The dark, cluttered room seemed to shrink as Hades stood his ground, his presence expanding to fill every shadow between the discarded wrappers and the flickering screen.
He looked at the man who claimed to be the source of all his pain, and he did not see a god worthy of worship or a victim worthy of pity.
He saw a man who had lied to himself for so long that he had begun to believe his own fiction.
Hades stared at the author and stated, "Yes. You are wrong."
The words were not an insult, but a verdict, the final judgment of a King who had spent an eternity weighing the truth of souls.
The author flinched, his tired eyes searching Hades' face for a hint of hesitation, but he found only the cold, unyielding clarity of the Underworld.
