The great hall of Olympus was quiet, the echoes of the recent spectacle finally faded. Zeus stood by the open archway, watching the mortal world below as if it were a intricate game board. Metis stood beside him, her presence a calm, intelligent warmth against the cool marble.

"They are all whispering, you know," Metis said, her voice soft but clear in the vast space. "About what you did for the Spartan. Taking him to Elysium. It was… unorthodox."

Zeus didn't turn. "Let them whisper. They have always been better at talking than understanding."

Metis moved to stand beside him, following his gaze. "They whisper about other things, too. The old prophecies. The ones that say a son of yours will one day bring about your end." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "Some are saying you are creating the very instruments of your downfall. First, you elevated Ares, then Hercules… now this Kratos. You seem to be collecting potential heirs with a talent for violence."

A low, genuine chuckle rumbled in Zeus's chest. It was a sound devoid of anxiety, rich with a hard-earned wisdom. "Fear of a prophecy is what makes a prophecy true, my love," he said, finally looking at her. His stormy eyes were calm. "If you spend all your days looking for the knife in the dark, you will eventually put the hilt in your enemy's hand. You become so focused on preventing the future that you orchestrate it yourself."

He turned fully to her, a faint, tired smile on his face. "I have no fear of what the Fates have woven. Whatever thread they cut, whatever challenge they throw at me, I will meet it. I will embrace it. To resist destiny is to be broken by it. To accept it is to master it."

Internally, his thoughts drifted to a life that was not this one—a fleeting memory of mortality, of being a man named… the name was gone, but the feeling remained. The fear, the uncertainty, the desperate need to control everything. If not for those echoes, he mused, the ghost of a mortal life I once lived, I might have made that mistake. I might have become a tyrant, strangling my own future in its crib out of fear.

His smile deepened. The memory of that mortal fragility was his greatest secret strength.

He was about to speak again when a sudden, violent tremor ran through the fabric of the world. It wasn't a physical shake, but a spiritual one, a discordant note played on the strings of reality itself.

The taste in the air changed. For a split second, the clean, electric scent of Olympus was tainted with the coppery filth of blood and the acrid sting of foreign magic. A soundless scream seemed to echo across every divine realm simultaneously—a shriek of tearing dimensions.

Zeus's head snapped up, his eyes widening. The calm certainty vanished from his face, replaced by sharp, alarmed focus. He was no longer just the King of Olympus; he was the linchpin of a cosmic order, and he had just felt that order fracture.

On his throne, Poseidon suddenly gripped his trident, his lazy demeanor gone as he stared out at seas that were suddenly, inexplicably wrong. In the depths of the underworld, Hades looked up from the river of souls, feeling a chill that was not his own.

Zeus turned to Metis, his expression grim.

"Something is wrong," he said, his voice low and deadly serious. "Something has broken through."

Metis, her face pale, nodded. She could feel it too—a sickness in the air, a violation of natural law. "Where? What is it?"

Zeus closed his eyes, his consciousness expanding, reaching out across the realms. He felt the vibrant chaos of the Norse lands, the ordered cycles of the Egyptian afterlife, the serene balance of the Far East—and now, pulsing like fresh wounds in the skin of each world, points of invasive, hellish energy.

"They are not just here," he whispered, a cold dread settling in his gut. "They are everywhere."

The god who feared no prophecy now faced an unknown that had never been foretold. The game board had been shattered, and new, hostile pieces were flooding onto the field from a dozen different directions at once.

The Norse Realm

The air in the fjord crackled with spent lightning and the echoes of Thor's roar. A nearby pine forest was now a collection of charred, smoldering sticks, and the earth was torn up in great furrows.

Loki danced back, a smirk playing on his lips as he deftly avoided a thrown hammer that shattered the cliff face behind him. "Oh, come now, brother! It was just a little dye! I think the crimson suits you! Brings out the fire in your temper!"

Thor stood fuming, his chest heaving. His famous, flowing red hair—usually a deep auburn—was now a shocking, vibrant, almost luminous cherry red. It clashed horribly with his beard. He looked less like the God of Thunder and more like a startled rooster.

"You boiled my hair in the waters of the Farbauti spring!" Thor bellowed, his voice making the very rocks tremble. Mjolnir flew back to his hand with a dull thud. "It will not wash out! The Valkyries are laughing at me!"

"A small price for enlightenment!" Loki chirped, ducking behind a boulder as another bolt of lightning vaporized it. "You've learned a valuable lesson about trusting the clarity of mountain streams! Consider it… character building!"

"I'll build your character into the side of this mountain!" Thor thundered, hefting his hammer again, his new red locks standing on end with static electricity.

He was about to charge when a sound stopped them both dead. It wasn't the familiar crack of thunder or the rumble of an avalanche. It was a wet, tearing sound, like flesh being ripped from bone, but magnified a thousand times and coming from the sky itself.

Twenty feet above the ground, the air convulsed. A wound of shimmering, bloody light ripped open, pulsating with a malevolent rhythm. The scent that poured out was alien and foul—a mixture of sulfur, scorched metal, and rot that made Loki's nose wrinkle in disgust and Thor's grip tighten on Mjolnir.

Their feud was forgotten.

"What new mischief is this, Loki?" Thor growled, his voice low, all traces of his previous anger replaced by a warrior's focus. He moved to stand beside his brother, shoulder to shoulder.

"For once," Loki said, his usual smirk gone, his eyes narrowed to calculating slits, "this is not my doing."

From the pulsing red portal, figures emerged. They were tall, their skin the color of a fresh wound, covered in black, barbed armor that seemed to drink the weak Nordic light. Horns twisted from their heads, and their eyes glowed with the same dull crimson as the gateway that had birthed them.

The lead demon, a hulking brute with a serrated axe, landed on the scorched earth with a heavy thud. It scanned the area, its gaze passing over the destruction with indifference before settling on the two gods.

"Primitive realm," it grunted, its voice like grinding stones. "The air stinks of mead and animal fat. You two. You will take us to your chieftain."

Thor and Loki exchanged a single, brief glance. A world of understanding passed between them in that instant. Family squabbles were one thing. An invasion of their home was another.

Thor took a step forward, Mjolnir humming in his hand. "I am Thor Odinson," he declared, his voice rolling with the promise of a storm. "And you are trespassing."

The demon captain laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "Titles mean nothing to the legions of Hell. You will submit, or you will be broken."

Loki, who had been quietly observing, chose that moment to speak, his voice deceptively light. "Hell, you say? Which one? There are so many depressing afterlives to keep track of. You'll have to be more specific."

The demon ignored him, pointing its axe at Thor. "Kill the loud one. The skinny one might be useful."

Two lesser demons surged forward, claws extended toward the God of Thunder.

Thor didn't even move. He simply smiled, a fierce, wild grin. "You picked the wrong realm to be ugly in."

He swung Mjolnir in a short, brutal arc. It wasn't a lightning-charged throw, just a simple, physical blow. The hammer connected with the first demon's chest. There was no explosion of light, just a sickening crunch of shattered armor and bone. The demon was lifted off its feet and thrown back through the air, slamming into the second one with enough force to send both tumbling into the fjord's cold waters, where they sank without a trace.

The demon captain stared, its smug confidence faltering. It had expected fear, submission, perhaps primitive magic. It had not expected a force that could casually swat its warriors aside like flies.

"Your turn," Thor said, his eyes beginning to crackle with blue-white energy.

While Thor provided the distraction, Loki had been busy. His hands moved in subtle, intricate patterns. As the remaining demons focused on the clearly greater threat, the ground at their feet turned to slick, black ice. One of them stumbled, its heavy armor becoming a liability.

Loki then pointed a single finger, and a shimmering, green illusion of a massive, drooling wolf appeared behind the group. It was a simple trick, but effective. The demons spun around, momentarily confused, their formation breaking.

It was all the opening Thor needed.

He brought Mjolnir down on the ground. The resulting shockwave was a physical thing, a ring of pure force that erupted outwards. It hit the disoriented demons like a tidal wave, throwing them from their feet, their armor ringing like discordant bells.

The captain was the only one left standing, though it staggered, its axe now feeling impossibly heavy.

It looked from Thor, whose red hair seemed to burn with an inner fire, to Loki, who now stood leaning casually against a rock, cleaning his fingernails with a small dagger.

"You were saying?" Loki asked pleasantly. "Something about breaking us?"

The demon captain, Gorath's counterpart in this frozen land, knew a lost cause when he saw one. This was not a simple conquest. This was a meat grinder. With a guttural snarl of rage, it leaped backward, retreating into the pulsating red portal, which snapped shut behind it, leaving behind only the faint, foul stench of its passage.

The fjord was quiet again, save for the gentle lap of water and the sizzle of the last dying embers in the forest.

Thor turned to Loki, his hammer resting on his shoulder. The anger was gone from his face, replaced by a grim seriousness. "Your hair is still red," he said, though it was no longer an accusation.

Loki shrugged, a thoughtful frown on his face. "It seems we have a problem that's slightly bigger than your fashion sense, brother."

Both gods looked up at the sky where the portal had been, their internal alarms screaming. This was not a localised prank. This was a warning shot, fired across the bow of the entire world.

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