Reincarnated as a Death : vengeance against the Creator

Reyan awoke in the Sanctum.

Alone.

The sky outside was overcast, but still. The birds returned. The rivers flowed as they should. No whispers. No carved phrases. No mirrored shadows.

Yet the silence… wasn't peaceful.

It was expectant.

He sat up slowly.

His hand still bore the faint glow of the Fang shard, but the heat was gone.

Kael's echo—gone.

The pressure of Vel'thar—gone.

And yet...

Something in the air watched.

---

Selene burst into the room, breathless, eyes rimmed with tears. "You're awake."

Reyan looked at her. "How long?"

"Three days. You collapsed outside the Hollow's edge. Aesthera pulled you out."

He blinked. "Vel'thar?"

"Gone. Sealed. No sign. Your name held."

She reached for his hand—paused.

"Reyan… you brought something back."

---

In the garden of the Sanctum, where Kael once stood watch over the souls of the forgotten, a child now sat.

Pale.

Silent.

Hair as white as bone. Eyes like frosted glass.

He didn't blink.

Didn't breathe.

Didn't move.

But when Aesthera approached him, the child turned to her with a smile.

And spoke in Reyan's voice.

---

Reyan sat frozen as Selene described the child.

"I don't remember anything after I named Vel'thar," he whispered.

Selene nodded. "Then let me tell you what we saw."

---

Three nights ago, as the rift in the Hollow closed, a spiral of light rose skyward.

You were unconscious, blood on your lips.

But beside you… the air peeled.

And from that fold in the world stepped the child.

No aura. No presence.

Just emptiness.

We asked his name.

He didn't answer.

He only said:

"I am the memory left behind by the god who never was."

---

Aesthera's analysis confirmed it: no soul, no mana, no divine trace. Not even human.

Just presence.

Reyan stood slowly. "Then he's not a god."

"No," Selene said. "But he might be worse."

---

In the Sanctum court, the child sat on the old stone where Kael once delivered judgment.

Council members gathered, nervous, murmuring.

He watched them with curious eyes, tilting his head like a raven dissecting thought.

Reyan entered the circle.

Their eyes met.

And the child stood.

He was Reyan's exact height.

Same scars.

Same posture.

But pale. Hollow.

A mirror of who Reyan might have been if Kael had never existed.

---

"I don't know what you are," Reyan said.

The child smiled. "Neither do I."

"Why are you here?"

The smile faded. "You brought me back."

Reyan's chest tightened.

"You are Vel'thar?"

The child shook his head.

"No. Vel'thar was a lie. I am what remains when lies are remembered too long."

---

Aesthera stepped forward. "What do you want?"

The child looked up at the sky.

"To become real."

A hush fell.

"I have no name. No soul. No form. But I have presence. I am memory. Give me meaning… and I will become truth."

Selene hissed, "That's what the gods said before."

The child looked at her calmly.

"I am not a god. I'm what comes after."

---

Reyan felt something tugging in his chest—like a forgotten emotion trying to name itself.

He stepped closer.

"If I give you a name… what happens?"

The child blinked once.

"Then I am no longer what you fear."

He smiled.

"I become what you chose."

---

That night, Reyan didn't sleep.

He stood in the ruins of the Archive, Kael's tree glowing faintly behind him.

He spoke to the stars.

"To name you is to define you," he said softly.

"But to ignore you is to let you slip into every shadow we cast."

The wind didn't answer.

But in his shadow, the child stood.

Watching.

Smiling.

Waiting.

At dawn, the child stood in the middle of the Sanctum garden.

No guards dared approach.

He didn't move. Didn't speak.

But around him… people whispered louder. Thought darker. Doubted quicker.

It began with words.

Then hesitation.

Then fear.

---

"He's not dangerous," one soul whispered.

"But he's not natural either."

"I heard he dreams for others."

"My son spoke to him. Now he won't speak at all."

---

Reyan watched from the council tower.

"Every step forward we made," he muttered, "he unravels by just being."

Aesthera placed a scroll on the table beside him.

"This is what I've gathered."

She unrolled the parchment.

Every soul who had interacted with the boy had a shared symptom:

Confused memory

Loss of time

Recollection of events that never occurred

Selene entered, tense. "It's not madness. It's influence. He doesn't change things—he makes people believe they were always that way."

---

Reyan clenched his fists. "So what is he then?"

Aesthera replied, voice heavy, "He's not a lie anymore. He's a belief forming itself. A mirror to what's missing."

Selene turned to Reyan. "You said it yourself—he's a consequence. Of us. Of you."

Reyan didn't deny it.

He simply said, "Then I'll fix it."

---

That evening, he found the boy at Kael's tree again.

Still. Waiting.

"You're not going to stop watching me, are you?" Reyan asked.

The child smiled. "You brought me back."

"I didn't mean to."

"But you did."

Silence stretched between them.

"You exist because Vel'thar was named," Reyan said.

"No," the boy replied. "I exist because you believed something would remain. You feared the void. You hoped something was left. And now here I am."

---

Reyan paced. "If I name you, you become something solid. But if I leave you…"

"I seep," the boy said simply.

Reyan flinched.

The child tilted his head.

"Would you rather I vanish and become everything? Or remain, and be only one thing?"

---

The next morning, strange things happened.

A girl in the east Sanctum claimed she remembered a brother who didn't exist.

A man spoke of a war no one recalled.

Old scrolls showed edits no scribe made.

Time was rewriting itself, not by force, but by belief.

All tied to the child.

All because the world needed to fill its empty spaces.

---

Reyan convened the council.

Selene. Aesthera. The remaining elders.

He stood before them and said:

"We created a god without intending to."

Selene stepped forward. "And you plan to name him?"

Reyan nodded.

Aesthera objected, "You'd give shape to something that already rewrites reality without it?"

"I'll give him one shape," Reyan said. "So he doesn't take all of them."

---

That night, Reyan returned to the garden.

The boy was waiting.

"I'm ready," Reyan said.

"To name me?" the boy asked.

Reyan nodded. "Yes. But only if you agree to the meaning."

The boy's eyes narrowed. "And what meaning is that?"

Reyan knelt.

"You will not be a god. Not a devil. Not a lie."

"You will be Reman."

"The Echo of Regret."

---

The air stilled.

The name struck like thunder—quiet but absolute.

The trees swayed.

The stars pulsed.

And the boy… breathed.

For the first time.

---

Reman blinked, confused.

"I… feel."

"Good," Reyan said. "Then you're real. Now live with it."

Reman stepped forward, the faintest weight in his steps.

"Do I have a future?"

"No," Reyan said. "You have a choice."

---

But far above, beyond the sky, something stirred.

A presence that had once ruled over all.

Now blind.

But not deaf.

It heard the name.

And it remembered.

Reman breathed.

A soft inhale, as fragile as glass.

The world didn't crack.

It shifted.

Somewhere deep beneath the earth, echoes stirred in forgotten caverns.

Not from power.

From recognition.

---

Reyan watched closely.

"Feel that?" he asked.

Reman nodded slowly. "It hurts."

"Good," Reyan said. "Pain means you're real. Lies don't suffer."

Reman looked at his hands—still pale, but now with warmth.

"I remember nothing," he said.

"You're not meant to," Reyan replied. "You're a beginning, not a past."

---

But beginnings leave trails.

Across the Sanctum, the dreamers began to see again.

A mother who'd forgotten her child now remembered a lullaby.

A scribe who never learned to write found ink dancing under his fingertips.

Memories began to return—not the false ones Reman once carried, but true regrets.

Each memory triggered by his presence.

Regret made real.

---

Selene sat beside Aesthera in the old observatory.

They watched as a mural once erased—depicting Kael's rebellion—slowly reappeared across the stone wall.

Aesthera whispered, "Regret restores. That's his domain."

Selene folded her arms. "And what does he want?"

"I don't think he knows yet."

---

In the garden, Reyan sat beside Reman beneath Kael's tree.

The silence between them was... human now.

Not divine. Not cursed. Just quiet.

Then Reman asked:

"Do you regret naming me?"

Reyan didn't answer right away.

Finally, he said, "I regret a thousand things. But not that."

Reman closed his eyes. "Then I will carry it. If you let me."

Reyan turned to him. "Carry what?"

Reman opened his eyes.

"The regrets you can't."

---

That night, Reman disappeared.

Not vanished.

Just... walked beyond the Sanctum's borders.

No one stopped him.

Not because they feared him—but because they understood.

He needed to find his shape.

To find a place where regret could breathe.

---

Three days later, the dreams returned.

But not from Reman.

From somewhere beneath.

A place sealed before time, buried by the First Flame itself.

A temple with no name.

A crypt with no god.

Where regret had once been imprisoned—not destroyed.

---

Selene burst into Reyan's chambers, panic on her face.

"Something's moving beneath the southern cliffs."

Reyan stood. "Reman?"

She shook her head.

"No. Older."

They rode south that same night.

Aesthera joined them, bearing the Fang shard once more—fused into a blade now.

And there, at the edge of the cliffs, they saw it.

The mountain bleeding.

Stone weeping silver.

And from it... a hum.

A chant in a tongue no one spoke anymore, yet all understood.

"Bring us the weight. Let us carry it."

---

Reyan stepped toward the cleft in the rock.

"I know this place," he murmured.

Aesthera nodded. "The Archive never listed it."

Selene gritted her teeth. "Then it predates even the gods."

The wind whispered again.

"We were forgotten… not because we were lies… but because we were too heavy to hold."

---

They descended into the opening.

Below, they found a crypt of chains.

Thousands.

But nothing was shackled.

Only inscriptions.

Names.

Not gods.

Not demons.

Regrets.

Each regret etched into stone.

And one had been broken.

---

Selene read it aloud.

"'The Regret of the First Flame: I feared being forgotten… and in doing so, I burned the world.'"

A second inscription, beneath it, was fresh.

Reyan stepped closer.

It bore his name.

"The Regret of Reyan: I remembered what I should have let go."

---

Suddenly, the air shifted.

A figure stepped from the dark—

Cloaked not in shadow, but in tears.

Eyes like oceans. Voice like storms bottled too long.

"You remembered him," it said. "And so you awakened us."

Reyan drew back. "Who are you?"

The figure opened its arms.

"We are the Weepers. The regrets too powerful to die."

And they all began to rise.