Chronos gazed with dirt crusted eyes upon his abode. Pillars carved carefully from diamond had cracked and split as the battles above shook them, along with the rest of the underground structure’s foundations. Tapestries woven from fabrics fine enough to buy entire kingdoms with but a single strand had long since rotted away, their value having done nothing to deter the ravages of time. Great statues of gold, marble and gemstones had been taken piece by piece- carried away by looters over the millennia while the being they had been carved to honour hung chained and immobilised, his powers bound, in what was once a temple built to his name.

Of course, Chronos could not see any of this- the hall in which he resided had once been illuminated by great Arclights, precious crystals hewn from the earth and flooded with the otherworldly magical power of those who ruled it. They still remained, he thought, embedded high up in the ceilings or walls- and yet even the simple act of commanding them to give him light was something his once unrivaled power could not manage any longer.

“One, two, three…”

Chronos counted as he waited, even though every syllable tortured him. His jaw was a mechanism that had long since locked and rusted from neglect, his vocal cords had gone so long without constricting to form speech that they hardened like the veins of an old man. But of course he was an old man, he had been an old man for the thousands of years he’d spent inside his prison- and he had been an old man long before being forced into it. His mind was old, his spirit was old, everything but his body had been old. And now that same body had atrophied in its captivity, not aging yet withering from neglect just as it should have done from time.

“Four, five….”

He'd seen it all happen before. A vision of what was to come, the first he’d had in a very long time. And yet his visions appeared directly in his mind, the light which spilled into the room during his sight of the future had not actually been there. The light that spilled inwards now was the brightest thing he’d seen in a hundred lifetimes, his eyelids closed once more in response- yet even through the thin skin covering them the brightness was something beyond agony.

So preoccupied with the pain was Chronos, that he almost forgot about the creature entering his chamber. A human, if he could still be called that, with a tall frame, light hair and mahogany skin. He wore a simple garb of animal skin, yet he wore it as a king might wear a cloak woven from gold threads. Chronos could not see yet, his eyes still remained tightly shut against the glare, however he did not need to. He had recognised the man’s power the moment he drew within a league of his prison, and it was in the nature of beings such as themselves that a few millennia would not have changed his attire any more than his body.

Chronos's tormented jaw and twisted vocal cords strained to speak, however his agonising practice had loosened them enough for the words they formed to be coherent.

"Adeus, son of Hale, prince of Amoritia and most importantly, servant of the serpent, I've been expecting you."

He almost heard the smile in the man’s voice as he replied in a tone so level it could have stilled the seas.

"Of course you have."

There was almost no emotion in the reply, yet Chronos had known this man for long enough to recognise what little there was- he was practically screaming beneath his exterior.

"I see your war is going...well?"

A distant explosion ran through the walls, Chronos managed to force his eyes open and see millennia of dust cascade from the ceiling. Adeus was exactly as he had expected, save for a light scar running down the left side of his face. That was new, Chronos wondered who had gotten close enough with a God-Killer to mark the father of Deities’ face in such a way.

“I need your sight, Chronos. I need to know, do I win? Do I fulfil my purpose? Do I save the world?”

Chronos hummed before he spoke, a habit he had had… before.

“I saw your coming yesterday. And now you stand before me, just as I had seen, demanding I share with you the future once more. My chains thin. I don’t need my eyes to see that you are losing even as we speak, old friend. But that is not what you are asking, is it?”

If Adeus was angered at his victory being spoken of in such a glib way, he made no show of it. He merely replied as calmly as if he were answering a question from one of his followers.

“Will I ever succeed, Chronos? Will this world, however many ages it takes, ever be brought to enlightenment?”

Chronos thought for a second before answering.

“Oh, you will try. That much is certain. A being like yourself, an instrument of fate.. I hardly think one lifetime would be enough for you to finish shaping the world just by existing within it, even a lifetime as long as yours. In a new world, a changed world. You will try.”

Adeus’s face changed ever so slightly, a scrap of the writhing mass of fanaticism and zeal that was his soul was visible behind his eyes as he answered.

“Tell me of this world.”

Chronos's eyes lit up into a near pulsating bright green. He looked past time, yet into it. As though his consciousness were stepping to the side, viewing the world from outside it- viewing the world’s history, both that which was and that which was yet to be, holistically. He looked ahead, to the destination of the path the world now travelled by Adeus’s direction.

A world led by gods and gods alone, one where mortals were nothing but tools to be cast aside as their leaders deemed fit, two balancing forces under the illusion of power, buildings that reached into the sky as if to escape the world. Death, oh so much death, he could taste the ecstacy of thousands of lives lived and the anguish of having it all stripped away in seconds, the birth of a baby, the death of a child and the end of a God, he could see it all and it was overwhelming, it was damaging and it was intoxicating, the world was a jumbled mess of power in the hands of the unworthy and the hands of the worthy being severed for their trespasses, in the midst of all this he could see blooming flowers of gold and silver and platinum, and in them he saw peace. He saw a terrible peace, not the peace of people living in harmony. The peace that came only where people no longer were. The peace of a field of corpses, rotting and festering as flies feasted on them. As ravens plucked out eyes. As rats tore away tongues. And then he saw the peace of nothingness, the peace that he himself had come close to in his imprisonment- an endless, unbroken silence and darkness. Without change, without end, persisting until it had swallowed everything within it down to their memory.

"What did you see?" Adeus demanded. The King had lost his composure, his desperation would have been noticeable even to a mortal..

Chronos met his desperate dark eyes right before bursting into a pure and maddened laughter. His throat felt as though it were tearing apart under the strain, his cheeks had dust washed away in streaks by the tears that descended them. And then he stopped. He stifled his emotion, looking to Adeus and with an expression mirroring that of a blank canvas.

"Oh... nothing interesting."

Adeus's face stiffened. It showed confusion, frustration, anger and then resolve, all in that order. The man gave a slow mournful nod. "Very well old friend." He stood up and walked out of the temple. The door shut and once again Chronos was consumed by cold darkness and the muffled rumblings of war.