[Third Person’s POV]
[Location: Palace of Hades, Underworld]
With a lazy wave of his hand, Hades dismissed the lone soul reaper.
"Run along," he said mildly. "You’ve done your job."
The reaper did not need to be told twice.
He bowed so hard it bordered on self-annihilation, clutching the trembling ledger to his chest, and fled the hall at a pace that suggested the concept of dignity had been permanently abandoned. The mont he crossed the threshold, the palace doors closed behind him—not with a slam, but with a quiet finality that severed the last thread of mortal observation.
Now, there were only two beings left in the hall.
Hades, seated casually upon a throne that had ended epochs.
And Acedia Belphegor, standing before it like a man who had wandered into the wrong room and lacked the motivation to leave.
The silence deepened.
Not the polite kind.
The real kind.
The kind where reality leaned in to listen.
Hades studied Acedia openly now, no longer bothering to pretend this was casual small talk. His eyes—dark, unfathomable, like burial earth after rain—rested on the embodint of Sloth with asured patience.
"Annoyance," Hades repeated. "You don’t cross pantheonic boundaries, loiter in my jurisdiction for six centuries, and disrupt the taphysical efficiency of my realm because of annoyance."
Acedia shrugged, shoulders drooping. "I didn’t say it was small."
"Explain."
Acedia sighed.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.
But the mont he exhaled, a rare air of seriousness so unlike the previous slothful one settled over the hall.
The lazy weight that had clung to Acedia Belphegor since his arrival shifted—only slightly, but enough that even the ancient walls of the palace seed to notice.
He lifted his head.
For the first ti since entering, his half-lidded eyes focused properly on Hades.
Not sharply.
Not aggressively.
But fully.
"It’s ti," Acedia said, voice still flat but no longer drifting, "To rge."
"rge? Like an alliance?" Hades asked, tilting his head slightly. His tone remained casual, but the air behind the word shifted—an ancient god parsing anings that could fracture realms.
Acedia stared at him for a long mont.
Then he rubbed his face.
"...No," he said. "That sounds like work."
Hades blinked once.
Acedia continued, voice dragging again, but now there was sothing sharp buried under the lethargy. "Not an alliance. Not a pact. Not a treaty with signatures and vows and endless etings where everyone pretends they’re listening."
"Then what?" Hades asked.
"rgence of Realms."
"..."
"..."
For a mont, both just stared at each other, waiting for the other to laugh first.
Hades frowned as Acedia didn’t laugh, "This isn’t a joke?"
Hades stared at him.
Not in disbelief.
Not in anger.
But with the slow, patient look of soone who had just been handed a problem so profoundly inconvenient that reacting imdiately would only encourage it.
"...You’re serious," Hades said at last.
Acedia Belphegor shifted his weight, hands still in his pockets, shoulders slumped as the concept of posture had personally offended him. "Unfortunately."
Hades sighed and leaned forward, elbows resting on the armrests of the obsidian throne. The skull-patterned shirt stretched slightly as he did, sandals scraping once more against the ancient floor.
"You do realise," Hades said calmly, "that what you just suggested ranks sowhere between cosmic restructuring and existential malpractice."
"Mmm," Acedia humd. "Yeah. Sounds about right."
"That wasn’t an agreent."
"That wasn’t a disagreent either."
Hades pinched the bridge of his nose.
For a god who presided over endings, deaths, and the irreversible finality of souls, patience was sothing he possessed in abundance. But even patience had limits—and Acedia Belphegor had been idling directly on those limits for several centuries now.
"Explain," Hades said again, this ti more firmly. "Slowly. Preferably without skipping the parts where the universe collapses."
Acedia exhaled.
Not a sigh.
And started with—
"Don’t you ever feel that you were wronged? While Zeus and all rule from Olympus, you are thrown into this place?" Acedia finished, gesturing vaguely around the palace with two fingers, as if indicating not Elysium specifically, but the entire concept of after.
Hades did not answer imdiately.
He leaned back again, sandals scraping once, eyes drifting—not away from Acedia, but through him, as though looking at sothing far older than the Satan of Sloth standing before him.
"This place," Hades said at last, voice even, "is where it was always ant to be."
Acedia snorted softly. "That’s a very god-king thing to say."
"And yet you’re here, saying it to ."
"Heck, you are not even included in the Twelve Olympian gods, which is said to be the core of divine authority of the Greek Pantheon," Acedia finished lazily. "Funny how the one who handles endings didn’t make the cut."
Hades’ eyes shifted back to him.
There it was.
The real irritation.
Not rage. Not jealousy.
Neglect.
"The Twelve," Hades said calmly, "are a political invention. A brand. Zeus’ idea of simplifying divinity into sothing mortals could count on their fingers."
"Mm," Acedia replied. "Figures. Counting sounds like his level."
Hades did not rise to the bait.
"You think I was wronged," Hades continued, tone even, "because I don’t sit on a mountain throwing lightning at things I dislike?"
"I think," Acedia said, finally pulling one hand from his pocket, scratching absently at his wrist, "that you were sidelined. Conveniently. Quietly. While you were busy making sure reality didn’t clog up with dead people."
Silence stretched.
Hades didn’t deny it.
Instead, he asked, "I am not the only one, right? So other satans are visiting other hell and the underworld equivalent of other pantheons? Hindu Pantheon? Shinto? Egyptians? Many more..."
Acedia just nodded at that.
Hades’ chuckle was low, almost inaudible, yet it carried weight—weight enough that the obsidian floor seed to hum in response.
"Ah," he murmured, fingers lacing loosely over his lap, "so it isn’t just boredom that brings you here."
"Who’s the one behind you then? Who’s the one that can order Satans themselves?"
Acedia’s half-lidded eyes flicked toward the hall’s vast, shadowed corners. For a mont, even his lethargic aura seed to hesitate.
"... Trust on this," He hesitated. "The one behind is not soone to be nad casually."
Hades tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing—not sharply, not in anger, but with the subtle precision of soone weighing inevitabilities.
"...Go on," he said.
Acedia exhaled again, slow, asured, as if every word cost him effort. "You know the Lucifer Morningstar is dead, right?"
Hades nodded, "Everyone knows that he is dead, even his daughter is presumably dead, only his grandson lives."
Acedia answered with a flat, detached tone, almost as if tasting the words before letting them slip. "Husk of a prince is irrelevant in the grand sche of existence."
"Why ntion Lucifer then?"
"Do you know who killed THE Lucifer Morningstar?"
"..."
"..."
Hades’ gaze sharpened, dark and deliberate, but not unkind. "I don’t," he said softly, "Nobody knows his death is still a mystery to the world."
Acedia’s eyes flicked up, briefly sharper than before, then slouched back into their usual half-lidded lethargy. "Exactly. Nobody knows. Nobody even bothers to ask. Except... the one who killed him."
Hades shifted slightly on his throne, the movent imperceptible but sohow drawing the hall into its orbit. "And this one... is?"
"Azathoth."
"ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!" Hades groaned, the sound rolling through the obsidian pillars like distant thunder. His fingers dug into his hair, but even in this display, there was no chaos—only the tight, controlled eruption of centuries of asured patience being stretched thin.
"M-MAKE—Argh! THIS STOP!" Luminous ichor swept from cracks of Hades’ finger as he clawed his head.
Acedia flinched slightly—not from fear, but from the force of attention that had suddenly descended. Hades’ groan was not re noise; it was a wave, a shift in the fundantal fabric of the palace itself, as if centuries of calm had been strained to the breaking point. Even the golden light above dimd under its weight, the pogranate-scented air thickening with the tension of raw authority.
"You... you expect to believe Azathoth?" Hades rasped finally, voice tighter now, each word an iron chain pulling reality into alignnt. "The Blind Chaos itself moved against Lucifer Morningstar? And no one noticed? No other power intervened? No cosmic... ripple?" His dark eyes bore into Acedia like black holes drilling into the core of inevitability.
Acedia’s head tilted, lazily, almost teasingly. "Notice? Intervention? What makes you think there was a struggle? It was instant... and complete," Acedia finished, letting the last word drift, heavy as a gravestone. "A single act. No ripples. No alarms. The Morningstar line... truncated before it could scream."
Hades’ fingers unclenched slowly, nails tapping the obsidian like distant rainfall on a tomb. His gaze didn’t waver. "You an to say... the universe itself didn’t register the event?"
"Correct," Acedia replied, hands slipping back into his pockets. "Lucifer couldn’t even move. Not a flinch. Not a whisper of resistance. Not even a hint that his presence had been erased. Just... gone. As if the universe had swallowed him whole and decided it wasn’t worth ntioning."
Hades’ eyes darkened, narrowing like twin eclipses. "And this... Azathoth. You claim it acted alone?"
"You doubt it?"
"...No."
***
Stone , I can take it!
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