Chapter 366: Sentence Begins

Erasure spread outwards from the entity in clean, expanding rings.

There was no fire. There was no cataclysm. Where the rings of power touched, existence failed to renew itself. Stone, light, the names of rivers hundreds of years old, all peeled away to reveal something far less substantial that had previously been hidden. In the Underworld, the few free spirits not yet claimed flickered once before vanishing mid-scream. Rivers of the dead ran dry, then turned to dust and, finally, into nothing. On Olympus, great halls dissolved into pale dust which vanished a moment later. Across the mortal world, entire cities blinked out in geometric patterns, streets and lives removed with surgical neatness.

The entity did not have to speak, did not have to raise an arm for the sentence to pass.

Zeus gripped chaos in both hands and wrenched himself upward, throwing his power into the lower reaches of the entity’s vast form. Black-gold lightning speared downwards but vanished without trace, without even the dignity of a splash. The god of gods struck again and again, each blow connecting but instantly failing to register. Athena’s spear, Poseidon’s trident, a combined effort from Hades and Persephone that wove death and new life into a single powerfully thrust lance, all failed to make the entity so much as flinch. Each attack landed, but the entity was already moving on to bigger things.

"Again!" roared Zeus.

They obeyed.

Sun Wukong snapped his staff up to full size and sent it downwards in a falling tree of pure power. Kratos loosed both his blades as twin flaming arcs. Odin drove his spear forwards, all runes glowing, every symbol burning bright. Hermes darted around in impossible directions, searching for a weakness. Every trick, every technique, every scrap of power they still possessed went into the attack. All failed.

The entity did not even turn to look at them at first, its gaze still fixed on the work of destruction.

Realms continued to be consumed.

An entire segment of the northern sky folded in on itself, falling into nothing. The seas that had long belonged to Poseidon sucked back from the shorelines, then simply vanished, leaving cracked salt flats in their wake. In the distance, the last free souls of the Underworld gathered around Hades and Persephone in some final gesture of devotion to the couple who had saved them all. Persephone reached out. Her green glow passed through the nearest group of mourners, and they vanished, one by one, still looking at her.

Hades moaned.

Zeus struck the entity again, using up the last of his strength in a final effort to wound it in any way. His chaos took the form of a long steady stream that poured from his arms, tearing at the fabric of the world around him until the air itself began to fray, but it simply connected with the same vast surface and disappeared. It was over. Done. Finished. And all because, despite everything, the Father had allowed just one more day of life for these realms to persist.

Athena’s voice was raw. "It’s not registering the attacks. We’re not even on the same level."

Poseidon spat blood and tried again. The water he conjured vanished before appearing elsewhere. Odin’s strength guttered and died. Sun Wukong’s weapon shrunk back to manageable proportions in his grasp as if the wood itself had lost heart. Kratos stood behind them all, panting, his chains loose around his waist, looking up at something that had no interest whatsoever in looking back.

The rings of erasure reached the very edges of the chamber before being stopped.

The stone floor beneath them thinned. The air became transparent in places, revealing only the white of whatever was on the other side. Above their heads, whole swaths of Olympus were now vanishing in a slow, orderly fashion. The mortal world was blinking away behind them, continents disappearing in a series of orderly segments.

Zeus felt the pain of all the thrones he had refused, all the wars he had ended too soon, all the difficult choices that had forced him to sacrifice one for the many, settle in his chest like a second heart. It was all so incredibly meaningless against the sheer force of nature the Father had just allowed to pass judgement.

He gathered up the last of the chaos, preparing to fling himself at the entity one last time, to waste his final breath on this meaningless task.

The air changed.

A different pressure moved around the chamber, more precise, more aware, cutting through the space in carefully measured directions. It flowed around Zeus first, then moved outwards to the others with similar precision. Around Poseidon, around Hades, around Athena and Hermes, Odin, Sun Wukong, and Kratos. And finally, someone else entirely - Loki - was caught mid-step as he was pulled away from whatever distant vantage point he had been using to watch this all come to an end.

Nine figures in all, no more.

The light that swallowed them up was not the white of the edge of the gate. It possessed different tones, was older somehow, and far more certain in its purpose. The chamber, the entity, the endless realms, the ringing sound of the world vanishing all stretched away impossibly far, thinning out before finally disappearing.

Zeus saw the entity for one final moment, still massive despite the destruction it had caused, still looking out over the remnants of the world that was now no longer here. The entity was turning, its gaze finally coming to rest on them. On the nine of them.

Then the lower world was gone, replaced by an all-consuming silence. They stood on nothing, the nine of them, the gods and monsters that had survived this particular trial. The light that had taken them was already fading, leaving only the knowledge that the world they had fought to save, the only world most of them had ever known, was truly gone.

Zeus opened his hands, staring at nothing with a feeling akin to loss. There was no chaos, no sky, no throne. Only the nine of them and the all-consuming dark that had taken them all.

The sentence continued behind them, playing out until there was nothing left to sentence.