Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

Zeus materialized in Nyx's throne room with all the subtlety of a cosmic freight train, lightning crackling around him like a crown of pure destruction. Behind him came his chosen faction—Poseidon with water swirling in deadly spirals, Ares radiating bloodlust that made the air itself taste like copper, Hephaestus carrying weapons that hummed with the power to unmake reality, Dionysus swaying with wine-dark madness, Hermes and others vibrating with nervous energy.

They'd expected to find three goddesses cowering in the darkness, maybe plotting in whispered voices, definitely not prepared for a direct confrontation.

What they found instead made Zeus's confident stride falter mid-step.

Nyx sat on her throne of crystallized starlight like she'd been expecting them for centuries, completely relaxed, one elegant hand resting on the armrest while the other gestured lazily in the air. Aphrodite and Artemis flanked her, but they weren't hiding or preparing for battle—they looked like they were watching the universe's most entertaining comedy show.

But it wasn't their casual attitudes that made Zeus's blood run cold.

It was the others.

Arranged around the throne room in a perfect semicircle, like an honor guard of nightmares given form, stood Nyx's children. Her creations. The Primordial forces that had shaped existence before the first Olympian had drawn breath.

And every single one of them was smiling.

Not pleasant smiles. Not welcoming smiles. The kind of smiles that said they'd been hoping someone would be stupid enough to try this, and now they were about to have the most fun they'd experienced in millennia.

"Hypnos," Nyx said calling out to her daughter who had arrived with the gods, her voice carrying gentle reprimand and cosmic authority in equal measure. "You've been playing games again, haven't you?"

The Goddess of Sleep—who Zeus suddenly realized had been at Olympus but hadn't paid attention to, in their meeting, listening to everything—stepped forward with a bow so deep it was practically prostration. She was ethereal in the way that dreams were, with silver hair that seemed to drift in non-existent wind and eyes the color of deep twilight.

"I wanted to see," Hypnos said, her voice soft as whispered dreams but carrying undertones of power that made reality bend around the words. "For the first time in eons, gods were coming to Mother's realm to fight. I... I was curious."

She straightened, and her smile was absolutely radiant with malicious joy. "I apologize for the deception, Mother. But it was worth it to see their faces when they realized what they'd walked into."

Nyx's laugh was like starlight given voice. "Oh, my dear child. You've always been too clever for your own good. Go, join your siblings. Let's see what our guests have to say for themselves."

Hypnos bowed again and melted back into the semicircle, where Zeus could now see the true scope of what they were facing.

Thanatos, the Personification of Death himself, stood with his obsidian scythe resting casually against his shoulder. He looked like a beautiful young man carved from midnight, except his eyes held the final moments of every life that had ever ended.

The three Moirai stood together like a trinity of devastating beauty. Clotho, who spun the thread of life, appeared as a woman in her prime with fingers that moved in hypnotic patterns, weaving fate itself from starlight and shadow. Her beauty was the kind that made mortals forget their own names—perfect features carved from ivory and moonlight, with eyes that held the birth of every possibility.

Lachesis, who measured the length of life, stood tall and regal, her beauty more mature and terrifying. She looked like a queen who had ruled since the dawn of time, with silver hair that moved like liquid mercury and features so perfect they hurt to look at directly. In her hands, a golden rod that could measure the span of galaxies.

Atropos, the cutter of threads, was the most beautiful and most terrible. She appeared young, barely out of girlhood, with features so delicate they seemed carved from the first light of creation. But her eyes... her eyes held the ending of everything.

In her small, perfect hands, she held scissors that could cut the lifelines of gods, and when she smiled, it was with the satisfaction of someone who knew exactly when everyone's story would end.

Morpheus, the shaper of dreams, appeared as an eight-year-old child with dark curls and eyes that swirled with every dream that had ever been dreamed.

But there was something ancient in that young face, something that suggested this child had been eight years old since before time began, and would remain so until the last dreamer fell asleep.

Nemesis, Goddess of Revenge and Divine Retribution, radiated an aura that made every guilty thought Zeus had ever harbored rise to the surface of his mind like oil on water. Her smile promised that every wrong he'd ever committed was about to be paid in full.

Eris, Goddess of Discord and Chaos, practically vibrated with excitement. Her presence made the air itself want to argue with the concept of breathing.

But it was Erebus, the Primordial Goddess of Darkness and Dimensions, who stepped forward.

Where Nyx was the gentle darkness of night and rest, Erebus was the hungry darkness that devoured light and hope and left nothing behind.

Her aura didn't just fill the room—it consumed it, making the crystallized starlight throne seem dim by comparison. Reality itself seemed to bend away from her, like existence was afraid to get too close.

She was tall, impossibly tall, with skin that looked like the void between galaxies and eyes that held the birth and death of universes. But there was something... diminished about her. As if she was operating at only a fraction of her true power.

Nyx looked at her daughter with something that might have been maternal pride and cosmic anticipation. 'Soon, my dear Erebus. Soon you'll be whole again and regain your full dimensional powers. The wait has been long, but it's almost over.'

Erebus smiled at the gods, and the expression was sharp enough to cut through destiny itself.

"Zeus," Erebus said, and her voice was the sound of stars going out, of civilizations being forgotten, of the last light in the universe finally dying. "King of the Olympians. God of the Sky and Thunder."

Each title fell from her lips like an epitaph.

"You dare enter the realm of Night. You dare bring weapons of war into the presence of the First Darkness. You dare—"