Muffled noises filled the air—screams and pained groans, crying, the same pleas and prayers repeated over and over again.

Xenia was right. She should not have come.

Persephone stepped off the platform. She was in a huge cavern, carved laboriously from the bedrock of the earth. Lit torches glowed orange in the dark, illuminating paths that extended out from the cavern. Below her hung a multitude of wooden walkways, providing transit over a deep abyss.

On her level, she saw another monstrous giant speaking to a number of men wearing Hades’ colors. She took one glance at them, then turned and walked the opposite way, moving quickly, as if she knew what she was doing. Awful as this place was, she had no intention of being brought back before Hades quite so soon.

She found herself naturally taking walkways that led her further downwards, until it felt like forever since she’d last walked on level ground. As she walked, she passed cells carved into the rock and sealed by bars of iron; cells sealed by spider silk, by glyphs and incantations carved into the walls and floors.

Hands reached out to her from the dark.

“Mistress... save us...”

“Mistress, I’ve been here some hundred years. I’ve never harmed a living soul. Please—”

Persephone hurried past them all, not daring to look too closely at any wretched soul. Her stomach was turning from the noise and the smell of cold iron and dried ichor. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she was in too deep to admit her mistake and turn back.

“Daughter.”

The word was whispered, so faint she scarcely heard it. She froze, rigid with terror, then forced herself to relax. Zeus was not here, would never deign to bring himself here, and Demeter’s voice had never been that deep.

Nevertheless, she took a torch from a wall sconce and walked toward the voice. She found herself in front of a cell set apart from the others in its own row. Inside, there was a body chained to a rack, so still and gaunt that at first she doubted whether it had the strength for speech at all. Each limb was overly long and ill-proportioned, as though he was a Titan made small by sorcery.

The creature opened his eyes—eye. One of them was in the process of growing back, covered in ichor and slowly reforming itself from the inside out as she watched, unable to look away.

“Daughter,” he said, his voice a dry croak, so disused she could scarcely make out the word. “No. Granddaughter? Come closer, that I might see you.”

Slowly, as if drawn by invisible thread, Persephone approached the cell.

Its inhabitant ran his tongue over cracked and ichor-stained lips, staring at her like a starving man might stare at a feast. He lunged forward, straining so hard on his chains that there was a cracking noise, perhaps one of his bones snapping.