HADES

Chapter 25

Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon gathered in the room. "Are you ready?" Hades whispers in my ear. "I hope I am." Skotadi lifts up her hands and the words from the scroll are lifted from it. She lifts my chin, raising my head, and she runs her palm, which has the spell, down from my throat to my chest. When she gets to my chest, she pushes gently but to me, it felt very hard and I stumble. "Skotadi, what have you done!" a shrill voice screams from behind me. I turn around to see a very angry Shota looking at me, with veins all over her pale face. Skotadi immediately sends a dagger for Shota's necklace but it wasn't even five centimetres before Shota sliced it in half, by slicing the air. She grabs me by my shirt, squeezes my cheeks with one hand, thereby opening my mouth, and says, "I got you now. You may have won the battle, but oh, the war has just begun." She then kissed me. SHE KISSED ME! She closes my mouth, claps her hand once and just like that, she vanishes.

I don't know what happens next, but my eyes begin to be filled with dark clouds, and with one last breath I fall into Hades' arms.

Hades P.O.V

Oh no, it's happening again. Why does this keep happening to me! There are veins coming out of the corners of Lucy's mouth and eyes, and when I open her eyes, her pupils are red. What is this?

"Skotadi, what has Shota done to Lucy?" Skotadi moves her hand across Lucy 's body and places a finger on Lucy's throat, she moves it up to her mouth and as though she touched fire, he quickly removed her hand. "The breath of death." She whispers.

The breath of death? "What is that?" I ask her. "Long ago, back in the days of our parents. We, witches, used to be very cunning. We needed souls in order to do some of our rituals and human souls were the most desirable at the time seeing at Zeus was the one who created them and we wanted a piece of him. But, it would be considered war if suddenly we started killing humans for their souls.

So, they devised a plan. The witches decided that they had to find a way in which the humans would not only die but transfer what they were planning to another human. My mother was the one who actually came up with the idea," I wince as she mentions her mother, remembering our history, "Originally, she called it the kiss of death, but everyone else thought that it sounded vague. And so, it was called the breath of death. The witches knew how it was going to work but did not know how to create it. They needed a sickening amount of evil in order to kill someone from the inside.

Soon, suggestions started going around that the Queen should be killed. The Queen at the time was my mother's sister. My mother argued but the other witches convinced her that it was for the greater good.

So, my aunt was killed and her blood was heated till it became vapour, the witches then cast a spell on it that allowed it to be spread to someone else through a kiss. Each and every witch inhaled in her blood and they came down onto Earth to spread it to men, who they knew were more lustful. Soon, the amount of death on Earth became alarming for Zeus and he ordered his messenger to see what was happening on Earth.

At first, the messenger was unaware, and then he began to see a pattern. He would see a witch sleep with a male human, which was normal, but then soon, the person died and the spouse of that person would soon follow. He reported back to Zeus and the witches were ordered to stop, but by then, they had more than enough souls.

My mother, even though she participated, did not pass on the breath of death to me. Something about being guilty or whatever. Shota must have gotten the breath of death by killing the blood descendant of an ancient witch. Anyway, I do not know much about how to remove it, but, I can try."