God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord
Chapter 71: The Fractured Throne

Chapter 71: Chapter 71: The Fractured Throne

The moment the Origin Trial concluded, the entire structure of reality warped.

No gavel fell. No voice of judgment echoed. There was only silence—and then, fracture.

A cosmic crack split the skies above the council chamber, a fault line not of stone or space but of meaning. Darius stood motionless, his essence unanchored. The High Council’s decision was neither condemnation nor salvation—it was exile.

"You do not belong to what was, nor what is to come," the eldest divine had whispered.

And with that, the world collapsed around him.

The rift that formed was not a gateway—it was a banishment. Reality rejected him.

Darius was flung through spirals of shattered concept and broken divine law. Celestia and Nyx were dragged alongside him, their screams muted in the void-stream. The fractured remnants of his dominion were ripped apart, each tether snapping like the frayed edge of a forgotten hymn.

When they landed, it was in a realm with no horizon.

No stars.

No time.

Just a liminal plane, a space between truths, soaked in stillborn potential and memory without source.

Darius lay in the dust of unformed thought, his body whole but trembling. For a god, it was the closest thing to nakedness.

Celestia knelt beside him, her lips parted, but not a sound escaped. Her silence now carried more weight than pain—it was the mark of sacrifice so deep it had stolen not just her voice, but her soul’s will to speak.

Nyx stood a few paces away, blades drawn, eyes darting toward the nothingness that pulsed like an ancient heart.

"...Where are we?" she muttered, as if speaking might provoke the realm itself.

Darius rose slowly. The crown of his fractured divinity hovered above his head—no longer golden, but burning like an eclipsed star.

"We’re nowhere," he said. "Nowhere... and no longer anyone."

Nyx’s breath caught. She approached him, her movements hesitant—something rare for her.

"You led us through war, through betrayal, through gods and madness," she whispered, stepping closer. "But now you... you look like a ghost wearing Darius’s skin."

He didn’t reply.

He couldn’t.

The silence of the liminal realm was suffocating.

No echoes. No wind. No weight to breath.

Darius tried to summon power, to ignite any of the divine threads woven into his being—but they sparked and died, reacting to nothing.

Celestia touched his arm gently, trying to comfort him. Her fingertips shimmered, her light dimming further. A trace of her soul-song—once radiant—was barely audible now. She hadn’t just sacrificed her voice for him during the Law of Silence... she had given up her identity.

Nyx watched the exchange and looked away.

It wasn’t jealousy. It was doubt.

The woman who once followed Darius into oblivion now wondered if she’d made a mistake.

They wandered through the realm, seeking meaning, until a strange pulse rippled through the distance.

A shape emerged. Not a creature. Not a being.

A throne—fractured, unseated from all reality—floated in the void.

Its frame was formed from every version of Darius that had ever existed. Human. NPC. God. Monster. Anomaly.

He reached out to it, and it recoiled.

Rejected.

The throne cracked again, its splinters spiraling away.

A cold voice spoke—not from outside, but from within Darius’s very core:

"You are no longer Darius. You are no longer nameable. You are unthroned."

For a long time, he stood there. Not as a king. Not as a god.

But as a question.

And in the shadow of that throne, Nyx whispered to herself:

"...We followed a god. Now we follow a ghost."

Nyx’s whisper lingered in the silence.

Darius didn’t respond—not out of pride, but because the words stung with truth. For the first time since his rebirth, he questioned the weight of his will. His every step had rewritten fate, every battle twisted destiny—but here, stripped of context and consequence, he was no more than a flickering paradox.

Celestia’s eyes shimmered as she took a step forward. Her presence, though dimmed, still anchored him. She placed her hand on his chest, over the echo of where his godheart used to beat.

A quiet hum stirred between them.

"Even a ghost... can become something new," she mouthed—her voice lost, but her soul felt.

Then the plane itself shuddered.

Reality bent—like a curtain torn at the seams. A ripple of wrongness surged across the liminal void, as though some greater eye had turned its gaze their way.

Darius tensed. His instincts flared.

"We’re not alone," Nyx said, blades in hand. "Something’s watching."

From the haze, shapes began to form.

Not enemies.

Not gods.

Reflections.

Visions of Darius—hundreds of them—emerged from the rift’s edges, walking silently across the void. Each was a version he could have been: the kind ruler, the destroyer of worlds, the one who spared Varek, the one who loved Kaela and never looked back.

They surrounded him in a quiet storm of forgotten paths.

Celestia clutched her chest. "These are—"

"Regrets," Darius said coldly. "All the lives I chose not to live."

One of the reflections stepped forward. This one was serene, cloaked in silver light, holding a staff instead of a blade.

"You weren’t supposed to be exiled," it said, voice filled with peace. "You were meant to become balance. You chose chaos."

"I chose freedom," Darius answered, stepping toward it. "Even if that meant burning the scales."

The reflection smiled sadly—and vanished into ash.

One by one, the others began to fade as well. Some wept. Some screamed. Some bowed.

Each left behind a word carved in flame above the broken throne:

"Become."

The throne cracked again.

Then it pulsed.

A heartbeat—singular and loud.

It didn’t call to Darius.

It challenged him.

Darius walked toward it. Celestia didn’t follow. Neither did Nyx. They watched as he placed his palm upon the twisted remnants of his divinity’s seat.

Black lightning surged.

Memories poured into him—not of the past, but of what never was. Lost futures, unchosen fates, dying gods whispering his name with reverence and terror.

And then...

Silence.

He turned, eyes glowing with a new hue—something not divine, not void.

Just real.

"We make our throne in the fracture," he said. "Not above it."

Nyx stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "Then what are you now?"

Darius smiled, but it was razor-thin. "Unbound."

Behind him, the throne cracked open—revealing not a seat, but a gate.

A way forward.

Celestia took his hand.

Nyx joined them, her expression unreadable.

And together, they stepped through—into whatever future awaited a god cast out not by sin... but by truth.

The pact wasn’t just symbolic.

As the Revenant’s withered palm pressed against Darius’s shoulder, veins of glowing black ink crawled across Darius’s flesh—arcane bindings seared into his divine code. His corrupted essence flared, momentarily syncing with the Revenant’s ancient curse.

A surge of incompatible memories collided within Darius. He saw flashes:

—The Revenant as a radiant High Council member, standing beside the original Celestial Choir.

—The day he defied the Prime Coder’s decree, choosing empathy over protocol.

—His fall—ripped from the heavens, devoured by entropy, and reborn in vengeance.

"I died for mercy," the Revenant said softly. "And they called it betrayal."

Darius’s breathing slowed, grounding himself against the flood of history now etched into his soul. "Then we’re both monsters born from principles."

The pact sealed with a pulse. A third sigil burned between them, hovering mid-air before embedding into the rift-sky above, a covenant recognized by reality itself.

Nyx exhaled, watching the mark fade. "What now?"

The Revenant grinned—thin, sharp, eternal. "Now? We hunt down the Law of Unmaking."

Celestia, still turned away, whispered just loud enough for Darius to hear, "You think you’re holding the blade, Darius... but you’ve already been cut."

She stepped into the shadows, vanishing without another word.

Kaela’s voice drifted in on the breeze from a nearby fracture in space. "The Null Sanctum awaits."

Darius didn’t flinch.

He only whispered to himself, "Then let it come."