Tartarus wasn't silent.
Even when it seemed like it should be.
It hummed—deep and low, like the undercurrent of a heartbeat that didn't belong to anything living. Sometimes it would groan, like the stone was shifting beneath your feet, ancient and angry. Other times you'd hear a whisper, just on the edge of your hearing, a voice that sounded like your own and not your own, telling you to lie down and die.
And yet, there we were.
Me, missing an eye, walking through this endless grave of monsters… with a three-headed puppy trotting at my heels.
Cerberus, of course I am going to name him the original name. It just felt right.
He didn't talk, of course. But that didn't matter. Something in the bond between us clicked immediately. I didn't need him to speak in words. I just… understood him.
It didn't take long before we started having full-on conversations and actually understanding each other.
"Alright, alright," I muttered, stepping over a jagged ridge of stone that looked like the spine of some dead god. "We'll find food. I don't even know what you eat though."
Cerberus barked—three short yips—and wagged his tails. The middle head drooled.
"Yeah," I chuckled. "I should have known that you like meat."
My body ached, but it was mending. Slowly.
The bones in my arms had reknit with sharp ticks and cracks. My ribs no longer ground together with every breath. I could feel ichor slowly seeping back into the vessels beneath my skin, glowing faintly in the dim gloom. Even the torn muscles in my legs had firmed up again, and my spine no longer felt like it was being held together with string and wrath.
But my eyes…
Cerberus whimpered, brushing up against my leg.
"I'm fine," I muttered, not looking down.
He didn't believe me.
That's when I heard it—footsteps. Heavy ones.
I froze mid-step. Cerberus's fur bristled immediately, his three heads snapping in the direction of the sound. Low growls rumbled from each throat. The shadows near my feet swirled in response, reacting to my sudden alertness.
The footsteps got louder. Steadier. Coming right for us.
I raised my hand, and with a twist of my fingers, a bone blade erupted from my palm. I hissed through my teeth as it tore skin and muscle on the way out. Warm ichor dripped down my wrist, but I broke the blade off cleanly and flipped it into a makeshift grip.
Cerberus bared his fangs, all three sets glinting in the darkness.
Then the figure stepped into view.
A giant of a man—at least twelve feet tall, but not the lumbering, grotesque kind. No, this one was built like a statue—broad shoulders, thick arms like tree trunks, and a chest that could probably break a mountain in half. But he wasn't monstrous.
He looked… tired.
Starved.
His skin was ashen, tight around his ribs. Muscles that should've bulged with strength sagged slightly, like he hadn't eaten in weeks. He wore a bronze kilt-like garment wrapped haphazardly around his waist, cracked and scorched from years of use. A leather strap crossed his chest, but the weapon it once held was long gone. His single eye, centered in the middle of his forehead, looked dull and bloodshot.
Then it landed on me.
And lit up.
"Lord Hades!" the giant cried, stumbling into a run.
Cerberus growled louder, but I held out a hand. "Wait."
The cyclops barreled to a stop a few feet away and bent into an awkward bow, one massive knee hitting the stone hard enough to crack it. His eyes shimmered with awe.
I blinked. "Uh… do I know you?"
He chuckled—a deep, almost embarrassed sound. "Forgive me. I'm Brontes. One of the Elder Cyclopes that you helped release."
I lowered the bone blade slowly. Cerberus calmed as well, though his middle head kept watching Brontes with a suspicious glare.
There was a brief pause.
Then I frowned. "Why did you come back?"
Brontes scratched the back of his head. "I had come to help you fight Kampe. I figured, you know, you'd need a hand. But uh…" His eye shifted to the dark smear on the horizon where we'd left Kampe's corpse. "Seems I was too late."
"You could say that," I muttered, rubbing the space below my missing eye. "She put up a fight."
Brontes nodded respectfully. "That bone—if I remember correctly, did you remove that from your own body?"
"Yes, I did." I tossed the broken blade to the side. "Still painful, but I am getting used to manipulating my own bones. So I assume that everyone is already out, so we should hurry to catch up."
Brontes looked sheepish. "Yeah, about that. Zeus refused to unchain the Hekatonkheires."
My stomach dropped.
"Seriously?" I groaned. "He left the hundred-handed ones behind?"
"He said they were too unstable. That if they woke up fully, they would turn against you guys." Brontes's eye twitched. "He sounds alot like my brother, Cronus."
"Yeah, tell me about it. Like father, like son."
Cerberus sneezed, the middle head snorting disdainfully.
I sheathed my shadow back into my arm with a wince, flexing my fingers. "Alright. We're going back. You're with me."
Brontes gave a low bow. "Lead the way, Lord Hades."
Together, the three of us turned and made our way deeper into the pit, back toward the prison cells still echoing with the silence of forgotten gods.
I couldn't help but mutter, "Next time we stage a prison break, remind me not to trust the guy who thinks it's okay to pick and choose who to save."
Cerberus barked in agreement.
☼
The walk back to the prison didn't take long—though honestly, that might have just been the adrenaline still pulsing in my veins. My bones still ached and Cerberus kept bumping his head against my thigh like an overeager child needing reassurance. I didn't mind. In fact, the presence of the pup calmed something inside me, a constant reminder I hadn't lost everything down here.
Eventually, we stopped at a jagged arch carved into the side of a hill of blackened rock. The stones shimmered faintly with heat and dread. The prison. Again. I suppressed a sigh and followed him in.
We went deeper into the tunnels, and finally Brontes turned down a left corridor that hadn't looked any different from the dozens we'd passed. But this one… this one pulsed with a strange kind of pressure. It reminded me of the moment right before a storm broke—an eerie stillness that made the air heavy and breath feel like it took effort.
We reached a massive chamber carved out of obsidian and brimstone. And there they were.
I blinked.
Four giants, each easily forty feet tall, stood in slumped, miserable silence. They looked… weirdly normal? Tall, lanky, and skeletal in build, like Brontes. Their skin was a sickly grayish hue, sagging in some places, pulled taut in others. And where I expected a hundred limbs flailing in a monstrous, incomprehensible tangle—there were just four arms each. Just four. Hanging limply at their sides. Each arm was longer than a horse cart, corded with potential, but clearly atrophied.
"You're sure these are the Hecatoncheires?" I whispered.
Brontes snorted. "What, were you expecting a hundred waving hands at once?"
I shrugged. "I mean… kind of, yeah."
One of the giants stirred. His eye—deep-set and golden—fluttered open, locking on us with bleary confusion.
"…Brontes?" he asked, his voice like distant drums under water. "You… how are you… out?"
Brontes stepped forward and gave the barest hint of a grin. "Woke up early. Got help."
The giant's gaze shifted to me. He blinked slowly, trying to process my presence.
"This is my nephew," Brontes added. "Hades, son of Cronus."
The giant studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment before nodding. "Briareus," he said, introducing himself. "These are my brothers—Cottus, Gyges, and Aegaeon."
As he named them, each stirred slowly from their half-sleep, their massive forms shuddering against the chains. Aegaeon gave a guttural yawn that shook dust from the ceiling. Cottus stretched all four of his arms and groaned like he'd just gotten up from a nap. Gyges didn't move much—he just looked annoyed already.
"Right," I said. "Let's get you free."
"Chains are Adamantine," Brontes noted, his tone a mix of respect and resentment.
My eyes lit up. "Adamantine? Seriously? We're not leaving that behind. We can melt it down. Make armor. Weapons."
Brontes smirked. "Figured you'd say that."
We got to work.
The chains resisted my every attempt at breaking them with force, so I manipulated bone blades from my hands and started slicing at the lock mechanisms while Brontes brute-forced the anchor points out of the stone. It took a while, but eventually Briareus groaned in satisfaction as the last of his bindings clattered to the floor.
"Feels like breathing again," he muttered.
As the others shook off their chains, I noticed Aegaeon wandering away toward the cavern entrance.
"What's he doing?" I asked.
Brontes squinted. "Oh. Probably gutting Kampe."
"…I'm sorry, what?"
Sure enough, I followed the sounds of slicing flesh and found Aegaeon tearing through Kampe's enormous corpse with a calm, surgical precision that was more unnerving than frantic.
He looked up when I approached. "Ah. Nephew."
"…You okay?"
"She's an Elder Dragon," he said, lifting one of her blackened ribs with one massive hand. "You killed an Elder Dragon. Do you know what her bones are made of?"
"…No?"
"Twenty-five percent Adamantine," he said with a grin, holding up the jagged rib like it was a trophy. "Her blood has restorative properties. Her flesh can be dried and ground into medicine. Her eyes can see through illusions. Her liver can purify poisons. Her teeth can pierce any known material."
I blinked. "Well. Shit."
"Indeed. We'll need bags. Or a very large cart."
Cottus walked by then, shaking his head and laughing. "This is why you don't leave Aegaeon unsupervised. He's already got plans for the bones."
"I mean… I kind of love it," I admitted.
Gyges stomped up behind us, clearly less amused. "Can we hurry this up? I'm starving and I hate walking."
"We just got free," Cottus snapped.
"You've been sleeping this whole time!" Gyges replied. "I was awake. I counted every goddamn hour."
I rolled my eyes. "Alright, alright. Let's store what we can."
I reached into the air beside me and summoned a wall of shadow. The void shimmered, and the others watched in awe as I began feeding Adamantine bones and chunks of Kampe's body into the swirling abyss.
"What is that?" Briareus asked, wide-eyed.
"Portable storage," I said with a grin. "Helps lighten the load."
The brothers exchanged glances. "Okay. That's actually kind of cool," said Cottus.
Brontes nudged me. "See? You're growing on them already."
I smirked. "Maybe. Still hate that we're not done. Zeus left the damn Heccies here on purpose."
Brontes groaned. "Yeah… said you'd figure something out. His words."
"Of course he did," I muttered. "Alright. Once we finish clearing out everything useful, we're heading to the Underworld. From there, I'll teleport everyone to our base."
The last stretch of the walk through Tartarus felt like it took centuries.
Cerberus scampered ahead, his paws scattering volcanic ash as his three heads sniffed and huffed with growing energy. It seemed the closer we got to the Underworld proper, the more invigorated he became. I felt it too—a subtle charge under my skin, a weight lifting from my bones as we passed from the primordial rot of Tartarus into the quieter, darker expanse of my future kingdom.
And then, as we crested the edge of a shadow-draped outcropping, I saw them.
A small group, camped at the edge of a ridge, their figures haloed by the gray glow of the Phlegethon mist. Zeus stood at the front, pacing like an agitated lion, tossing pebbles off the cliff and muttering loud enough for anyone within three worlds to hear him. Poseidon leaned against a rock, looking unimpressed. Hera had a vine-wrapped staff in her hand and was gently tapping it against her palm, clearly out of patience. Hestia and Demeter sat close to each other, murmuring quietly, while Arges and Steropes were fiddling with a chunk of metal, probably trying to pass the time.
"Oh, for the last time, I swear, I took the right turn!" Zeus groaned, hands in his hair. "Everything looks the same down here! Brontes should've stayed with us!"
"Maybe you should've stayed with Brontes," Poseidon muttered.
"Oh, shut up."
I grinned.
"Helloooooo!" I called out, voice echoing across the rocks.
All heads turned.
Zeus blinked like a man waking from a bad dream. "Finally," he muttered, though his voice lacked relief. When his eyes locked on the towering forms behind me—four gaunt, starved giants dragging the carcass of a butchered Elder Dragon through the mist—his face froze.
I waved as I approached, Cerberus trotting beside me, tongue lolling from each mouth. "Look who we found wandering around without a map."
"Hades," Hera said, nodding in greeting. Her tone was carefully neutral, through her eyes flicked between the Hecatoncheires and the dragon bones with wary interest.
Zeus crossed his arms. "You weren't supposed to let them out."
I stopped walking. The others did too. The tension hit like a slap to the face.
"You abandoned me," I said flatly. "You left me to fight Kampe alone."
"We assumed you could handle it," Zeus replied, eyes narrowing. "Which you did."
"Damn right I did," I muttered. "But I wasn't going to leave them behind. They didn't deserve that."
"They're dangerous."
"They're family," Brontes said, stepping up beside me. "They fought beside us during the old wars. We owe them."
Zeus didn't answer right away. His jaw clenched, lightning still crackling faintly along his arms. Then his gaze flicked to me—something hard, unreadable behind his eyes.
"Let's just get out of here," he muttered.
"Gladly," I said.
I stepped forward and placed a hand on the cold stone wall. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a low rumble echoed through the chamber, deep as the belly of the earth itself. The wall trembled beneath my palm. With a grinding of ancient stone and the groan of shifting weight, the rock split open, revealing a staircase carved into the mountain itself. Pale daylight leaked through from above.
A breeze swept in, cool and clean—freedom.