Chapter 213: Invasion 2
The silence in the courtyard was heavy, broken only by the low, persistent hum of the obsidian portal. Hades finally turned from the ominous gateway, his dark eyes sweeping over the four Olympians.
"This is beyond a skirmish," he said, his voice cutting through the exhausted quiet. "We cannot guard this wound alone. Come with me. We go to Zeus."
He didn’t wait for agreement. He simply turned and walked toward the great hall, his form seeming to draw the shadows with him. After a shared glance, the others followed—Apollo helping a limping Hermes, Artemis with her knives still drawn, and Persephone, her hands still trembling slightly from the exertion.
They found Zeus not on his throne, but standing before the great hearth, deep in conversation with a visitor. The man was tall and broad, clad in dark blue robes, a wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face. A single, piercing blue eye gleamed from beneath the brim, and two ravens perched on his shoulders. The air in the room tasted of ozone and ancient, cold stone.
Odin, the All-Father, had come to Olympus.
"...red portals, tearing into the very fabric of the realms," Odin was saying, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "My sons encountered them in the fjords. Arrogant, red-skinned creatures. They called themselves legions of..." He paused, as if the word itself was distasteful. "Hell."
Zeus, who had been listening with a deep frown, closed his eyes. A weary sigh, heavier than any mountain, escaped his lips. It was the sound of a king recognizing a nightmare he’d hoped was long dead.
"Lucifer," Zeus said, the name dropping into the hall like a stone into a still pond.
Hades, who had just entered, stopped dead. The usual impassive mask of the Underworld’s lord cracked, revealing a flicker of stark, genuine alarm. "That Lucifer?" he asked, his voice sharper than usual.
Zeus nodded, his stormy eyes opening to meet his brother’s. "It seems so. If it is, then this... this is going to be a fight unlike any other."
Odin looked between the two brothers, his single eye narrowing. "You know this name. This ’Lucifer’. Who is he? What is this ’Hell’ that is not one of the known realms of the dead?"
Zeus gestured for Hades and the others to approach. The mood in the hall was now funeral-serious.
"It is an old story," Zeus began, leaning against the hearth. "From a creation... before ours. Before the Titans. In the beginning, there was a single, all-powerful Creator. He forged existence from nothing—light, time, matter. He built a realm of perfect order and beauty, and populated it with beings of pure light and spirit, his first children. The most magnificent of them all was Lucifer. The Light-Bringer."
He paused, gathering the old, almost-forgotten knowledge.
"But perfection bred pride. Lucifer came to believe he was equal to the Creator himself. He rallied a third of the heavenly host and led a rebellion, a war in the heart of creation." Zeus’s voice was low, almost a whisper. "He lost. The Creator, in His wrath, did not destroy them. He cast them out. He carved a new realm from the void, a prison of fire and despair, separate from His light and order. He named it Hell. And Lucifer, the fallen prince, became its master."
Odin listened, utterly still. The concept was alien to him. His world was one of cycles—Ragnarok was a destined end and a new beginning. This was different. This was a fall from grace so absolute it created an entire realm of punishment.
"This Creator," Odin asked slowly. "Where is He?"
Zeus spread his hands. "After the war, after casting out the rebels, He began again. He created a new, mortal universe, a world of choice and consequence, far from the halls of Heaven and the pits of Hell. And then... He left it to its own devices. Our realms, our pantheons... we emerged in that second creation. We are, all of us, living in the world He made after the first one broke."
The revelation hung in the air. They were not the first gods. They were inheritors of a cosmos scarred by a war they never knew.
"So these demons..." Artemis ventured, her practical mind grappling with the scale of it.
"Are the descendants of those first fallen angels," Hades finished, his tone grim. "They are not merely chaotic. They are beings of ordered evil, fueled by a hatred for the creation that replaced them. They see our worlds, our lives, as a mockery of the perfection they lost."
"And now they have found a way out of their prison," Zeus said, pushing off the hearth. "The portals are not just invasions. They are a breach in the walls of a cosmic jail. They aren’t just seeking to conquer. They seek to unmake everything the Creator built after their fall."
Odin absorbed this, his hand tightening on Gungnir. The familiar prophecies of Ragnarok felt small, almost provincial, in the face of this. This was not a wolf destined to devour the sun. This was an army from a before-time, its hatred as infinite as the void they were cast into.
"This ’Lucifer’," Odin said, the name now carrying a terrible weight. "You believe he leads this?"
"The kings of Hell serve him," Hades confirmed. "If his lords are marching, then the lotf we faced, underling of Mephisto, acts with his authority. This is not a border raid. It is the opening move in a war that was old when our grandfathers were born."
A heavy silence fell upon the great hall. The God of Thunder, the King of Wisdom, the Lord of the Dead, and the best of the new generation stood together, the truth settling upon them like ash.
They were no longer just Greek or Norse gods protecting their domains. They were the defenders of a second chance at creation, standing against the vengeful ghosts of the first.
And the door to their enemy’s prison was hanging open, right in their mountain.