Thanatos stood on the edge of the world. He held his inverted torch, the flame sputtering low. He was quiet, precise, and patient.
Before him, the ocean heaved. It wasn't water; it was Tiamat.
The Dragon Mother rose, a wall of scales and salt water that blocked out the stars. She had eleven bellies, and each one was birthing a new monster.
"Your time has ended," Thanatos whispered. His voice was the sound of a clock stopping.
Tiamat laughed. It sounded like continents grinding together. "I am time, little shadow. I am the mud from which you were made."
The Reaping
Thanatos glided forward. He did not fear size. He touched the flank of the great dragon with his torch. Inverted Torch Extinguish.
Where he touched, scales turned gray and died. A patch of flesh the size of a city rotted away.
But Tiamat didn't scream. She dissolved the dead flesh into salt and grew new scales instantly. Molten Resurgence—or her own version of it, Body-Break Creation. The dead matter simply became new life.
"You take one," Tiamat roared. "I make a thousand."
She opened her mouth and unleashed the Primordial Salt Sea.
The Flood
A torrent of chaotic water aimed at the death god. It wasn't just wet; it was corrosive. It dissolved definitions.
Thanatos tried to fly, his black wings beating against the storm. But the water caught him. It didn't kill him—he was Death, he could not die—but it unmade his form.
His wings dissolved into seaweed. His torch was swallowed by the deep. His silence was drowned out by the roar of birth and chaos.
Thanatos was washed away, a speck of order lost in a sea of entropy, forcing him to reform centuries later in a quieter corner of the underworld.