved.

A/N

Thanks for reading this far, it has been a glorious ride, I love all your supports and contributions, and I will continue to do my best to keep you all entertained despite my tight and busy schedules.

And one day I hope this novel would be the talk of the ages.