The underworld had always been a place of quiet. A realm of shadows and echoes, where the dead whispered their regrets and the living feared to tread. Hades had ruled it for eons, watching souls come and go, each one a story, each one a memory.
But now, it was empty. The souls were gone, taken by Heaven, stored in the Citadel like books on a shelf. The underworld was a library with no books. A kingdom with no subjects.
Hades stood at the gates, his bident in hand, waiting. The shadows around him stirred restlessly, sensing something on the horizon. A change. A shift.
Then he felt it.
A tremor ran through the fabric of reality. A pressure built in the air, in the ground, in the very essence of his realm. Something was coming. Something vast.
The first soul appeared as a flicker of light at the edge of his vision. Then another. Then a dozen. Then a hundred.
