Divine Ascension: Reborn as a God of Power-Chapter 56: The Schism of Olympus (Part 16)

(1 day till the start of the war...)

The silence that followed was a vacuum.

The battlefield—if it could even be called that anymore—was a ruin of broken stone, scorched earth, and golden blood soaking into the very bones of Tartarus.

Ares lay motionless.

Not dead—gods didn’t die so easily—but he was as close to death as a deity could be without crossing the threshold.

His body was wrecked. Absolutely, irreversibly shattered.

His left arm was missing from the elbow down, severed clean in the final flurry of Hades’s assault. Bone jutted from the stump, crusted in drying ichor. The remains of divine muscle twitched weakly, still trying to reform but failing—too damaged, too drained. His right leg bent the wrong way at the knee, a grotesque spiral of fractured bone and torn sinew.

Ares’s chest had been torn open by the last strike—a diagonal gash from shoulder to hip, wide enough to reveal his ribcage split and flaring outward like a cracked shell. Parts of his stomach were outside his body, twitching faintly. His intestines coiled in unnatural spirals, half-severed, slathered in molten gold. His heart still beat, but weakly, fluttering like a dying bird in a broken cage.

His face... gods, his face. One eye had been crushed entirely, the socket sunken and black. His jaw hung uselessly, shattered at the hinge, with teeth scattered across the floor in a bloody trail. His hair was gone in patches, burned away. What little skin remained on his hands and arms was flayed, exposing raw divine tissue that struggled to regenerate.

Hades stood over him, hunched and still.

He wasn’t unscathed—his own body bore the scars of their divine brawl. One arm dangled limply at his side, dislocated and broken in three places. A ragged cut stretched down his back, leaking ichor in thick rivulets. His robes were burned away, exposing flesh blackened by soul-fire and marred with deep gashes. One horn-shaped bone jutted from his left shoulder, where armor had failed to protect him.

But he stood and was less damaged. Plus, because of being on his domain, his regeneration acted faster.

Ares’s blood still sizzled on the ground behind him, pooling into steaming gold, but Hades no longer paid it any mind.

Instead, he turned—toward the darkness. Toward them.

Behind the walls of broken obsidian, behind the veil of shadows that only he could part, the Titans still waited.

They had saw it all.

Every blow. Every scream. Every pulse of divine fury that had shaken Tartarus to its marrow. For a moment—just a moment—they had believed their time had come.

But now, they knew the truth.

Hades stood before them, undefeated. Wounded, yes—but not dead.

He stepped toward the edge of their prison. The veil parted, a slit of pure shadow revealing twisted, bound shapes. Limbs the size of mountains shackled in gold. Eyes like dying stars flickering in the dark. Chains sang softly, resonating with the old magic that bound the ancient ones in place.

Hades raised his head, his voice calm—cold as a tomb.

"You failed."

Silence answered him, vast and thick. But in the dark, something shifted.

"You bleed, Lord of the Dead. You are weaker than you think."

Hades’s lip curled, faintly. "And yet you remain in chains."

Another voice answered—feminine, ancient, cruel.

"Time will favor us someday. Even the mightiest crumble, even you."

"I have crumbled before," Hades replied. "And still I remain your jailer."

He stepped closer to the edge of the chasm, letting his shadows spill downward into the pit. The Titans shrank back instinctively—those who could. The souls bound to their prison moaned, sensing the growing presence of the master of Tartarus.

The shadows beneath him surged like a tide, wrapping around the bars of the Titans’ cell, reinforcing the ancient glyphs etched in divine blood. The bindings flared, pulsing once—twice—as Hades infused them with his power, drawn from the very ichor that still dripped from his wounds.

"I came here with no interest in what you were trying to do. But now?" His voice dropped. "Now you have my attention."

The ground trembled as the prison walls groaned louder.

"I will be returning soon," Hades declared, eyes glowing like molten silver. "And when I do, I will tighten your bindings, deepen your seals and whatever crack you have found will be purged." frёeweɓηovel_coɱ

"You dare—!" a Titan screamed, their voice erupting in fury and desperation.

"I do," Hades snapped.

His voice reverberated through Tartarus.

"I have had enough of war bleeding into my kingdom. Of pawns moving behind my back. Of Olympus taking me for a fool."

He raised his arms, despite the pain, and the very air answered. Chains of blackened gold coiled around him, thrumming with divine law. The ancient sigils binding the Titans ignited anew, glowing brighter than they had in millennia.

"You will not be freed," Hades whispered. "Not by Ares, nor Zeus. Not even by fate itself."

The veil closed with a thunderclap, sealing the Titans once more in darkness. Their cries faded into silence.

Hades turned from the chasm, face unreadable, expression carved from Stone and walked to the broken figure of his nephew, stopping just beside him.

Slowly, with a grunt of effort, Hades knelt beside the broken god of war. He looked down at Ares—he was still conscious and breathing, unbelievably.

Ares’s one remaining eye fixed on him, blood pooling in his mouth.

"You... you win," he rasped, the words barely audible through the hiss of steam rising from his ruined body.

"I don’t care about that, I will take you to Zeus." Hades replied coldly.

Then, without another word, he reached down and lifted Ares as gently as he could.

It wasn’t an act of compassion, it was more like a formality.

Even in this state, Ares was a god, and leaving him broken in Tartarus would only invite more chaos and more incursions from Olympus. Hades wasn’t about to let that happen again.

With a flick of his fingers, the air around them shimmered, and they vanished from the Underworld.

They reappeared in the throne hall of Olympus with the crack of displaced wind and the sharp tang of brimstone. Light streamed down through marble columns, painting golden lines across the polished floor. Hades stood in the center of it, carrying the broken god of war like a ruined trophy.

The silence in the hall was immediate and absolute.

Zeus stood at the head of the room, flanked by Hera and Athena. Apollo leaned against a pillar. Hermes stood frozen mid-step, mouth half-open, as if preparing to speak before realizing the weight of the moment.

Golden ichor dripped steadily from Ares’s body, forming a trail from the edge of the hall to the foot of the throne. Hades dropped him unceremoniously at Zeus’s feet.

A sickening wet sound followed. No one spoke.

Hades’s voice cut through the silence like a blade. "Your champion tried to liberate the Titans."

Zeus’s expression tightened. "Ares acted on his own."

Hades tilted his head. "Did he?"

The implication hung in the air, heavier than anything Ares had swung at him.

"I warned you," Hades continued, his voice rising, "warned all of you, that the next intrusion into my kingdom would not go unanswered. First it was Hermes—slipping in to talk to my prisoners. And now Ares, trying to liberate the Titans from their prison."

"You misunderstand the situation—" Hera began, stepping forward.

"No," Hades interrupted. "You misunderstand me."

He raised his broken arm and let divine energy crackle through his fingertips, casting long shadows across the hall. His presence warped the light. His rage boiled beneath his skin.

"I have bent, again and again, to Olympus’s games. I have remained in my realm, kept my domain from spilling into yours. And in return? You make deals behind my back."

His eyes locked on Zeus.

"You gave Demeter permission to break my deal with her regarding Persephone, no, even worse, you convinced her to believe she could broke a deal between gods."

Zeus met his gaze, unflinching. "It was a temporary allowance, part of a larger balance we are trying to—"

"Spare me the politics," Hades growled. "You play at diplomacy while undermining your own blood. I will not be your afterthought. Not anymore."

The hall trembled. The air itself seemed to dim around him.

Zeus straightened. "Careful, brother. You tread dangerously close to treason."

"No," Hades said softly. "I tread towards what is right."

He stepped back from Ares’s ruined body and stood tall. Taller than he had in centuries.

"I am joining Nemesis."

A gasp ran through the room. Even Athena’s stoic expression flickered with surprise.

Zeus’s face darkened. "You would ally yourself with them? You would betray me?"

"I would ally myself with anyone who thinks you have gone too far," Hades said. "Olympus has grown complacent and rotten. You think because we are gods, we are beyond judgment. But even we must answer for what we do."

Zeus’s hand clenched on the armrest of his throne. "You would fracture the Council—"

"It is already fractured," Hades barked. "You just refuse to see the cracks."

He turned from the throne and walked toward the exit, each step leaving streaks of golden ichor from his own wounds. His back was straight. His voice calm. But his presence was like a storm that refused to pass.

"Say what you want, brother, I know what I saw and what I endured. And I will not wait until another war god, or sun-born child, decides to tear through my gates again."

At the doorway, he paused.

Without turning back, he spoke one final sentence.

"If Olympus will keep disrespecting their allies... maybe Nemesis won’t."

And with that, he vanished, leaving only the faint smell of ash and a shattered god twitching in a pool of golden blood.

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