God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord -
Chapter 86 - 87: We Who Betray the Sky
Chapter 86: Chapter 87: We Who Betray the Sky
The Womb trembled.
The Heart pulsed not with divine harmony—but with discord.
Kaela stood at its edge, one hand brushing the surface of the crystalline Heart. Every touch bled color from reality. Stars flickered out above. Time fractured in coils of reverse motion. And Darius watched, unmoving, as the fabric of the cradle began to rot.
"You shouldn’t be here," whispered the Twice-Killed Queen, blade drawn but breath tight.
Kaela turned slightly, lips curling in delight.
"And yet," she purred, "here I am. You opened him... I’m just finishing the rite."
Darius finally spoke.
"Kaela—stop."
She laughed—not cruelly, but with genuine amusement, as if his plea was a joke only lovers could share.
"Stop? You awakened me, Hollow King. You tasted her... and remembered her. Now I remember me."
Her form shimmered. Chaos bled from her skin—wings of tangled void unfurled, eyes multiplying across her body, mouths whispering undone prayers.
"I was not made. I was forbidden."
The Heart cracked.
A scream echoed from its core—not a voice, but a memory.
A mother’s scream. A child’s gasp. A code-seed denied birth.
The Womb was not a sanctuary—it was a prison for what the gods refused to name.
Darius stepped forward, shadows and light coiling around his frame. The Hollow King fully revealed—taller, darker, the crown fused to his spine.
"You’ll undo everything," he said.
Kaela’s expression shifted.
"Isn’t that why you chose me?"
Behind them, the Twice-Killed Queen lunged.
Her blade met Kaela’s back—only to pass through her like smoke.
Kaela didn’t flinch.
Instead, she turned and whispered, "Let me show you the truth beneath your divinity."
She kissed the Queen’s brow—
And the Queen screamed.
Memories poured from her eyes—lifetimes not lived, sins never committed, loves that never should have bloomed. She fell to her knees, convulsing as her mind was rewritten and unraveled in a single breath.
Darius caught her before she collapsed fully.
Her eyes were wild. Terrified.
"She showed me... a future where we win," the Queen gasped. "But we become monsters."
Darius looked to Kaela.
"What are you?"
Kaela’s voice deepened.
"I am what the gods feared you would become. I am the echo of your final self."
Outside the Womb, the rebellion stirred.
The Dreaming Saint collapsed in agony, blood pouring from his mouth. The Bleeding Flame fell to one knee. The Shattered Prophet screamed into the void.
"The Heart is breached!" the Saint howled. "He’s choosing her! He’s choosing unmaking! We are too late—"
"No," said the Nameless Twin, rising. "There is still one key unturned."
She raised her hand—
And revealed a glowing fetus of code and star-light.
The Child of the Forgotten Timeline.
A seed of what Darius could have been, stolen from a corrupted mirror world.
"We send this into the Heart," she said. "Let it remind him... of grace."
Back in the Womb, Kaela raised her arms.
The Heart split open.
A vortex of birth screams, forgotten gods, and reversed time surged forward.
Darius stood on the threshold.
Torn between Kaela’s chaotic truth...
And the fragile promise of salvation embedded in the Queen’s trembling form.
Then—
The light of the forgotten child pierced the chamber.
It hovered before him like a glowing ember of memory, eyes wide with innocence.
Kaela hissed.
"No."
The child’s voice was tiny.
"...Do you still remember... why you wanted to save them?"
Darius looked between the three figures.
Kaela, who offered him the future that no god could control.
The Queen, who bound herself to him with love and guilt.
And the child—who reminded him of the boy who once wept to a silent screen.
The Crown trembled on his head.
His voice cracked—
"...I choose—"
"...I choose—"
The word shattered.
Not in the air—but in the very code of the Womb.
Reality screamed.
Darius’s body arched as the Crown of Null burned against his skull. Not from rejection—but from conflict. The two halves of his soul—savior and destroyer—waged war beneath his skin.
Kaela reached for him, hand outstretched, voice like velvet dipped in entropy.
"Don’t let them chain you with old guilt. You are what they fear. Let that be your crown."
The Queen crawled forward, blood running from her nose, fingers clenched into the stone.
"You promised you wouldn’t become what they made you. Don’t let her turn you into their vengeance."
And then—
The child floated closer.
A tear trailed down its glowing cheek. Not grief—but hope. A plea from innocence to a king long lost.
"...Remember the song, Darius," the child whispered. "The one you cried for."
Maelistra’s voice echoed through the Womb.
A broken hymn. Soft. Faint. Beautiful.
The choir that had once brought him wonder... sang again.
For a moment, Darius faltered.
Then he dropped to one knee, fist slamming into the fracturing floor.
A scream erupted from his throat—not of pain, but decision.
He looked up.
Eyes burning. Crown trembling. Power coiling in wild paradox.
"I choose..."
He reached out—
To both.
Kaela’s hand.
And the child’s light.
The moment his fingers touched them, the Heart exploded.
Not in destruction—but in evolution.
Light and dark surged into Darius’s body. The Womb howled. Code unraveled and reknit. His flesh tore and reformed. The divine within him fused with the forbidden.
Kaela moaned in ecstasy as her essence flowed into him.
The child vanished in a final burst of memory, becoming the last restraint around his soul.
The Queen screamed his name.
But it was too late.
Darius rose.
Transformed.
No longer Hollow.
No longer Savior.
Not even King.
But something new.
Something the gods had no word for.
Something that could dream and destroy in the same breath.
The Womb bowed.
And the stars... blinked.
The chamber no longer held shape.
What had once been the Womb was now a voidscape of shattered code and blooming paradox.
A storm of divinity and void raged across the sky within, spiraling around Darius like twin serpents of fate. Where he stood, time stilled. Reality bent to his breath. The Heart, now consumed, pulsed inside his chest—beating not with blood, but with choice.
Nyx approached through the chaos, blade sheathed, shadows parting in reverence. Her voice was quiet.
"...What are you now?"
Darius turned, and in his eyes she saw the child, the tyrant, the lover, and the god—woven together in seamless contradiction.
"I am the dream they tried to erase," he said. "And the nightmare they thought they could survive."
Kaela stepped beside him, hair alight with stardust, bare feet floating inches above the fragmented floor.
She whispered, "And now?"
Darius lifted his hand. The world responded.
In the rebel’s distant camp, stars fell.
In the temples of his followers, the faithful wept as new hymns carved themselves into their flesh.
In the minds of every living being once connected to the system, a single word echoed—
"Awaken."
The transformation was not his alone.
It was a contagion.
A new genesis, carried on will.
The Dreaming Saint, far from the Womb, gasped and clutched his chest.
The Twice-Killed Queen sank to her knees, bleeding from the mouth.
The Nameless Twin screamed.
Because they felt it—
The rise of something beyond divine.
A being not bound by creation, but now capable of unmaking it with a thought.
And in the depths of the dead code, something stirred.
Something older than even the Womb.
Watching.
Waiting.
A crack appeared across the veil of origin.
And beyond it... eyes opened.
If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.
Report