Chapter 10

The Evil God moved.

Each step was not simply movement—it was an unraveling. As its presence advanced, the world behind it convulsed and withered. Stone crumbled into fine dust; rivers turned black before vanishing into nothing; the air itself trembled, unable to carry sound without distorting into screams that no lips had spoken.

No force stood in its path. No principle of existence dared oppose it. Every law of reality, every cosmic constant that had once governed this world—mass, time, causality, identity—shivered under its gaze and began to dissolve as though they too had chosen to commit suicide rather than suffer His passage.

Creatures that once breathed, prayed, and loved now perished not by the swing of a blade nor by the collapse of cities, but simply by proximity. Their existence was denied by His will. Even before His shadow touched them, they ceased to be—not dead, but erased, forgotten by all systems of memory and consequence.

And above the crumbling world, even the sky grew afraid.

Stars flickered and blinked out, galaxies recoiled into themselves like wounded beasts, and the very fabric of heaven groaned beneath the expanding tide of annihilation. As The Evil God advanced, creation itself suffocated in His wake.

But inside that monstrous form—deep, so deep within—a whisper continued to echo.

Ercolash.

The fragment of his being, though bound and weak, still clung to the smallest corner of the mind they once shared. It watched the horrors unfold from the pit of its prison, helpless, yet conscious. His thoughts were like distant lanterns beneath a sea of black.

And in that dark, memories stirred.

A voice—no longer The Evil God's—spoke in recollection, not to the world, but to itself.

"You were supposed to receive your blessing, Ercolash."

The vision twisted into the past—a temple of light where the Chosen gathered, awaiting their anointment.

"But you saw what others could not."

He saw it then, as he had seen it long ago. The sphere of divinity hovered before him—a crystalline sun filled with threads of radiant power, destined to assign its gift.

"The blessing... was not merely a gift. It was a chain."

And behind the sphere… something pulsed.

Hidden, coiled like a viper behind the fabric of sanctity, was It—The Evil God—its will interwoven into the roots of the very system that governed the ritual.

"I was always there."
"Watching. Waiting."

The blessing was not salvation. It was a contract. A pact to become yet another pawn in the balance of gods who ruled this world. And Ercolash—clever, proud, defiant—had understood.

He rejected not the power itself, but the price.

"So you gambled."
"You cast your entire soul into a desperate act of will—burying me, burying the connection, sealing away the core of your own power. You did not let the blessing form, but neither did you let me rise."

The Evil God smiled as the memory faded.

"But nothing remains buried forever."

With a flick of its thought, the storm above broke into a crimson spiral as entire laws of physics crumpled beneath its will.

Entire civilizations, hiding within fortified realms and sanctuaries layered with divine enchantments, suddenly collapsed like sand under an invisible tide. Ancient defense arrays—once designed to fend off even the most blasphemous of forces—became hollow decorations. Barrier runes twisted into illegible nonsense as the principles they once invoked ceased to exist.

Wizards, kings, and demigods stood in futile resistance, screaming prayers into the collapsing heavens. Their words found no purchase. Language itself stuttered and lost coherence, as if their very concepts were no longer permissible.

A high priest of the Ivory Sanctum raised his staff and called upon the Primordial Law, invoking the "Absolute Command"—a last act of divine authority meant to erase all opposition.

The Evil God turned His head.

And the priest ceased.

Not died.

Not even silenced.

He was unmade, as though he had never stood there at all, his trace erased not only from the earth but from the story of existence itself.

Even time, that stubborn chain, faltered.

The Evil God stepped, and with each movement, entire centuries twisted in knots. The past folded over itself, the present fractured, and the future became void. Flowers bloomed and rotted in the same breath. Oceans dried and then poured from empty skies in reverse, their waters falling upward into stars that no longer existed.

"You understand now, don't you, Ercolash?"

The voice echoed again within the imprisoned fragment.

"Your resistance was futile. The blessing was a cage, but you delayed me—only for this moment. And now… your world dies by My truth."

And then, from the swirling void behind Him, the blade appeared once more.

The Sword That Was Not.

It had no weight, no shape, no edge in the conventional sense. It existed as a boundary violation—a fracture where continuity was severed. Where it struck, the world ceased not only to exist, but to have ever existed.

The Evil God did not swing the blade—it merely allowed its inevitability to unfold.

Entire continents blinked out like snuffed candles. The tectonic plates that had carried the bones of history fractured into nothing. Islands and mountains—entire landmasses of countless ages—collapsed into unreality. Reality shrieked as its seams tore apart.

"Look, Ercolash."

The Evil God whispered into the void within Himself.

"This is perfection."

And yet…
Even in that abyss, something resisted.

The fragment trembled, not from fear, but from memory.

Leon’s voice still lingered. The whisper of a friend—a brother in arms—who had refused to surrender even when stripped of everything.

"You don’t have to be this."

Those words—simple, fragile—anchored the shard that remained.

And for the first time, The Evil God hesitated.

The Sword That Was Not froze mid-thought, the rift in reality pulsing erratically for a fraction of a second, like a breath caught in a dying lung.

"No." The Evil God hissed, its voice splitting into thousands of overlapping tones. "You will not rise."

But inside, the fragment of Ercolash whispered:

"I am not done."

The storm shuddered.

The world cracked further, but somewhere—against the hunger, against the entropy—a spark had begun to fight.

Not strong enough.

Not yet.

But it had begun.