Gamr was not sure how he got himself into this situation. He thought for sure they would not be able to find a st minute repcement guarding the Realm Between but, not only did they find a repcement for him but also for Cerberus and Anubis. Apparently some guy named Yama and his two ckeys White and Bck, real creative names, had been angling for the job for ages. This would be their chance to get their foot in the door.

  Gamr thought it would be a nice little getaway. It had been eons since the st time he had seen a mortal world. Yeah, the more he thought about it the more excited he became. It should be an easy enough job, pop down to a world with a sun for once, enjoy the flow of a realm with a linear time. Kill a couple of people and then be back home in time to catch his favorite show.

  “Did Death really need all of us to go?” A smooth, almost sensual baritone interrupted his thoughts. “I was in the middle of a massage.”

  The sudden voice pulled Gamr back to the present and he saw his fellow Hellhounds all sitting atop the glowing Celestial Ptform. Endless realities flipped by like channels on a television as they passed through the many-many living worlds below the Higher Pnes. They all sat in a semicircle and it looked like they had been talking for a while. Gamr had not paid any attention to the group for a while.

  “Ah, Anubis, your presence here was never a necessity, merely an indulgence.” Cerberus answered, all three of his heads speaking in perfect unison.

  Of the four of them Cerberus was by far the rgest and imposing. With grey fur, muscles that would make a bodybuilder jealous and three heads he was terrifying. Add the fact they were all immortal hounds with power comparable to most divine entities, no one was getting past him.

  His three heads each exhaled hellfire every time he spoke and Gamr got the feeling he was a little too into his role as guardian of the Realm Between. It was a noble position sure but no reason to change up his whole cadence for. After the conference with God Hell, he started to sound far more… eh… maniacal.

  Cerberus continued his voice deep and growling, “did you truly think Tiangou, Gamr, and I required additional hands to recim those wretched souls who dared flee from Lady Death's embrace? Alone, we could set the very heavens abze, reduce the earth to cinders, and reap the wayward spirits like wheat before the scythe! No mere mortal—no pitiful, simpering immortal—could ever hope to slip beyond the veil of life and death without first enduring the cold scrutiny of my unerring gaze.”

  Anubis raised a brow. “I had a choice? I wasn’t given a choice.”

  Anubis was the only one who had chosen to manifest in a humanoid form, appearing as a tall, dark-skinned man with the head of a jackal. Golden embellishments traced the edges of his eyes, and his ears were capped with gold—new additions, Gamr noted, and rather stylish ones at that. Unlike the rest of them, Anubis was reclining in what looked suspiciously like a celestial wn chair. Where Ceberus was the muscle he was definitely the brains. Death wouldn’t have given him a choice, he was going on this mission no matter what.

  “I am sure he misspoke, we were all chosen to take this mission.” Tiangou said with a gre towards Cerberus.

  “I merely spoke the…”

  “Cerberus.” Gamr growled.

  “I mean no, we did not have a choice.” Cerberus coughed.

  “I feel like I am missing something.” Anubis said accusingly.

  “Oh look, it looks like we are here.” Gamr said as he stood and bounded to the edge of the ptform. “Everyone get ready.”

  Gamr found himself ready for an easy time on a mortal world collecting a few stolen souls. Yes, a vacation was in order. He continued to think that until the Celestial Ptform slowed, the world below and the vast, bleeding firmament around it came into view. His wagging tail drooped low as he saw a realm completely broken by forces that should never have been present on a Mortal Pne.

  Space, the eternal void that should have been bck and empty, glowed an ominous red. Not the warm, fiery red of a star’s heart, but the deep, sickly crimson of an open wound left to fester. It wasn’t lit, not truly. There couldn’t possibly be enough light to touch every corner of infinity. No. This red was something else. A saturation of corruption, a reality hemorrhaging into itself.

  Everywhere they looked, the cosmos was fractured. Long, jagged streaks of frozen lightning threaded through the void like shattered gss caught mid-scream. The streams pulsed irregurly, their glow flickering as if trapped between moments of existence and colpse. Time and space weren’t just damaged—they were struggling to remember how they were supposed to work.

  “What fresh hell is this?” Anubis muttered, his chair floating gently to the edge of the ptform. “I thought we were going to a mortal world. This looks like this pce has barely finished forming its core concepts. Look that sun is bleeding. I think that is actual blood.”

  Gamr followed his gaze.

  The star of this sor system or what should have been a star was weeping. Rivers of molten gold spilled from its core, oozing like thick blood from a celestial artery. It pulsed erratically, as though its heartbeat had been disrupted by a cosmic trauma. Bck veins spread across its surface, webbing outward like cracks in a dying eye.

  “This is the right pce, right Tiangou?” Gamr questioned.

  “Yes. I’m sure of it,” Tiangou replied, ears twitching with mild offense. “I know how to program a Celestial Ptform.”

  “Are we sure we didn’t slip into one of Hell’s subyers?” Anubis asked, squinting into the corrupted heavens. “Because I swear, this smells like the third level of Perdition.”

  “Not enough fire,” Cerberus said casually. “Hell would never let such weak ebbs of Soul Fire torment the damned souls cursed to endure His machinations.”

  “This is the right pce,” Tiangou repeated, more firmly this time.

  “It is alright brother, Tiangou. While I have never made such an embarrassing mistake around my peers on such an important mission we will not hold it against you.” Cerberus said with his usual grandiosity. “We will simply check the coordinates and leave this pitiful realm to its denizens. While their suffering may be long they should treasure this day and know that they were not the receivers of our ire nor the targets of my conquest.”

  “Speak for yourself, I will definitely hold this against him.” Anubis said with a zy wave of his hand. “Just give me the coordinates. I’ll put them in manually.” He waggled his fingers. “Paws aren’t the best maniputors of delicate celestial machinery.”

  “It’s the right pce,” Tiangou snarled, his tail bristling. “Just because it looks like... well, shit, doesn’t mean it’s not the right world.” He pointed a paw toward the pnet below. “There. You see that? That’s a trace of Creation.”

  Anubis leaned forward, adjusting the golden caps on his ears as he peered over the edge.

  “Oh. Oh yeah, I see it. That is rare. There’s a fragment of original divinity down there.” He paused. “And a whole horde of True Immortals fighting over it.”

  “That is probably why Reincarnation chose this Pne.” Gamr muttered. “All of these Immortals, the Piece of Creation and this pce being so unstable, it will make it hard to find the fugitive souls.”

  “Which also means,” Tiangou said with a smirk, “that I was right.”

  “Yeah-yeah, sure why are you still on that?” Anubis said.

  “Your correctness is old news, Tiangou.” Cerberus added.

  “It was you—” Tiangou cut himself off and took a breath. “You guys are fucking with me, aren’t you.”

  “Of course they are,” Gamr said with a shake of his head. “You just now catching on?”

  “How do you deal with them?” Tiangou asked.

  Gamr ughed, “Different shifts.”

  “Let’s just get on with it.” Anubis finally stood up from his chair and cracked his neck. “We’ll need to chase off the immortals before we can even start our job. Is that Poison?” He pointed to a far too rge serpentine form slithering through a shattered canyon of stone and bone. “Even the Hydras are here. This isn’t a skirmish--this is a full-on Immortal War.”

  They’re still doing those? I thought the Immortals had grown out of that kind of foolishness. Gamr thought to himself as his eyes scanned the battlefield unraveling below, shapes shifting like serpents through smoke.

  “Hydras… Serpents… two, no—three Dragons over that ridge. Angels? What are they doing here? Isn’t the Chorus already colpsing? And Ljosalfar too.” Gamr clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Those are major factions. No Elysium-born though. At least someone had the wisdom to sit this one out.”

  Slowly he sat down on his haunches, his ears folding back as he considered his next move. He and the Hellhounds were already mobilized. Although it looked like the issue with the souls would soon take care of itself especially at the rate this realm was destabilizing. He wanted to call it quits but at the same time he knew Death would not let them go back empty handed. So much for a simple vacation.

  Gamr sighed, “this pce is falling apart... and somehow, it’s still our problem.”

  The Celestial Ptform hissed as the group stepped off, their divine forms descending gently through the corrupted sky like falling stars. The world below loomed rger, its jagged continents and broken seas barely holding together under the strain of a war not meant for mortal soil.

  Gamr made out more details of the world below and he noticed that the Angels seemed to be in the middle of a civil war amongst the chaos of the other, rger battles. The world was abze; it was definitely in its final days given the state of it. He wished he would be going somewhere that at the very least had trees.

  Gamr’s sixth sense told him he was in danger. That wasn’t possible given that there were only a couple thousand True Immortals down there. Despite his rationality he knew something was wrong.

  Space didn’t carry sound for most beings. However, Gamr and his ilk spoke through divinity and all things could be revealed to them. So when he heard a sound like a scream in reverse and a prayer forgotten mid-word his fur stood up on end. A fsh of light bathed them in a halo of gold, and in the blink of a heartbeat, the Celestial Ptform was gone.

  Anubis barely turned his head. “Wait, wha—”

  A jagged bde of divine light pierced straight through his chest, emerging in a spray of shimmering ichor from his back. Weapons that could harm a soul like Anubis shouldn’t exist. Gamr’s eyes went wide as he saw the impossible py out before him. Anubis’s body exploded into motes of bck sand and vanished into the void.

  Gamr spun teeth bared as divine energies swirled around his form. He saw Cerberus roar in fury, all three heads bzing with hell fire so bright he became the brightest and hottest star in this realm. The three headed hellhound surged forward then stopped in his tracks.

  The light was so intense that Gamr had to turn away but the moment he turned back three bdes, each cleaner than thought, tore through each of Cerberus’s hearts at once. The fme that made up his hellfire dispersed into the void like a divine supernova. Gamr saw as the proud guardian’s form broke apart like gss catching fire.

  Gamr didn’t even have time to react. His divine armor shattered as a beam of celestial energy mercilessly hit him from his blind spot. The beam didn’t stop there, it kept going like, well, a hot zer through something that can’t handle a hot zer. It scorched through his body from shoulder to fnk.

  The impact knocked the breath from his lungs if… he needed to breathe. He fell, spinning, entrails trailing silver like a comet’s tail. His divine essence being absorbed greedily by the Mortal Pne. His blood flickering out into the ruined sky like a farmer watering a field.

  Above him, Tiangou hovered alone, reality warping around his now monstrous form. The bdes that killed both Anubis and Cerberus orbited around him. His essence controlling the deadly weapons.

  Gamr’s mind spun as he tried to make sense of what just happened. Tiangou betrayed them and killed the Guardians of the Realm Between. Why? How? Tiangou was strong but no stronger than himself, yet he managed to kill them all so easily. He wanted to speak but he couldn’t as his spinning form started to break apart.

  His eyes flicked to the weapons, four massive bdes coated in the divinity of a God not a great spirit like them. Someone wanted this to happen? Someone wanted them to die. Tiangou had the backing of one of the Gods and was acting with direct Blessings. They broke the rules.

  Tiangou’s eyes bzed with the impossible radiance of God Reincarnation's blessing. His body began to grow, swelling and shifting until his form became translucent, his shape stretching into the silhouette of gaxies. Stars twinkled along his spine. Nebus bloomed like bruises across his limbs. Universes swirled within his eyes.

  Gamr could only watch as Tiangou’s jaws opened, expanding wide. He didn’t stop growing until his jaws eclipsed the corrupted sun itself. Gamr had a sudden realization of course this would happen when dealing with the sun eater. Of course the crazy fucking asshole would eat the fucking sun.

  With a terrible, silent inevitability, Tiangou’s jaws smmed shut around the star. Everything was being devoured. Not just light. Not just matter but also the meaning of those concepts. The corruption buckled and bent, folding in upon itself as if Tiangou had become a bck hole of divinity, drawing in the very ws of this universe.

  Below, the battle between True Immortals ceased. No more duels. No more immortal blood bleeding into the soil.

  They fled.

  Even the arrogant, the proud, the eternal beings they were, knew that this was beyond them. By the thousands they ripped open gashes into the Higher Pnes with panicked fury, cwing and tearing reality to escape the looming colpse.

  Gamr was adrift, in pain and unraveling as his soul dispersed. He felt cold fingers reach for his soul. It wasn’t Goddess Death, she would never be so gentle. His st sight was of Tiangou blotting out the sky. He thought he should be angry but at this point all he felt was tired.

  “Well, that was easier than I thought it was going to be.” A deep voice rumbled.