The night remained quiet until then, as always. With only look up, Hecate saw the same stars that accompanied her since the beginning of time. However, the pressure on her head did not stop. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

The Titaness always smiled when she saw them. Her mother, Asteria, created them after seeing the darkness that enveloped her daughter. Each one of those brilliant diamonds lit up the sky, contrasting with the blackness that perpetually covered Hecate.

"Cousin, is everything okay?" Persephone's voice sounded distant. Still hesitating, Hecate turned her gaze, hid her emotions, and looked at the goddess. They were actually third cousins, but constant travel had brought them closer than they were at first.

Every six months, Hecate traveled between the worlds to deliver Persephone. First to her mother, Demeter, and then to Hades, her husband. No matter how much time passed, she would never understand why they were still so enraged with each other. Thousands of years had gone, and the siblings still needed her to be the mediator between them.

"Yes, worry not. I just was thinking." She smiled calmly at her, though her mind kept searching for the source of that imbalance.

Demeter did not wait. She stepped out of the bushes behind which she always waited for her daughter to return. As usual, she held her tightly without holding back the tears.

"Thank you," she said, looking at Hecate, her cousin's daughter. The Titaness preferred not to think about her family most of the time. The family tree was confusing enough, and although she knew who was who and what their relationship to her was, she preferred to stick with simple classifications. And without descendants.

"You are welcome."

The goddess of harvest and agriculture bowed her head in respect, a gesture that Hecate imitated with her three heads. She seldom used her triple aspect, which infused respect in all who saw her except her parents and grandparents. Persephone's travels were one of those times.

The queen of the underworld took one last look at her before leaving with her mother, who seemed to be in a hurry. As usual. Hecate just smiled at her, bowed her head once more, and waited for Persephone to be far enough away.

She liked spending time with her, and she was one of the few Olympian goddesses who seemed to really think before she acted. Everyone else, or the great majority, said it be in honor of the truth, let themselves be carried away by their baser instincts. Her second cousin, Zeus, her mother's first cousin, was the living example of this.

Virtually every story in her family began with him and his desire to have sex. Hecate still found it hard to believe that she was closer to him than to Persephone. While she was keeping the underworld in check along with her husband and uncle, Hades, and later helping Demeter with the world of men, Zeus only seemed to care who else to sleep with. And he was precisely the one who killed Cronus, her great-uncle.

Asteria had told her in detail how he had eaten all his children, from Hestia, his first-born, to Poseidon, the youngest before Zeus was born, the sixth of his descendants. With the arrival of the god of thunder, Cronos lost the throne after he opened his belly and took out his brothers.

Hecate still remembered the battle that arose as a result of it and how precisely Zeus had achieved the fall of the Titans and the giants, crowning himself as king of the gods. Now he only seemed to want to compete with his son Dionysus for the title of the most libertine. No one was surprised that she preferred to stay with Hades most of the time, but this time she would stay a little longer in the world of men. The annoyance continued, but stronger.

The Alcyonian Lake, in Lerna, was among her favorite places. She enjoyed it most when the hydra was alive, a monster that could be very eloquent given the opportunity, but Heracles disagreed. Son of Zeus had to be. It even seemed like an insult. Hecate smiled at the idea before calming down once more.

Bowing to the crystal-clear surface of the lake, Hecate's reflection distorted, giving her a corrupted image of herself. The Titaness entered her unique facet, more similar to the aspect of humans. The water calmed at that moment, allowing her to clearly see the source of that energy.

A tingling in the body that went down her back to her heels told her that it was something that came from the underworld. The colors of her reflection were altered, changing to darker tones, but also to strong lights that blended with black. Hecate blew into the lake, shaking them as if she were Poseidon himself, imposing order on the waters. However, although she needed answers, the images were confusing.

A disturbed groan escaped her throat. Was it possible that someone was hiding something from her? She hoped not. For the sake of the gods and the Titans, she hoped not. Hecate rose, spread her night cloak across the land, traveling to the nearest crossroad. The barking of a dog showed her the way, and the lady patted its head in thanks when she arrived. The animal gasped happily, feeling younger and noticing its much brighter black fur.

By placing her pale hand on the ground, her white skin glowing under the rays of Selene, her second cousin, Hecate felt the vibrations of the ground. Something was wrong. The land itself rejected this... thing. She heard the beat of a battered heart, weak, barely able to stay alive.

A heart that shouldn't be beating.

Hades's voice thundered in her head.

HECATE.

I know. I just felt it. The Titaness rose angrily. The sky was instantly dark.

Do you know anything about this?

Give me a second.

The images flashed one after the other in front of her eyes, each melting into the shadows of the worlds. The right with those of the living, and the left with that of the dead. It didn't take long to find the cave from which that sound came.

The name eluded her, but she knew he was a clumsy, inept god, useless in every sense of the word. Obviously, he wasn't capable of planning something like that, which made it that much more dangerous in her eyes. Many of the gods thought he was just an idiot, they preferred to ignore him, but Hecate knew how serious a disaster like the one that seemed to have happened could be.

The rest of her body dissolved into the darkness of the night, moving across the planet, until she returned to where she was and traveled back to the underworld. The pressure increased as she entered the depths. Her whole being seemed to want to shake, sickened by what she felt, as if something that belonged to her by right was being taken.

Koalemos.

The name vibrated in her mind.

Koalemos. Koalemos. Koalemos.

A bastard son of Nix herself, the daughter of Chaos. Her great-great-aunt. One of the first beings to exist when there was nothing. One of the primordial titanesses. Hecate still remembered her. Always dressed in black, the darkest that could exist, darker, dense, and heavier than the one she wore, who was the goddess of darkness. But Nix was the night itself, darkness.

After the war was over, it had been Nix who locked Koalemos in the lowest and most miserable level of the underworld, making sure he couldn't get out. Hades was puffed up with pride at being the one in charge of keeping an eye on his erratic ancestor and vowed not to fail. Apparently, even the god of the dead could be wrong.

Like the darkest shadow of all, Hecate moved through the corridors that she knew so well. The souls fell out of her way, terrified, eager to keep as much distance as possible. Several of them screamed at her presence, bringing with them the memory of physical death, making them relive those last moments.

The Titaness used to enjoy her emotions. She fed on fear, grief, pain, and loss, gave and withdrawn them as needed by each soul, and strengthened every time they surrounded her. Her being shuddered much more when it was the deceased who were affected by her presence, and she allowed herself to enjoy the changes she caused in the environment. But something more important had happened.

The erratic image of Koalemos appeared before her eyes as a part of herself reached his cell in the underworld. The bastard had been searching for what he had never missed. His energy was tainted. Hecate felt that the walls created by Hades himself were shaking trying to contain him. Now it was something else, something no one had ever seen.

Nix , Nix , Nix. She repeated the name in her mind several times, drawing closer and closer to the cell. Her great-great-aunt used to be the most remote of all the children of Chaos, the primal entity that originated everything that was and what is. As far as she knew, she only cared about passing through the sky, watching that her darkness covered everything, and very rarely did she notice the calls of her own descendants. Hecate smiled at the thought of humans asking for her intervention in their worldly affairs.

Who were they to ask Night itself to make an appearance, to favor them, to intervene for them? Hecate herself was selective about which pleas she answered and which she did not. They ranged from the simplest to the stupid. As if she had no more responsibilities. As if unrequited love, family quarrels, and men's greed worried her.

With all that, she was much more accessible and forgiving than Nix. Night acted on her own terms, not on the whims of mortals. However, Hecate waited for her to hear her call.

Nix , Nix , Nix, you who were born of Chaos,

Nix , Nix , Nix, you who are shadow, mystery, and torpor.

Nix , Nix , Nix, hear my call.

Nix , Nix , Nix, hear my cry.

Dark night that gives life and death,

I ask you to come to those you left.

The Titaness's voice sounded distorted even in her mind. Hades had repeated her call, word for word, right after she spoke them. He seldom called on his own ancestors, constantly busy with the ancestors of men. Hecate hoped that meant that Nix realized the urgency of the situation.

By the time they entered the cell, beneath Tartarus itself, Koalemos was unrecognizable. The prison had been precisely devised by Hecate and Nix, knowing that the God of Stupidity must be contained at all costs. With Tartarus being the prison of giants, Titans, and humans with the most profane hearts, placing it underneath them seemed like a good option. Judging from his appearance, something had gone wrong.

Koalemos never had a defined body, but was a dark humanoid energy with bright veins, almost always green, but that changed color when he wanted it. His body transformed depending on the disjointed ideas he had, reflecting the illogical world that inhabited him and that could destroy everything with just one touch. The cell, made of darkness, emptiness, and chaos, kept him suspended forever, unable to come close to anything. He barely had a few rocks to entertain himself with, which fell apart with one blow.

However, it now seemed to have a monstrous body, more similar to that of the hecatoncheires, giants with fifty heads and a hundred pairs of arms in charge of guarding the gates of Tartarus and, therefore, Koalemos' cell.

The bastard's muscles looked like a corpse's, his blackened teeth were about to fall out, as were his greenish fingernails and dry, yellow eyes. Black, empty veins furrowed the putrid skin, covered in pustules, infected scars, and bleeding irritations. A mane drier than the underworld's rocks covered the floor of what should be the prison of the god of stupidity, an entity that seemed to have lost the little sanity that allowed him to recognize his superiors.

Next to it, where there should be nothing, was a disfigured body, barely recognizable. One of the hecatonchires. The images of him, entering the cell, only to mock the bastard, and falling because of a mistake he caused, appeared before her wild eyes. Idiot, damned idiot. Hecate could swear Koalemos smiled.

When the empty eyes looked at Hecate like she was a rock, the Titaness saw what the future held. The primal titans free from their confinement, prowling the earth and sowing chaos, Olympus under the effects of anarchy, and the throne of Zeus cracked. Rain of fire, acid, and blood, rivers of ice that crossed the earth, which opened and closed under the will of the new god of the undead, the dead who came back to life. The one who managed to outwit darkness.

Forgetting all protocol, Hades shoved the Titaness out of the place, sending her back to the Alcyonian Lake, when Koalemos shook the underworld with a single step. She acquired her triple facet, wrapped in shadows like a sacred mantle, and with a desperate cry, she threw one of the torches that she always carried in her six arms. This was consumed in the black fire that she carried, summoning all Olympus and the gods to see her signal.

The image of Hades appeared before her eyes, as clearly as if she were seeing him in person. The necrotic body of the underworld god rose before the undead god. He had the same look of one who sees the world for the first time, and in his eyes you could see loyalty to his new creator. A smile cracked Koalemos's face, dropping several teeth.

The sky trembled, a sign that Olympus was coming to her, but Hecate only waited for Nix to hear her call.