Chapter 567 - 567: Echoes of What Never Was
Nyx raised her hand with the casual grace of someone who had decided the universe needed a minor adjustment.
Time shuddered.
Reality hiccupped.
And then everything began to unravel backward.
The beaten gods floating around the throne room like broken toys suddenly snapped back to their feet, their injuries healing in reverse. The blood that had pooled from their defeats flowed backward into their bodies like red rivers running uphill.
Screams of pain became inhales of preparation. Tears of humiliation rolled up cheeks and disappeared into eyes that forgot why they had been crying.
The entire cosmic beatdown played in reverse—weapons flying back into hands, spells unweaving themselves, dimensional prisons opening to release their contents. Zeus's lightning bolt pulled itself out of Iris and returned to his palm.
Poseidon's tsunami of blood became water again, then retreated into whatever realm he'd summoned it from.
The throne room emptied as gods flew backward through space and time, their arrival becoming their departure, their entrance becoming their exit.
And then time stopped.
At the exact moment when Zeus and his faction had first decided to breach the borders of Nyx's realm.
Before they had seen the crystallized starlight throne. Before they had met the Six. Before they had learned what it meant to challenge beings who existed before the concept of challenge had been invented.
"There," Nyx said quietly, her voice carrying the satisfaction of someone who had just erased a particularly troublesome stain from existence. "Much better."
She gestured again, and the borders of her realm—already nearly impossible to breach if she didn't allow—became something far more absolute. Not walls, but the absence of the possibility of entry. Not barriers, but the fundamental concept that this place was not for them.
The Primordial Goddess of Night had just made her realm unreachable to anyone she didn't personally invite.
The gods trying to force their way in suddenly found themselves floating in the cosmic void between realms, confused and disoriented. They remembered preparing for their assault, remembered the righteous anger that had driven them to seek answers...
But they couldn't remember why they were now drifting in empty space instead of standing in Nyx's throne room.
"What happened?" Zeus demanded, his voice echoing in the emptiness. "We're—"
He stopped, confusion flickering across his features. About to what?
"Enter her realm," Poseidon finished, but his voice carried uncertainty. "Weren't we? But... why can't we?"
The gods looked around at each other, each one feeling like they'd just woken up from a dream they couldn't quite remember. There was a sense of something important missing, some crucial memory that kept slipping away every time they tried to grasp it.
Among them, one figure smiled.
Hypnos, Goddess of Sleep, drifted in the cosmic void with the rest of the confused gods, but her twilight eyes held knowledge that the others had lost. She remembered everything. The throne room. The beatdown. The creative humiliation that her siblings had dealt to these arrogant Olympians.
She remembered because she existed in the spaces between waking and sleeping, between memory and forgetting. Time could be rewound, but the dreams of what had happened remained.
Her mother had chosen mercy over justice. Again.
She didn't know why Nyx had reversed time instead of letting the lesson stand, but she trusted her mother's wisdom. There were always reasons. There were always consequences that stretched further than anyone could see.
"My lords," Hypnos said, her voice soft as whispered dreams but carrying enough authority to make even Zeus pay attention. "Perhaps you should not attempt to enter Mother's realm."
The gods turned to look at her, and for a moment, Zeus's eyes flashed with irritation. "And why not? We came here for answers, and—"
"Because," Hypnos interrupted gently, "she does not wish to see you. And when Night herself decides she does not wish to see you, it is... unwise to insist."
There was something in her tone—not threat, but simple fact stated with the certainty of someone who knew exactly what would happen if they tried to force the issue.
Ares stepped forward, still carrying the frustrated aggression that had driven him here. "We're not afraid of—"
Hypnos looked at him with eyes that held every nightmare he'd ever had, and the God of War's words died in his throat.
"Go home boy," she said, and somehow her voice carried the weight of cosmic inevitability. "There are no answers for you here. There never were."
And then she was gone, dissolving into dream-mist and twilight shadows, leaving the gods floating in empty space with the growing certainty that they had forgotten something important and the equally strong certainty that they didn't want to remember what it was.
***
Meanwhile, across the cosmic expanse, Parker led Cleopatra, Hector, Cassandra, and Isis to the top of his main palace, where the air itself hummed with the kind of ancient power that made your bones ache just breathing it in.
And there she stood.
Judgment.
Or at least, her statue.
The winged figure carved from what looked like crystallized starlight and Existential justice rose nearly fifty feet into the air, her perfect features set in an expression of absolute neutrality that somehow managed to be more intimidating than any scowl could ever be. Her wings were wide enough to cast shadows that didn't just block light—they weighed souls, measured worth, found you wanting before you even knew you were being judged.
Her eyes, even carved from stone, seemed to see through to the fundamental truth of everything they looked at. Not the surface truth. Not the convenient truth. The real truth. The kind that made people confess to crimes they'd forgotten they'd committed.
Just being near her was like standing in front of a cosmic lie detector that could read your thoughts, your intentions, and probably your browser history.
Cleopatra found herself wanting to drop to her knees and confess every political manipulation she'd ever orchestrated, every alliance she'd betrayed, every promise she'd broken for the sake of power.
Cassandra felt this overwhelming urge to spill every future she'd seen and chosen not to prevent, every warning she'd kept to herself because the truth was too terrible to speak. Isis experienced the bone-deep need to bow before justice incarnate and admit to every time she'd bent the rules because it was easier than doing what was right.
Even Hector, trained warrior that he was, had to shake his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears, fighting off the overwhelming reverence that threatened to drop him to his knees in front of a fucking statue.
"Ma'at!" Parker called out, his voice carrying both authority and the kind of genuine affection you'd use to greet an old friend who'd been away too long.
The four champions watched in amazement as a dark red-golden soul emerged from somewhere deep within Parker's chest—not violently, not like something being ripped out, but with the gentle intimacy of something that had been sleeping close to his heart and was finally ready to wake up.