There was no falling.
No weight.
No ground.
No light.
There was only absence.
Zelf'th opened his eyes but saw nothing.
Not darkness.
Not even the black between stars.
This was beyond sight.
Beyond time.
A realm not shaped by gods or men.
He tried to scream.
No voice came.
Sound had no meaning here.
The gods had not cast him into death.
They had cast him into unbeing.
Time passed.
Or didn't.
He did not know how long he drifted If "drifting" could be called a thing in this place.
Memories began to unravel.
Names.
Faces.
Even Helian's voice frayed like paper soaked in water.
But just as he felt himself dissolve—
Something stirred.
A ripple in the not-space.
A presence without form.
A thought that was not his own.
You are not the first…But you are the one who remained.
The voice did not speak.
It echoed within.
Not like language But like instinct.
Like grief.
You seek to defy the gods…You seek to mend what they deemed broken.
Zelf'th clenched what he thought were still hands.
'Yes', he whispered in his mind. I would burn their thrones to bring her back.
And the VOID…laughed.
Not cruelly.
Not mockingly.
But with recognition.
'Then let us make a pact, broken one. Let us remake you—Not as a servant. Not as a vessel. But as a flame in the dark. A truth the gods tried to bury. The one who knows how they are born…And how they can die.'
Zelf'th clenched his fists.
The VOID pulsed with something deeper—A memory not his.
But one buried.
Stolen.
The silence began to unravel.
And from it, images bled into his mind:
A golden throne.
A god adorned in radiance and pride Aurelion, the Flame of the First Light.
He stood before Helian.
He gazed not with love.
But with envy.
"She dares shine where only gods should glow."
"Let no mortal rival the heavens. Let no flame burn brighter than mine."
With a single word, Aurelion—the Flame of the First Light—struck her soul still.
Not out of justice.But jealousy.
"Let her beauty be eternal," he whispered," and forever silent."
She did not die from the spell.
She was frozen in time.
Flesh turned to marble.
Soul bound in stillness.
A statue placed in Aurelion's private sanctum A trophy.
A curse.
Zelf'th's knees buckled.
Rage crashed through his chest like a tidal wave.
All this time…He thought he had killed her.
But it was not the magic.
Not his folly.
It was the gods.
It was him.
"They lied,"
he whispered.
"They stole her."
The VOID coiled around him like smoke and stars.
Now you know the truth.
Now you understand why they fear you.
You were never meant to fall.
You were meant to rise.
And burn the heavens.
The VOID did not just whisper.
It devoured.
It tore him apart cell by cell, thought by thought Until there was nothing left of the man who once prayed beneath breathless stars.
And then It rebuilt him.
His bones cracked like breaking constellations.
His blood burned cold, flowing with ink-black light.
What once was a shattered mana core now pulsed in his chest Not with arcane fire,
But with void-crystal, a prism of endless night.
Flesh melted into shadow.
Eyes turned to stars.
His breath echoed like wind across dying worlds.
Yet, beneath the monstrous form, the shape of a man remained.
Zelf'th, the broken mage, lived on within the god-slayer.
He was no longer man.
Not fully.
Not anymore.
The gods had cast him into the dark.
But from the dark, he was reborn.
And when he walks the earth again…The heavens will tremble.
"When next the stars align," the VOID murmured," one god will fall."
And Zelf'th opened his eyes again Galaxies swirling in his gaze.
A flame born from silence.
A reckoning waiting to rise.