I Became the Error the Gods Couldn’t Erase

The silence of millennia was not broken by sound—but by memory.

Deep beneath the scorched bones of the Hollow Cradle, something ancient stirred. Not in rage. Not in hunger. But in remembrance. It pulsed. A steady, thunderous rhythm—vibrating through the stone like a buried heartbeat. Rael felt it crawling up through the ground, through his boots, through the marrow of his bones. It wasn't sound. It was a summons. A call older than gods, echoing up from a wound in the world.

The cold chamber trembled. Ash fell from the domed ceiling like gray snow. Blue runes etched across the cracked altar suddenly burned bright, flaring in sync with the deep pulse below.

Rael stood still as stone, shadow-wrapped and sharp-eyed.

He'd heard of this place. Myths passed between warlocks and starborn wanderers. The Hollow Cradle was not merely a ruin. It was a tomb. A vault. A seal.

And it was waking.

The runes' pulsing quickened—mirroring the rhythm beneath his skin. The dark force within him, his tether to the forbidden current that danced through the edge of existence, resonated with the energy below. It wasn't a rejection. Not yet. It was recognition. Like a long-lost relative acknowledging his bloodline.

Rael turned toward the altar.

Behind him, shadows twisted unnaturally. They writhed not as extensions of light but as conscious things, reacting to the pulse below. Each step Rael took forward, the more alive the shadows became.

He didn't fear them. He was born from them.

The broken scavengers littered the crypt floor like discarded puppets—limbs twisted, mana shattered. They hadn't faced a man. They'd faced inevitability.

Only one remained breathing. The leader.

Frozen. Paralyzed. Not by fear—but by Rael's precise mastery of the Noctfang energy that lived within him. He was locked from the inside, unable to scream, unable to die.

Rael crouched beside him, expression unreadable.

"Why here? Why now? Why do the stars bleed onto this place?"

The man's jaw trembled as the altar flared again.

"T-The Astral Core… It's beneath… The Cradle was built to bind it. The old flame. The first piece of the world's breath—buried to never awaken. But every Astralfall… every star that breaks the sky… it thins the seal. It—"

A quake silenced him.

The altar cracked down the center with a shriek of stone. The ground tore open, exhaling a foul breath of ancient dust. From the black chasm, a staircase spiraled downward into darkness.

Rael didn't hesitate.

He hoisted the frozen man onto his shoulder and stepped into the maw of the world.

Every step down echoed like a funeral drum.

The walls wept with silver veins of light, flickering against lines of abyssal black, like old scars that never healed. Wisps of corrupted mana danced through the air, singing in forgotten tongues.

Rael's eyes flicked to a half-buried shrine along the descent—its walls still etched with protective incantations. He stepped in briefly, laid the paralyzed man against stone, and weaved a shield of whispering shadow around him.

"Live if you can," Rael murmured. "But if it finds you, pray it ends quickly."

From the abyss below, something moved.

Not walking. Not crawling. Something immense shifting in the deep, cracking stone just by breathing.

And then—

It roared.

The kind of roar that echoed through history itself.

Rael descended.

The final stair gave way to a cavern vast and black as the space between stars. Heat and cold swirled together. The air burned and froze with every breath.

At the center of the chamber, rising from a pit of ash and shattered celestial chains, was the guardian.

No longer a name spoken by mortals, but a curse etched in the bones of reality:

Morvaegoth, the World-Sundered.

It stood half-buried in molten rock and dust, a titan of fused metal, bone, and obsidian wrath. Six arms, armored in cursed alloy, ended in claws like the broken blades of a god. Its spine arched like a mountain hunched in pain, and its chest glowed with chained runes screaming in languages that no longer existed.

Its face—if it could be called that—was a cracked mask of sorrow and slaughter. Two bottomless holes where eyes should be, leaking vaporous light that bent space. Its mouth, a vertical chasm of twisting teeth, opened—not to speak, but to devour.

Rael stood unmoved.

He raised his hand. The Noctfang obeyed.

The black tide surged from within his chest, flooding his arms and forming into twin crescent daggers. They shimmered with living shadow. Behind him, the darkness stretched and clawed upward—taking the shape of torn wings, half-smoke, half-void.

Morvaegoth moved.

It didn't step. It collapsed forward with weight that cracked the cavern floor. One colossal arm swept at Rael, a strike meant to erase mountains.

Rael vanished from its path, reappearing behind its leg. One Noctfang dagger stabbed into the gap between plates.

CRACK.

Dark ichor burst forth, steaming.

But the wound was shallow.

Rael leapt again—this time toward its spine—but midair, a cold wave struck him.

The Core's rejection.

Power drained. Shadows flickered. His blades trembled.

This place was not his. The magic that lived here… wanted him gone.

His wings shrank, flickering. The Noctfang's edges blurred, as though unwilling to exist.

Morvaegoth turned with a sound like time cracking.

Its clawed fist struck.

Rael blocked. Too slow.

THOOM!

He was thrown across the cavern, spine-first into a stone pillar. Bone cracked. Blood burst from his lips. The air left his lungs in a shattered gasp.

Everything screamed.

But he got up.

He always got up.

One breath. Another. Pain blurred his vision, but he stood—legs shaking, ribs broken, shadows thin as mist.

He couldn't win. Not yet.

So he did the only thing left.

He turned—and ran.

The cavern groaned behind him. Morvaegoth's roar chased him. The spiral stairs above collapsed, stone falling like the sky dying.

Rael's fingers clawed against the walls as he ascended through the chaos, dodging falling debris, blood slick on his side.

At last, the crypt's surface. Cold air. Stars above.

But no rest.

He fled into the forest. The Hollow Cradle behind him shuddered violently, like the earth itself gasping.

From beneath, something older than flame stirred.

Rael didn't look back.

He vanished into trees and shadow, his breath ragged, blood dripping, thoughts razor-sharp:

"This world will break before I do."

And then, softer:

"I need answers. Nexaris. Only Nexaris knows what's buried beneath the stars."

As the trees closed around him, and the Hollow Cradle groaned its final warning, Rael disappeared into the dark, wounded—but not defeated.

Not yet.