The echo did not breathe.
It knelt within the hollow of a dead temple, deep beneath Nightfell's crust, nestled in the dreaming marrow of the world. This place was not on any map. It was a wound carved into reality—where time unraveled and rebuilt itself with teeth.
Ash fell like snow.
Kiro stepped forward, each footfall sinking into memories older than language. The air tasted of copper and grief. Above, a crimson sky swirled like congealed thought, and below, the stones wept in silence.
The figure at the altar was still.
A mask of bone. Arms soaked in blood that had long since dried into ink. Not a god. Not a man.
A tomb made flesh.
[Divine Echo Identified: Kuni, the Blood God][Warning: Combat Trial Initiating – Inheritance Gate Active][Victory Condition: Survive / Resist / Reject or Embrace][Note: Echo is not aware of death.]
The mask flaked as it turned. Eyes glowed dim beneath.
"You came too late," the echo murmured, a thousand voices buried beneath its own.
Kiro's system pulsed with dread. His blood felt heavier, like it carried answers it couldn't translate.
"You're not him," Kiro said.
The echo stood. Bone cracked. Muscles tore and rewove. A blade unfolded from its wrist, forged from coagulated godblood and the ache of extinction.
"I am what he left behind."
Above, in the Dreamworld
The skies above the City of Threads shimmered with unspoken prayers.
Here, the gods had built their sanctuaries—temples woven from emotion, dreams sculpted into cities, memory anchored in gold and song. This was not the mortal plane. It was higher, stranger—the realm where divine thought took shape.
And now, it bled.
A tear split open the sky, vast and pulsing. A shadow emerged—a creature of entropy, crowned in silence.
The Voidling Warlord.
It did not descend.
It invaded.The song of the city warped into screams.
High Dreamers—those who had shaped the foundations of creation—manifested their avatars in defense. Blades of living poetry. Shields of soullight. Choirs of defense spells hummed from a thousand towers.
But the Warlord did not flinch.
It raised a single limb, each finger a spiraling abyss.
A sphere of energy began to form—black, bloated, thrumming with antimatter and stolen divinity. It absorbed time. Devoured space. A hungry eclipse.
The High Dreamers chanted, desperate.
But the orb grew.
And then—
Detonation.
The City of Threads was erased.
Not shattered.
Not burned.
Forgotten.
Its temples vanished. Its people never were. Reality stuttered and limped away, scarred.
In the Dream on Nightfell
Kiro lunged.
Blood whips. Viora threads igniting his arms. Speed blinding.
But the echo was memory incarnate. It knew every move before Kiro did. The blade passed through shadow—striking nothing but the weight of consequence.
"Do you know why I died?" the echo asked, already behind him.
Kiro turned, eyes narrowed. "You fought the Voidlings alone."
A pause.
"No," the echo said. "I died because the other gods turned away."
Flashback – The War of Heaven
Images surged through Kiro's mind—not his, but shared.
The Dreamworld. The Mortal Realms. The Void.
A time when the gods ruled as one. When their thrones were united in flame and light.
And then—
The Voidlings came.
Not invaders. Not monsters.
Rebels.
They were once soldiers, shaped by the gods to fight eternal wars. When the fighting ended, the gods discarded them—locked them in the void, between dimensions.
But the Void… remembered.
And when they returned, they brought death shaped like thought.
Kuni stood alone at the breach between realms.
The Lord of Flesh refused to fight. Neer, Mind of Endings, hid behind his illusions.
Only Kuni bled.
He slaughtered entire legions. He screamed at the heavens, begging for his siblings to aid him.
None came.
And in the final moment, when his blood could no longer carry his will—
He sealed the gate with his body.
Return to the Trial
"I died to delay the inevitable," the echo said. "But the gods... they let it happen. They feared what we created."
Kiro clenched his fists.
"And now they expect me to fix it."
"They expect nothing," the echo whispered. "They sleep. The Void doesn't."
The dream cracked. Shadows poured in.
[Stage Two: Memory Collapse Complete][Final Inheritance Gate Opening…][System Warning: Subject Approaching Divine Threshold]
Back in the Dreamworld
As the ashes of the City of Threads drifted across the stars, the Voidling Warlord moved to the next.
It whispered to itself—not in hate, but in mourning.
"We are what you left behind."
A new city loomed ahead—City of Flamewrought Law.
And across the dream-lattice, as the gods began to awaken from their deep slumber, one word kept bleeding through the cracks:
Kiro.
The Throne
Kiro fell.
Into a temple made of bone.
Into a void beneath memory.
And there, seated upon a throne of ribs, was the source.
Not the Blood God.
Not a god at all.
But something older.
A being made of paradox.
"I am All."
"I was never born. I ended myself so you could begin."
Kiro's eyes bled light. His soul twisted with understanding.
"You… made everything?"
"I made thirteen gods to rule."
"I gave them war, Void, and Dream. I gave them you."
"And I made one first."
"The Naught. The observer."
The voice grew distant, falling into itself.
"I did not make creation to be ruled. I made it… to be tested."