The smell of scorched wings lingered in the air—ozone, blood, and the faint trace of burnt feathers that no wind could cleanse.
The ground was slick with divine residue, where lightning had kissed the obsidian soil of Hell's second layer.
Steam rose from cracks that still pulsed faintly with celestial energy, and in those rippling veins, the memory of Zeus's wrath shimmered like ghost-fire.
Atlas stood in silence, the great weight of stillness pressing on his shoulders. Around him, the fallen angels—his kin, his soldiers, his believers—lay motionless, their faces turned upward as if still staring at the sky that had betrayed them.
He could hear the crackle of what remained of divine thunder in the distance.
There was no pure death in Hell. The realm was not kind, nor merciful; it was cyclical. Here, souls could wither, shatter, or burn—but to truly die, one had to be forgotten by Hell itself. And Hell remembered all.
