The evening sky blazed amber and indigo above the ancient city of Nineveh, as though the heavens themselves mourned a peace too fragile to last. From the highest terrace of his palace, King Tiglath-Pileser III stood cloaked in indigo and gold, his silhouette a solitary pillar against the dying light.
He said nothing. He simply watched.
Below him, the empire pulsed like a living thing. The streets coiled through the city like veins, carved into sandstone and blood. The River Tigris shimmered beneath the setting sun, a molten ribbon flowing eastward. Market stalls clattered shut. Children's laughter rang out through narrow alleys. The air was thick with the scent of lentils, roasted lamb—and something sharper.
Iron. Not in blood. In anticipation.
Behind the king, the ziggurat of Nineveh towered skyward, tier upon sacred tier, a stairwell for gods. Ashur, deity of kingship. Ishtar, goddess of love and war. Their names etched in every stone.
Symbols of strength. Of order. Of divine right.
But twilight deepened, and Nineveh did not sleep. The city stirred with breath unceasing. Its soul spoke in whispers that only a king could hear. Not with ears—but with the crown's weight pressing into his brow.
He heard everything.
An old woman mourning the winter ahead, her son buried in barley fields. A conscript's mother, mouthing half-believed prayers to absent stars. The silence of fallow ground.
And then, somewhere below—low voices, carried on the evening wind.
"They say the king's armies have reached the Euphrates again."
"The gods favour Assyria," another voice replied, brittle as old parchment.
"Aye... but at what cost?"
Not treason.
Just truth.
The king's eyes closed. He breathed in the scent of his city one last time.
To be chosen by the gods...
Was it strength? Was it conquest?
Or was it sacrifice?
He turned eastward, to the black mountains crouched on the horizon—silent fangs of obsidian, carved by time itself.
They will outlast me, he thought. As they outlast all kings.
The palace walls whispered glory. His victories etched in cuneiform by hands too terrified to err. And yet, in the hush between heartbeat and breath—doubt crept in, curling like smoke beneath the door.
Will they remember me as a guardian? Or just another blade that carved a bloody map?
And then—
The earth screamed.
A sound like the cracking of the world's spine split the air. The terrace lurched. Tiglath-Pileser stumbled, gripping a pillar as the sky fractured above him.
And from the street below, the ground tore open.
From that wound—they rose.
Nine colossal heads.
Scaled. Serpentine. Vast beyond belief. They erupted like demons from the underworld, sapphire hides catching the last golden light.
Dragons? No.
Not beasts.
Harbingers.
Their eyes glowed with ancient memory—intelligent, unblinking. Their roars shattered stone. From their jaws poured black flame, blistering the heavens.
The streets became fire-rivers.
The sacred ziggurat cracked. Groaned. Collapsed inward, devoured by claw and fury. Stone melted. Prayers died mid-breath. Smoke coiled skyward—and from it rose the screams.
Tiglath-Pileser stood unmoving. A king. A myth.
Now only a man.
"Ashur..." His voice vanished into the soot. "Ishtar... where are you?"
Soldiers surged through the plazas, arrows aflame, javelins like thorns against titans. But the projectiles shattered mid-air, turned to ash. The dragons did not bleed. They did not fear. They did not fall.
They only advanced.
And yet—he did not flee.
"Stand firm!" he roared, voice cracked and raw. "We are Assyria! We are chosen!"
But in his chest, something shifted.
A tremble beneath bone.
A sliver of ice.
Even gods may choose wrongly.
And then, a single thought bloomed in the back of his skull, jagged and absurd:
What in Ishtar's womb am I doing?
Far above, on the last watchtower untouched by flame, another figure watched.
Tartanu Sargon.
The king's aide. His eyes, once forged in war, now wide with disbelief. Fingers clenched white on the railing.
Below him—Nineveh no longer burned.
It bled.
Temples. Libraries. Homes.
Gone.
Ash and scream.
He tried to speak—a curse? A prayer? The words stuck, caught between teeth and soul.
His eyes dropped to the street far below. The abyss waited. A fall—swift and certain. Quieter than the horror below.
One foot edged forward.
He hesitated.
Is this the doom the omens warned of? Or have the gods simply turned their faces away?
The wind caught his cloak like a dying banner.
Somewhere through the smoke, a child screamed.
And Tartanu Sargon stepped back from the ledge.
Nineveh was gone. Its palaces. Its gods. Its kings.
All of it—devoured.
And yet, by some cruel providence, the tower still stood.
For now.
He had seen one of the beasts up close—one head among nine. Sapphire-scaled. Breath hot enough to boil stone.
Its eyes met his.
Not hatred.
Judgement.
And then...
It turned away.
The creature—no, creatures, for there were nine heads—retreated as if bored of violence, their vast forms coiling above the ruin like smoke given form. Silence fell across the tower like a burial shroud.
Tartanu Sargon lay on cracked stone, unmoving. Limbs frozen. Mind blank.
The dragons had gone still.
Not gone.
Waiting.
Maybe they sensed there was nothing left worth burning. No resistance left to crush beneath claw and fire.
A miracle?
No.
A mockery.
Somewhere deep in his chest, a flicker of hope sparked—faint, almost laughable. Tears blurred his vision. Was this divine mercy? Had Ashur stayed their wrath after all?
Am I spared...?
His eyes moved.
Beside him lay Atalya, his second-in-command. Her throat had been slit cleanly, precisely. Her eyes were still open, staring at nothing. A desert eagle pecked at her corpse, unbothered by honour or sacrifice.
The gods do not care.
His gaze dropped to a dagger beside her hand. Still clean-edged. Still gleaming beneath its thin veneer of blood.
That would be a cleaner end.
Cleaner than screaming. Cleaner than burning. Cleaner than this—the shame, the stillness, the stench of his own failure soaking into the stone beneath him.
Once, he had been a warrior. A commander. A man of the crown.
Now?
He was just another survivor. Unwanted. Undone.
"I..." he whispered, voice barely a rasp. "Surely this is a dream. A fever. When I awaken... I shall tell it to the priests. They'll cast the omens. Read the stars. Make sense of the madness..."
But even as the lie passed his lips, his stomach twisted.
The dragons were moving.
All nine heads.
In perfect, fluid unison, like one mind behind many eyes.
And they were looking at him.
What followed was not fear. Not even dread.
Terror.
Primal and choking.
He dropped flat against the blackened floor, chest to stone, heart hammering. Maybe—just maybe—if he stayed still, they'd overlook him.
But it was far too late for that.
She had arrived.
From the smoke, she walked.
No—she strode, the world parting before her as if it, too, feared what she was.
She wore white armour trimmed with snow-fur, untouched by soot, unmarred by blood. Each step she took ruined the ground further—ash curling at her heels, stone blackening beneath her like a curse.
Behind her, the nine heads rose.
Not beasts. Not pets.
Wings. Throne. Extension of her very will.
A moving monument of wrath.
Her hair—silver-white, long and glimmering—rippled behind her like a comet's tail. Her eyes—slits of molten gold—burned with delight.
One of the great dragon heads slithered down, eye narrowing as it fixed on Sargon's trembling form.
And then came her voice.
Low. Musical.
A blade in silk.
"How delightful," she purred—her words sliding into the world like honey soaked in venom. "I spared this pathetic little tower just for you, you know."
Sargon's mouth went dry.
"Watching you tremble..." she continued, almost singing the words, "was thoroughly entertaining."
Then, softer. Cooler.
"Tell me, little creature. Do you not feel shame?"
His body seized with it. Shame hot and raw. But somehow, his mouth still moved.
"...I—I was waiting... for the right moment. To strike."
It was a lie. A naked, pathetic lie. But it was all he had left.
He felt the warmth down his leg. The stink. The humiliation.
A stain on the stone. A stain on his name.
She laughed.
Not cruelly.
Worse.
She laughed sweetly. Like a mother amused by a foolish child.
Windchimes in a hurricane.
"Oh? Is that what that was?" she murmured, tilting her head. "How noble of you."
Then her voice dropped, and the world turned cold.
"But you took too long, insect."
The dragon's mouth opened.
"No—don't—please—!"
He didn't finish the scream.
With a sound like the cracking of the earth's bones, the dragon devoured the tower whole. Stone shattered. Flame consumed. There was no ash. No body.
Only silence.
A deep, guttural hum followed.
Not hunger.
Satisfaction.
High above the ruin, on the central dragon's crown, the woman stretched—elegant and unhurried. She yawned, then curled her body across the scaled head like a queen resting on her throne.
The other eight heads coiled around her, protective. Worshipful.
The world beneath her screamed.
She had already forgotten it.
But peace, even for monsters, is never permanent.
From the bleeding horizon, three figures stepped into the smouldering remains of the world—moving with the weight of myth behind their every stride.
At their head walked Marduk, King of the Gods. Lawgiver. Creator. In his hand, the divine storm-spear Imhullu crackled—lightning chained into form, forged from the fury of creation itself. Each of his steps sparked arcs of white fire that danced across the broken land, stitching thunder into the air.
To his right strode Nergal, god of war and plague. Crowned in golden fire, bare-chested and marked by crusades both divine and cursed. His flesh bore sigils of rot, brands of conquest, and scars too sacred for healing. In his grasp, the jagged mace Gidimsar pulsed—carved from bone, wrapped in a miasma of decay. Every swing stirred clouds of pestilence, thick with dread.
And to Marduk's left strode Ninurta—the Sage of Storms, the Stoic Warden, the one who watched and waited long after the others had forgotten how.
His armour shimmered with constellations drawn in starlight, thunderbolts etched in sacred script across every plate. At his hip hung Sharur, the sentient war-mace, its whispers spilling ancient tactics and divine stratagems like a battlefield sermon.
His gaze locked onto the slumbering form atop the dragon's crown.
He did not flinch.
Not from fear. Not from hatred.
But from the silent resolve of a protector long betrayed.
Marduk's voice shattered the quiet like divine verdict.
"Tiamat may sleep... but her heads do not."
The clouds recoiled from the weight of his words.
"She's changed. Mutated. Touched again, perhaps... by the Master of the Deeps?"
Nergal sneered. "She has more heads now."
His golden eyes narrowed to a predator's slit.
"Her fury still burns. But it no longer thrashes blindly. She's found focus. That's far more dangerous."
Ninurta's jaw tensed, stone-still.
"Apsu saved her once," he murmured. "He will not save her again."
Not this time.
One of the nine heads moved.
A long, serpentine neck reared, fangs glinting, and suddenly—
Snap!
It bit her.
The dragon bit its own queen, clamping its colossal jaws on her torso like an impatient child waking its parent with a tantrum.
"—Why don't you knock it off?" came a groggy voice.
Tiamat stirred.
She opened one golden eye. Slit-pupilled. Ancient. Glowing with divine irritation.
And without another word—
She punched the dragon head.
Brutally. Casually. Like smacking a misbehaving pet.
CRACK.
The head recoiled. The sky reeled.
The shockwave wasn't just sonic—it tore through the threads of reality itself. Time warped. Universes blinked out. Omniverses folded into nothing.
And then—just as suddenly—
Pop.
Everything snapped back.
Reality stitched itself together again, as if sheepishly pretending it hadn't just imploded.
"Tsk. That must've been Finality," Tiamat grumbled, hovering lazily above the ruin. "Always fixing things before anyone even notices the damage. So rude."
She stretched mid-air, floating not by wings or spells—but by sheer metaphysical arrogance. Her humanoid form yawned, still draped in scorched armour, a single strand of drool hanging from her lip.
She caught it. With her tongueS. Plural.
Because of course.
Ash crumbled beneath her boots as she descended with an unceremonious thud. Flesh was still annoying. She hated flesh. It stuck.
Brushing soot from her greaves, she blinked up at the sky.
The stars blinked back, unimpressed.
All around her, empire lay in ruin. The Neo-Assyrian capital was little more than shattered silhouettes and skeletal ash. Palaces reduced to tombstones. Obelisks crumbled like brittle teeth.
"So... where are the others?" she asked.
She wasn't talking to anyone in particular.
But someone answered.
Not with speech.
With a rift in the sky.
CRASH.
Marduk stepped through first—divine authority made flesh.
The heavens cracked like stained glass behind him.
He shone brighter than any star, every inch of his body wrapped in regality and wrath. Imhullu, the storm-spear of creation, buzzed in his hand like a barely-contained apocalypse.
"They are coming," he declared. "But you will fall before they arrive."
With a roar that split the sky, he raised his spear high. The tip gleamed with enough power to annihilate a pantheon.
Tiamat stared.
Then exhaled. Bored.
"You still recite those tired verses?" she scoffed. "I broke your armies with a breath, remember? You'd be cosmic compost if the Void hadn't caught you."
She rolled her eyes.
"Or Apsu, as you fleshlings insist on calling her. Honestly."
Nergal and Ninurta stepped forward.
Nergal crackled with rot, disease, and divine warfare. His twin maces—one tangible, one spectral—flared with cursed light. He spat a gob of plague-blood onto their heads. It hissed. Sanctified.
"I tire of your face, dragon-witch," he growled. "Soon your heads will hang on my wall."
Behind her, Tiamat's nine heads stirred—coiling in sync, blades of divine malice.
The battlefield held its breath.
Beside him, Ninurta raised Sharur.
And invoked the boon of sacred warfare.
"Heroic Prosperity."
Green fire bloomed. A lion of jade and flame emerged, its roar vibrating the bones of the world. Its voice became resolve—divine, unshakable.
The lion's flame spread, igniting the three gods in celestial fortitude.
Their bodies surged with power. Their spirits sang with fury.
"Brothers!" Ninurta called. "Sharur compels us—shatter her into a thousand fragments!"
Marduk moved first.
"Imhullu Tempest!"
The spear blazed, unleashing a spiralling cyclone of divine storm. Lightning howled into spectral serpents. Thunder shattered sound. The very air was torn apart as the storm enveloped Tiamat in a fury of wrath.
Nergal followed—his body cloaked in plague-fire, dual maces raised.
"I NEVER LEARNED RESTRAINT!"
He hurled himself like a comet dipped in pestilence.
But Tiamat...
Did not scream.
She answered.
From one of the nine mouths, a weapon emerged.
A broadaxe. Living metal. Sentient. Hungry.
"Kingu," she said, casually.
The axe landed in her hand with a deafening crash.
The earth split. Craters bloomed like open wounds.
And the storm—
Bent.
Imhullu's tempest staggered—hesitated for just one heartbeat.
A single, fatal beat.
"That's all I need."
Tiamat smirked.
And swung.
Her axe met Nergal's spectral mace—
And shattered it.
Shadow burst. Screams spilled from the rupture. The original mace screamed in strain.
Nergal's veins glowed crimson. His skin flushed with divine fire.
But he did not fall.
Not yet.
"Huh." Tiamat tilted her head. "You're sturdier than last time."
She grinned.
All nine heads rose behind her.
Their eyes blazed.
And then—
"Round two, then?"
"Danger only feeds me!" Nergal roared, muscles glowing with divine iron as he hurtled toward Tiamat like a falling star made of plague and wrath.
But above him, Sharur's voice sliced into Ninurta's mind like a surgeon's scalpel:
Nergal is in mortal peril. Levitate him—now.
There was no hesitation.
Ninurta obeyed.
The battlefield rippled. Earth reared up beneath Nergal like a living fist and launched him skyward—mere heartbeats before Tiamat's axe came down in a vertical arc of absolute finality.
CRACK—
The blow missed.
Barely.
And yet, the ground still convulsed.
The shockwave tore through the crust like a divine tantrum. The battlefield fractured. Rivers boiled. Geysers of lava screamed into the sky, painting it in blood-orange fury. A mountain range groaned—then simply ceased, crumbling into dust like it had remembered its age.
Ninurta had summoned a dome of invisible barriers to shield Marduk from the brunt of it—each layer costing more than the last.
Blood misted from his lips.
His heart stammered.
His lungs sizzled.
But still, he held.
He endured.
Above the tremors and flame, Marduk watched—and for a fleeting moment, his ever-stern face allowed a rare, almost fatherly smile.
"Well done," he said. "Both of you."
He stepped forward. Imhullu snarled in his grip, spitting arcs of wild lightning. The very air twisted around it, reality fracturing like glass dipped in fire.
The tip of the spear pointed squarely at Tiamat.
"In the wake of your devastation," Marduk declared, voice like iron law, "a new order will be forged.
"Nine realms—ten, if we're including that mockery of humanity you like to wear."
He stared into the baleful gaze of all nine draconic heads.
And did not blink.
"I look forward to carving out my domain."
Above, Ninurta levitated alongside Nergal, who now stood again—bloodied, fuming, incandescent with hatred.
"Let's end this," Nergal growled.
He hurled one of his maces—Gidimsar, now ignited by a divine fury that made it writhe mid-air like a living curse.
As it flew, it changed.
It became a lion—burning, furious, sculpted from cursed flame and divine spite. It roared through the heavens like divine judgment set on fire.
Ninurta followed it.
But his weapons were not beasts.
They were collapsing stars.
He summoned meteors—fragments of crushed omniverses, debris harvested from the void between voids. The sky tore open to make room.
Below them, Marduk raised Imhullu one final time.
He inhaled.
And roared—
"ENūMA ELI?!"
The world split.
The blast from Imhullu wasn't just light—it was truth made manifest. Lightning. Thunder. Revelation. It howled across the battlefield, tearing sky and soul alike, unmaking that which dared defy divine order.
Three gods.
One combined strike.
And yet—
Tiamat didn't flinch.
She caught the lion.
With one hand.
The cursed flame still burned. Its teeth still snarled. But she smiled—a slow, cruel, playful smile—and tore the lion's aura from its body like peeling silk from flesh.
The beast whimpered once.
Then crumbled to ash.
"These attacks..." she mused, voice lilting with wicked amusement. "They're adorable. Like kittens nipping at the ankles of titans.
"What will I do with you three?"
Around her, Kingu stirred.
But this was no summoning.
This was memory reawakening.
Chaos Radiation bled from him—not magic, but recollection. Ancient fog, older than gods, pulsing with the hunger of countless forgotten timelines.
It devoured.
Fire. Lightning. Divine relics. Omniversal debris.
All of it—gone.
And then, the arms came.
Human arms.
Malformed. Endless. Bleeding without end.
They burst from Kingu's flesh and the battlefield alike, erupting like weeds from the cracks in reality itself. They clawed not at matter—but meaning.
Where they grasped, things forgot what they were.
Blood misted from the arms—and the mist rewrote reality.
Timelines smeared.
Causality choked.
History blinked—and vanished.
And through the fog, all nine of Tiamat's draconic heads began to laugh.
The gods' assault fell silent.
Smouldering.
Spent.
Tiamat tilted her head, bemused. All nine heads exhaled together—smoke, venom, derision curling into the ruins.
"Don't worry," she purred, all fangs and honey. "Kingu won't end you just yet. That would be far too dull."
Above them, Nergal roared.
"Strength alone shall decide this battle!"
His body became volcanic light. Divine muscle gleamed beneath ash and godfire. He tore free from Ninurta's levitation with brute force, plummeting downward like a wrath-fuelled comet.
Every rotation gathered flame.
A meteor with vengeance.
But—
Tiamat didn't even blink.
One sinewy limb of Kingu lashed upward, catching Nergal mid-fall.
SNAP.
His descent stopped cold.
His arms—divine, ancient, battle-forged—fractured like twigs.
And then—
She swung.
With one hand on Gidimsar, Tiamat brought it down in a single, merciless stroke.
CRUNCH.
Nergal's divine manhood shattered.
There was no scream.
Just the rupture of something holy, followed by a silence more violent than any shout.
Then the pain hit.
Nergal spiralled through the air, trailing divine ichor, his mouth stretched in a silent scream that echoed across realms.
Ninurta caught him mid-fall—reflex, instinct, brotherhood.
But the impact still sent them crashing downward into...
An ancient, steaming heap of sacred elephant dung.
It smoked.
It sizzled.
It stank.
And it lingered.
Divine irony.
Marduk stood in stillness, unmoved by the chaos. His eyes narrowed, lips barely parting.
"Tiamat," he muttered, as if tasting her name. "You really want to see what I've been saving?"
His chest rose.
He inhaled.
His body swelled—not merely with breath, but with creation. Muscle rippled with starlight. Veins throbbed, luminous with the breath of newborn galaxies. Imhullu writhed in his grip, roaring with lightning like a wolf pack caught in a storm.
"My strength is now at seventy thousand percent..."
The earth trembled beneath him.
"But even that won't be enough alone."
He glanced sideways at Ninurta, eyes steady.
"How long until the healing's done? If Nergal recovers, we'll attempt... the fusion. Unstable, yes. But it might—"
"Not long," Ninurta interrupted, calm as ever. "My knowledge of divine anatomy is... exhaustive."
From his celestial satchel—marked with glyphs that even Kur dared not utter—he produced a blade.
A scalpel.
Forged from the first bronze.
It shimmered beneath the wounded stars.
And suddenly—time vanished.
Sound faded.
The world watched in reverence.
Upon a battlefield made of prophecy and ash, Ninurta began to operate.
Every incision was a hymn. Every suture, a benediction. He worked in divine tempo—sewing nerves spun of golden light, sealing ruptured flesh with whispered scripture. It was a war hospital straddling the edge of reality.
And Marduk stood alone.
His sweat fell like burning stars. His aura blistered the air. He took one final step forward—
And lunged.
But Tiamat was faster.
Her tail—a glistening silver whip tipped with the wrath of the void—lashed out.
A blur of inevitability.
CRACK.
Imhullu shattered—splintering into a thousand shards of failed divinity.
The tail kept going.
SLICE.
Both of Marduk's arms flew from his body, severed clean.
Blood erupted in divine geysers, limbs falling to the scorched earth like broken promises.
Marduk collapsed.
And the world shook with his scream.
But still—he did not weep.
He did not curse.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
He spoke.
"Tiamat..." he gasped, each breath a quake. "This isn't over. You haven't yet become... the realm I dreamed of."
His vision swam, but he held her gaze—all nine sets of eyes.
One god.
Nine dragons.
And one truth.
"I dreamed of our people dancing across your broken spine," he whispered. "Of Anunnaki children laughing atop your ribs. I dreamed of palaces carved from your bones... of banquets in your lungs."
Blood spilled from his mouth.
And yet—he smiled.
"I would have made you a goddess. Glorified. Exalted. My consort. Together, we'd sire new gods and reshape the stars."
His voice trembled. He was drifting.
"From the moment I first beheld you... I knew. You were chaos. You were truth. You were mine. I see no future without you in it."
A beat.
"Tiamat... I love you."
And the world—held its breath.
Silence, so complete it seemed sacred.
Then Tiamat sneered.
"You?" she spat. "A mangled demi-deity thinks himself worthy of me?"
Without fanfare, she exhaled.
Not air.
Primordial brine—the boiling salt of ancient oceans, distilled from the marrow of eternity.
It struck Marduk's face like a curse.
His flesh sizzled.
The air filled with the scent of cooked god.
He screamed—but even through the agony, his gaze remained fixed on hers.
"The lies of mortals... those were Ea's doing," he hissed. "Not mine.
"I only wished their myths ended differently."
His voice began to fray.
"But this moment... just us... no myths, no audience...
"It's enough."
And then—
He laughed.
A soft, broken laugh.
The laugh of a man who'd lost, yet found peace in losing.
"It was charming, wasn't it?" he murmured. "Our little war dance."
Blood mingled with brine. Salt and ichor. The taste of death and something stranger.
He tasted her essence.
Not just salt—but memory.
A layered flavour of ancient umami, dark cosmic bitterness, and a kind of sacred melancholy that defied taxonomy. It was the taste of her origin. The soup that sang the first hymn of existence.
"...An indirect kiss," he whispered, eyes fluttering shut, the ghost of a grin on his face.
"In this moment... I find... solace."
His words scattered like petals on wind. His soul wandered across memories—childhoods, starbirths, forgotten melodies. He spoke no more.
Tiamat raised a brow.
Then scoffed.
"So be it. Senile. Weak. Pathetically sentimental."
Her eyes drifted past him—to the broken world.
To the ashes of empires long eaten by time.
The wind still whispered the names of gods who had defied her. Names now forgotten by history, but remembered by her.
"Speaking of Ea..." she purred. "You promised me an army, Marduk. Where is it now?"
She raised her arms.
And the void replied.
A black tide surged from her form, folding reality like silk dipped in fire. Her body became a gate—a second birth. From within her, the Abyss came crawling.
And then—
They were gone.
The gods vanished—dragged into her realm.
They arrived in a paradox.
A sky of cerulean sea stretched above them.
And beneath their feet—the same sea.
An endless ocean, mirrored and inverted.
Time stilled. Wind vanished. Even causality curled up and went quiet.
Half-submerged towers pierced the horizon—ruins from civilisations that had never existed.
Not dreams.
Not nightmares.
Something in between.
Then—
Clap. Clap.
A sound.
The silence shattered.
And the next act began.
A million gods appeared.
War gods. Sea gods. Sun gods. Forgotten household idols with burnt offerings still clinging to their breath. Feral deities from dying pantheons—half-starved, wholly mad.
Their eyes widened in confusion, awe, and horror.
All had once stood against her.
All had failed.
And now—Tiamat welcomed them with the warmth of a crocodile's grin.
One of her nine draconic heads dipped to drink from the glassy sea. Another burst into peals of laughter, echoing across the mirrored firmament.
"Well, hello again," she purred, teeth like crescent moons. "I've missed our little dance."
Across the expanse of divinity, Anu fell to his knees.
"Impossible..." he whispered. "The Fell Dragon of Ruination...!"
He bowed until his forehead cracked the water.
"I surrender! Spare me and my bloodline—we pledge loyalty—undying loyalty—to you, Empress Tiamat!"
His voice broke. His pride shattered.
"Come! All of you—kneel! Show her we mean no harm!"
And one by one... they obeyed.
Some bowed in reverence. Others in raw, primal fear. A few—those crueler, wiser, older than myth—knelt out of calculated devotion, veiled in velvet necessity.
As the Abyss accepted them, her name echoed in every trembling heart like the first and final stanza of a sacred poem:
Tiamat.
"No... stop this foolishness..."
The voice was little more than a rasp, thinner than smoke.
Marduk.
He lay broken, eyes swimming in pain and disbelief.
"She can be defeated... You only need to believe—in yourselves... in me..."
A goddess knelt beside him, hands weaving sigils faster than thought. Divine light danced between her fingers, sculpting new arms from sacred mud and the essence of stars. Her lips moved in constant prayer. Her eyes never left his face.
Then—another voice.
Heavy. Familiar.
"Marduk."
Ea.
He stepped forward, tall and sorrow-made-flesh, the ocean of his presence rippling with ancient grief.
His turquoise eyes flicked upward toward the inverted sky.
"Without Apsu... we are only fragments."
He moved closer, his aquamarine hair drifting like riverfoam, his voice the sound of tides turning over aeons.
"You're not whole anymore. Neither am I.
Even if you weren't mad, you always yearned for her.
You wore the crown.
I bore the burden.
You played the hero.
I made the decisions."
He glanced down at the mirrored sea. His reflection wept without moving.
"Was it worth it, Marduk?"
Behind him stood Enlil, silent and immovable. Viridian hair like woven jade. His gaze—stone cut from forgotten mountains.
Nearby, Ninurta lay unconscious, cradled against the disassembled anatomy of Nergal. It looked sacred. Terrible. Beautiful.
Ashur, standing amidst the divine wreckage, sniffed once.
"...It's not entirely unpleasant," he muttered, face split between revulsion and reverence.
His gaze snapped to Ea.
"Ea. We need you. Now! If we're to act—if we're to unite—it must be now. Mind and might. One will."
A moment passed.
Then—
Laughter.
Tiamat's laughter.
Like obsidian breaking in a church.
"This?" she said, arms spread, her many wings unfolding into a cathedral of ruin. "This is your resistance?"
Her thousand eyes swept across the kneeling pantheon.
"Not one of you has the spine to challenge me?"
And then—movement.
Ishtar stepped forward.
No hesitation.
No fear.
She dropped to her knees before Tiamat, reverently lowering her face to the Empress's greave.
And licked it.
Marduk's blood.
Her tongue traced the divine stain as if it were a sacrament.
Time. Froze.
Tiamat's heads turned—every one of them—in perfect, eerie synchrony.
"Audacious little goddess," she purred, voice like molten honey. "For that act of devotion... I grant you mercy."
She lifted one leg.
"One greave is clean."
She raised the other.
"Whoever cleans the second shall also be spared. Just one more. Choose wisely."
Then her tone turned glacial.
"The rest...? Let them kill each other for it."
A single breath passed.
Then—
Chaos.
Ishkur surged forward, cloak flapping like storm-wracked sails, astride his roaring thunder-bull.
He did not make it far.
He was thrown off.
With a spectacular cry, he crashed into the mirror-sea, lightning exploding from his impact.
Sputtering, soaked, undeterred, he rose.
Then, in a motion both noble and insane, he reached down—
—and stripped Nergal's undergarment from his mangled remains.
"This will do!" Ishkur proclaimed, triumphant, waving the relic. "A banner of divine intent!"
He paused.
Sniffed it.
A beat.
His expression crumbled.
"...No. No, no, no—Empress Tiamat deserves only the purest offerings! I am a fool! A blasphemer of sacred thighs!"
He plunged the garment into the mirror-sea, arms trembling with guilt.
"I have soiled her mercy... at the worst possible moment!"
The gods stood frozen. Stunned.
Ishkur, half-mad and wholly sincere, wept into the water, bathing Tiamat's salvation with the trembling grace of a prophet mid-nervous breakdown.
A chuckle escaped—low, warm, devastating.
Like thunder curling into a sigh.
"Ishkur," said Nabu, the God of Wisdom, stepping forward with his enchanted stylus dancing through his fingers.
Glyphs of truth and judgment shimmered behind every motion.
"Forever the storm chasing its own tail."
He sighed.
The mirth drained from his face.
"Very well. You want a lesson, storm-whelp?
"Then class is in session."
He advanced like a divine professor, delivering punishment with all the theatrical gravitas of a law-god grading sacrilege.
Each crack of his enchanted stylus against Ishkur's skull rang out like a courtroom gavel.
"Infraction: Theft of sacred undergarments!"
Smack.
"Violation: Intentional blasphemy via olfactory desecration!"
Smack.
"Byline: Article Three, Subsection Seven of the Celestial Concordat—All acts of holy laundry are subject to divine jurisdiction."
Ishkur wept beneath the blows. It was unclear whether from pain or shame.
Not far off, Ningal, Goddess of Rebirth, glided forward—her expression composed of contempt and warpaint.
"A trivial contest," she sneered, robes flowing like silk woven from battlefield banners. "And yet not a single one of you divine buffoons recognises what is rightfully mine."
She didn't slow as she passed Nanna, her moon-faced husband.
"And let's not pretend you care," she said, each syllable a honed blade. "Ishkur stole my undergarments while I bathed. Once this absurd trial ends, I will ensure he regrets it."
She laughed. High. Cold. Aristocratic.
"I shall be the sole survivor."
Nanna, God of the Moon, did not blink.
"I haven't said a word," he replied softly. "Frankly... it's not my concern."
He stepped forward, casting pale light like the memory of a lullaby.
"As you say—Tiamat's trial demands your focus."
His voice dropped into hush.
"Ishtar bought us time with her tongue... but that mercy is an illusion. Let the most deserving survive."
Further off, Anu was shrieking like a collapsing temple.
"Stand aside! It is my right to cleanse Tiamat's sacred leg plates! I am your father! Obey me!"
No one did.
Ningal turned.
Without breaking stride, she shoved Anu to the ground, seized his throat, and began to squeeze.
"Your time has long passed, old fool."
Anu gagged. He clawed. He broke free—
Only to receive three savage punches, each one echoing with the fury of ancestral vengeance.
He collapsed.
Silence returned.
High above, Enlil surged through the upper winds, a comet of divine resolve. Reality bent around his form.
Clinging stubbornly to his leg—
Ashur.
Bloodied. Blazing. Laughing.
"Release me!" Enlil barked, kicking. "I won't repeat myself."
Ashur clung tighter.
"Not until you take me to her."
Enlil's patience snapped.
One hand grabbed Ashur's face. The other ripped him off and hurled him downward.
Ashur crashed into the mirror-sea.
He rose. Staggered. His knee cracked audibly.
And he laughed.
"I deserve this pain," he whispered. "Let it deepen me."
But Enlil wasn't finished.
He descended like wrath itself.
He slammed into Ashur. Gripped his head. Drove him beneath the surface.
"I warned you," he hissed. "Now die. Quietly, if you have any dignity left."
At the water's edge, Ninurta stirred.
Ea knelt beside him, hands glowing aquamarine, weaving threads of life and logic.
"It's hopeless," Ninurta muttered. "I always knew. I played the hero to silence that truth."
He looked at the battlefield—gods broken like pottery. Dreams scattered like ash.
"I understand that mortal now. The one who faked death in the tower. I envy him."
He reached down.
Touched Nergal's withered groin.
Clinical. Cold.
"Still small," he said flatly. "Like the meaning of our lives."
Nergal's body twitched.
His eyes flared open.
"Ninurta, you cowardly bastard! Don't you dare speak of weakness—not now!"
He rose like a wounded titan.
"Phantom pain or not, I endure. I fight. Always!!"
His grin was feral.
"It's not the size, Ninurta. It's the spirit. And mine still rages!"
Ea exhaled.
The weariness in him went deeper than time.
"I've spent everything healing you fools," he muttered. "Why do I even bother...?"
A spear whistled through the battlefield.
Ea caught it mid-air—without looking.
With a flick of his wrist, he infused it with Reversal Magic.
It spun backward—blazing with inverted runes—and impaled its original owner through the chest.
The dying god smiled.
"None of us," he whispered, "will see another dawn."
At the eye of the storm, Tiamat stood.
Blood streaked her cheek from some distant slaughter. She wiped it away with a gauntleted finger. Studied it.
"Impressive," she murmured.
Then—casually—she tossed Kingu into the air.
One of her heads lunged.
Swallowed him whole.
Still kneeling beside her feet, Ishtar licked at now-immaculate greaves. With the reverence of a monk polishing relics.
Tiamat extended a gauntlet.
Ishtar obeyed.
Her tongue flicked across each finger, slow and deliberate.
Then—
Tiamat peeled off the gauntlet.
Ishtar's tongue met divine skin.
It was warm. Eternal. Cold as judgement.
"I hope you're in a favourable mood, Mother," she whispered.
Tiamat smiled.
Soft. Terrible.
And then—
Reality tore.
From the fractured edge of the Abyss Realm, where existence wore thin and the threads of being unravelled—
A rift bloomed in the sky.
A wound in the fabric of truth.
Through that rift...
He stepped forth.
He emerged atop the skeletal remains of a shattered tower, silhouetted against the screaming winds of a world that had long divorced itself from logic.
Turquoise hair spilled across his shoulders, flowing like ocean currents in a midnight trench. A long obsidian coat—cut in the shape of silence—billowed behind him, its hem whispering forgotten truths to the broken stones beneath his boots.
"Is this what passes for amusement now?"
Ouroboros's voice slithered out across the battlefield, disdainful and serpentine.
"Preying on these feeble husks? Honestly—have you fallen so far?"
His gaze swept the divine wreckage—gods collapsed like wine-drowned locusts, ichor slicking the mirror-like waters in lurid streaks of gold and black.
"Disgusting," he muttered, puffing faintly on his bone pipe. "They offend the concept of godhood."
Below him, draped upon the throne of annihilation she'd forged from ruined heavens and broken pride, Tiamat laughed.
Her laughter echoed—a silken sound threaded with ancient malice.
"Ouroboros," she said, all nine heads swaying like snakes dreaming in unison, "you always know how to ruin my mood. Have you come to die?"
The still waters churned.
Tendrils of living shadow erupted—slithering forth with preternatural grace. They crept over divine corpses, coiling around limp limbs and fractured pride.
Then the screaming began.
The gods convulsed.
And changed.
Bodies twisted into obscene architecture—flesh unmade and rewritten. What emerged were Abyss Monstrosities: grotesque, reverent, inhuman. They dripped with primordial hunger and stared with devotion hollow as deep space.
Marduk—still alive, tragically—was flailing in the distance, barely dodging a saw-limbed aberration.
Tiamat raised one hand.
She didn't shout.
"Enough."
The sky ripped open.
A vortex screamed into existence, spiralling with madness. The Abyss itself howled in revolt.
And then—
At her gesture—it stopped.
Silence fell like the lid on a tomb. Mist slithered back into place, obedient as a well-trained hound.
"I'm feeling uncommonly generous," Tiamat said, her voice a velvet coil. "Gather round, my little disasters—I bring good tidings."
One by one, the gods rose—drenched, dazed, trembling. Some spat up Abyssal water. Others swallowed—and found the taste oddly... rejuvenating.
Behind her, the Monstrosities stood tall, patient and terrible. They watched everything—the gods, the realm, the audience, the scaffolding of reality itself.
Their hunger was not of flesh.
It was ontological.
Tiamat's many eyes narrowed.
Their gaze was a spell in itself:
Eldritch Gaze.
Like dead gods cracking open minds with invisible fingers, her stare crushed their thoughts into ecstatic madness. Her voice—a lullaby woven from the screams of dead stars—descended in an omniversal chant.
The Abyss listened.
Pain bloomed.
Then transcended.
From their torment, the gods and monsters alike emerged... whole.
And horribly new.
Ouroboros reclined against a moss-stained column, smoke curling from his pipe in lazy ouroboric spirals.
"That man," he muttered to no one. "The one who claimed to be an Outer God... He said he followed the Tenebris Monochrome. All he cared about was... painting."
He flicked the ashes into the black water.
"I wonder... can painting truly be that absorbing?"
Tiamat rolled her neck. One of her heads yawned, fanged and elegant.
"You insects exhaust me," she sighed. "No resistance to meta-forces? Collapsing under my Nihilpotence like soggy scrolls. Embarrassing."
She extended a single hand—nonchalant, manicured, utterly divine.
Reality peeled open.
A spiralling portal irised into being, ringed with impossible colours—cosmic black edged with radiant horror.
"Oh, whatever!" Tiamat snarled, her voice a screeching blaze that clawed the air. "The whispers? Hah—dead true! You all loathe your wretched realm, don't you, my precious swarm of filth? Good. I'd burn it myself!"
Her gaze landed on Marduk.
"Whatsit you hissed, hmm? Carve a shiny new world from my rotting husk? Precious!"
She grinned. A monstrous, knowing, maternal grin.
Marduk snarled, rising on unsteady feet.
"What kind of joke is this?"
"No joke at all," she replied. "In fact... there's a promotion involved."
She snapped her fingers. Light cracked across the heavens like breaking glass.
"As of now, you, Marduk... are no longer a failure of a war god."
Her voice dipped—silk wrapping around iron.
"You are the Admiral of my Abyss Legion. Congratulations."
Behind her, the Monstrosities bowed in unison. The gesture was choreographed. Grotesque. Reverent. Utterly wrong.
The gods didn't move.
Not out of fear.
But because even the oldest among them could feel the gravity of what she'd said.
One of her heads—the largest—descended toward Marduk with unnerving tenderness. Its breath stank of voidlight. Its eyes held the colour of dying suns.
And atop that head—Ishtar crouched, smirking like a cat atop a sacrificial altar.
"Let's see how far loyalty gets you," she whispered.
Marduk didn't answer.
He closed his eyes.
And broke.
His arms—once forged from clay and kissed by creation—twisted.
Soundless cracks rippled through the air as his body warped. Limbs contorted into abyssal shapes—jointed like nightmares, veined with infernal sigils.
Tiamat sang—a Lullaby of Extinction. Her melody was law, her will metaphysics.
"No need to thank me," she cooed. "Just repay my kindness by making sure my Legion thrives."
Her smile sharpened.
"Start by conquering everything. Existence. Nonexistence. The places even thought won't go."
Behind her, the portal howled.
Marduk changed.
Abyssal power flooded his core. Wind stilled in reverence. Time paused to watch.
His unruly black hair turned oceanic blue—dark, endless, ancient.
His eyes blazed—violet starlight igniting from within, consuming even the concept of mercy.
Crimson armour unfolded onto his body—each plate etched with dead languages, binding curses, and histories that never were.
Metal clanged into place like a choir of execution bells.
Flames erupted from his limbs.
Shadows stretched beneath him, devouring any battlefield's light.
He stood reborn.
A crimson war god.
A Red Dragon of Extinction.
And all the world held its breath.
"Imh'Ulu Mu??u??u!"
Marduk's roar split the silence, echoing through existence like a command carved into the bones of reality.
The words surged with Aequiskotos—the sacred authority of divine eldritch utterance. Not mere magic. Not even godly speech.
Law.
And reality, as expected, obeyed.
From the void, twin titanic blades burst forth—red as wrath, hot as entropy. Their edges shimmered with annihilative potential, their mere presence warping space around them like paper under fire.
Forged of raw destruction. Wielded by a crimson god.
They were the twin swords of Draconic Obliteration.
Tiamat inclined her crown of heads in regal approval.
"Adorned in your Bloodshed Incarnate, you are no longer Marduk the God of War," she declared, voice smooth as apocalypse.
"You are my Red Dragon of Death.
My Scourge-Admiral. My Abyss-Spear incarnate.
Lead my Legion into the void—and burn everything in my name."
Marduk gave a single, silent nod.
And with a swirl of crimson fire and churning darkness—he was gone.
Swallowed by the spiralling gate of conquest, along with the legions that now bent knee to him.
At the edge of that cosmic spiral, another figure appeared.
Ouroboros.
One hand in his pocket. The other idly flicking his bone pipe into the depths of darkness.
"Larger than Theoktonos," he mused aloud, eyes glinting. "Another Red Dragon, eh?"
He spoke more to the void than the gods.
"Ignatius, Devourer of Worlds—Muspelheim, in certain tongues. Formidable. Perhaps an equal to Glacialus the Endless Frost... both anomalies among the Primordials. Beyond even Ginnungagap, who built paradox like cathedrals."
He paused, smoke curling like ancient questions.
"Some claim Ignatius clashed once with Apathraxis, Harbinger of Final Silence. I wonder... do their echoes still bounce across dead time?"
Around him, whispers rippled through the pantheon.
"That's Apsu," Utu murmured, eyes wide.
"Him?" Enlil scoffed. "He's... lankier than I expected."
"I thought he was myth," Nanna whispered. "Never imagined I'd see him breathing."
Ouroboros merely smirked.
But Tiamat stood unmoved. Sovereign. Unbothered by their awe.
"I care little for forgotten monsters," she said, her voice flat and unshakeable. "Apathraxis? A toddler's bedtime tale. Finality's lapdog. All beneath me."
Her heads twirled in synchronised dismissal, as if spinning the cosmos itself into a bored shrug.
"If this realm amuses you, Ouroboros—stay. If Marduk entertains you—follow.
It makes no difference. You'll break eventually. Everything does."
He gave her a sharp-toothed smile, all mockery and menace.
"I just came to see if you'd created anything interesting."
Then, without fanfare, he stepped into the portal.
One by one, the gods followed.
And beyond the veil... they emerged.
The Abyss Garden unfurled before them like a memory whispered in a language no longer spoken.
Forests of sapphire trees reached skyward beneath a titanic, radiant moon. Leaves shimmered like celestial serpent scales, rustling with the sound of ancient lullabies.
White blossoms carpeted the glades—each one glowing faintly. Their scent was impossible. Soothing. Dangerous. Divine.
Above them, the sky pulsed—not with light, but with intent. Stars moved like slow blood through a god's veins. Each constellation beat like a heart older than creation.
The air healed them.
Not flesh.
Essence.
The realm breathed, and with every breath, the gods found their divinity reshaped—reforged in deeper truths.
And there—Tiamat.
She glided through the trees, as if she was the trees. As if the realm bent around her, not in obedience, but in longing.
From one of her heads, she tossed the Tablet of Destinies.
Ishtar caught it mid-leap, talon poised and perfect.
And everything changed.
Power bloomed. Nihilpotence surged through her—untainted, unfiltered. Her spine arched. Her body lengthened.
Horns spiralled from her brow—elegant. Terrible.
Wings burst forth—draconic, golden-veined, eclipsing the twin moons behind her. Her eyes gleamed like stars made sovereign.
Two tails uncoiled behind her, trailing gold like the signatures of forgotten constellations.
A Dragon Fell Goddess was born.
Tiamat's heads turned, each bearing a different expression—pride, hunger, rage, joy.
"If Marduk is my left hand," she intoned, "then you, Ishtar... shall be my right."
Amber met gold.
"You shall command the skies. As he rules the Abyss Sea, so shall you reign over the Firmament.
My Dragon Knight. My Sovereign-Marshal of Heaven."
The Tablet shifted.
Not into words.
Into armour—Tiamat's Wrath. Forged from the scales of infinite Tiamats across infinite realms.
And beside her, a weapon flickered into form.
The Doomsday Scythe.
A blade shaped to reap realms. Elegant. Jagged. Inevitably cruel.
Ishtar took it in hand like it had always been hers.
"I am deeply honoured, Mother."
Her voice carried across sanctified waters, resonant and electric.
Even the skies bowed.
Ouroboros let out a low whistle.
"She suits you," he said lazily. "Her Nihilpotence already eclipses what you wielded during our last fight. And Marduk... well. Crimson spectacle and mindless devotion make quite the combination.
"Your fang and your claw. They'd humiliate Sathiel. Even Theoktonos.
Though... if her latent potential awakens—and if his chains were ever broken—"
His eyes gleamed.
"Now that would be a battle worth remembering."
One of Tiamat's heads purred—a sound that could shatter worlds if she chose.
Not a threat.
A suggestion.
"Everyone settle in," she commanded, her tone as soft as thunder. "Ouroboros and I have business to discuss."
She narrowed her eyes.
"He'll be cooking tonight's feast. If any of you so much as breathe wrong—you will be on the menu."
The gods flinched.
She turned toward the Abyss Garden, surveying its impossible beauty.
"This realm is no sanctuary. It is my capital. The Abyss is my army. This—its heart.
Let it stir you, for it stirs even me."
Her gaze fell on Ishtar—an icon made of fire and prophecy.
"Ishtar, take command.
Ea—support her."
The words weren't spoken.
They were bestowed.
Ishtar sprang from her perch on Tiamat's brow, suspended mid-air. Her voice rang like banners in flame.
"As Empress Tiamat commands!"
Her hair danced in the starlight—burning, bright, divine.
She turned her gaze upon Ea.
The sage stepped forward—calm amidst divinity, older than language. The other gods fell silent.
"Understood," he said simply. "Together, we shall build an empire to outlast even Eternity."
Thus began the Empire of the Abyss Garden.
The pantheon dispersed.
Not as scattered stars, but as architects of a divine constellation.
Ishtar—tactician, orator, and sovereign by fury—conducted the divine chorus with merciless precision. Every command struck like thunder in marble halls. Every word she spoke lit sacred fires in their bones.
Her decrees weren't orders.
They were prophecy.
Beside her moved Ea, quiet as entropy. Measured. Inevitable. While Ishtar conjured nations from thunder, he laid the unseen foundations—governance matrices, resource distributions, divine equity models written in golden script. Equilibrium, defined.
But even amid his arithmetic, his mind wandered.
What is justice in a world of immortals?
What becomes of mercy when time loses meaning?
Beneath moonlight and sapphire-leafed canopy, he and Ishtar debated often. Not as governors, but as dreamers. Their sparring of thoughts beneath those twin moons became more than governance.
It became scripture.
And scripture, in this realm, became reality.
This was no empire. Not merely.
It was a sanctuary of inquiry.
A crucible for creation.
A world where even gods paused to ask:
Why do we exist?
Across endless plains, the empire bloomed.
Forests shimmered with iridescent trees, their bark whispering old names. Marble towers reached into a sky painted with alien constellations, unknown even to the stars. Lantern-lit paths wound through luminous gardens and rivers clear as divine thought.
In every courtyard, gods paused.
Not in worship.
In reflection.
At its heart stood Axisarbour—a peak sculpted from stillness itself.
Crowning it, the Lunar Citadel rose. Sapphire domes. Halls frescoed in living memory. Paintings that moved. Histories sung by light. Its libraries overflowed with scrolls not written, but remembered.
A city of memory.
A temple of knowledge.
And within it, peace.
Not silence.
But meaning.
Gods worked. Gods questioned. Gods grew.
Above it all—on Axisarbour's highest terrace, where even divinity thinned like air—Tiamat and Ouroboros arrived.
Their business meeting was held within the Cloisters of the Fell Dragon's Deceit. Modest, externally. Stone and stillness. A hut unworthy of its occupants.
But within?
The interior spiralled into vastness.
Nihilpotence shaped its geometry. Space folded inward, retextured by possibility.
Tiamat had let Ouroboros design it.
He'd crafted a still-living echo of a long-dead world.
Tatami floors. Latticed shōji doors painted with fading cherry blossoms. Moonlight pooled over straw mats. The scent of sandalwood and rain on stone curled through the air like memory.
They sat across from each other in silence.
No wind.
Only birdsong.
Only water.
A hush, older than language.
Tiamat broke it, as if resuming an old conversation.
"To inspire terror in both gods and mortals... I planted one of my heads into their world."
A smile tugged at her lips.
"But the Void intervened."
A pause. Her voice softened—drawn thin, like silk under strain.
"Curious, isn't it? I was her first. The most beloved. The first non-concept. And yet... she restrained me."
She didn't sound bitter.
Across from her, Ouroboros sat cross-legged on a straw mat. Tank top white, sleeves rolled. Nike logo gleaming faintly like some ancient crest. Chopsticks in hand. Aura relaxed.
"Aha! Hotpot's ready," he chirped, scooping tofu and chicken breast from the simmering pot. "Went with chicken stock—light sodium, high protein. Gotta keep the coils lean."
Steam curled between them like incense in a forgotten shrine.
Tiamat—goddess-empress, slayer of pantheons—watched him with the expression of someone debating whether to incinerate the table or wait for dessert.
"You realise, Tia," he said between bites, "if the Void acted against you... it wasn't out of hate."
He plucked a mushroom.
Her stare could fossilise Deicides.
She said nothing.
But her silence demanded something.
Ouroboros slurped his tofu, sighed in delight.
Then, with a shrug:
"Alright, alright. Lore dump incoming. Brace your soul-core."
He set down his chopsticks with reverent precision.
"The Void isn't just a thing. She's the thing. The absolute. She transcends nonexistence. Floats beyond the Unknowable. You know that name—Apsu? That was one of her shadows."
A beat.
"This cycle... she's incarnated as a Japanese high school girl."
Tiamat's eyes narrowed.
Ouroboros nodded.
"Name's Ayame Kurohime. I know. Don't laugh."
Tiamat didn't laugh.
Her silence deepened.
So he went on, voice low and woven with memory.
"She's got a twisted sense of humour. Sows fragments of herself—Void Shards—into other beings. That's how she spawns her kind. The Voidkin. Not followers—symptoms. Echoes. Fractures."
He glanced down at the broth, eyes unfocused.
"One of them—K?ss'Ius—painted nightmares like lullabies. Part of the Tenebris Monochrome.
I fought him once. Stalemate. Still taste the colour of that battle in my dreams."
He coughed. Either from the memory or a rogue bit of broccoli.
"They say we're all inside her. Her stomach, metaphorically. Her sisters—the Unknowable Ones—exist outside even the Void.
Her title among them? The Unknowable Void."
He paused. Smirked.
"But Azathoth—chaotic idiot that he is—started calling her The Ineffable One."
Tiamat raised a brow.
"Really? I thought that was a rumour."
She reached across the table, picking up a broccoli floret with the grace of an executioner examining her next victim.
"Not the skirmish. Her. Incarnating. As a schoolgirl."
A slow breath.
"And Azathoth? Dragged into coherence? That shapeless moron was where I used to relieve myself between annihilations."
She took a bite. Chewed. Blinked.
"...This is delicious," she muttered, annoyed. "I wonder if she'll taste as good."
A low laugh rippled from her. The walls quivered.
"Hey, Ouroboros. If you beg, I might make you my personal chef."
Another bite.
Half-lidded eyes. Silent pleasure.
"Still... almost pathetic. A dragon nearly undone by hotpot."
She stared across the simmering pot.
"Tell me something, loong-boy.
Did you conjure this... or actually cook it?"
Ouroboros grinned like a man just knighted for culinary excellence.
"Manually. Of course." He gestured grandly toward the simmering hotpot. "Listen and learn, Fell Dragon of Ruination."
With a flourish, he raised his chopsticks as if he were a wandering swordsman about to demonstrate an ancient technique.
"First, the broth—whole chicken, ginger, garlic, quartered onion. Simmered for hours. Skimmed, strained, clean and light. Perfect for divine digestion."
He held up the chopsticks like a conductor's baton, his eyes gleaming with delight.
"Then: lean chicken breast. Thin slices. Tender texture. Tofu, firm. Shiitake mushrooms. Broccoli. Spinach. I thought about enoki and bok choy but decided to go minimalist today."
He nodded solemnly, as though revealing the secrets of the cosmos.
"Set the hotpot cooker. Poured the broth. Gentle simmer. We eat as we go—add what we want, cook what we need. A ritual. A slow burn. A conversation between palate and soul."
Tiamat leaned back, a wisp of steam curling lazily between them. She licked her lips.
"Hmph. You're a better chef than prophet."
"Well," Ouroboros said, plucking a tofu cube, "prophets get burnt at the stake. Cooks get thanked. Or devoured. Depending on the goddess."
The broth simmered. The moonlight stirred.
Tiamat's gaze was unreadable as she lifted another piece of chicken to her lips. She chewed slowly, swallowed once, and then spoke, as though handing down a divine verdict.
"I take my compliments back."
But she kept eating, her movements unhurried.
"Chicken's good. Vegetables are crisp. Broth's light—refreshingly mortal. A welcome break from the usual eldritch entrails."
Across the table, Ouroboros nodded with solemn pride, his cerulean dragon tattoo faintly shimmering along his arm.
"Good food is a spell," he said, voice deepening with conviction. "Each step, an incantation. Every ingredient, a sigil. The process is the magic. A proper meal sharpens the mind—and tempers the soul."
Tiamat exhaled softly.
And, despite herself, sighed.
Leaning back against the smooth grain of the chapter house wall, she murmured—half to herself, half to the air:
"That was delicious."
Startled by her own admission, she rose. Silver-armoured fingers brushed against the doorframe. She opened the panel, and moonlight poured in like silver from a divine grail.
"I'm heading back to the palace," she said, her tone suddenly distant, as if already leaving. "This realm's got corners I haven't explored... and indulgences I haven't claimed."
She stepped out into the starlit hush, her shadow trailing behind her like the memory of a storm.
Ouroboros remained seated, leaning back against the trunk of a sacred tree. Shadows and moonlight painted hieroglyphs across his face. He didn't turn to watch her leave.
"I think I'll stay a while," he said, voice soft but resolute. "There's something in this place. Something worth lingering for."
His eyes remained fixed on the silent garden. He didn't need to see her leave. It was enough to feel the subtle tremor in the air as she walked away.
Far below, in the silver-lit streets of the empire, a ripple passed through the divine weave.
A figure cloaked in white emerged from the ether like a whisper returning to its breath. Her hood concealed most of her face, but strands of crimson hair spilled free—fiery and wild, like the last rays of a dying sun.
She paused, her senses reacquainting themselves with the world. She took in the change, the shift in the atmosphere.
"I haven't been gone that long... have I?"
Her voice was soft, barely above the wind.
"This place... it's changed."
Then, without warning, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder—venomous, certain.
"You've reached your end, trespasser," growled Nergal, the god of the Underworld.
Beside him stood Ninurta, his eyes narrowed, calculating. His hand rested upon the sacred warhammer, Sharur, its ancient voice whispering warnings in low thunder through his thoughts.
"I wouldn't provoke her," Ninurta murmured, his words not born of fear, but simple fact.
Nergal scoffed.
"She may be dangerous, but danger sharpens me."
He swung his gaze back to the woman. The divine presence radiating from her only grew stronger, pressing against the space around them.
But before Nergal could say another word, his boast died in his throat.
In one fluid motion, so clean it seemed preordained, the woman seized Nergal's wrist.
Her grip was absolute.
And then—
A wet crack.
Bone splintered, loud and sickening. Screams followed, echoing like thunder in the empty streets.
With a twist of her wrist, she ripped the arm clean from its socket and tossed it into the air. It vanished into the aether, spinning like a discarded prayer.
Nergal collapsed to one knee, howling, blood pouring like rivers from the stump of his arm.
Rage surged through him, and he reached for Gidimsar, his massive mace, intent on vengeance.
But the weapon betrayed him.
Mid-swing, Gidimsar turned on its master.
With a brutal snap, its sacred adamantium slammed into Nergal's own face, crushing his skull, nose, and jaw with punishing force. The sound of bone shattering filled the air like a twisted song.
Blood fountained from his mouth as he staggered back, his weapon now inert beside him in the dirt.
The woman rolled her knuckles, flexing her fingers like a dragon waking from slumber. Her hood slipped back, revealing her face.
Her eyes—blood red, like the setting sun over a battlefield. Warpaint streaked across her skin, like ritual scars marking her as something beyond godhood.
A grin curled on her lips—a grin that had devoured gods and still hungered for more.
She didn't glow. She didn't shout. Her presence simply expanded, overwhelming the very cosmos. It folded itself to her silhouette.
And then—
A pulse.
An aura erupted—not pressure, not raw energy—but dread.
A tide of existential certainty rolled outward, not just felt, but known. It didn't belong to this moment. It belonged to every timeline, every probability, every dream that had ever existed.
It was Aura of Inevitable Angst.
Reality itself knew her.
"Barbarians now rule this realm?" Her voice rang through the air, as sharp as polished steel drawn from myth. "Then allow me to reintroduce hierarchy."
She took a step forward.
"You're standing before the alpha."
Nergal couldn't move.
Ninurta couldn't breathe.
They were locked—not by paralysis, but by narrative.
Their divine vessels, their very mythic cores, were frozen in place, bound across all omniversal threads.
Stepping out of a nearby temple, Ishkur strolled out with a dazed grin. Draped over his head like a trophy were Ningal's celestial undergarments, perched with an elegance that defied logic.
He rounded a corner and collided—full force—with Ninurta's frozen frame.
The divine panties fell over one eye like a rogue eyepatch.
"What the fuck, man—?"
He trailed off.
Because he saw her.
And just like that—
The same paralysis took hold.
Not fear of death. Not fear of pain.
But the primal dread that predates language. The kind that slumbers in the marrow of all beings—the fear that says:
If you name it, it will speak back.
In that moment, the three gods understood a single truth with perfect clarity:
They had not encountered a woman.
They had encountered a force.
