"I told you, boy," said Hades, voice low as a collapsing grave, "there is no escape from this place."
Zagreus exhaled, watching the vapor curl from his lips into the frozen air.
"This is giving Deja vu," said Zagreus, tightening his grip on the Stygian Blade. "Seem like you said that last time i sent you to the Styx."
A gust of wind tore across the clearing, dragging loose snow in spiraling sheets between them.
He moved first.
A dash across ice-slick stone — the sound sharp and sudden in the stillness — and his blade came down in a flash of infernal red. Hades vanished into shadow before it could land, reappearing in a burst of darkness behind him, bident already cleaving downward.
The impact split the frozen ground, sending shards of ice skidding across the arena.
Zagreus rolled through the shockwave, boots digging into snow as he came up and loosed a Bloodstone into the storm-lashed air. It struck true — embedding itself in his father's chest in a burst of crimson light that steamed against the winter cold.
Hades didn't so much as recoil.
In less than a second, once again he was tasting his own blood. Spear in chest, but he wasn't gonna give up so easily.
Or so he though, before his father used his trident to cut his head off.
"…Stubborn," his father muttered.
**
"Urhhh, you don't need to keep saying that every time I die" Zagreus thought to himself, after his mysterious narrator... well, narrate his dead for the 106 time.
The ceiling of the House of Hades greeted him like an old insult.
Cold marble. Flickering torchlight. The low, distant murmur of the dead. He could see the ghostly figures -color green- looking at him, some with admiration, some... he didn't know.
Zagreus lay there for a moment, staring upward, unmoving as the last phantom sensation of steel separating bone and sinew faded from memory. Again.
"…Right," he muttered, lifting a hand to rub at his neck. Still attached. Always was. Eventually.
The Blood pooled beneath him began its slow, familiar crawl back toward his chest - an old feeling indeed, but he didn't dislike it completely, only what it meant. Defeat.
From somewhere across the chamber came the dry scrape of quill against parchment.
"Welcome back, Zagreus," said Hypnos, far too cheerfully for someone who had just watched him get decapitated for the 106th time. "How was your—"
"Short," Zagreus cut in, sitting up with a groan. "Very short. You'd think after the first hundred tries I'd at least get to keep my head for a few minutes longer."
Hypnos tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Hm. Maybe try ducking next time?"
agreus stared at him.
"I did duck."
"Oh."
"What do you mean 'Oh,' you saw it!" Hypnos could only smirk at that, Zagreus didn't find it funny though.
He pushed himself to his feet, already feeling the pull — that quiet, inevitable whisper of the Styx dragging at his bones, urging him forward, outward, upward. Back into the cold. Back into the fight.
Back to his father.
Except—
It was still pulling.
Zagreus frowned.
The sensation didn't stop at the door to the courtyard like it always did. Didn't fade into the background hum of the Underworld's magic. It stretched further — thinner, sharper — like a thread hooked somewhere far beyond the realm of the dead.
"…That's new."
The torches along the walls flickered.
For a brief instant, the shadows bent the wrong way.
And then the pull became a yank.
The House vanished.
His vision was covered in dark in an instant, no sound, or smell. All dark.
"Erm Hypnos, are you seeing this?" But no answer came to him.
Some time passed, more than he could count, and he did count.
'1000020 seconds, 1000021 seconds Argggggh, what's happening!?' Zagreus though to himself, it had been a long time since he felt something. Well it was difficult to explain.
He couldn't do anything. He didn't breath, didn't fell asleep, or wake up for the matter, didn't feel hunger or thirst, not that he did anyways (being a god and all).
Warmth.
That was the first thing he noticed.
Not the burning, oppressive heat of Asphodel's magma seas, nor the dry chill of the Underworld's stone halls — but something soft. Close. Alive.
He tried to move.
Nothing happened.
Panic came quickly after that.
He couldn't feel his arms — no, he _could_, but they weren't responding properly. They twitched instead of obeying. His legs kicked weakly against something that yielded beneath them.
Fabric?
No—
Too soft.
His chest rose sharply as instinct took over — breath dragging into lungs that felt too small, too new — and then—
He cried.
The sound startled him more than anything else.
High-pitched. Broken. Pathetic.
_That_ wasn't his voice.
The world came in pieces after that.
Blinding light forced his eyes shut — lids fluttering uselessly as shapes moved beyond them. Sound followed, muffled and incomprehensible, a stream of noise that rose and fell in unfamiliar cadences.
Language.
He knew it was language.
But it meant nothing.
It wasn't Greek. Not even the guttural chatter of the shades in Tartarus.
Just… noise.
He tried to speak.
To demand an explanation.
To ask who in the Hades thought this was funny.
All that came out was another weak wail.
Something shifted beneath him — no, _someone_.
Arms.
He was being held.
Cradled, close against a steady, rhythmic thump that echoed through his entire body.
A heartbeat.
Not his.
Large hands adjusted around him carefully — reverently — as another voice joined the first. Deeper. Rougher. Just as incomprehensible.
More noise.
More warmth.
More light.
Zagreus tried to summon the Infernal Arms.
Nothing answered.
No Bloodstone burned in his chest.
No call of the Styx whispered at his bones.
No presence of Nyx in the dark behind his thoughts.
'Alright then—what in the name of my father's _realm_ is happening right now?'
Zagreus forced his eyes open.
Light.
Blinding, merciless light.
Two faces loomed above him — one belonging to a woman with striking red hair and warm brown eyes. Beautiful, truly. Not the distant, sculpted perfection of the Olympians, but something… softer. He couldn't recall the last time he had seen anyone who wasn't half-dead, fully dead, or actively trying to kill him.
Which, admittedly, narrowed the field somewhat.
Beside her stood a man with short brown hair. Broad-shouldered. Solid. Zagreus tried to focus on his face, but the light behind him made it difficult to make out his eyes.
'Kindly remove your hands from my person,' Zagreus attempted to say.
What came out instead was:
"WAAAH—!"
He froze.
That—
No, that would not do at all.
He tried again, attempting to move, to twist free, to summon even a shred of strength into his limbs—
Nothing.
His arms flailed uselessly. His legs kicked with all the might of a particularly offended loaf of bread.
The woman made a strained sound — pained — before someone else entered his limited field of vision. Another man, older, more composed, carefully lifting him away and placing him into the arms of the brown-haired one.
The man looked down at him as though he were something fragile.
Precious.
Irreplaceable.
Zagreus blinked up at him.
Right.
Several things were immediately wrong here.
'Alright—steady on—why am I naked?' he thought, horrified.
The woman cried out in pain, though Zagreus found his attention rather firmly occupied elsewhere.
Namely—
Himself.
'I'm a baby,' he realized.
There was a brief, dignified pause.
'…I'm a _baby_.'
Well.
That explained the nakedness.
'How in the ever-loving hells did this happen?' he thought, a flicker of panic threatening to set in. 'Father's going to have my head for this—again—and I haven't even done anything this time—'
He stopped.
Breathed.
Or attempted to.
Right. No sense losing composure now.
Assess the situation.
New body.
Alarmingly small, but functional, presumably.
No immediate sense of divine presence.
No pull of the Styx.
Which meant—
'I appear to be mortal.'
Another pause.
'…That is significantly less cool than I initially thought.'
He tried to listen to what he though was this body's parents, but he couldn't understand a single thing of what they were saying. He could only see another baby coming out of the woman's...
He immediately looked away.
"What about I try to call my family?"
He hesitated.
"Mother?"
Zagreus reached inward, past instinct, past panic — toward that familiar, ever-present dark at the edge of his thoughts. Toward the quiet comfort that had guided him since before he could walk.
Or fight.
Or repeatedly die.
_Mother Nyx?_
He waited.
Nothing answered.
No velvet-dark warmth.
No whisper in the silence.
No gentle, knowing presence curling around his mind.
He reached further.
"Father?"
Still nothing.
Hypnos?
Not so much as a yawn.
Right then.
That left—
—
Chaos.
The world fell away.
Warmth vanished. Light collapsed inward.
And Zagreus stood — properly stood — once more within the vast, impossible expanse of the Primordial's domain.
Endless dark stretched in all directions, yet it was not empty. Galaxies turned lazily through the void, constellations drifting like embers in still water. Space that was not space. Silence that was not silence.
"Oh, for Hades' sake—thank Olympus that worked," Zagreus exhaled, flexing his fingers with undisguised relief. Legs. Hands. A voice that did not immediately devolve into screaming.
Marvellous.
He had never been so pleased to possess kneecaps.
"I suppose you find yourself in a rather unfortunate dilemma, Zagreus."
The voice arrived from everywhere and nowhere at once — vast, layered, and impossibly old. Not spoken so much as _understood_.
Zagreus straightened instinctively.
"Chaos," he greeted, with a respectful incline of his head. "Always a pleasure. Though I must admit, I was not expecting our next meeting to occur under these particular… circumstances."
Silence stretched.
Stars shifted.
"I am the reason for your displacement" Chaos continued getting closer to Zagreus by the second.
"…I beg your pardon?"
"You have grown… accustomed to the aid of your Olympian kin, Zagreus."
The words were not accusatory.
Merely observed.
"As one might grow accustomed to breathing," Zagreus replied carefully.
Silence followed — thoughtful, not displeased.
"For countless cycles you have entered my domain," Chaos continued at length. "You have offered Blood freely. You have listened. You have spoken. Your presence has been… diverting."
Zagreus blinked.
He wasn't entirely certain how to respond to being described as entertaining by the literal Primordial embodiment of existence.
"And so, I have elected to offer recompense."
Zagreus' stomach dropped.
"I'm not certain I care for the tone of that sentence—"
"You aspire toward divinity beyond inheritance."
He fell silent.
Because—
Yes.
"You seek not merely to be a god by birth, but by merit."
"…Ideally without dying quite so often in the process," Zagreus added.
"And yet, you lean upon the strength of Olympus," Chaos went on, unconcerned. "Upon boons granted freely. Upon powers that are not your own."
A pause.
"The future that awaits you will demand solitude."
The stars dimmed.
"And so, I have prepared you."
Something cold coiled in Zagreus' chest.
"I beg your pardon—?"
"I have sent your soul beyond this realm. Beyond death. Beyond the reach of those who would lend you strength."
Understanding came slowly.
Horribly.
"You now reside within a mortal vessel," Chaos said simply. "A life newly vacated. A world entirely foreign."
Zagreus stared.
"You will learn as a god learn. But you will struggle as a mortal struggle. You will fight without boon or outside help."
A constellation collapsed into nothing.
"And in doing so… you may become the god you were always meant to be."
Silence.
"…You turned me into a baby," Zagreus said at last.
"Yes."
"…As a reward."
"Yes."
He considered this.
"…I'm going to be exceptionally cross with you when I get back."
...
...
"Now hold on," Zagreus interjected, polite but firm. "What about my birthright."
A pause followed.
The galaxies shifted.
"You misunderstand," Chaos replied.
Oh.
That was never a comforting sentence.
"You have not been stripped of what you are," the Primordial continued. "Only… separated from that which made it effortless."
Zagreus felt something stir beneath his skin at that.
"Though this vessel is mortal, your soul remains divine," Chaos said. "The River Styx yet flows within your essence, as it always has."
A cold, familiar sensation pulsed through him — faint, but undeniable. Like a heartbeat beneath his own.
"You will learn," Chaos stated. "As you have always learned. Death will not claim you easily here."
Zagreus exhaled slowly.
Right.
That was—
Actually quite reassuring.
"I'll set you off to your new family, but dont worry. I'll always be watching you." Is the last thing Zagreus heard before returning to his new baby body.
--------------------
Author's note:
Hey, well that's the first chapter so I'm gonna make some clarifications about the fic right here.
I intend to make Zagreus MORE than he is in the game. I always though while playing Hades II that Melinoe was cooler than Zagreus, because she had her own magic of the moon etc. to fight rather than just taking the Boons of the gods as her own strength. I want Zagreus to have his own thing too. And I'm re-reading TBATE right now after the ending (I didn't really like it that much, but Ig)
Also Zagreus didn't lose ALL his powers. Only the ability to contact his family, and resurrecting in the river Styx.
But but but after some investigation I found out that some people think Zagreus is the 'God of Blood' game wise of course. Others say that he is the 'God of life and death'.
In my opinion he is the god of therapy but meh I'll leave it as that.
What I want to say is that I'll be playing around what the 'god of', I want him to be.
As an example, now through his mortal body he has access to the river Styx (which would never be possible game wise, or myth wise or any kind of wise) but this is my story, and through this ability he will be able to regenerate his body, which is kind of a nerf to his resurrection which ties to his godhood of blood.
Of course I'll also be playing around what kind of magic I want him to have, or if he even will have an aether core. I want to make my own thing with Zagreus.
I'll be NOT be adding any kind of necromancer power in this story, go read Solo Leveling or idk any kind of manwha out there who has necromancer.
You have a lot to pick from
I have many ideas of what powers he could have, or which weapons he will wield. But that's for me to decide, and you to give me ideas.
Anyways, hope you like the chapter bye.