Ares descends with Hades and Thanatos into the forgotten tunnels. The air stings with ozone and old tomb-dust, and fading violet runes crawl along the walls toward a sealed iron door ahead.
Hades lifts one hand, calm but hard-eyed, and points toward the door. The shadows around his fingers tighten, as if the dark itself feels the threat beyond it.
Thanatos
The source is close. If it anchors the throne, the whole realm stays broken.
Ares draws up his weapon, and the iron door answers with a low, buried thrum. The violet runes flare once, then begin to die, like a signal losing its last breath.
Hades
Beyond that door lies the root of the usurpation. Break it, and we may still restore death to the dead.
The seam in the iron widens a finger’s width. Cold light leaks through, and with it comes the faint sound of many voices, chained deep below the throne room.
✓ Quest Accepted
Destroy the source behind the sealed iron door
“Has anything else escaped from Tartarus besides Sisyphus and the Titans?”
NO, BUT (Likely, rolled 70)
Ares scans the dark, cramped space beyond the threshold, but finds only the lingering, cold residue of the Titans' failed siphon. No other entities stir in the gloom, and the silence of the abyss remains unbroken by any further escapees.
“I open the iron door wider”
SUCCESS (Legendary Strength, rolled +2)
Ares plants both hands on the iron slab and hauls. Metal grinds on stone, and the crack turns into a wide, jagged opening.
Cold violet spill washes the threshold. The chamber beyond is still empty, but the floor at the far end bears a black seam that runs into the wall like a healed wound.
Thanatos
That mark is wrong. It is not from the Titans.
Hades
Then we have found the hinge of it.
The seam twitches. A faint pulse answers from deeper in the Underworld, distant but unmistakable.
Ares
The door gives way fully.
Thanatos lifts his chin toward the dark opening, and Hades steps in beside Ares, gaze fixed on the pulse beyond.
“Is the pulse coming from something deeper than the Titans?”
NO, BUT (Likely, rolled 72)
The pulse does not originate from a deeper entity, but rather from the lingering, fractured essence of the Titans themselves, still clinging to the stone like a sickness.
Thanatos
It is not a new threat, but the echo of the old ones. The Titans left their stain behind, and it is festering.
“I strike the black seam”
SUCCESS (Legendary Strength, rolled +1)
Ares drives his blade into the black seam. The wall gives with a sound like stone splitting under ice.
Violet light bursts out, then gutters. Fractured Titan essence spills away in wisps, hissing as it loses shape.
Thanatos
The stain is breaking apart.
The seam collapses inward, and the pulse dies with it. The air turns colder, but quieter.
Hades
Good. That corruption is gone.
For a moment, the chamber settles. Then a dull tremor rolls through the floor from far below, as if something deeper has noticed the wound closing.
Thanatos
That was only a surface tether. Something remains beneath it.
Quest Complete
Destroy the source behind the sealed iron door
New Gift: Iron Will