Meanwhile;
Far below the roots of the world, deeper than temples dare to build and priests dare to whisper, there lies a kingdom untouched by time.
The Underworld.
No sun lit its sky, yet the shadows were full of shape and movement. Rivers flowed backward, forests grew from bone and obsidian, and the dead walked quietly under groves of stone. Here, silence had weight.
Here, justice did not shout—it waited.
And at the very center, beneath a great vaulted cavern of basalt and black diamond, sat King Hades.
Clad in robes darker than smoke and stitched in patterns only the dead could read, he stood before a massive table carved into the shape of the world's bones.
Cracks ran across its surface—lines of fate, shifting, alive. His gloved fingers moved tokens from one side of the map to another, indifferent, methodical.
A ledger hovered in the air beside him, its pages turning with no hand to command them.
The rustle of winged sandals broke the stillness.
"Still wearing black, I see," came the voice—bright, easy, uninvited.
Hades didn't lift his eyes.
Hermes, god of roads, words, and the swift-lost dead, hovered a few steps above the obsidian floor, cloak tossed over one shoulder, caduceus twirling loosely in one hand.
"I bring tidings," he said, grinning. "Unasked for, of course. But news travels faster when I carry it."
Silence.
"Leonidas of Elis," Hermes continued, "has banished your name from his sanctuary. Exiled the sculptors who remembered you. Punishes a girl for honoring the one brother the world pretends was never born. Yet, you never punish him."
There was no reaction from Hades.
Hermes landed lightly on the ground and stepped closer. His voice softened.
"She placed your idol between Zeus and Poseidon. This incident has started the chain of events which eventually bring Thea to the underworld."
That made Hades pause. His hand halted over the map. Just for a breath.
"I have no dealings with her," he said, voice low and flat, like distant thunder in a tomb. "Nor will I ever."
Hermes tilted his head. "But she…"
"She is mortal," Hades interrupted. "And her soul will come to me in its proper time, as all things do. Until then, I am not her keeper."
The caduceus stopped spinning. Hermes stepped around the table now, watching Hades more closely.
"She was Persephone," he said.
The words fell like stones.
Hades's eyes rose at last—deep, ancient, unreadable. Not anger. Not sorrow.
But distance.
A kind of silence that no voice could fill.
"She was Persephone," Hermes repeated, quieter now. "Once. In another world. Another age. You knew her. Loved her. You found her in the spring and lost her to the wheel."
Hades looked away, returning to his work, his voice softer than before, yet absolute.
"That name is no longer hers."
"She remembered the way to your gate," Hermes murmured.
"I sealed that gate," Hades replied. "Let her walk her path. The gods will play their games. I have no part in them."
And with that, he reached toward the floating ledger, flipping a page with one gloved finger. The script rewrote itself before their eyes. New deaths. New names. New balances.
Hermes watched him for a moment longer. Then sighed.
"Very well, Lord of the Quiet Hall."
He turned, sandals lifting him from the stone.
"But you know better than anyone, Hades—memory does not die. And fate cannot be avoided. Sooner or later, she will come here. This is her home, after all. And where her destiny lies."
He vanished in a blink of golden light.
Hades did not reply. He stood alone in his hall, surrounded by unspoken names, by all the souls who had once been and would be again.
He placed his hand on the map.
And from the distant surface above, a faint wind stirred the ash atop Mount Erebus.
But he never looked up.
Meanwhile, at Elis;
The wind had grown cruel.
It tore through the cloister like a prowling beast, scattering leaves in every direction. But she caught them. One by one. Day after day. Her fingers, cracked and blistered, refused to let go.
Zeus.
Over and over. Again. And again. She wrote the name.
Her ink ran dry twice. She learned to grind burnt olive wood with rainwater to make more.
But she never stopped.
Not when her eyes blurred. Not when her back ached from sleeping upright against the stone bench. Not even when the guards, once bemused by her defiance, began to watch with wary silence.
She had taken the oath aloud on the fifth day.
"I will not eat. I will not drink. Until the last leaf bears his name. Until the task is complete."
She had said it before the priests. Before the sky. Before the leaves.
And she had meant it.
*
On the twenty-first day, her skin was grey beneath the ink stains.
Her lips cracked in silence. Her fingers trembled more than they wrote, but still
she held a piece of bread once. Her mother had brought it, wrapped in warm cloth and tears. But Thea placed it back in her hands without a word.
Her mother knelt beside her then, voice raw.
"Thea, please. Enough. No punishment is worth your life."
But Thea did not answer. Her eyes remained on the parchment.
She could not look at her mother—not when she had yet to fulfill the punishment her father gave her.
*
It was on the thirty-seventh day.
The final leaf—brown, nearly torn, carried by wind from an old oak near the edge of the palace garden—rested in her lap.
She inked it slowly, with a hand that barely held the brush.
Zeus
The name shimmered. Dried.
Done.
She smiled—just a flicker—and let the leaf drift from her palm. It landed softly atop the pile of ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
Thea exhaled, long and slow.
Then her body folded forward like a petal wilting at dusk.
She did not rise.
A scream rang through the courtyard.
"Thea!"
Her mother's hands clutched her, tried to lift her frail form from the ground. The girl's heartbeat was faint. Her skin is cold. The ink on her hands had soaked into her veins like poison.
"She's burning up," her mother whispered, tears running down her cheeks. "And freezing."
Physicians came. Priests gathered. A crowd of servants stood by in hushed fear. But no remedy stirred her.
"She refused water," one whispered.
"Not even a sip," said another. "Thirty-seven days. Thirty-seven. Look how thin she has gotten. There was barely any flesh on her."
Meanwhile, In the great hall of the palace, beneath frescoes of Olympus triumphant and heroes carved in gold-leaf relief, King Leonidas stood atop the marble dais, gazing down at the crates of leaves laid before him.
Each crate brimmed with the labors of a madwoman's oath.
A hundred thousand dried oak leaves, each inked by hand. The name of Zeus repeated like an incantation across the fragile faces of wood-flesh, stacked in neat bundles, smelling of dust and old prayers.
His court stood silent. Priests lined the walls, uneasy in their robes. Even the guards dared not make a sound.
Only Leonidas moved.
His steps echoed down the stairs as he approached the crates, one hand trailing across the surface like a man examining tribute.
And then he stopped.
A single leaf had fallen astray from the pile.
It rested at the edge of the dais, turned just so, catching a shard of light from the open window.
And on it, not the name Zeus.
But something else.
*Hades*
Leonidas stared.
His fingers clenched.
He reached down, snatched the leaf up, crushed it in his fist—
But it did not crumple.
Instead, the moment his skin touched the name, a cold wind rippled through the chamber.
The priests shivered. The torches flickered low, as though gasping for breath.
Leonidas turned slowly, now marching back toward the crates with grim purpose.
"Thea…" He thundered at once.