Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

Erebus had trapped Zeus in a dimensional maze where every path led back to a mirror showing him what a disappointment he was.

Eris had convinced half the remaining gods that they were actually on a game show and needed to compete for prizes.

Phantasos had trapped several minor deities in a shared nightmare where they were all middle-school teachers dealing with cosmic entities as students.

Philotes was group-hugging some nature spirits so hard they were experiencing every emotion that had ever existed simultaneously.

And Nemesis was still running her "consequences therapy session" with Hera and about twelve other gods who were being forced to face everyone they'd wronged.

It was absolute chaos.

It was completely one-sided.

And Nyx's children were having the time of their immortal lives.

Just as Keres raised her hand to deliver what would undoubtedly be a lesson in mortality that the Olympians would never forget, a voice whispered in Nyx's mind—not heard by the others, but felt by every child of Night as a tremor in the very fabric of existence.

"Throne," the voice said quietly. "Don't do anything. Let them be."

Nyx's eyes closed, her perfect composure settling into something deeper than calm. When she opened them again, the starlight in her gaze had shifted, become something more ancient, more fundamental.

She looked directly at one of her children who hadn't revealed herself fully yet.

Keres.

The Goddess of Violent Death stood in the shadows at the edge of the throne room, and now, under Nyx's direct gaze, she became fully visible. Where the others were beautiful or terrible in their power, Keres was both and neither. She appeared as a woman in her prime, but her beauty was the kind that made mortals think of battlefields at sunset—gorgeous and terrible and absolutely final.

Her skin was pale as bone, marked with intricate tattoos that weren't tattoos at all but the recorded deaths of every warrior who had ever fallen in battle.

They moved across her flesh like living things, each mark telling the story of a life ended by violence. Her hair was the deep red of spilled blood, and her eyes held the exact moment between life and death—that single heartbeat where everything balanced on the edge of forever.

She wore armor that looked like it had been forged from the weapons of fallen heroes, and her very presence made the air taste like copper and ozone.

But it was her smile that marked her as something beyond even divine—it was the smile of someone who had personally ended civilizations and felt absolutely no regret about it.

Keres was the original reaper, the first death that had ever been dealt in anger rather than mercy. She was violence given form, war made manifest, the concept of ending something with purpose and fury.

"Let them go, Second," Nyx said, and her voice carried weight that made reality itself pause to listen.

The moment Nyx spoke her true name—Second—Keres straightened like she'd been struck by lightning. Her eyes widened, not with surprise but with the kind of instant understanding that came from eons of absolute obedience.

Second wasn't just what Nyx called her. It was what she was. The Second concept of Death ever created, right by Nyx (Throne) herself. The first child of the first mother, born when the universe decided that sometimes Death too needed help for things that needed to end.

Around the throne room, five pairs of eyes lit up with the same understanding.

Erebus—First, the original darkness that had given birth to space and dimension—went completely still, her dimensional claws retracting without conscious thought.

Eris—Third, the discord that had taught chaos how to dance—stopped her reality-warping with the abrupt precision of a stopped clock.

Philotes—Fourth, the love that had shown the universe how to care about itself—felt her emotional manipulations simply... cease.

Nemesis—Fifth, the justice that had given consequence its teeth—let her scales of retribution fade back into concept.

Phantasos—Sixth, the impossible dreams that had taught reality how to imagine—allowed her nightmare-weaving to dissipate like morning mist.

They knew. When Throne called them by their true names—the numbers that represented their place in the order of creation—it meant the command wasn't coming from their mother.

It was coming from HIM.

Nyx was Throne, the one who had created the concept of the concepts of Death itself. The one who had birthed Time and Space, not by making them but by giving them form and purpose. The one who ruled all Death's concepts while choosing to be known simply as the Primordial Goddess of Night.

But to those who truly understood, Nyx wasn't just a goddess.

She was the Throne of Existence. The seat upon which the ultimate authority sat.

And when that authority spoke through her, even the First Children obeyed without question.

Keres—Second—bowed deeply, her armor chiming like funeral bells. Without a word, she stepped back into the shadows, her presence fading until she was once again just another darkness in a realm made of night.

The other five followed suit, their various powers dissipating, their battle-ready stances relaxing into respectful withdrawal.

To the Olympian gods, it looked like surrender. Like the children of Nyx were backing down from a fight they couldn't win.

Zeus's chest swelled with vindicated pride. "Finally! Some sense! Now we can—"

But before he could finish the sentence, Nyx simply waved her hand.

Time wobbled.

Space hiccupped.

The Void itself seemed to stutter like a cosmic record skipping.

And the Olympians were gone.

Not banished. Not transported. Not teleported.

Simply... elsewhere. Returned to where they belonged, with the casual ease of someone cleaning up toys that had been left scattered around the living room.

The throne room fell silent except for the soft whisper of starlight against crystallized night.

Nyx settled back into her throne, her expression serene as still water.

"Well," Aphrodite said after a moment, her voice carefully neutral. "That was... anticlimactic."

"Necessary," Artemis corrected, though she looked like she wouldn't have minded seeing how a fight between Primordials and Olympians would have played out.

Nyx smiled, but it was a different smile now. Not the amused expression of someone watching entertainment, but the patient expression of someone who had just prevented a cosmic catastrophe.

"My children are powerful," she said quietly. "But they are also young. They forget sometimes that there are consequences to unleashing their full strength. Especially when mortals might be watching."

She looked toward where the Olympians had been standing, her gaze distant.

"And they forget that sometimes, mercy is not weakness. Sometimes, mercy can also be the greatest power of all."

In the silence that followed, none of them spoke about the voice that had stopped the battle before it could begin. None of them mentioned the true names that had been used, or what those names really meant.

But they all understood that they had just witnessed something far more significant than a simple family squabble.

And in that moment, even gods who thought themselves beyond authority had learned what it meant to be gently, firmly, absolutely corrected.

The question now was whether they would remember the lesson.

Or if they would need to be taught again.