Prologue
"What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest." - Rumi
In the beginning, there was darkness. It was not the absence of light, but its own living, breathing thing. The darkness encompassed the Underworld like a blanket; it wrapped up close and filled every crevice, crack, and corner. It wasn’t cold or cruel—like you might believe—when it came to the pitch blackness. It was like slipping into warm water—slowly, then all at once.
In the darkness, Nyx was home.
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We are born from shadows,and we return to them when we die. The fear of this lightlessness is one that is implanted in us by men—by gods—who convince us that only wicked deeds happen in the obsidian depths. Far from being a place of eternal hellfire, it was only in darkness that Nyx found peace. There was no greater peace than the one that was known to someone who could embrace its depths, and no depths ran deeper than those of the Underworld.
In a time of gods, men, and titans, the rising tensions between the light and the dark were beginning to stir like the first words of a song. This was before the time of heroes—there was no Hercules, no Achilles, not a word had been whispered of Odysseus. The gods were nothing more than children, fighting amongst themselves as the world pulled and pushed through its adolescence. It was the titans who had the world in their iron-grip, who used the gods as errand-boys, generals, and playthings. In kind, it was how gods treated men.
The only beings as powerful as the titans were the primordials. The ones who had sung themselves into existence, who had birthed themselves from blackness and created their power alongside it. The most powerful of these was Nyx.
She existed before the titans, before the gods, before the concepts of man, earth, and time. Nyx had pulled herself from Chaos and existed in the blackness —giving it the guardrails that it needed. She saw the world for what it was, misshapen and deformed, and created a dimension in which life could prosper amongst death. She shaped the Underworld, poured Tartarus from her fingers, and birthed night into reality for the world needed its rest. From Nyx’s womb came sleep and death, Hypnos and Thanatos, intended to equalize both gods and men and give them all the reprieve they needed when their souls grew weary.
The black depths of the Underworld were her doing, and the very boundaries of life were her creation. In the beginning, she was worshipped. Her gift of peace and obsidian and her feminine creation were all seen for the balance that they established in the world.
She was not alone. Nyx was night, but what was night without its cover? Not long after Nyx had pulled herself into existence, Erebus followed. Hewasdarkness. While Nyx was the divine embodiment of night and all that it entailed, Erebus was action. He was primordial, an enforcer, the executioner. The final knell of sleep and death and the champion of the night. Nyx created the space for Erebus’s darkness and the two were one. It was with Erebus that she had born Hypnos, Thanatos, and Charon. Before time immemorial, Nyx was known as the Consort of Darkness. Their passion for one another was woven into their very beings, running as deep as their power.
Over time, as the gods who existed in the sun grew nervous over her power, her name was wiped away. Dark tales were spun of the depths, striking fear into the hearts of anyone who heard them. Darkness was criminalized; the night became a time of fear and villainy, and life’s balance deteriorated along with it, leaving the world to succumb to its excess.
The gods and the titans had started to fight, their squabbles threatening to overthrow the balance that Nyx had created. War was brewing, and it would take everyone with it. Erebus had begun to be tempted by the promises of the light, to be praised and celebrated like the gods, to be worshipped by man as they sat forgotten in the Underworld. Nyx had scoffed at such hopes, calling them foolish. Erebus recoiled.
Night itself and darkness incarnate were beginning to separate.
Part I
1
Nyx watched the rolling waters of Phlegethon, the sound of the waves always calming her down. The Underworld was becoming too crowded these days. She found herself repeatedly retreating to Tartarus for some peace and quiet, where it was rumored to be so dark that the blackness wrapped around the land like a cloak. The rumblings between gods, men, and titans exhausted Nyx as she watched their reverence for death slowly eroding. All men wanted to live in the sun now. The gods all wanted to be exalted in the daytime.
Loneliness had been something that had never been a part of Nyx. She had created everything that she had ever needed in her life, everything that she felt the world had needed… and then, there was Erebus. The two of them were primordials who had called themselves into creation and ingrained their lives with each other. His darkness was an extension of her night. Her night was the home to his darkness. Recently, the struggles of the gods had threatened to drive a wedge between the two of them, creating a loneliness in Nyx for the first time in her long existence.
She didn’t like how it felt. People always claimed that the night was empty, that the absence of light was cold—it wasn’t true. There was plenty of warmth and peace to be found in her blessed coverings, in the shade, away from the blistering sun. It waslonelinessthat was the true void. Only hers came without the darkness, not in it.
She was lost in her thoughts as she stared out at the river. A recent batch of arrivals to the Underworld had caused the Gate to get backed up and Charon was behind. The screeching of desolate souls had sent Nyx diving deeper to Tartarus.There was a time when souls never minded dying.Her thoughts were bitter.They welcomed my children. They greeted Thanatos with a smile. Now, a few hundred years with these gods running around, and they cry foul.
“Nyx.”
The voice didn’t break the silence, but it pulled Nyx from her thoughts. It echoed in her mind, ringing between her ears and making her heart beat faster. She sighed, readjusting herself on the riverbank, and refused to respond.
A moment later, the shadows on top of the water began twisting, morphing into something solid. They moved towards Nyx and curled at her ankles. She watched as the black tendrils wrapped around her legs.
“Erebus.” Nyx’s voice rang out in the depths. She fought to keep the smile off her face, even if their relationship had been… at odds, recently. The darkness chuckled in response.
“You’re hiding from me,” Nyx chided, sighing and looking at the skyline.
“I’m here.” Erebus’s voice echoed aloud this time, coming from all the shadows at once.
“You never let me see you anymore.”
“You can see me.”
Nyx rolled her eyes, standing up and pushing the shadows off her like she was dusting off dirt. “You know what I mean.”
There was a heartbeat of silence, then two, then three. A slight breeze picked up as it began to spin in a small torrent, a black column of shadow appearing as a man stepped out of it. He was bronzed with dark, curly hair nearly falling into his face. Even his chiton was black. The expression on his face was cautiously playful. Nyx’s smile finally broke free.
