Rise Of Hades' Hellborn: Trumpets Of The Damned

Ashes Between Realms

Myles sat on the edge of his Paragon-issued cot, elbows on knees, hands laced, eyes blank. His quarters were about the size of a janitor's closet, with white walls that smelled like disinfectant and reeked of containment. There was no window, just a single metal door and the low, ever-present hum of energy suppressors embedded in the walls.

A surveillance camera blinked red from the top corner, watching. Always watching. He wondered if they even bothered reviewing the footage anymore or if it just fed into some bottomless archive for bureaucrats to ignore.

His fingers twitched.

Something was off.

The temperature dipped sharply—cold, not the clinical cold of AC but the bone-deep chill of a tomb. His breath misted. The air went thin.

Then—

Blackout.

The fluorescent lights overhead sputtered and died with a pop, plunging the room into darkness.

But it wasn’t just his room that vanished.

Reality itself fractured.

The walls, the floor, even the pressurized air—gone. Myles stood in an alien plane of smoke and bone, suspended in perpetual twilight. It was neither night nor day, only an eternal hush that settled like dust. The sky, if it could be called that, churned with ash that fell in slow motion. Towering black columns, ancient and cracked, jutted into an unseen ceiling, their forms reaching into infinity like silent judges.

In the distance, the shapes twisted—memories, regrets, unfinished sins—flickering and warping like old film burning in reverse.

And then he saw him.

Hades.

The god emerged from behind a jagged throne sculpted from volcanic rock and writhing with infernal veins of magma. His form was humanoid in the way nightmares were—recognizable but wrong. A silhouette of obsidian draped in moving shadows, his head crowned with jagged metal that pulsed with dying embers. His eyes were twin furnaces, ancient and half-dead.

Myles didn’t kneel. Not this time.

He folded his arms and tilted his head. “Huh. You ditched the whole charming-devil look. Trying something edgier?”

Hades’ eyes flared.

“Silence, mortal.” His voice was layered—one part whisper, one part thunder, and something in between that was pure void. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was law.

But Myles held his ground.

“I’m not your puppet. You want something, you speak plain. No cryptic riddles, no flaming theatrics.”

There was a long silence, broken only by the drifting ash and the low groan of shifting pillars.

Hades stepped forward, shadows parting around him like waves. “You’re bold. I like that. It means the mortal in you still fights.”

“Wasn’t aware he ever stopped.”

“You will.”

Myles felt it then—something press against his mind, like a mountain settling on his thoughts. Hades didn’t move, but his presence expanded, touching every part of the realm.

“The trumpets are sounding.” His tone was different now. Lower. Colder. “The seals that hold back the infernal tides—cracking. Faster than I foresaw.”

Myles frowned. “Because of Kaelin?”

“Because of what he summoned. Because of what you disturbed.”

“Me?”

Hades raised one hand. Images exploded into the void. Visions of demons clawing through street alleys, children crying blood in schools, cities weeping black rivers. And above it all, Kaelin, flanked by dark sigils and whispers that bled into the walls of time.

“He struck a bargain I was not privy to.”

Myles paced. “You’re supposed to be a god. You’re telling me someone bypassed you?”

“I am bound by law older than creation. The Pact of Death grants me dominion over souls—not over free will.”

“Convenient excuse.”

Hades’ eyes narrowed. The shadows around him hissed.

“Careful, Avatar.”

Myles stared back, unwavering. “Careful went out the window when you dropped me into this mess without a full manual.”

“You were chosen because you bend, but don’t break. Don’t forget that.”

Myles exhaled slowly, tension still in his shoulders. “Fine. Then tell me why the hell I’m here.”

“Because the Harbinger is waking.”

The words dropped like lead.

“Come again?”

“The being meant to signal the end. The Seventh Trumpet. If Kaelin completes his pact, the Harbinger will be loosed.”

Images flared again—this time, a towering form cloaked in voidfire, faceless and colossal, its arrival shattering cities like glass.

“And what am I supposed to do?”

“Kill Kaelin. Stop the pacts. Delay the trumpets.”

“That’s it?” Myles laughed bitterly. “Just stop a madman summoning Armageddon-level hellspawn. Piece of cake.”

But the sarcasm didn’t settle. Because suddenly—Hades split.

His form fractured like a mirror cracking, producing mirrored versions of himself—each one holding a future like a reel of fate.

In one, Myles lay broken in the dirt, his body impaled by a horned demon’s blade.

In another, he stood atop a mountain of corpses, but his eyes were void—soul lost to wrath.

One showed Louise, bleeding out, whispering his name.

Another… showed Anna on her knees before Kaelin, bound in chains of living fire.

Myles stepped back, jaw clenched. “Stop.”

“These are all possible. But only one destiny.”

Suddenly, a massive hourglass emerged behind Hades—its sands black, its glass cracked. The sand inside twisted violently.

Then—crack.

The hourglass splintered.

The entire realm shook.

Something ancient and hungry shifted.

“Get your watch back from he that comes for you,” Hades said, voice now distant, fading with the ash. “The one I once cast down. The Black Flame… walks again.”

Myles stumbled as the vision collapsed, the ash blinding him, the twilight burning away—

Gasp.

He bolted upright, heart pounding like a war drum in his chest. His breath came in sharp bursts, lungs clawing at stale air. Sweat clung to his skin, drenching the thin black undershirt he wore. The humming of the suppressor field was back. The lights overhead flickered to full brightness with an indifferent buzz.

The room was the same.

The same small, suffocating box.

But everything had changed.

He wiped his face with a trembling hand, then stared at his reflection in the metallic wall. There was a flicker—just a flicker—of someone else in his eyes. Something older. Something colder.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

The god had marked him. Again.

He looked around, checking for alarms, sirens, or even a locked door. Nothing. Paragon hadn’t felt the quake.

But he had.

He muttered under his breath, “He’s real. He’s coming.”

Sorran.

Not a rumor. Not a name whispered in forbidden scripture. A reality. The Black Flame—something so ancient even Hades feared speaking his name with weight.

Myles looked at the tiny digital clock on the wall: 2:42 AM.

He wouldn’t sleep again.

---

Somewhere in the Lower District – Midnight

Rain fell in angry sheets, hammering rusted rooftops and flooding the alleyways with oil-streaked water. Neon signs flickered in protest—TATTOO… LIVE GIRLS… RAMEN 24H—their colors drowning in the puddles below. Trash floated past like little paper coffins.

A vagrant screamed nonsense in the distance, and someone else laughed with a bottle in hand. A dog barked once, then whimpered away into silence.

And through it all, Sorran walked.

He moved with a patience that made the world feel slow. The rain did not touch him—it evaporated inches from his skin. Cloaked in robes darker than absence, his form pulsed with black fire that licked at the edges of existence. Where he stepped, insects died mid-scurry. Rats convulsed and keeled over in the gutters. Lamps blew out one by one in his wake.