Scene 1
Ten POV
"Lady Sitri, you requested me?"
I entered the same garden where we had eaten yesterday, finding the lone lady of the house seated at the table with tea in hand while she admired the flowers and carefully shaped hedges around us.
"Yes. Serafall failed to notify you of Archangel Michael's warning. He stated that you should avoid the Greeks for now until you're capable of protecting yourself."
Taking a seat across from her, I nodded once. I had already accepted the fact that Zeus would still be Zeus in any world worth the title, and that this Hades was not my father.
"Thank you for the warning. That answers whose Sun Domain is aiding my claim to the Sun in my weakened state. Meeting him would yield results on the Grand Board scale."
As I spoke, my thoughts drifted to the names I had heard spoken in pairs with reverence and dread alike. Yhwach. Samael. Michael. The first trinity. The Satans and God of this world were rumored to have died in battle, yet Michael's touch through his domain told a different story than simple myth.
He was clearly more in touch with his True Essences than most beings here. The move he had made through Tí, my divine wolf, had only cemented that fact. He was operating somewhere near the level of my father. Yet the warmth that had passed through his domain carried no hostility, giving me no room to reject the aid I was receiving from it.
"It's only right that we warn you," Lady Sitri said. "Now, the real reason I wanted to see you was the divine marks on your body. As the one who handled most of your healing, I can sense dangerous powers within them."
I answered by summoning the marks back into view across my skin, allowing her to study them plainly.
"Because they are dangerous. In my world, a god is born as the natural wielder and anchor for their domains, allowing those laws to express themselves into reality through them. The Dark Sun mark is my birthmark, born from Zeus's attempt to steal the Sun and my father weaponizing broken Fate. The band of All Things Evil is the circle encompassing my foundation. The stone of Gaia came after my subordinate aided in raising her successor and showed her a path out through a mortal's ascension.
"Then there's the broken Aesir cycle branch of life from the World Tree, linking my Death and Life Domains fully into one domain of Endings. Which one are you interested in?"
Before she could answer, I heard fast footsteps approaching from behind. Turning slightly, I found her husband nearly sprinting toward us with stars in his eyes, as though his instincts had dragged him here in the same way knowledge always pulled at my brother CuelJuris.
"Tell me about All Things Evil," Lady Sitri said without missing a beat. "It'll be your biggest headache among devils currently fighting for the throne."
One of the maids set a plate before me, and I accepted it without ceremony. The kitchen had realized quickly enough that I would eat nearly anything placed in front of me.
"Hm. It came from my father, so it is his birthright claim over anything classified as evil. Whether it's Pandora and her calamities, or the ending of the Golden and final Silver Eras of Humanity."
I lifted a cut of seasoned monster meat and placed it into my mouth, taking a brief moment to enjoy the flavor before continuing.
"In my time with it, it has been expanding into a crown for Endings to rest upon. Whether it's gaining control over the Four Horsemen or 666, each can be classified as both Ending and Evil in the minds of mortals and immortals alike."
"Ah," Lord Sitri said, already writing in the small book he had brought with him. "Then it isn't Lucifer's fragment, but a complete domain of Evil. There are no recorded Evil Gods here, so it would naturally attract us as the closest thing our world has to such a concept."
"That would be correct, darling," Lady Sitri said before I could respond. "This Hades has very good foresight. To even attempt taking his domain, one would need to accept the totality of morality itself. Unless madness through paradox is the goal, no being besides one rooted in neutral domains like Endings could even attempt it. A God-King of the Underworld would naturally possess such a thing."
I nodded once at her reasoning, then saw her gesture toward the tattoos running up my right arm and the spear mark resting along my neck.
Summoning the weapon into being, I let Black Sun appear across my lap. It was still mostly composed of the gold Odin had forged it from, though black had already begun spreading through it in spots where my other domains were bleeding into the weapon.
"A treasure from one Odin to the next," I said. "Even if he hated losing the greater game. The stars are from Hastur, who is no doubt watching as we speak."
I kept my tone plain on purpose. There was no reason to provoke outer gods into turning their eyes toward this place any more than they already might be. Odin of my world had died, but naming him too freely here could still attract whatever comparable version existed in this one. That was not something I intended to test.
"So there are multiple variants of beings throughout the multiverse?" Lord Sitri asked, his pen already moving again. "That adds another spin to the idea of invading minor worlds."
I raised a hand, stopping him before he could continue too far in the wrong direction.
"I would stop using minor worlds as your terminology for what you people do here. A minor world is a world of lesser status than one with a naturally born Gaia. It exists within the sphere of influence of the main world, Earth. So no—you don't have minor worlds. As I told you before, you're essentially invading universes of Earth that match this world's wavelength."
He nodded quickly, scratched out one of his earlier notes, and began writing again.
"Hastur is a name I haven't heard before," Lady Sitri said, glancing toward her husband. He only shrugged while continuing to fill the page.
"Good. If you aren't aware of his pantheon, then it's best to leave him as the only one you're even capable of learning about. The King in Yellow and King of the Stars ranked above me. I am the Lord of Stars, the Greek Sun operating at God-King level. At worst, he'll be the one sent to retrieve me if he grows bored enough."
Lady Sitri nodded and immediately killed any further questions about that subject before her husband could ask them.
"The star tattoos are a gift from him," I continued. "I developed them alongside my Force Domain to build stars of different elements around my sun. Even this lightning will eventually be turned into a star of demonic essence."
Raising my bandaged left hand, I commanded the inky black lightning to dance across my fingers in thin arcs.
"So you'll never truly become a devil," Lady Sitri said, watching the dark current carefully, "but still remain a god operating close enough to our mental frame to be understood."
"Something like that."
"Then my final request is simple. Aid the soldiers if they encounter one of the Demonic Stars. The war between heirs is one thing, but allowing regular devils to die from neglect is another. That should be stopped, even if only by those who were saved from despair."
I nodded, feeling the number of souls separating from their bodies throughout the Underworld. Fighting had been breaking out in different territories almost nonstop since I awakened yesterday.
Her request was practical.
That alone made it easier to respect.
Scene 2
Persephone POV
"Grandmother, why are you summoning me during the winter solstice?"
I entered Rhea's hidden abode, a sanctuary shielded by laws so ancient that even standing beneath them made the air feel older than memory. They hid her from the majority of divinity itself, making this place feel less like a home and more like a secret the universe had been forced to keep.
"A potential trap," she said, seated upon her throne with a scroll already open in her hand, "but one that requires you to see it."
My eyes shifted to the second scroll resting on the arm of her throne, still sealed by wax.
"A trap, you say? Does it require my darling husband to rescue me from Mother again? I do love those little adventures."
Chuckling to myself, I stepped closer, only for Rhea to silence the mood with a single sharp look. No amusement. No indulgence. She meant exactly what she had said.
Then she began reading the letter aloud.
"Dear Grandmother, you will know neither my name nor my connection to you. I am none of your grandchildren, yet the younger twin child of your eldest son."
I stilled.
The words were calm, measured, and impossible.
"I regret to inform you that devils of your universe invaded mine while my brother and Apollo were in the midst of one of their usual tantrums. As my dear uncle decided to launch one of his bolts using the remainder of his will left inside Apollo's lightning symbol, he cast my brother into your world through fracture.
"Sadly, without any way to confirm how close you are to said uncle in your universe, the rest has been locked behind another scroll for our mother to locate my idiot brother.
"As payment, Chronos and the version of yourself there are the ones aiding me in sending these off. You will understand the meaning behind his freedom to act more than anyone. So he will answer any questions he deems worthy in your universe.
"Signed, CuelJuris, Recorder of Endings and Heavenly Scribe."
By the time she finished, I had taken a step back without fully realizing it.
Something inside me had stirred while she read, as though the words themselves had touched a place in me too deep for logic. Not recognition exactly. Not yet. But something close enough to unsettle me.
Then Rhea lifted the second scroll and passed it to me.
I took it carefully.
The wax bore the crest of a book with an eye at its center. And as I held it, a soft fruit scent reached me—sweet, familiar, maddening in a way I could not immediately explain. It did not comfort me. It tempted me. Dared me to break the seal then and there.
Before I could decide, I felt Grandfather's Time Domain move.
Distance across planes meant nothing as his power opened a barrier over his mountain, answering a question Hades had always refused to give voice to.
"Take your time," Rhea said. "But until you calm down and make a decision here, you'll remain with me. Either burn the scroll and go home, or read its contents for yourself."
Her eyes sharpened.
"And I mean yourself. Do not include either of my sons."
With a thought, she summoned a throne across from her. I took the offered seat slowly, the scroll still resting in my hands as my fingers brushed along the wax seal.
Burn it.
Read it.
Go home ignorant.
Or open it and step into whatever trap had been prepared for me long before I ever entered this room.
I kept caressing the seal while debating the words I had heard, already knowing one truth with unpleasant certainty.
I had not opened the trap.
But I was already inside it.