God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord
Chapter 78 - 79The Rebellion of Faith: A World Set Ablaze

Chapter 78: Chapter 79The Rebellion of Faith: A World Set Ablaze

The sky no longer wept.

It bled.

Above the ruins of the old world, crimson rivers of broken starlight streamed across a sky torn open by Darius’s will.

The heavens had no gods left to rule them.

The earth had no kings left to claim it.

Only Darius remained — a being without a name, a soul reforged in the silence between heartbeats.

And yet, the battle was far from over.

The survivors of his empire—those loyal beyond reason, beyond fear—rose from the ashes of their shattered cities.

Their eyes burned not with hope, but with defiance.

Their battered banners, stitched from rags and blood, rose into the wounded air like declarations against fate itself.

They would not kneel to the Usurpers.

They would not scatter to the void.

They would fight.

For him.

For the world he would remake.

The first to answer the call was Ardan the Steelborn, once Darius’s general, now a warlord unto himself.

His body bore the scars of a hundred defeats and a thousand betrayals, but his spirit remained unbroken.

He stood atop a ruined citadel, his sword raised high, his voice carrying over the ruins:

"We are the last flame in a world of ashes!

We are the blade that will not break!

We fight for the Nameless King!"

The soldiers below roared back, a cry born not of orders, but of desperate, furious loyalty.

Around them, other fires lit — across the scattered remnants of Darius’s domain, his forgotten children began to move.

Secret sects.

Exiled warriors.

Wandering mages.

Assassins.

Outcasts.

All the broken pieces he had once gathered now surged back into motion, as if called by the silent pulse of his existence.

But the rebellion did not go unchallenged.

From the ruins of the Arch-Usurper’s armies rose new enemies:

The Faithless Host, born from the corruption of shattered gods and desperate mortals.

Twisted creatures of bone and black fire, fed by the lingering will of the Prime Coder and other fallen divine architects.

They descended upon Darius’s loyalists with feral hatred.

No negotiation.

No mercy.

Only the mandate to erase, to unmake, to silence forever the spark of rebellion before it could ignite.

The Battle of the Black Spires began.

Ardan led the charge, his armor dented and scorched, his sword wreathed in borrowed godfire.

Beside him rode the last of the Void Templars, knights who had bound their souls to the entropy between worlds to serve Darius even in death.

Steel clashed against nightmare.

Blood soaked the broken stone.

And above it all, the battered remnants of Darius’s banners fluttered, defiant against the howling void.

Far from the front lines, deep in the heart of the world-wound, Darius stood atop the jagged corpse of what had once been a mountain.

Kaela knelt beside him, sweat and blood mingling on her skin, her magic flickering and unstable.

Nyx crouched at the edge of the precipice, her daggers dripping with shadow, her breathing ragged.

Celestia lay against a broken obelisk, her fingers still weaving the remnants of the binding song that kept Darius anchored to this fragile plane.

They had given everything to hold him here.

And now he would return that gift.

Darius lifted his gaze.

The world trembled at the simple act.

He could feel it: the millions of threads of loyalty, love, desperation, and rage stretching across the battlefield toward him.

Each one a tether.

Each one a prayer.

Each one a rebellion.

Not against him.

But for him.

They no longer needed his name.

They carried it within them, etched into their very bones.

He would answer.

The void beneath him cracked open.

A yawning, endless chasm of pure nothingness, hungry and wild.

Darius stepped forward, unafraid.

His voice, when it came, was not loud.

It was not triumphant.

It was inevitable.

"Rise," he commanded.

Not to the void.

Not to the gods.

But to his people.

Across the fractured world, the faithful felt it like a hammer against their souls.

Soldiers stumbled mid-battle, tears burning their eyes as newfound strength flooded their broken limbs.

Wounded mages gasped as their shattered spells reignited with furious, impossible power.

Dying assassins laughed through bloodied lips as their blades moved faster than mortal eyes could follow.

The rebellion surged, no longer a desperate defense —

but a crusade.

A wildfire that would not be extinguished.

At the Black Spires, Ardan drove his sword through the chest of a Faithless warlord, black fire spewing around him, and turned to his soldiers.

"He lives!" he roared, voice cracking with raw, feral joy.

"The King lives! Fight, damn you! FIGHT!"

And fight they did.

The Faithless Host broke, splintering under the onslaught.

For every loyalist that fell, two more rose, bolstered by Darius’s silent command.

The world itself began to shift, as if responding to the will of its new master.

Mountains moved.

Rivers boiled.

Cities long dead shuddered and cracked open, revealing ancient, forbidden powers buried by the old gods.

In the center of it all, Darius began to ascend.

Not as a god in the old sense.

Not as a tyrant or a savior.

But as a force.

A fixed point in a collapsing universe.

A defiant answer to the question of whether a soul, stripped of everything, could still matter.

Kaela watched through bleeding eyes as Darius rose.

Nyx whispered a prayer she would never admit to speaking.

Celestia wept, her song faltering into silence—not because it had failed, but because it was no longer needed.

He remembered.

Not his name.

Not his titles.

Them.

And that was enough.

---

The new world would be cruel.

It would be dark.

It would be beautiful in ways the old one could not even imagine.

And it would belong to the Nameless King.

The Lord of the Voidborn.

Darius.

The void beneath Darius’s feet no longer threatened to consume him.

It obeyed.

Where once it had been chaos, now it was purpose.

Where once it had been hunger, now it was loyalty.

The black winds of the shattered world twisted around him like living things, folding into a cloak of endless shadow, shot through with glimmers of the souls who believed in him — the fallen, the faithful, the furious.

He was no longer merely a man who had torn through gods.

He was the will of an entire broken reality, stitched together by rebellion, by pain, by the fierce unwillingness to be forgotten.

From the ruins below, a surge of figures broke through the mist: Ardan, battered and half-blind, led the vanguard up the broken mountain toward him.

Behind him, soldiers, mages, templars, and assassins bore the marks of Darius’s old dominion — tattoos burned into their flesh, sigils etched into their armor, banners made from the remnants of the old world.

They came not to worship.

They came to fight beside him.

As his brothers. His sisters. His heirs.

The Faithless Host, sensing the collapse of their doom-bringer, screamed and scattered, their bodies dissolving into ash and whispers.

Their creators had abandoned them.

Kaela stumbled to her feet first, swaying, blood trickling down her arms, her crimson hair a wild halo.

She looked up at Darius, her lips parting in a ragged, breathless whisper:

"You’re... you’re more than we dreamed."

Nyx was slower, steadying herself on a broken dagger, her usually cold mask cracked open to reveal something naked and raw beneath.

A reverence that shamed her.

Celestia could barely move, but she smiled through her tears, her soul singing without words:

I knew you would come back.

Darius spoke, his voice soft yet resonant, carrying through the void-torn air:

"We are not yet finished."

He turned his hand over, palm facing upward.

A black sun bloomed above his fingers — not burning, but devouring, a singularity of boundless will.

It was not enough to survive.

It was not enough to rise.

They would rebuild the world in his image.

Every god that had ever ruled — false, arrogant, blind — would be forgotten.

Every law of nature, every lie of power, would be rewritten.

Not through mercy.

Not through compromise.

Through dominion.

Ardan knelt before him, blood dripping from his ruined armor.

"Give the order, my King," he rasped, "and we will set fire to the heavens themselves."

One by one, the others knelt — soldiers who had never bent the knee to any emperor, mages who had defied death itself, assassins who had sworn only to the void.

Their broken bodies, their defiant eyes, their unwavering faith — all given freely to Darius.

He did not ask them to rise.

He commanded it.

With a wordless thought, the black sun flared.

The world shuddered.

Seas boiled away into mist.

Mountains shattered into floating islands.

The skies cracked wide, revealing the cold machinery of the abandoned gods’ architecture, rusted and weeping stars.

The rebellion was no longer just a war.

It was a creation event.

A reset.

A rebirth.

Darius turned his gaze toward the far horizon.

Beyond the last remnants of the Faithless Host, beyond the broken temples of dead gods, he could feel something stirring.

Not an enemy.

Not yet.

But a power, ancient and waiting, bound deeper than even the Prime Coder’s constructs.

A force that had slept through a thousand apocalypses.

A force that would not kneel without a price paid in blood, soul, and sacrifice.

The True Architects.

The First Makers.

The origin of the void, and the end of all light.

He would meet them.

And he would decide if they deserved to exist.

Behind him, Kaela rose fully, her magic no longer flickering but blazing, her chaotic beauty more vivid than ever.

Nyx pulled Celestia to her feet, the three of them forming a triangle of loyalty, strength, and devotion around him.

Darius did not smile.

He did not need to.

The world smiled for him.

He raised his hand once more, and the legion of his faithful roared as one:

"HAIL THE KING OF THE VOID!"

"HAIL THE MAKER OF WORLDS!"

"HAIL DARIUS!"

Their cries echoed into the endless night, a sound too powerful for any god to silence.

The new world had begun.

And it would be a world shaped by his hand alone.