Gaia’s soulscape.
The battle between the Primordial and the Entity raged on.
The soulscape was corrupted beyond help, and Nyx was letting out her power without care, completely destroying anything around herm
It was a battlefield between the ancient and the alien.
Despite all the chaos, Nyx stood untouched and unrelenting.
The entity’s avatars, its grotesque clones, sward her like a flood.
Twisting masses of eyes, tendrils, bone, and whispers collapsed upon her from every angle, clones that would drive mortals mad at the re sight.
They sought to overwhelm her, confuse her, corrupt her.
But it was futile. Nyx was strong. Stronger than even this entity.
With every wave of her hand, entire swathes of the entity were erased. No screams, no struggle. She just obliterated them all.
"Give up," she said, "A re parasite cannot win against ."
The entity hissed in pain as another of its avatars exploded in a violent ripple of shadow.
Hundreds more were destroyed in the sa breath. It reford again and again, but its numbers were thinning, its essence dimming.
No. It doesn’t want to die.
So it tried to speak calmly. It tried reason with her.
"Nyx... sister... listen. You and I—we are the sa. We are both fragnts... survivors of a higher whole."
Nyx didn’t even glance at it. She simply lifted her hand and twisted space itself, cutting another fragnt to pieces.
The entity’s whispers grew louder, more desperate.
"We are kin! Let devour this universe and ascend. You can take another, countless more, even. But this one, let it be mine."
She gave no answer.
"I can help you!" the entity cried. "I can help you kill Hades!"
That stopped Nyx.
For the first ti, she turned toward the entity, slowly, her eyes cold and emotionless.
The entity sensed hope.
"Yes, yes. That’s right. You already know, don’t you? Hades... he’s not one of your creations. He is a remnant—a survivor from the previous cycle, the true original inhabitant of this universe."
Nyx didn’t deny it. Her silence was confirmation.
She had known it long ago. Hades in this tiline is not the original Hades. He was a man from the original universe, a remnant she had failed to devour.
"When you devoured this universe," the entity whispered, "he escaped your purge. Sohow, his soul endured. And that—that is why you’ve never fully transcended. Half of the power you should have taken went to him."
Nyx knew that.
The reason this Hades was so powerful is because half of the power of the previous universe that she could’ve devoured went to Hades.
Due to that, she failed her transcendence.
In different tilines, where Hades was not from the previous universe, Nyx had completed her ascension and transcended this plane of existence.
She left the universe, which caused the entity to freely devour the universe without anyone capable of stopping it.
That is why those who has prophetic ability cannot see beyond certain ti, because the entity had successfully devoured the Universe.
"Kill Hades, and all that power from him will be yours. You can Transcend. Leave this plane. Beco what you were always ant to be."
The words slithered through the soulscape like poison. The entity was coiling around her, speaking in a dozen mouths, a hundred voices, so of which mimicked her own.
"That’s why you kept him close, isn’t it?" it cooed. "To keep him contained. To wait for the perfect ti to strike."
Nyx remained silent.
"Let help. Together, we can devour him. You’ll ascend. I’ll feast. We both win."
There was a long pause.
The shadows stilled.
The entity could almost taste victory. It could see the flicker of doubt—or was it hesitation?—in Nyx’s cold, ageless eyes.
But...
Nyx raised her hand.
An instant later, the entity was impaled by a pure conceptual weight of night in a form of a pitch black spear.
It scread, writhing as countless tendrils of itself dissolved in agony.
"...Shut up." Nyx said flatly.
The entity shrieked, withdrawing, its mind fragnting. "W-Why?! I offered you transcendence! I offered you everything! Why refuse!?"
Nyx’s eyes narrowed, glowing like stars swallowed in darkness.
"You’re too late," she said. "If you made that offer... eons ago, maybe I would’ve taken it. Maybe I would’ve used you, consud you, and moved on."
The entity twitched in confusion, still trying to piece its broken bodies together.
Nyx drifted toward it, each step cutting through reality like a blade.
"Yes, Hades is not like the others. Yes, I once planned to kill him. I once hated that his existence ant my incompletion."
She smiled slightly.
"But then he looked in the eye, knowing what I was... and never flinched. He never bowed nor begged. In fact, he outright said to my face that he is better than . He proved that, and he earned the right to stand by my side."
She paused, her voice like death’s lullaby.
"You? You’re just filth. You want to kill him? Tough chance. That’s my man. I’ll kill anyone that even thinks of harming him."
The entity glared at her, and roared, its body twisting.
It was transforming.
Nyx watched in silence as the entity shrieked in desperation, its true form unraveling into sothing even more grotesque—a sphere of roiling black fla with mouths on every surface and a halo of distorted wings made from bone and nerve.
It surged toward her one last ti, claws of void reaching out to consu her.
She didn’t flinch.
With a whisper of her true na, the darkness bent to her will.
Night itself rippled, heavier than gravity, sharper than ti.
The entire soulscape convulsed as she unleashed her full divine authority, not as a goddess, not as a being—but as a force of nature.
The entity stopped mid-flight.
Nyx snapped her hands, and slowly, the entity started to crumble and disappear.
And then, silence.
The soulscape trembled as the last echo of the entity was wiped from existence.
"Hmph. A parasite, no matter where it ca from, is still a parasite." Nyx whispered.
Around her, the warped soul-domain began to unravel, its hideous tendrils, its teeth-like ridges, its chattering, gibbering mouths, all turning to dust, all disintegrating under the weight of her divine will.
Nyx exhaled softly before she turned toward the center of the soulscape.
There, still untouched by the rot, still sealed in a sphere of pale green light—was Gaia.
The goddess floated in unconscious silence, curled like a child inside her mother’s womb.
Her breathing was soft, her soul dim but intact. Nyx could see the fractures within it, the damage left behind by the entity’s invasion.
Nyx floated closer. She studied Gaia’s soul with a mixture of distaste and sympathy.
She rembered the original Gaia well, stubborn, proud, unyielding. In so ways, much like herself.
But this?
This grotesque shell that now walked the Underworld, twisted by parasitic control and rage?
No. Gaia deserved better than that.
Nyx tilted her head as she considered her options.
She could return the soul now, seal it back into the corrupted body, and be done with it.
Hades would likely contain her until she recovered, maybe even force her into hibernation until her essence stabilized.
But... Gaia wouldn’t want that.
Nyx smirked faintly to herself. "She would absolutely hate waking up in that disgusting body."
That corrupted vessel, skin blackened with bile, that third eye pulsing like a tumor, it was an insult to the Earth Mother. To the ancient goddess who once birthed mountains and fed nations.
Nyx narrowed her eyes.
No, she would not return Gaia to that body.
Instead, she would take the soul with her, cradle it in her power, stabilize its broken threads, and later, she and Hades would forge a new one.
Sothing worthy of Gaia’s na. Maybe even let her pick the shape next ti.
Sothing a bit more graceful than her previous self, perhaps.
Nyx reached out and gently touched the sphere of light.
"Co on, sleeping beauty," she murmured. "Let’s give you a second chance."
And with that, she vanished—taking Gaia’s soul with her.
The soulscape collapsed behind her, leaving only silence.
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