Chapter 3

Hades did not return that night.

I had expected it. Whenever Nympha was taken to the Temple of Asclepius, he would remain by her sickbed until the healers themselves asked him to leave.

At dawn, I left the bedchamber with a small travel case in my hand. The corridor was quiet, and Eren’s door had been left slightly open.

I meant to pass by.

Still, I stopped.

When Eren was born, I had nearly spent half my divinity keeping him alive. He had come into the world frail and cold, and I had raised him with my own hands. I measured his healing draughts, warmed his blankets with springfire, sang him through fevered nights, and sat beside his cradle until even the shades outside grew silent.

After today, none of that would be mine to do.

I pushed his door open softly.

Eren was already awake. He sat on the carpet, arranging three little clay figures before a toy altar. One wore a dark cloak. One had flowers in her hair. The smallest one stood between them.

He glanced up at me and said, “Good morning, Mother,” before turning back to his figures.

I stayed by the door.

“Eren,” I said, “Mother is leaving. Take care of yourself from now on.”

He only nodded, distracted, as if I had told him I would be gone for the morning.

Then I saw the word he had carved into the wooden base beneath the three figures.

Home.

There was no fourth figure.

I looked at it for a long moment.

Not long ago, Nympha had posted a public memory clip on the social feed.

In it, Eren sat in her lap beneath the silver trees of the Underworld garden, licking nectar from his fingers while she laughed and loosened the bedtime rules I had kept for years.

“I like staying with Nympha,” he said in that shard. “She lets me eat sweet things and watch the moonflowers open. Mother only tells me what not to do.”

Nympha had smiled and asked, “Then who feels kinder to you, little prince?”

Eren had answered without thinking.

“You. If Mother were half as gentle as you, I would be happy.”

I had closed the shard after one viewing, but the words stayed.

I thought I had loved him carefully. Steady rest, clean food, healing draughts on time, warm cloaks when the Underworld grew cold. I thought one day he would understand that I had been strict because his life had once been so fragile.

But in his memory, my care had become a cage.

Nympha only had to offer sweets, late nights, and soft smiles to become the gentle one.

I turned to leave.

“Mother,” Eren called.

I looked back.

He had finally put down the clay figure. There was no fear in his eyes, no reluctance to see me go, only a child’s simple confusion.

“You once said you would try to like what I liked,” he said. “I like Nympha. You will like her too, won’t you?”

For a moment, I could not move.

The last warmth in my chest went cold.

I closed my eyes, and when a tear slipped down my cheek, I wiped it away before he could notice.

Then I smiled.

“You have always wanted to stay beside her and protect her,” I said. “From today on, you may do that with your father for as long as you wish.”

Eren tilted his head, not understanding.

I did not explain. I picked up my case and left his room.

Downstairs, the first gray light of dawn had entered the hall. I folded the divorce decree, now bearing Hades’s signature, and placed it inside my sleeve. Then I looked once more at the palace where I had lived for five years.

The long table. The black marble stairs. The unlit lamps along the walls. Above the hearth hung the wedding fresco from the day Hades and I bound our names before the gods. In it, I stood beside him in a veil of spring blossoms, still foolish enough to believe that a wedding vow could make a home.

I took nothing from the palace.

At the door, I turned back for the last time. Eren’s chamber was still lit. Through the half-open curtain, I could see his small head bent over the toy altar again, probably still arranging his little family.

I withdrew my gaze and walked into the dim light before sunrise.

Before crossing the Styx, I removed the obsidian message charm from my wrist and crushed it between my fingers. The fragments fell into the black water one by one.

Inside it were five years of memories. Hades’s vows, Eren’s first whispered Mother, the small captured images I had once treasured like sacred relics.

I let the river take them.

When the ferry began to move, the sky above the Underworld was losing its darkness. I stood at the prow and watched the black shore fall farther behind me.

For the first time in years, I could breathe.

From that moment on, I would no longer be a wife waiting in the dark or a mother shrinking herself to fit into a family that had already replaced her.

I was Persephone.