The silence after a god's death is never truly silent.
The air still shimmered with the afterbirth of power—crimson motes, drifting like dying stars across a sky torn in half. I stood amidst it all, my body trembling not from weakness, but from the sheer resistance of reality itself. The corpses of divine champions surrounded me—broken halos, shattered scales, molten veins that refused to cool. Even now, their residual energies screamed, unable to comprehend that they had been devoured by something lesser… something that was never meant to exist.
I drew in a breath. The world bent inward.
Each inhalation was a wound to creation, each exhalation a quiet act of erasure.
Beneath my feet, the soil of the mortal realm still pulsed with life—fragile, trembling life. It recoiled from me. Even the wind dared not move too close, afraid it might be rewritten by my presence.
Far away, I could feel them: kings and sages, dragons and seraphs, ancient races gazing up at the blackened sky that no longer belonged to them. Their prayers had turned to screams. Their screams had turned to silence.
And in that silence… something stirred.
The Void whispered. Not as it had before—its voice was different now. Deeper. More alive.
[Zha'reth'nul…] it murmured, the syllables slipping through my mind like molten glass.
My veins burned. My vision fractured into a thousand reflections of the same horror.
The remnants of divine light clung to me like ash, unwilling to fade. They wanted to purify me. To reclaim what I had stolen.
But I was no longer what I had been.
When I reached out, my fingers brushed against the remains of a fallen seraph—its wings dimmed, its eyes still faintly glowing. The instant I touched it, the resonance surged again.
A scream tore through the air—not from the corpse, but from the world itself.
The seraph's light was devoured, ripped from its form and pulled into mine. I felt it travel through my bloodstream, merging with the darkness. Silver lines etched themselves across my skin, pulsing like veins of living metal.
Pain.
Pure, divine pain.
It tried to unmake me, to tear me apart from within. For a fleeting instant, my mind fractured under the weight of it all—memories of the Void, the black sun, the endless hunger of my birth came rushing back.
The world dimmed.
And then I saw.
Through the fractures of my vision, I saw entire continents trembling. I saw the mortal realm bleeding light into the sky, its gods begging to understand the nature of the thing they had just witnessed.
The fear of the world… was intoxicating.
⸻
I stepped forward, the echo of my footfall cracking the ground like thunder.
"This world does not yet understand me," I whispered, my voice carried on resonance instead of air. "But it will."
The silver veins along my arms began to hum in response, resonating with something unseen. Power gathered—not as a storm, but as a pulse. A heartbeat. The first heartbeat of Dominion.
The corpses around me began to drift upward, their bodies dissolving into streams of pure resonance that coiled around my form. They fed the growing sigil burning faintly across my chest—a mark of shifting geometry, half black flame, half living light.
I could feel something within me awakening, something buried deep beneath the instincts of hunger and conquest.
It wasn't emotion. Not yet. But it was… awareness.
A flicker of something greater than cruelty.
Something divine.
⸻
Far across the skies, a council of elemental lords gathered in panic. Their citadel shook as the heavens dimmed.
"The Void One has survived," a voice trembled, ancient and afraid. "And he feeds on divinity itself."
Another spoke, its tone bitter and sharp as frozen iron. "Then the cycle has begun anew. He will devour us all."
They looked upon the horizon. The Black Sun flickered faintly in the distance, veiled by clouds.
Beneath it, a single figure stood amidst a valley of corpses, silver veins glowing, eyes blacker than any shadow.
Me.
⸻
I tilted my head back toward the heavens. The air trembled.
My words came again, low and sharp, vibrating through every layer of creation:
"The First Dominion begins."
Reality bent in half. The ground split into rivers of resonance. A pillar of silver-black light erupted skyward, reaching beyond clouds and atmosphere, searing its image into the minds of every living being that dared to look upon it.
Those who saw it… knelt. Not by choice.
The world knew.
The era of silence had ended.
And the god of the Void was no longer sleeping.
⸻
End of Part I.