Chapter 9

The breath of existence seemed to fracture, a ragged exhale torn from the throat of reality itself. The god—no, the thing that had been Ercolash—stood amidst the ruin, the remnants of cities and bones crumbling beneath its feet. It was not a being of flesh, not anymore. It was hunger given form, entropy made manifest, a rift where the laws of being twisted and died.

And yet, in that sea of destruction, something stirred.

Leon, broken and hollowed, coughed blood onto the ashen earth. His vision swam, darkness creeping at the edges, but a glimmer—faint as a dying ember—burned within him. His breath was shallow, ragged, but a single thought clawed its way through the fog: I must stop it. Even if he was nothing, even if he had been reduced to a shell, there was still something left—some sliver of will, of defiance that refused to let go.

He dragged himself forward, fingers clawing at the shattered ground, leaving streaks of red behind him. The weight of the god’s presence bore down like a storm, like an ocean pressing on the bones of the world, but he reached—reached into the hollow that had once held his power, into the void where Null and Affirm had been torn from him.

And there, in the abyss, he heard a voice.

Faint, so faint it could have been imagined. A whisper, or perhaps a memory.

“Not yet. You are not done.”

Leon’s eyes widened. His fingers tightened, scrabbling against the dust. His voice, cracked and barely more than a whisper, bled into the darkness.

“...Ercolash...”

The thing paused.

A flicker—a crack—ran through its form, infinitesimal, like a hairline fracture in the face of a monolith. The vast, unfeeling hunger paused, as if some distant chord had been plucked within its being.

Leon coughed, choking on his own breath. His voice was a rasp, a ghost of sound.

“Remember... who you were...”

For a moment, the shadows swirling around the god seemed to falter, stuttering like a skipped heartbeat. A ripple passed through the tattered threads of existence, an almost imperceptible quiver in the storm.

And then it screamed.

A sound that split the air, that shattered the bones of the earth, a sound like the dying wail of a thousand collapsing stars. It was not pain—no, not entirely—but fury. Fury at the fracture, at the whisper, at the memory that would not die.

“Silence!” the god roared, its voice a tidal wave of hatred. “You think your pitiful voice can reach me? That your fragile hope can bind me?”

It raised its hand, and from the void, the sword came.

It did not manifest in the air; it simply was. A blade that existed beyond the fabric of reality, a fracture in the laws of causality itself. It moved not with speed, but with inevitability. There was no swing, no arc—only the fact that it had cut, and you were already undone.

A creature in the distance, once a being of flesh and blood, turned to nothing in an instant—its existence erased so thoroughly that no memory, no trace of it could ever have been. Mountains split, oceans bled into the sky, and the firmament of the world groaned, fissuring under the weight of that impossible edge.

Leon watched, helpless, as the blade carved through space, through thought, through the very concept of resistance. He felt the pull in his chest, the thread of connection that had once been Ercolash—and he knew that it could be stopped, should be stopped.

But he was too small. Too broken.

And yet, his voice cracked the silence once more, ragged and raw.

“Ercolash... you don’t... have to be this...”

The god hesitated again.

For a breath—a single, trembling moment—its form seemed to flicker, as though something deep within it was fighting, screaming against the cage of power that the ancient god had forced upon it. A flash of something—eyes, perhaps?—hidden within the abyss. Something that looked... human.

And then it was gone.

The god moved, its form stretching across the horizon like the shadow of a dying star. It spoke, but the voice was different now—layered, as if two voices spoke in tandem, the hunger and the broken soul beneath it.

“Leon... you should have died with the rest of them.”

Leon’s breath hitched. His body, already shattered, convulsed in pain as the weight of the voice slammed into him, crushing his will, his hope, grinding it to dust.

But even as the god turned its gaze away, even as the blade tore through the fabric of the world, Leon felt something stir—a resistance, weak and fragile, but there.

A fragment.

A seed.

Somewhere deep inside, a part of Ercolash still fought, struggling beneath the waves of annihilation. The whisper Leon had spoken had planted a thorn, a sliver of defiance in the god’s mind. It was not enough to stop the destruction. Not yet. Cities burned, oceans boiled, the very sky split apart—but it slowed the devouring, if only by a heartbeat.

Leon coughed, blood staining the ground. His voice barely audible, he whispered to the sky, to the storm, to the shadow of a friend long lost.

“Please... remember...”

The god’s form shimmered, unstable for a moment, like a candle in a storm.

And then, with a scream of tearing reality, it surged forward, the sword striking without thought, without mercy. Mountains crumbled, continents fractured, and the world began to unravel at the seams.

The god—no longer Ercolash, not truly—stood alone in the ruin, the last shreds of resistance broken beneath its feet.

But somewhere, buried deep beneath the storm, a fragment of Ercolash remained. And it watched.