The cold and timeless House of Hades had stood for countless years by the River Styx, heart of the lands of the pallid dead, where the gravest brother of Lord Zeus held court. In all that time, it had seen only a little change; a garden planted, an extension added to the grand and solemn archives. Impudent Zagreus, prince of the Underworld, had brought a sudden burst of activity to the place recently, setting the House contractors to work with all matters of frippery and frivolity; changing the colours of the drapes specifically to irritate his lord father and buying gewgaws and decorations which served no functional purpose at all.

But none of that registered with furious Kratos as he emerged, dripping, from the pool at the end of the hall and saw that once more he had been returned to this place of cold judgement which had set him to a seeming eternity of torment. With an irritated grab he snatched one of Zagreus's towels to blot the Stygian waters from his face, and then kicked over the pile.

"Oh!" Pale, scarlet-clad Hypnos jolted awake. "I'm awake, I'm awake, there's no need to— oh, phew, Lord Hades isn't back! I thought 'who would kick over a pile of towels' and immediately thought it was him!"

Tossing the towel down, Kratos stalked down the hallway, eyes alert for any threat. He remembered the last time he was here but hazily, but the oversized desk at the other end of the hall had been where dread Hades held court. The absence of the stern patriarch of the lands of the Dead was to his benefit, though the rage in his heart and his fierce desire for revenge for his imprisonment drove him to foolishly contemplate violence upon even the ruler of the Underworld.

"Cease your yammering," Kratos rudely growled. "Begone, foul voice, and leave me in peace."

"Sorry, who are you talking to?" asked Hypnos.

"Can you not hear this… this buzzing insect? It accompanied Zagreus and now it is following me too! Speaking without cease, narrating my every action!"

"No insects in the House! I think Dusa eats them — I kid, I kid, she's lovely! But what was that about a voice?"

Kratos decided that this white-haired fool was, indeed, a fool. "Silence. How do I get out of here?"

"Uh, let me just see, let me just see." Hypnos examined his scroll, which he had through wrapped wire attached to a board so that he did not keep on losing his place. "Oh! You're Kratos, the Ghost of Sparta, right? You've been killing Zagreus a lot. Did he get you for once? He'll be happy about that!"

The muscle under Kratos's right eye twitched. He loathed the underworld. "That pup could not stop me."

"Oh, hey. What's a Dread REDACTED? I've never seen one of them before!"

"Cease your yammering."

"It sounds dreadful whatever it was. Though I suppose the clue's in the name, given that— urk!"

Kratos lifted gentle Sleep by the throat, and dashed him repeatedly into the wall until his head broke. Then, squaring his shoulders, he—

"Wow, that really hurt! No wonder Zagreus doesn't like you much," Hypnos said, pulling himself out of the pool of death. He slapped his chest, and coughed up the waters of the Styx. "Bleh! Hey, mister, don't do that again! Although… huh!" He rummaged in his robes, retrieving his scroll. "Yep! Even I'm here! Hypnos, dashed against the wall by the Ghost of Sparta! Does that mean I need to give myself advice on how to avoid this?"

"Does no one in this wretched place shut up?" Kratos fumed, stomping back away from Hypnos's body towards Hypnos.

"Uh… maybe shutting up when a scary shade threatens me might help! Good idea, Hypnos! Hey, thanks for your help, Hypnos! Wow, I wish Zagreus or Meg or Alecto or Tis would say something like that when I help them! And—"

Kratos grabbed Hypnos by the shoulders, and drowned him in the pool, holding his head underwater until bubbles ceased to come up. Of course, that had the obvious consequence that Hypnos surfaced right next to his own deceased body.

"Urk", said gentle Sleep, wisely, as furious Kratos whirled on him. He checked his scroll. "Drowned by—"

"Why does nobody die and stay gone?" the mad Spartan fumed as he caved in Hypnos's skull with a single punch.

"Stop doing that!" Hypnos demanded, surfacing once more.

"No! You stop doing that! Stop… not-really-dying!"

"I am a Chthonic g—

"-od — stop that! — and we come back from—

"... really stop that! Something like this!" Hypnos pointed at the multiple bodies floating in the pool, all of them his. "Look at the mess! You're making so much work for Dusa! She's going to have to fish them out with a net, and have you ever seen a floating gorgon head try to use a net? It's really sad! She doesn't have hands, you know!"

With one last salutary blow for the road, Kratos winded Hypnos so he would cease speaking yet would not know the rejuvenation of death. The maddened demigod stormed off, trailing the red waters of the Styx down the hall in a thoughtless manner with no care for the amount of work that went into maintaining the House.

"Shut up! I will find you and kill you too!" Kratos the cruel and vindictive hollered into thin air. Perhaps his wits were scattered from his rageful madness to show such abuse to others. "Just leave me alone!"

Before him, the shades who had been queuing to await the return of Lord Hades and his oft-brusque judgements scattered. They fled the red-dripping madman whose footsteps were akin to the way men beat their shields with their blades before a battle — and rightly so, for Kratos may have loathed Ares the crow, but the handiwork of the God of War permeated his nature. They fled him for the same reason the innocent flee a field where two armies are to engage in bloody, pointless—

"Silence! Will you not leave me in peace!" Kratos yelled at thin air.

And thoroughly distracted, Kratos felt the red-hot pain of a spear sinking into the small of his back. He roared like a bull, twisting to escape the barb, and deflected the second strike with his chain-wrapped forearm. Before him was a green-cloaked man, beardless and blond curled, the sigil of the House worn upon his cloak-clasp.

"Hold, shade," cried green-eyed Achilles, champion of legend. "Your life is over — and you sound troubled. You rant and rave at the thin air. Lay down your arms. We can help."

"Achilles?" Kratos's nostrils flared. Blood dripped from his wound. "Is the hero reduced so far as to be a dog in this place's service? As to stab a man in the back?"

"Better a guard dog than a rabid stray," retorted Achilles, "and as for honour, mine is in serving this House to aid the one I love. So I will protect this place from you."

"Then you have no honour left!" Kratos roared, and threw himself at fleet-footed Achilles, tutor of the Underworld's Prince.

Such was the battle of two warriors, part-divine in life, now fellow shades in the Underworld. Achilles the Myrmidon was dextrous and skilled; his spear-work precise, and though he bore no shield he wielded his long-bladed spear in two hands in the manner of the Macedonians. His foe, Kratos the Spartan, was wounded and half-mad with rage, the cursed blades chained to him outranging the spear of Achilles and his strength the greater, yet his footwork and his bladework the lesser. Across the ashen flesh of Kratos the spear of Achilles danced its bloody path, scoring lines that matched the markings on his body, and his aggressive rushes let him close within the reach of the chained blades of Kratos.

But this is the truth; brave Achilles had gained wisdom and lost his killing edge. His heart no longer beat to the cry of the battlefield and the clash of the blade storm. He had tamed his rage, and in that learned inner peace and calm. But against Kratos kin-slayer, wisdom and serenity and self-acceptance had no place.

With snarl, Kratos threw himself forwards headfirst into Achilles's charge. He let the blade scrape along his ribcage, drawing deep wounds, and with a snarl trapped it between his body and arm, slick with his own blood. Spartan strength was always legendary, and with a twist and a wrench, he broke the spear clean in two.

Gasping, snorting, he grabbed Achilles by the head and brought him down upon the carpeted stone as if he was a stone and the floor a nut he sought to crack.

The unbreakable, blessed body of Achilles had perished before the city of Troy. And the shade of Achilles lacked his mother's cunning blessing.

Now in truth coated in gore as well as the waters of the Stryx, Kratos looked around wildly, searching for an escape. Already he knew that the shade of fleet-footed Achilles would rise from the waters of the Stryx, whole in body, just as Kratos himself had, and any guard or sentinel that he slew in his escape would likewise return. Speed was of the essence. To the left, he saw a number of ornamental vases and the bust of an unknown philosopher; to the right many shades trying to flee from him, packed as tight as a school of fish. There was nothing else to be seen there.

"Liar!" Kratos grunted. "I can see the garden exit as clear as day! You are trying to hide this, so I will go there."

Fortunately, the rage-filled Spartan had not heard of the art of reverse psychology—

"You make yourself my enemy, voice! I can hear the fear! This is no reverse psychology — that is just a lie of yours to delay me, just as you distracted me so that coward Achilles could stab me in the back! I will find you, voice, I promise you that!"

Yet in his violence and his threats, Kratos was undone. Perhaps he should have spent less time threatening an innocent narrator. The sonorous bell of death sounded out in the House of Hades, and the light itself faded as it does from a man's eyes at the moment of his passing. Grey-haired Thanatos, brother of Hypnos, appeared from a mote of light.

But the shade Kratos had no eyes for the visage of death. The kinslayer valued three things in his existence; his revenge, his wife and his daughter, and the third of these stood behind Thanatos, peeking out from behind him. Kratos looked and saw how she had changed; dressed in black to match her new master, the mark of the House of Hades upon her, a trainee's scythe in hand and the rosé colours of Elysium spreading further through her hair.

Calliope stared back at her father, and she too saw how he had changed. From her oldest memories of him; greatly. From her most recent memories of him; barely at all. She clutched the back of Thanatos's loose robes, eyes full of fear at the blood-soaked figure of her father who stepped towards her, eyes full of maddened pain.

"Step back, Kratos," Thanatos ordered, gently shifting Calliope back. He let his scythe fall, and drew his executioner's sword. The broad-bladed weapon sat naturally in his hands. "You cannot stand against death."

"Give me my daughter!"

"I will give you nothing save death, shade," Thanatos said.

"Then I will kill death itself!" Kratos screamed, and threw himself at Thanatos.

Night came, ancient and heavy and forced all to their knees, even Kratos. Her black star-speckled hair floating behind her, her eyes flashing with a deep and terrible rage. As one, every single light in the House was extinguished as Nyx reminded this place that she had ruled here once before Hades, and her hands had laid these foundations. Ancient Night, Primordial Night stepped forth once more, for she was the queen of the times when even the bravest men quail and when wicked deeds are done without witnesses or regret. It was Ares the crow that Kratos sought vengeance on, but the discord and chaos that Ares brings is just a weak echo of the inchoate times that saw witness to the birth of Nyx — and which men remember when night terrors seize them.

"Enough," said Night, and her word disturbed the darkness like an unseen bird, bringing with it the sensation of unseen wings.

"Yes, Mother Night," said Thanatos, head bowed.

Impossibly, incredibly, Kratos pulled himself up to one knee, though the darkness-remembered deeds he sought to flee from weighed heavily and bent his shoulders. "I will not be stopped! Not until I have my revenge!" he grated out. "Not by gods! Not by titans! Not by anyone!"

"You slay one of my sons, threaten another, disturb the peace of this house, and break the very laws of the Underworld. You will not be stopped? No matter what?"

"No!"

"I am Nyx, I am the Night; mother of Brightness and Dark, of Doom, Destruction, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Blame, Pain, Fate, Retribution, Deceit, Friendship, Old Age, and Strife. And also Zagreus. Kratos, now you know who I am; will you not yield?"

"Yield?" He pulled himself upright and took one step, then another, though each step was as heavy as if he was Atlas himself. "No chains will ever hold me forever; no pit is deep enough that I will not climb out! I will have my revenge! And I will kill anyone who gets in my way! Even you, Nyx! Anyone"

Night's pale face had a certain edge of sorrow. "You are a candle flame in the dark, Kratos of Sparta." She reached out with one delicate hand. "No more. If you will not be stopped, if you will not stay imprisoned, then — for the House of Hades — I will extinguish you."

The darkness thickened, intensified, becoming something palpable. The shades and gods who cowered in the chthonic darkness of the House of Hades averted their eyes, for some feared Nyx and others did not wish to see what she was about to do. Kratos took another step.

Then; a glimmer of light.

"Stop!" called out Prince Zagreus, striding forth from the Styx, lit by the burning footsteps of his wake. "Everyone, stop trying to kill each other for one moment! For just one moment!"