The first thing that Hades saw was a vast mouth, covering the heavens, and the cruel king-god Cronus swallowed him whole.
In the next instant, the innate power and knowledge of a god flooded into his mind.
Hades, the god of [Subterranean Wealth], had not yet announced his arrival into the world before he was devoured by his cruel biological father.
Before him was an infinite darkness, viscous and suffocating. The divine spacetime power of Cronus was like a blade, cutting into Hades' newborn divine form.
He could feel his own divine power being slowly digested and absorbed—just like his sisters, who had also been swallowed into that belly, becoming part of the cruel king-god's nourishment.
Hades could not withstand the intense pain, and the newborn deity screamed silently in despair.
But just as his consciousness was about to fall into slumber, he suddenly noticed his sisters nearby.
Hestia, Demeter, Hera—their faint divine sparks flickered in the darkness like stars on the verge of being extinguished.
Forgive me...
This silent admission flashed through Hades' heart, and then he was seized by instinct.
In the chaotic darkness, Hades strained to reach out and touch the divine form of his sister closest to him. Her divine power was so tenuous, like a candle guttering in its final moments.
When the first thread of that divine power seeped into Hades' body, he nearly wept from the warm and familiar feeling.
It was power of the same origin as his own, born from the resonance of their maternal bloodline from the goddess Rhea. But this warmth was fleeting, replaced by the clarity brought by the restored strength.
As the divine power flowed into him, Hades felt his consciousness gradually clear, and the pain caused by Cronus's digestive forces was no longer unbearable.
He even began to perceive the boundaries of this dark space and the flow of spacetime power within it.
But his sisters, from whom he had drawn this divine strength, had their already feeble consciousness completely stilled, sinking into a deep slumber.
He felt their complete silence and could only silently promise them future recompense.
Hades perceived this invisible prison—without time, without space. He had no idea how to escape.
As a newborn god who had not yet assumed his sacred office, Hades could not draw divine power from the world.
In fact, his current divine power was meager, and he had to constantly expend it just to resist Cronus's absorption.
He could not pin all his hopes on a younger brother not yet born, whose arrival was uncertain.
Wait? That would mean leaving his own survival to insubstantial fate and the hands of others.
In this absolute darkness and silence, time lost all meaning, and only the pain of his dwindling divine power was real.
Hades understood clearly that if he defended himself passively, his mind would be shattered by this endless void and slow torment long before Zeus ever came.
He would go mad, lose himself in eternal suffering, and ultimately become a silent part of Cronus's power.
No.
He could not wait for salvation; he must save himself.
Subterranean Wealth... His sacred domain. It was not merely a pile of gold and gems; it was the embodiment of all value hidden beneath the earth.
Here, in Cronus's belly—a place severed from heaven and earth, where time and space were distorted—his connection to the earth should have been severed. But the 'underworld' was his domain, and even if this 'underground' was the belly of a king-god!
An extremely bold, even blasphemous, thought exploded in his mind.
Was the prison itself, Cronus, not the greatest, darkest, and most 'wealthy' 'subterranean' treasure-house of all, right here in his stomach?
He began to try to mobilize his meager divine power, not using it forcefully, but guiding it with delicate precision.
The process was slow and arduous, like dancing on a knife's edge. Any excessive fluctuation in power might draw Cronus's attention, with disastrous results.
A faint resonance occurred. Not from the outside world, but from the 'boundaries' of this dark space, from the remnants of 'value' that had been digested, absorbed, but not yet completely annihilated.
They were scattered, chaotic, bound and assimilated by Cronus's power.
Hades' divinity, like a precise furnace, began to forcibly extract these ownerless 'treasures'.
Gradually, a small point of golden light coalesced in his palm. It was not pure energy, but a concretized 'value'—a rune that seemed forged from the purest gold. Then came a second point, like deep obsidian; a third, like flowing silver... Countless points of light, each symbolizing the concept of 'wealth', were forcibly summoned and converged before him.
To forge them into a weapon or shield would only invite the instinctive counterattack of Cronus's divine power.
What he created was an 'illusion', an 'equivalent'. Using his own divinity as a template, he molded this 'subterranean wealth' into a divine form identical to himself—a 'divine body' radiating a majestic divine aura, but devoid of his own will.
At the moment of its creation, Hades felt a wave of weakness he had never known, nearly draining him completely.
But he dared not stop. He immediately severed his active connection with most of his divine power, drew his consciousness in to the utmost limit, becoming like a true, inert stone, sinking into the shadow cast by this double.
The 'Wealth Double' instantly became the most prominent 'entity' in the dark space. It radiated a pure and powerful aura of energy, immediately drawing the full 'attention' of Cronus's digestive system.
The spacetime power surged like a shark scenting blood, engulfing and constricting the double.
Hades was gambling—gambling that Cronus slumbered, and his instincts prioritized only the most 'conspicuous' targets. Gambling that this double, forged from countless treasure remnants, would buy him enough time to catch his breath and hide.
Clearly, he had gambled correctly.
In the precious, stolen time that followed, Hades fell utterly silent.
He no longer perceived the outside world, nor even thought of it. He drifted in this viscous current of darkness and chaos like a truly dead thing.
He relinquished control of his power, the dignity of a god, for a single purpose: to hide.