God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord
Chapter 76 - 77: The Voice Beneath

Chapter 76: Chapter 77: The Voice Beneath

The black obelisk pulsed—slow, rhythmic, like a monstrous heartbeat beneath the world.

Darius stood before it, the Void-Code on his skin crawling, writhing like a living parasite sensing its ancient enemy.

Kaela and Nyx flanked him, weapons drawn but useless against what they didn’t yet understand.

Celestia remained behind them, fragile, hollow-eyed, her hands wrapped in the remnants of forgotten prayers. She could feel it too—the breath of something vast leaking from the fractures in reality.

It was older than gods. Older than faith. Older even than the First Codes of Origin.

And it was waking.

Hours earlier, when the black obelisk first erupted, Darius had sent riders and warpriests across the broken dominion to reinforce temples and prepare for what he called "The Silent Siege."

It wasn’t rebellion he feared.

It was infection.

The anti-code that clung to the Revenant King was not mere corruption—it was a sentience of its own, whispering across the ley-lines of reality.

By the time the first warpriests returned, it was too late.

Villages once loyal to Darius had fallen into stillness—buildings intact, bodies preserved, but souls missing.

An entire province had been silenced, not through violence, but through an unseen pull downward, into the beneath.

Kaela described it best when she returned from a scouting mission:

"It’s not death, my lord. It’s... deletion."

Now, standing before the black spire, Darius felt it clawing at his mind, pulling, like a thousand unseen hands dragging his soul toward the abyss.

He clenched his fist.

A shield of void energy rippled outward, forcing the voices back—for now.

"We strike it down," Nyx growled, stepping forward, blades bared. "Before it can anchor fully."

Darius shook his head slowly.

"No." His voice carried the weight of law. "We learn first."

Nyx’s face twisted, frustration bubbling beneath her cold loyalty. But she obeyed, stepping back into formation.

Celestia whispered, her voice strained:

"You must not listen too long, Darius... It will weave itself into your code."

"I already carry corruption," Darius replied, a bitter smirk curling his lips. "What’s a little more?"

Then he reached out—

—and touched the obelisk.

The world inverted.

Sight, sound, sensation—all dissolved into a singular pulse that wasn’t life but wasn’t death either. It was raw unbeing.

Darius stood on a shoreline of broken code, where dead stars floated in seas of black static.

Across the endless horizon, figures moved—hollowed shapes, once divine, now erased from all memory.

He saw himself among them.

Walking.

Forgotten.

Nameless.

The Voice spoke—not from one mouth, but from everywhere.

"You fled Origin. You broke the Laws. You thought you were different."

The sky tore, and through it poured a storm of images—Darius’s conquests, betrayals, fusions, and failures—all laid bare, stripped of the lies he wrapped himself in.

"You are no god."

"You are an error."

"And errors must be erased."

A shape moved in the storm—something vast and wingless, its body stitched together from failed realities and dead codes.

A mouth opened in its chest, not to speak, but to consume.

Darius roared, void energy surging around him, tearing at the hallucination—but it did nothing.

This was not a battlefield.

It was a trial.

A second, secret trial.

He staggered backward, ripping his hand free from the obelisk with a howl.

Blood—not red, but shimmering silver—dripped from his palm.

The others rushed to him immediately.

Nyx caught him before he collapsed, her face a storm of fury and worry.

Kaela scanned him frantically, her hands glowing with broken restoration magic.

But Celestia only knelt before him, tears streaming silently down her face.

"You saw it," she whispered.

Darius nodded once, breathing heavily.

"The Revenant..." he said through gritted teeth, "...is not the true enemy."

Kaela stiffened. "Then what is?"

He rose slowly, glaring at the obelisk that pulsed ever stronger now, feeding off their fear.

"The First Failure," he rasped.

"The Thing That Origin Buried."

The others fell silent.

Darius wiped the silver blood across his chest, smearing it into the void-code markings there.

He turned to his closest circle—those who would either die for him or betray him before this ended.

"Listen well," he said, voice dark and shaking the stones beneath them.

"This realm, my dominion—it’s already lost."

Nyx’s mouth parted slightly. Kaela lowered her gaze. Celestia wept harder.

"But beyond survival," Darius continued, "beyond the ruins, beyond the end itself..."

He smiled then—a grim, terrible smile.

"...we will carve something even the Voice cannot delete."

Hours later, they stood atop the citadel.

The skies had darkened fully—not with night, but with the end of concepts. Time, law, meaning—all fraying at the edges.

The Revenant King’s armies marched below—warped mortals and fallen gods stitched together by anti-code.

Darius raised his sword high, black flame wreathing its edge.

Behind him, his warpriests chanted the Rite of Nullfire, preparing to burn their very existence into the next plane.

Kaela stood ready, twin void-blades gleaming.

Nyx whispered final death-oaths.

Celestia, broken but unyielding, sang the first verse of a forbidden hymn—one meant to bind gods and demons alike.

And as the armies clashed, as the heavens wept broken constellations, and the Voice beneath howled in triumph, Darius—last true god, first Broken King—charged forward, not to defend his realm...

...but to wage war against the end of reality itself.

The world tore apart as Darius threw himself into the fray.

The frontlines collided with a thunderous impact—his warpriests, veiled in the ashes of forgotten worlds, slammed into the Revenant King’s corrupted legions.

Screams ripped through the air, but not all were mortal.

The heavens themselves shrieked, their threads unraveling at the seams.

Nyx moved like a shadow beside Darius, a whirlwind of death, her blades slicing through soldiers stitched from the remains of saints and monsters alike.

Each kill left stains on reality, wounds that bled concepts rather than blood—honor, loyalty, memory—all evaporating into the howling void.

Kaela followed in their wake, her chaos magic tearing gashes into the battlefield, pulling foes into miniature rifts where their code dissolved into shimmering dust.

Her laughter—beautiful and unhinged—rang out amidst the carnage, a song to annihilation.

And behind them, Celestia knelt, holding the fragile threads of existence together through sheer force of will, her voice rising louder, stronger, weaving an unholy psalm that defied the natural decay infecting the world.

Together, they were not merely fighting an army.

They were defying oblivion itself.

Above them, the skies writhed.

The black obelisk continued to pulse, each beat a ripple that erased parts of the battlefield wholesale—men vanished mid-scream, cities crumbled to dust, history itself unraveling as if it had never been written.

Through it all, the Revenant King advanced, slow and inexorable.

He was no longer a man, nor a god, but a vessel—a mouthpiece for the Voice Beneath.

Tattered royal banners clung to his decayed armor, but his crown had fused to his skull, and from the hollow spaces of his eyes leaked streams of anti-light that devoured everything they touched.

He raised a blade not of metal, but of concept—a sword made from the death of kingdoms, forged in betrayal and sealed in despair.

When it struck, it did not wound flesh; it wounded meaning itself.

Darius met him head-on.

Their weapons clashed with a soundless scream that cracked the air, shook the mountains, and froze the stars in the sky.

The force of the impact sent shockwaves in every direction, flipping soldiers through the air, ripping trees from the ground, shattering fortresses in the distance.

The Revenant King’s blade bit into Darius’s void-armored side, carving deep—not into body, but into identity.

For a split second, Darius forgot who he was.

Forgot his dominion.

Forgot why he fought.

Forgot even his name.

Only the burning brand of his will—the impossible, searing defiance that had carried him through death, betrayal, and godhood—anchored him long enough to retaliate.

With a roar that shook the last trembling pillars of reality, Darius drove his fist—wreathed in the raw authority of his broken divinity—straight into the Revenant King’s chest.

A pulse of inverted light exploded outward.

The Revenant King staggered.

For the first time, the corrupted god-knight bled—thick black fluid pouring from the cracks in his form, sizzling as it touched the ground. Where it landed, the earth didn’t break—it ceased to be.

In the wake of the clash, silence fell.

The armies around them hesitated, watching with terror and awe.

Above, the black obelisk shifted—cracking.

Hairline fractures spread up its impossibly smooth surface, leaking tendrils of ancient, pre-cosmic darkness.

The Voice spoke again—not in words this time, but in feelings, in inevitabilities.

A message burned into every living thing still capable of understanding:

"You cannot win."

"You were never meant to exist."

"Join us, or be erased."

Darius laughed.

Low. Hoarse. Defiant.

His voice, carried on the fractured winds, reached gods and mortals alike:

"I was never meant to exist?"

He staggered forward, bleeding silver light from every pore, his frame flickering between realities.

"Good."

Another step.

"Because the things not meant to exist are the ones that break the world apart..."

A final step—until he stood before the Revenant King once more, their broken crowns inches from touching.

"...and build something new from the ashes."

Behind him, Celestia rose from her knees, her hymn crescendoing into a weaponized symphony.

Nyx and Kaela unleashed hell—Nyx diving into enemy lines like a falling star, Kaela fracturing the battlefield with chaotic rifts that consumed whole squads in bursts of raw void.

And Darius—

Darius drove his sword forward again.

Not to slay.

Not to conquer.

But to anchor himself deeper into the end of all things.

To become the constant in a world that had forsaken all constants.

The Revenant King screamed—a sound of metal rending, bones breaking, worlds dying.

And with that, the true battle began—not for land, not for glory, but for the right to exist at all.