The Underworld.
Eternity darkness shrouded the earth, and souls, devoid of joy or sorrow, formed an endless line, slowly crossing the Styx, which was covered in black foam.
Hades, King of the Underworld, leaned back on his throne made of bones, resting his chin on one hand, idly twirling a pure gold goblet between his fingers.
The entire Underworld is like an extremely precise machine, operating flawlessly for billions of years.
Death, judgment, reincarnation.
Everything follows an unshakeable, ancient law.
Boring.
Utterly boring.
Just then, above the peaceful palace of the Underworld, space was violently torn open by a brute force, leaving a scarlet rift.
A scorching wave of air, mixed with the acrid smell of sulfur, swept down, and the massive metal body of the Destroyer Armor crashed to the ground, shaking the entire palace.
A slight commotion arose in the procession of the dead, but they quickly regained order under the pressure of death.
Hades frowned slightly, casually tossing the wine cup in his hand beside the throne. The golden cup rolled a few times on the ground, making a crisp sound.
"My dear nephew, what are you up to now?"
The visor of the Destroyer Armor slowly opened, revealing the ambitious face of Ares.
He stepped out of the armor, straightened his sharp suit, and acted as if he hadn't just been wielding a destructive weapon to tear through space, but rather attending a regular business cocktail party.
" Hades, I know you are also dissatisfied with Zeus's rule," Ares said bluntly, without beating around the bush. "How about we join forces to pull your good brother off the throne of Olympus?"
Hades listened without even thinking and simply shook his head.
We are no match for them.
His reaction was as calm as if he were stating a fact rather than expressing a position.
Mount Olympus had Zeus, Hera, and the ever-energetic Sun god; a direct confrontation would have been futile.
Ares seemed to have anticipated this, and he smiled, pointing to Hades ' feet.
"What about Titans?"
Before he finished speaking, Hades suddenly stood up from his throne and slammed his hand on the bone armrest with a loud "bang," instantly cracking the hard bones.
A powerful aura belonging to a god-king suddenly erupted, and the temperature in the entire hall plummeted to freezing point.
"You're insane!" Hades ' voice was filled with suppressed rage. "Those guys are a bunch of uncontrollable lunatics! Have you considered the consequences of letting them out?"
The Titans were the first generation of gods, even more ancient and primordial than the Olympus gods.
They were born in the beginning of the universe, wielding the most brutal and violent cosmic forces, their very being filled with primal desires for plunder and conquest, and they disregard all order and life in the world.
Releasing them from the Abyss of Tartarus would be tantamount to tearing open the most terrifying prison in the world, and the resulting catastrophe would be ten thousand times more terrifying than the calamity of Pandora's Box.
Ares ignored his anger and simply paced back and forth.
"My dear uncle, the more wars there are, the stronger I become. Chaos is the source of my power."
He stopped and looked directly at Hades.
"And, ask yourself honestly, don't you really want to bring Zeus down? That hypocrite has seized the sky that should have been yours, but banished you to this underground kingdom where you've never seen the light of day, where you've been for thousands of years."
Hades fell silent.
Every word Ares struck precisely at the deepest, most hidden wounds in Ares' heart.
"You don't need to worry about them." Ares's voice was full of seductive magic.
"Let them wreak havoc on Earth. Perhaps they can even help you trample Themyscira to pieces. By then, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, will have lost her kingdom and her people. Where else can she go but your underworld?"
"You can be with your ex-girlfriend for eternity, forever inseparable. How about it? Tempted?"
Hades' tense body relaxed slightly, but he immediately shook his head again.
"No." His decision left no room for argument. "I owe Diana a favor, and Themyscira cannot be allowed to fall. Besides, you can't go against Diana."
That girl once ventured into the underworld, and with her purity and stubbornness, she managed to extract a promise from him.
As the ruler of the Underworld, he has his pride and principles.
"Okay." Ares's smile widened, as if this was the result he wanted.
"She's just an Amazons princess. Surely you could bring yourself to harm her allies who exemplify justice?"
After saying that, he took out three objects from his pocket and casually tossed them over.
They were three blackened bronze fragments, their surfaces covered with twisted, ancient dark patterns.
They were attracted to each other in mid-air, and when they got close, they trembled violently and burst out rings of purple mist.
Finally, with a "click," the three fragments were perfectly pieced together into a huge bronze key.
The handle of the key is engraved with a relief depicting gods and the dead fighting each other, with ghostly black smoke flowing between the teeth.
As soon as it took shape, the surrounding space began to distort, as if the key itself were a rift leading to Hell.
"I'm leaving this matter to you," Ares said.
Hades reached out and caught the cold, heavy key, as if he were holding a wailing universe in his hands.
How do you plan to start a war?
Ares smiled mysteriously, then turned and walked back to the Destroyer Armor.
"Don't worry, you're not my only helper." His voice came from inside the armor, carrying a slight metallic hum. "Those guys may be weak, but they're enough to achieve our goal."
The crimson spatial rift opened again, and the Destroyer Armor soared into the sky, disappearing into the dim sky of the Underworld.
The main hall returned to silence.
Hades gazed silently at the Key of Tartarus in his hand for a long time before turning and walking into the darkness behind the throne.
He passed through the court of judgment and stepped into the deepest part of the Underworld.
The air here is stagnant, as if solid, and even time seems to be frozen.
Ahead stood a colossal gate composed entirely of pure darkness, bound by countless chains formed from the power of laws.
This is the entrance to the Abyss of Tartarus.
The prison of the gods.
The Cage of Titans.
Hades raised the key and, without the slightest hesitation, inserted it into the center of the dark gate.
The key made no sound the instant it touched the door.
But a terrifying suction force, powerful enough to tear apart the Soul Stone, erupted from between the key teeth, frantically devouring the law chains on the door. The chains shattered one by one, turning into countless points of light that dissipated.
As the last chain snapped, the dark gate slowly opened a crack inward.
An indescribable, wild, and ancient aura gushed out from the crack in the door.
That aura was filled with hunger, savagery, and the purest desire for destruction.
A massive figure, three meters tall and with a dark bronze metallic sheen, slowly emerged from the crack in the door.
His muscles were as bulging as mountains, and every step he took shook the entire depths of the Underworld.
He looked at Hades, who was releasing his race, and grinned, revealing a set of teeth that were also dark bronze in color.
He chuckled, his voice like the friction of tectonic plates.
"I knew you'd come back, Hades."