Reincarnated as a Death : vengeance against the Creator

The descent into the crypt was suffocating, not because of the air, but because of the overwhelming sensation pressing against Reyan's chest with every step. The deeper they went, the more the world above felt like a distant memory—blurred, dreamlike, irrelevant. Behind him, Selene's grip tightened on the hilt of her blade, while Aesthera muttered incantations under her breath, protective runes lighting up along the inside of her cloak. Their footsteps echoed unnaturally, as if the stone was absorbing their presence instead of reflecting it.

They entered a massive chamber lit only by cold silver flames burning atop twisted obelisks. The walls were lined with tablets—etched with regrets. Not prayers, not curses. Just pure, aching, unfiltered regret. Entire lifetimes carved into single lines. "I let her die alone." "I worshipped the wrong god." "I loved too late." The room was a grave of memory, not of bodies, and every inscription pulsed with a resonance that Reyan could feel in his bones.

Selene moved closer to a fractured altar at the center. "These aren't just regrets of mortals," she whispered, running her hand over one. "Some of these... they're divine." Aesthera nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. "We're standing in the vault of the Weepers."

Reyan stared at the central slab. Unlike the others, this one was freshly cracked—and beneath it, his own name was carved in jagged lines. "The Regret of Reyan: I remembered what I should have let go." He traced the words with a gloved finger, a hollow ache blooming in his chest. This wasn't prophecy. This wasn't warning. This was truth, etched before he'd ever spoken it aloud. The chamber had known. It had always known.

The air thickened suddenly, and from the darkness, they came. Not gods. Not mortals. Shapes formed from tears and shadow, from memory and absence. They moved slowly, without form, yet every one of them wore faces Reyan recognized—faces from dreams, battles, old lives long buried. One stepped forward, cloaked in sorrow itself, its voice like thunder behind a wall of rain. "You remembered him," it said. "And so you awakened us."

Reyan's body tensed, but he did not draw his weapon. "You're the Weepers," he said, more a statement than a question. The being inclined its head. "We are what remains when regret becomes stronger than faith." Its eyes, hollow and infinite, locked with his. "You opened the seal when you named the child. And now, we remember too much to remain silent."

Selene stepped forward, blade half drawn. "What do you want?" The Weeper answered without looking at her. "We want to be known. We want to be felt. We want the world to carry what it made us bury." Behind it, hundreds of other Weepers began to emerge—some small, shivering and translucent; others towering, warped by centuries of abandonment. One muttered names. Another cried silently, hands clasped in endless prayer. Each was a memory that had once been too painful to bear, sealed away by gods and mortals alike.

Aesthera whispered, "They're not just remnants. They're truths the world refused to hold." Reyan stepped forward, eyes fixed on the first Weeper. "And now?" he asked. "Now that you've returned?" The Weeper spread its arms, the silver fire dancing along its limbs. "Now, the world must remember. Or be consumed by the weight it discarded."

The chamber trembled.

The regrets carved into the walls began to glow brighter.

And then, a voice—small, fragile, yet unmistakably real—echoed from behind them.

"Then I'll carry it."

They turned.

Standing at the threshold of the crypt, pale hair shining in the cold firelight, was Reman.

His expression wasn't childlike now. It was calm. Certain.

Reyan's eyes widened. "You came back."

Reman nodded, stepping into the light, the silver flames flickering as he passed. "I felt it. The Weepers. The weight." He looked to the sorrowful beings. "I was born from a lie… but they were buried truths. I understand them."

The first Weeper watched Reman with unblinking eyes. "You carry regret."

"I am regret," Reman answered softly. "Given form."

The chamber pulsed again.

Reyan stepped toward him. "Reman, this isn't your burden."

"It has to be," the boy said. "You gave me meaning. Let me use it."

The Weeper's voice dropped to a whisper, and yet it filled the entire crypt.

"Then choose, Echo. Will you become the weight… or the one who teaches the world to carry it?"

Reman didn't answer.

Not yet.

But the fire began to spiral around him as the chamber prepared for a decision that would shape the fate of gods and mortals alike.

The chamber had fallen deathly still, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath, awaiting Reman's answer. The silver flames encircling him rose higher, not with heat, but with pressure—as though the world had coiled around this moment. Reyan stood just behind the boy, unable to speak. For all his strength, all his cold defiance, this was a decision even he dared not influence. Reman was no longer just a remnant of the past; he was the dividing line between erasure and revelation.

Reman raised his hand slowly, the flickers of fire responding to his movement like threads of memory unraveling at his touch. "You ask if I will carry it," he said, voice steady. "But I already do. I was made from what should have been forgotten. I exist because someone dared to remember." His gaze turned to the Weeper before him—its hollow eyes like wells of drowning sorrow. "But I don't want the world to suffer as you did. I don't want them to collapse under the weight of their regrets."

The Weeper remained motionless, but its voice drifted like fog through the air. "Then teach them. Become the vessel. Let every forgotten grief live through you. Every buried cry echo in your being. Carry all of it—and become what the gods never dared to be." The silver flames wrapped tighter around Reman's form, now forming sigils in the air—runes older than language, etched in grief and truth. His body trembled, not from fear, but from the immensity of the task. Behind him, Reyan took a step forward.

"You don't have to become their burden," Reyan said, the words struggling past the lump in his throat. "You were meant to choose your own path—not be chained by ours." Reman turned, offering a sad but sincere smile. "But that's just it… this is my choice." He looked again to the Weepers, who were now kneeling, as if recognizing a successor. "I won't erase regret. I'll hold it. I'll remember—so they don't have to forget just to survive."

With that, he stepped into the heart of the flame.

The light exploded—silent and blinding. The chamber roared with energy as every inscription on the walls flared to life, then faded into the stone as if consumed by something greater. The Weepers didn't vanish. They merged. Their forms flowed like rivers of sorrow into Reman's body, not as pain, but as essence. His pale skin darkened slightly, shaded now in silver veins of light. His hair flickered like a fading comet. When the light faded, he remained standing, breathing slowly, eyes closed.

The chamber was quiet again. Not empty—whole.

Selene exhaled for the first time in minutes. "What did he become?" Aesthera answered softly, reverently, "A living archive. The Soul of Regret." Reyan stepped toward Reman, who opened his eyes slowly. There was a stillness in him now, not the emptiness of before—but a peace born from understanding.

"I see them," Reman whispered. "All of them. The gods who broke. The mortals who begged. The children who never had the words." He looked up. "They're not screaming anymore. They're heard."

The temple responded. A soft chime echoed through the air, and the walls, once lined with regrets, were now smooth stone. Not erased. Not rewritten. Simply accepted. The burden had found a bearer.

Reyan placed a hand on Reman's shoulder, his voice thick. "You did what I never could." Reman shook his head. "You gave me the chance. You believed in something the gods were too afraid to touch."

Behind them, the path out of the temple began to reopen, light shining from the surface world above. The Weepers had left no curses, no demands—only silence, the kind that follows when something heavy has finally been put down.

As the three walked toward the exit, Reyan looked back once. There was no lingering fear in his eyes. No hunger for vengeance. Only the faint shadow of a man who had carried too much, and finally passed the weight to someone who chose to bear it not out of anger, but grace.

The world would remember now. Not because it had to.

But because someone finally made it safe to.

The light that greeted them at the surface was unlike anything Reyan had ever seen. Not divine. Not corrupted. It was soft, forgiving. A sky painted in muted golds and silvers, as if the heavens themselves had exhaled. For the first time since his return, Reyan felt something close to stillness. Not peace exactly—but the kind of clarity that follows after the storm. Selene stood beside him, her armor dimly reflecting the fading energy from the temple. Aesthera stepped out behind them, adjusting the runes along her arms as if they too had changed somehow. And in the middle of them stood Reman—no longer pale, no longer just an echo.

He was whole now, radiant in a quiet, dignified way. He didn't speak as they walked, didn't need to. Everything about him exuded calm. The Weepers were no longer lingering in shadow. They lived within him—memories not twisted, but accepted. Carried. A presence like his couldn't go unnoticed for long. As they descended into the lower sanctum village, people came out of their homes, drawn by something they didn't fully understand. Eyes widened. Knees buckled. Not in fear. In recognition.

Many of them wept silently, though they didn't know why.

Selene placed a hand on Reyan's arm. "He's already changing things. Not with power… with memory." Reyan nodded, gaze fixed on the horizon. "That's why we don't have time to wait." He turned to Aesthera. "Can you open the Gate to the Astral Seat?"

She hesitated. "You're going to confront the Creator now?"

"I have to. Before he buries this too."

Aesthera's fingers twitched, drawing celestial runes midair. "If you step through that gate, there's no guarantee you'll return. He controls that realm completely."

Reyan looked at Reman, then back to her. "I'm not going to fight. I'm going to show him what he forgot."

With one final sigil, the sky split in two.

No storm. No lightning. Just a vertical tear in reality—calm, sharp, precise. The Gate to the Astral Seat opened like a door left cracked, daring them to step through.

Reyan moved without hesitation.

---

The Astral Seat was as Reyan remembered: blinding, perfect, hollow. A cathedral made of stars and silence, where time didn't move but watched. At its center, on a throne forged from nothingness itself, sat the Creator. Still faceless. Still formless. Still pretending he hadn't destroyed everything to maintain control.

Reyan stepped forward, his boots echoing against the floor of stilled galaxies. The Creator did not rise, but his presence pressed like gravity. "You shouldn't be here," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it reverberated with godhood—authoritative, absolute.

"And yet," Reyan replied, "I am."

The Creator tilted his unseen head. "You've changed."

"I remembered."

"That was your greatest mistake."

Reyan took another step. "No, that was your fear. You buried every regret. Every error. Every emotion that didn't fit your design. And now, they've returned."

A pause.

"Reman," the Creator said. "The name you gave regret."

"He chose to carry it. The Weepers gave him form. He is what comes after you."

For the first time, the throne trembled. Just slightly. But Reyan saw it.

"You're not here to fight me," the Creator said. "So what is it you want?"

"I want you to look," Reyan said. "Truly look."

He raised his hand. A small memory unfurled from his palm—not as a weapon, but a window. A single mortal's regret: a girl who lost her mother, who prayed to a god who never answered, and who buried that pain so deep she forgot how to feel.

The memory hovered between them.

"You built a perfect world," Reyan said. "But you erased what made it real."

The Creator was silent. Then, almost imperceptibly, his voice softened. "Perfection cannot include suffering."

"But without suffering," Reyan whispered, "there's no meaning."

And in that still, frozen throne room where stars had no heat and time had no weight, the Creator bowed his head.

Not in defeat.

In acceptance.