Reincarnated as a Death : vengeance against the Creator

The throne room remained suspended in silence long after the Creator lowered his head. Reyan stood still, his breathing calm, his hand lowered as the memory faded into gentle sparks. The stars that once shimmered in the walls dimmed slightly, as if the very fabric of the Astral Seat was uncertain for the first time in eternity. This was a space that had known only absolutes—divine order, flawless control, and calculated creation. And now, it held something far more dangerous: doubt.

Reyan didn't speak immediately. He watched the Creator—this entity that had once erased him, reshaped reality to remove his name, and declared emotion a flaw in the machinery of the cosmos. To see that divine figure still, motionless, even vulnerable, was more powerful than any battle. For the first time, Reyan realized he didn't need vengeance anymore. Not because the pain had vanished, but because he had surpassed it.

"I didn't come here to destroy you," Reyan said finally, his voice low but firm. "I came to show you what you refused to carry. And now that you've seen it, you must decide. Will you change, or will you fall behind?"

The Creator remained silent, his presence flickering slightly—no longer pulsing with the same force it once had. The silence between them stretched, almost painful in its depth. Then, at last, the Creator's voice emerged—not as a booming declaration, but as a whisper carried by starwind.

"I created a world without weight," he said. "So it would float above despair. I erased regret, hoping it would erase guilt. I see now… that I also erased truth."

Reyan nodded. "Truth is heavy. But it gives meaning to lightness."

The Creator lifted his head slowly, and for the first time, his form shifted—becoming clearer. Not a human, not a beast, not a divine abstraction. Just… presence. Humble. Uncertain. "And what do I become, now that I am no longer infallible?"

Reyan looked at him—not as an enemy, not even as a god—but as a being lost in his own creation. "You become real," he said. "Like the rest of us."

Meanwhile, far below the Astral Seat, the world had begun to change. In the Sanctum, the people who once feared Reman now watched him walk among them. No longer an enigma, he had become something else entirely—a presence of stillness. Children who had never understood death sat with him and spoke of dreams. Old warriors who had forgotten their mistakes knelt in quiet remembrance. Even the wind around him seemed softer, more reflective. He didn't preach. He didn't lead. He simply listened.

Selene observed him from a distance. "He's not just a vessel," she murmured. "He's become something more."

Aesthera, adjusting the scrolls under her arm, nodded. "He's teaching them what the gods couldn't. How to live with their pain… instead of running from it."

News of the Weepers' disappearance had already spread, and with it came a strange awakening. Across the mortal realm, forgotten memories returned—sometimes gentle, sometimes harrowing. But unlike before, the people no longer screamed or turned mad. They understood. Regret no longer festered in silence—it was given space to breathe.

And yet, in the northern reaches of the continent, beyond the Blackridge Mountains, something stirred.

Where the light of the Creator's realm had not reached, shadows clung desperately to their borrowed dominion. Not all gods had agreed with the Creator's perfection, and not all had vanished like the Weepers. Some had gone deeper, hiding their essence within voids—waiting. Watching.

A lone figure walked through one of those wastelands now, wrapped in layers of obsidian mist, eyes glowing crimson beneath a rusted crown. His name had been struck from the Archive, but his followers called him Mourn-King Haldran, the god of Loss Without Memory.

He had watched the return of Death. The rise of Reman. The stirring of the Weepers.

And now, he whispered to himself, voice sharp as broken bone, "If regret has found a voice, then grief will demand a throne."

His words echoed through the dead wind, and the world trembled.

Reyan stepped through the returning Gate with slow, measured steps, the veil of the Astral Seat fading behind him like a dream that had finally unraveled. The world he reentered no longer felt the same—not because it had changed visually, but because it felt awake. Sounds seemed sharper, emotions deeper. People walked with the weight of memory on their shoulders, but not as a burden. More like a reminder of their humanity. He paused at the crest of the Sanctum's outer ridge and looked down at the valley below. The morning fog curled around rooftops like fingers trying to hold on to the last shreds of sleep, and among it all stood Reman, surrounded by a small gathering of villagers.

Children asked questions that adults once feared to speak. "Why do people die?" "Do gods make mistakes?" "Is forgetting bad?" And to each, Reman answered not as a prophet or a sage, but as someone who carried the same confusion. "Sometimes," he told a little girl with wide, searching eyes, "we forget because we think remembering will hurt too much. But pain only becomes poison when you run from it."

Reyan watched in silence, something knotting quietly in his chest. He never imagined Death could have such a gentle face. The Weepers had not transformed Reman into a weapon. They had entrusted him with their deepest truths—and the boy had chosen empathy over wrath.

Selene joined Reyan at the ridge, brushing a strand of wind-tossed hair behind her ear. "He's better than us," she said softly.

"No," Reyan replied. "He's what comes after us. We were made to break things. He was made to carry them."

But the peace was thin. Reyan felt it the moment he stepped away from the Sanctum's protective radius. Like stepping into a room where someone had just been screaming—but all that remained was silence and shaking air. The winds from the north smelled off—bitter, metallic, tainted by memories that hadn't returned. He turned quickly, eyes narrowing. "Something's wrong."

Aesthera, who had returned from the mountain libraries earlier that morning, met him near the Sanctum's edge. Her expression was pale and unreadable. "I found something," she said without preamble. "It was buried in the lost scriptures—records even the Creator couldn't erase. About a god who vanished before the war among the divine began."

Reyan stiffened. "A god that predates the conflict?"

"No," she replied, her voice low. "A god that refused to participate in it. One that disappeared… but not because he was destroyed. He left on his own. Took his followers, sealed himself away, and erased his own name from the Archive."

"Why?"

"Because he believed grief should rule the world—not memory."

The words hit Reyan like stone. "Grief... without memory?"

"Loss," Aesthera said. "Without cause. Without healing. The belief that the world should mourn forever, but never understand what it mourns."

Reyan whispered the name that returned to him like a foul wind: "Haldran."

Aesthera nodded grimly. "He's returning. The balance you helped restore... it called out to all the divine remnants, even the ones buried deepest. And Haldran heard it."

Across the continent, in the wastelands beyond the Blackridge Mountains, the Mourn-King stood beneath a ruined sky. His followers had begun to stir—souls who had lost everything and remembered nothing. Their eyes glowed with hollow grief. Their chants were made of names they didn't recognize. And Haldran smiled, his breath curling into the wind like frost made from sorrow.

Reyan clenched his fists. "He'll corrupt everything. Reman won't be able to reach those who've forgotten why they suffer."

Selene glanced toward the temple. "Then it's not enough to carry regret anymore. We have to teach the world to remember why it hurts."

Reyan's eyes narrowed. "No. We have to stop Haldran from making them forget again."

Aesthera laid out a scroll etched with forbidden runes. "He's creating a new Archive. One where grief is worshipped, but memory is erased. He calls it The Grey Codex."

Reyan didn't hesitate. "Then we burn it before it's ever written."

The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was resolve.

The journey to the north began before the sun could break the horizon. Reyan led the way through a sky dyed in fading violet, his cloak whipping in the bitter wind, his eyes narrowed on a path that had not existed for centuries. Selene followed close behind, her sword newly blessed with runes that shimmered like tears in starlight. Aesthera brought up the rear, her arms burdened with scrolls and relics banned from divine archives—tools they would need for a war against a god who ruled through oblivion. Reman did not come. He could not.

The Weepers' legacy lived through him now, and stepping beyond the Sanctum's veil would undo the fragile peace he'd brought to the broken-hearted. He watched them depart with quiet eyes, his hand raised in farewell, knowing that his part in this fight was to remain. His battle was in silence, in stillness, in holding the pain of others while the world struggled to remember why they ever hurt.

The further they traveled, the more the world seemed to change around them. Trees lost their leaves before they reached them. Shadows flickered where there was no sun. And as they entered the Wastes of Blackridge, time itself began to bend—shifting hours into seconds, days into breaths. This was Haldran's realm now, and he was hungry. Not for blood or power, but for removal. His dominion was not over death—but over absence. You didn't die here. You were unmade.

They reached the edge of a cracked valley where the last traces of the Creator's influence had died. The sky here was not dark—it was hollow. A dome of gray that pulsed with aching emptiness. Reyan looked over the ledge and saw it: a massive stone cathedral rising from the earth like a wound. It had no windows. No doors. Just an endless wall of names carved into its skin—names that no one, not even gods, remembered.

"This is it," Aesthera said, her voice barely audible. "The birthplace of the Grey Codex."

Reyan's jaw tightened. "And he's inside."

As they descended, the air thickened, not with magic, but with grief. Not the grief of memory, but of the kind that had lost all shape—unfocused, heavy, and formless. Selene stumbled once, gasping as a wave of sorrow washed over her.

"I... I don't know what I'm sad about," she whispered. "But it's crushing me."

Aesthera pulled out a pendant glowing with faint silver light. "It's his defense. A spiritual fog. It disconnects emotion from reason—grief without context."

Reyan placed a hand on Selene's shoulder. His voice was firm. "Anchor yourself. Remember something. Anything. Someone who died. Someone you failed. Make it real."

She blinked hard, her knuckles whitening around the hilt of her sword. Then she whispered, "My brother... Ardin. He died protecting me from the fire."

The fog around her receded slightly, as if stung by the specificity. Aesthera smiled grimly. "That's the key. He can't corrupt what we remember."

They reached the foot of the cathedral.

The structure was impossibly tall, stretching into the cloudless sky with no visible entrance. But Reyan knew this place. Knew it in a way that bypassed thought. "It's not meant to be entered by body," he said. "It's a temple for the soul."

And then, the cathedral spoke.

Its voice was Haldran's—serene, cold, and infinitely empty. "You carry memories as if they are weapons. But they are chains. I offer release. Come unburdened. Come unknown."

Reyan stepped forward. "We're not here to forget. We're here to stop you."

The walls groaned. The names carved into them began to blur, each one losing shape and form. Reyan raised his hand, calling forth a sliver of his divine essence. "No more erasure. No more lies."

The stone split open before them.

Inside, the world was monochrome. A realm of shadows without source, tears without cause, and grief so dense it throbbed beneath their skin. At the center stood Haldran, cloaked in mist and silence, his eyes two pinpricks of red lost in the void.

"You came bearing memory," he said. "Then drown in the sorrow of a world that no longer wants to remember."

And the cathedral closed around them.