God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord -
Chapter 83 - 84: The Dreaming Saint
Chapter 83: Chapter 84: The Dreaming Saint
The Dreaming Saint had not known sleep for seven thousand years.
He lay now beneath a canopy of swirling mist, bones wrapped in robes stitched from the hair of seers and sinners. His eyes—blind yet radiant—fluttered beneath lids marked with divine brands. Around him, the chamber pulsed with symbols etched in grief and starlight.
He screamed.
The vision took him again.
He saw Darius.
But not as the Hollow King.
He saw a child, no older than ten, hands pressed to a dying screen in a forgotten tenement.
A flickering choir sang beyond the static. Maelistra’s voice, raw with beauty, filled that boy with wonder. The boy cried as the broadcast ended, whispering, "Why did they stop singing?"
And then—
He became the man.
Not in years, but in despair.
A throne carved of dead gods. Eyes that bled light. A woman shattered in his arms. The world screaming as he rose. The Womb cracking. The Choir silenced forever.
The Saint awoke gasping.
The rebellion’s camp fell quiet.
He did not rise. Instead, he curled forward, weeping. "He remembers," the Saint whispered. "And that... will unmake us all."
Beside him, the Twice-Killed Queen knelt. Her once-regal face was a latticework of scars and grace. She placed a hand over his trembling chest.
"Then he must be ended before that memory becomes choice."
The rebel war council gathered in the Temple of Echoes.
Flames danced in bowls of soul-fire. Holograms glitched with fractured prophecies. At the head of the long, cracked table stood the leaders of the last resistance against Darius.
The Saint. The Queen. The Shattered Prophet.
The Bleeding Flame. The Heir of Dust. The Nameless Twin.
Each had suffered at Darius’s rise. Each bore a scar that sang of ruin.
They spoke not of whether he could be stopped—only how soon.
Because now, with Aetherion fallen, only the Womb remained untouched.
And Darius was moving toward it.
If he reached it fully awakened, if the Hollow God touched the Cradle again...
The rebellion would die with the stars themselves.
"Then we go first," said the Prophet, her voice a blade.
"Impossible," muttered the Heir of Dust. "Only his divine blood can open the path."
The Saint exhaled. "Not anymore."
He drew a jagged knife from beneath his robe and cut into his own chest. Not blood—code—spilled from the wound. Glyphs of ancient origin floated, flickered, and fell.
"I stole a piece of him... during the Fall of Regret," he whispered.
Silence.
Even the Nameless Twin stepped back.
The Saint handed the glowing shard to the Twice-Killed Queen.
"This will fool the Womb. For a time. Long enough to reach the Heart and sever the link before he arrives."
The Queen nodded.
"And if he does arrive?"
"Then pray the child in him still lives," the Saint said.
"Because the god won’t hesitate."
Far above, in a hidden corridor of the dying heavens, a lone figure watched the council from a portal of broken fate.
Nyx.
Veiled in shadow. Invisible even to divine sight.
She had come to spy. To listen.
But what she found instead was pain. Memory. Doubt.
The Saint’s words clung to her mind like thorns:
"He remembers."
For the first time, Nyx faltered.
Because she too remembered.
A boy. A whisper. A promise never kept.
"If I fall, bring me back."
She closed her eyes.
And vanished into the dark.
Meanwhile, in the silence between realms, Darius knelt beside the shattered choir crystal he carried from Aetherion. His fingers trembled as he traced its cracked edge. Maelistra’s memory still echoed faintly within.
You cried when our music ended.
"...I still do," he murmured.
Then he rose.
His pantheon followed.
And the Hollow King turned toward the last gate.
Toward the Womb.
Where gods are born.
And monsters unmade.
He sat in stillness, surrounded by old echoes and new omens. The stars above the rebel camp dimmed one by one, like eyes closing in reluctant surrender. His breathing slowed, and the air grew thick with prophecy.
"She sees him," the Saint murmured.
The Twice-Killed Queen turned toward him. "Who?"
"The Maiden of Silence. She walks again... in the Deep Fold. She gazes upon his soul, and it burns her lips to speak his name."
A ripple ran through the chamber. The Prophet clenched her fists. "Then even the silent ones are stirring. We don’t have time."
The Queen’s voice dropped. "Nor options."
They left the Temple by twilight, robes trailing ash. The shard of Darius—glowing like a wound carved into fate—was sealed inside a relic-chest bound in iron and regret. The rebels walked in grim procession through forgotten sanctuaries and fractured skyways.
The Nameless Twin muttered broken hymns.
The Bleeding Flame bled without wound.
The Heir of Dust whispered to the bones beneath their feet.
As they crossed the edge of the last veil—toward the location of the Womb—they felt it.
A tremor not of earth or realm, but will.
Darius had moved.
Not toward them. But through something.
The Dreaming Saint gasped, choking on invisible smoke. "No. Not yet. He’s not supposed to see the chamber!"
But he had.
For a flicker of time, the Hollow King had beheld the First Memory—a vision even gods were never meant to witness.
Inside the sanctum of his soul, Darius stood before an ancient mirror. Not of glass, but of raw unfiltered becoming. Reflections bled in all directions.
In one, he was a god, gentle, beloved, and worshipped.
In another, a tyrant of smoke, devouring all who touched him.
In the last, he was himself—the boy watching the Choir, crying alone in the dark.
A voice echoed through the mirror.
"Which one of you was real?"
Darius stared into it. His hand clenched.
Then, quietly—
"I don’t know."
The mirror fractured.
And so did the balance.
Back in the rebel’s march, the Dreaming Saint fell to one knee. His chest split again—not from blade, but from pressure. Glyphs spiraled out of him, flying into the void like birds fleeing a storm.
"He’s accelerating. The fusion is no longer guided—it’s becoming instinct."
The Twice-Killed Queen grabbed his shoulder. "Then we cut the tether now."
He gritted his teeth.
"No. We do more than that."
He looked up, eyes flaring gold through the blindness.
"We steal the Womb before he becomes it."
Across the ever-darkening sky, a new star ignited.
Not white.
Not red.
But black—alive with hunger.
The Saint turned toward it and shivered.
The Womb... was awakening.
And it was not empty.
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