by neuraX
"In the beginning, the Void knew silence.
Now, it knows fear."
For eighteen cycles, the Black Sun has pulsed in silence above the endless dark.
Its light is not warmth but memory — remembering what was once divine and what now festers beneath.
Beneath its shadow, a single village has survived longer than it should have.
A cradle of those born from nothing — shadow folk, voidlings, and dreamless husks.
They whisper of their protector, their godling, their curse.
They whisper my name.
I remember the sound of their whispers. It used to amuse me.
They built altars from black sand and offered their blood in bowls carved from bone, hoping I would protect them from the lesser horrors that stalked the Void.
For a time, I did nothing.
But they kept kneeling. They kept praying.
And one day, I decided I had heard enough.
The air is trembling again. The Black Sun burns cold.
I stand on the edge of the village, my feet leaving trails of darkness that dissolve the ground.
Below me, hundreds of faces lift — pale, eyeless, trembling.
"Azael Voidborn," they chant.
"The Son of the Black Sun."
They don't understand what they're worshiping.
They never did.
My mother, Vaelira, steps forward first — her beauty unchanged, her voice still wrapped in sorrow.
Her veins shimmer with silver light; she was once the Void's healer, a rarity among our kind.
"Azael," she whispers, the air breaking around my name. "The world bends when you breathe. Please, child… stop before you unmake everything."
I tilt my head slightly, studying her. "Everything must be unmade, mother. The weak build, the strong destroy, and gods rule what remains."
Her eyes glisten. "You are not a god yet."
I smile faintly. "Then I will become one."
My father, Rhaz'thar, steps beside her. His voice cuts like obsidian — deep, firm, heavy with unspoken dread.
"The Black Sun watches, boy. Even it may not forgive this."
"Then let it watch," I reply. "Let it see how its children truly ascend."
The sky cracks. The Void howls.
My aura spills outward like liquid night, rippling across the village. Every structure, every stone hums with my heartbeat.
The weak collapse first — their forms melting into dark mist, their souls whispering in languages even I cannot remember.
Vaelira screams my name, summoning her Celestial Veins — silver light bursting from her body, weaving around me in chains.
They burn. They tear.
I let her believe she's holding me.
"Your compassion blinds you," I murmur. "Even now, you still think I am your son."
She pulls the chains tighter. "Because you are!"
I raise my hand, and Dominion answers.
The light around her dies. Her voice catches — then fades into a soundless cry.
The silver veins crack, her body folding inward, dissolving into ash that glows once before vanishing into my shadow.
My father roars — not in grief, but fury. His own power erupts — Abyssfire, black flame that devours even thought.
It surges toward me, a storm of annihilation.
I walk through it.
He meets me in the center, claws like molten blades. Our strikes tear the air apart — each blow shatters the horizon.
But he is mortal. I am not.
I grip his throat. His fire sputters and dies.
He looks into my eyes — eyes that reflect nothing but depth.
And in that reflection, he sees what I have become.
"There are others," he rasps, blood and shadow spilling from his mouth. "Other villages. Other bloodlines. You are not alone."
I tighten my grip. "Then I will find them."
The sound of his neck breaking echoes like thunder.
When his body falls, the Void itself trembles.
Silence.
The village burns with black fire, though no heat touches me. The screams have faded, replaced by faint echoes that orbit my throne.
Even the Void winds have stopped howling.
For the first time, there is peace — the kind born from extinction.
I look down at my hands. The blood of my kin stains them, glowing faintly violet as Dominion hums through my veins.
Power beyond comprehension. But still… incomplete.
The Void feels small now.
I gaze toward the horizon, where cracks shimmer faintly — thin seams of color bleeding into the dark.
Reality itself is fracturing. The other worlds beyond are leaking through.
Whispers rise from the ashes — faint voices of the dying villagers.
"There are others…"
"Other children of the Black Sun…"
"They will come for you…"
Their words amuse me. I welcome it.
Let them come. Let them beg for their gods to protect them.
Because I am coming to become their god.
Eighteen Cycles Later
The Void has not changed. Only I have.
My throne rests at the center of what remains of the village — though it's no longer a place, but a scar upon existence.
From here, I can feel every echo of power in this realm — every whisper of the other villages still hiding in the dark.
They chant my name in secret, praying I will never find them.
I always hear them.
The Black Sun above me pulsates again. For centuries, it has been dormant — now it hums with something new.
Color.
Light.
Life.
A thin crack tears open before me, slicing through the Void like a wound in the skin of reality.
Beyond it, I see fragments of a world that should not exist — the first of the Fractured Worlds.
Air. Sky. Flame. Sound. Things the Void has never known.
A flicker of curiosity touches my mind — faint, almost human.
I step forward. Shadows peel from my body, forming wings of voidlight that tear through the air.
The rift widens at my will, the edges glowing with violet flame.
As I stand before the gate, the whisper of my mother's voice lingers — an echo of the memory I refused to feel.
"Azael… there is always something beyond power."
I look back once, toward the ashes of the world I destroyed.
It is silent now. Perfectly mine.
Then I look forward — into the unknown.
"Let the Void remember me as its end," I whisper, stepping into the light.
"For I will be the beginning of everything else."
End of Chapter 4 – "The Fractured World"