CHAPTER 145: EVEN NYX FEELS FEARS

The sea was quiet for the first time in hours. Only the groan of wounded currents and the slow collapse of ruined reefs broke the silence. Poseidon knelt, his trident buried in the seabed to hold himself upright, blood clouding the water around him. Zeus stood near, his shoulders lit faintly with sparks, his breathing heavy but steady.

Then, the ocean itself stirred. From the remnants of Varuna’s body rose two lights—one burning deep crimson, the other glowing with the pale gleam of drowned stars. The core and the essence of the fallen god-king. They floated before Zeus, pulsing like hearts, raw and alive with the abyssal dominion they carried.

The storm bent toward them, but Zeus did not claim them. His gaze dropped to his brother. Poseidon’s eyes burned even through the exhaustion, his body battered but unbroken. He had fought in his waters, had nearly bled them away to keep Olympus safe. The sea was his, and so too should be the spoils.

Zeus lifted his hand. The currents wrapped the lights and carried them down, pressing the core and essence into Poseidon’s chest. The ocean flared bright as they sank into him. The sea itself roared in answer. Poseidon staggered, clutching his trident as a tidal force surged through his veins. His aura exploded outward, the pressure of it crushing the seabed into fissures. His wounds closed, his body steadied, his presence heavier than the ocean itself.

The storm whispered through Zeus’s ears, faint but clear.

[Primordial Authority: Abyssal Tides — transferred.]

Poseidon rose slowly, his trident glowing with veins of thunder-blue and abyssal red. His power pressed against the trenches, stabilizing them, binding the waters back into their shape. He looked at his brother, no words spoken, but a silent understanding passing between them.

Zeus gave a single nod, then turned. Lightning gathered around him, brighter and sharper than before. In a heartbeat, he was gone, his storm tearing a path through leagues of water toward Olympus.

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The underworld groaned.

The black rivers boiled, Styx herself twisting as if in pain. Mountains cracked, and the halls of the dead trembled. Souls scattered in panic as the deepest caverns split open, vomiting frost and light that did not belong here.

Hades stood at the center of it all, his bident glowing with pale fire, cloak torn and heavy with ash. His face was calm, but his body carried cuts too deep, his shoulders already stooping under the weight of his realm. Every strike he made echoed with the fury of a king who refused to yield.

But against these foes, even the lord of death faltered.

Ymir towered first, a mass of frozen flesh and jagged ice, his single eye glowing like a pale star. Each swing of his hand froze rivers in their flow, turning whole swarms of souls into brittle statues that shattered in the quake of his steps. His breath itself was blizzard, spilling frost storms across the caverns and burying armies of shades beneath glaciers.

Opposite him, Pangu moved with a terrible calm. His axe split reality itself, cutting through walls of shadow and earth as if they were paper. Each swing shook the bedrock of the underworld, splitting the halls into fragments, opening wounds in the very bones of the realm. Where Ymir was brute fury, Pangu was inevitability. His blows were not wild. They were precise. They were final.

Hades stood between them, his cloak of night flaring, his bident catching blow after blow. He redirected Ymir’s ice storms into pits of fire, twisted Pangu’s swings into the walls, but each defense cracked his realm deeper. Souls screamed as they were dragged into voids, rivers overflowed, mountains collapsed. Even he could not hold this forever.

Then the shadows bent.

Night bled into the halls, soft but endless, swallowing the frost and dulling the light of Pangu’s axe. Nyx stepped from the veil, her silver eyes cutting through the dark. Her robe of stars spilled across the broken ground, cloaking it in calm that seemed impossible in the chaos.

She took in the scene with a glance. Hades bleeding, holding by sheer will. Ymir pressing forward, ice creeping across every stone. Pangu lifting his axe for another swing that could split the underworld in half.

Her lips pressed tight. Two Primordials here. Both of them monsters even among the first beings. Together, they were destruction incarnate.

If Zeus did not arrive soon, the underworld would fall.

But Nyx did not wait.

Her hands rose, her voice a whisper that carried through every corner of the dark. The night itself surged, blanketing the halls. Ymir’s frost slowed, his blizzard dimmed, his ice cracked beneath the weight of her veil. Pangu’s axe met her stars, sparks erupting as lawless power met the oldest silence.

Hades looked once at her, his eyes cold but grateful. He did not speak. He only raised his bident higher, his cloak flaring wider. With Nyx beside him, he pushed forward, his strikes sharper, his dominion steadier.

The clash shook the dead from their graves. The underworld itself cried out.

Nyx knew—this fight was no stall, no small battle. This was war at its sharpest edge. If Zeus did not come quickly, not even she could hold them both.

But until then, night and death stood together.

And the underworld roared.

The underworld cracked like brittle stone under a hammer.

Ymir’s roar shook the caverns, a sound so cold it burned. His arm, bigger than towers, swept down and froze half the battlefield in a sheet of ice. Entire rivers solidified, and the wails of trapped souls echoed as they shattered inside their frozen cages.

Pangu’s axe came next, cutting the air itself. The swing split a mountain in two, the peak crumbling down into the black rivers like it had never existed. The walls of the underworld bent, reality groaning as though it was about to tear apart completely.

Hades stood his ground. His bident flared, fire the color of dead suns bursting along its prongs. He stabbed forward, breaking Ymir’s ice into a thousand shards that rained across the caverns. He twisted, redirecting the force of Pangu’s axe into the collapsing mountain instead of his chest. Even so, the shock rattled through him, tearing blood from his lips.

Nyx moved like shadow. She didn’t run or strike—she folded through space. Her robe of stars spilled wider, cloaking the battlefield in endless night. Frost storms dulled under her veil, their rage muffled to whispers. The axe met her darkness and slowed, as if even inevitability had to hesitate in front of her.

She raised her hand and the night thickened. A thousand stars flared from her robe, piercing Ymir’s chest like lances. Each one burned cold, cutting through his flesh of frost. The giant staggered, snarling, his body repairing in an instant, but his blood—frozen ichor—drifted in chunks through the air.

Hades was there before it could settle. His cloak of death surged outward, swallowing the blood and twisting it into blades. He flung them back into Ymir’s eye, spearing the giant’s vision into a blinding white wound.

Ymir howled, swinging blind. His arm smashed through cliffs, his icy fist breaking entire mountains into rubble. The cavern shook with the violence, stalactites raining like spears.

Pangu stepped into the chaos, his face calm, his grip on the axe unshaken. He raised it once more, and Nyx felt her stars flicker. This wasn’t just a swing—it was creation itself trying to reset, to carve through everything in its way.

She whispered a word, and the night swallowed her. She reappeared behind him, her hand slicing forward. A tide of silver darkness wrapped around Pangu’s shoulders, dragging him back, slowing the arc of his axe by a breath.

A breath was all Hades needed.

He surged upward, his bident crashing against the blade with a flare of corpse-fire. The clash detonated, shaking the underworld like an earthquake. Souls screamed as the shockwave tore them from the ground, rivers of Styx boiling.

Hades’s arms trembled under the weight. Pangu’s strength was unrelenting, pushing him back inch by inch. But Nyx’s stars pressed tighter, her night strangling the Primordial’s movements, forcing cracks into the flow of his swing.

Together, they stopped it.

The axe froze mid-arc, the underworld quaking but not splitting.

Ymir, blinded and furious, barreled forward. His body smashed through mountains, frost exploding across the battlefield. He bellowed, his cold breath forming storms that devoured everything.

Nyx answered first. She lifted her arms and the stars above her robe flared, creating a dome of black sky. The blizzard hit it, sparks of frost shattering like glass against her veil. Her teeth clenched as cracks spread across the dome, but she held it long enough for Hades to strike.

The lord of death hurled his bident, the weapon glowing with underworld flame. It pierced Ymir’s throat, bursting out the back in a geyser of black fire and frozen ichor. The giant staggered again, his howl splitting caverns, his hands clutching at the weapon that burned like rot in his flesh.

Nyx flicked her wrist, and the night tightened around the wound. The fire spread faster, eating deeper, forcing Ymir onto one knee.

But Pangu would not let them finish it.

His axe swung low, cutting through the dome of night, through Hades’s cloak, through the very ground they stood on. The cavern floor split open, revealing pits of nothing, bottomless holes that dragged the dead screaming into them.

The swing cut across Hades’s chest. He staggered, blood streaming, his cloak torn, his fire dimming. He dropped to one knee, his bident flickering as if the underworld itself cried with him.

Nyx moved instantly, shadows wrapping around him, pulling him back before the next strike fell. Her eyes burned silver as she faced the two Primordials, her robe torn, her stars flickering weak.

She knew it in her bones—this was no fight they could win alone.

Her hand trembled as she pressed it against Hades’s wound, stars flowing into him, sealing it just enough to keep him breathing. Her gaze never left Ymir’s hulking form rising again, or Pangu’s calm march forward, axe dripping with the blood of realms.

Night itself shivered. For the first time in ages, Nyx felt the weight of fear pressing against her ribs.

If Zeus did not come now, the underworld would break.

The dead would have no home.

And Olympus would lose more than just a battlefield.