Hades appeared on Othrys, skin pale and eyes dark. He'd been too wrapped up in relishing the return of his power to notice what else had changed, it was only when Persephone pointed it out the quiet that Hades realised something was...off.
She was wrong of course; it wasn't quiet, it was silent. The world was never silent, how could it be when it was filled with the living? Life was noise; silence belonged to the dead.
But the world was silent, which Hades had found...more than slightly worrying. Obviously life still existed, but it wasn't really living anymore.
And he'd found out more. The clouds weren't moving, the trees weren't moving, even the sun, although still shining brightly in the sky, was transferring no warmth to the ground. Everything had just...stopped. Aphrodite's spell hadn't worked after all.
No, that wasn't right because the spell didn't originate with Love. It was Cronus' spell, and it had definitely worked.
Hades had left his wife with her mother and headed off to the Underworld to take back his rulership...only that hadn't worked out quite so well. He was God of the Dead again, and his other titles had been restored in full, but he wasn't king. Couldn't be king. It just...wasn't letting him take it.
Now that was really annoying.
He took a path up to his father's temple, the warm Othrys breeze doing little to remove the chill in the air that Hades left in his wake. It looked better than the last time he'd been here, closer to its former glory. It was unsettling.
Stopping, he looked up at the building, letting his eyes take in each refurbished detail. Hades didn't knock.