The moment the lid of Pandora's Box slammed shut around Chaos, reality itself screamed.
It was not sound as mortals understood it, nor light, nor shadow—it was the collapse of meaning. The very laws that held the stars in place faltered, unraveling like the frayed edges of an ancient tapestry. The floor beneath them flickered; Olympus shuddered as though the mountain itself feared the imprisonment of what had always existed before gods, before Titans, before time.
Aphrodite stumbled to her knees, clutching her chest as the air vanished in her lungs, not from lack of breath but because breath itself had ceased to have definition. Ares dropped his spear, its crimson edge evaporating into nothingness, and even the god of war knew terror as the battlefield itself was stolen from him. Hermes, ever quick, tried to run—but there was nowhere to go. Space had collapsed.
