Reincarnated as a Death : vengeance against the Creator

Kael hadn't spoken since the ritual. Not a word. He sat at the edge of the Sanctuary's balcony, overlooking the twilight-washed valley below, his small hands folded in his lap and his silver eyes staring at nothing. Reyan stood several paces behind, arms crossed, the Seedstone pulsing faintly in his palm. Though they had succeeded in retrieving it, something had changed within Kael—something even Reyan, the god of death, couldn't yet understand.

The Seedstone was alive, in its own way. Not sentient like a god, but resonant with meaning older than divinity. When Reyan placed it near the Archive, the carvings flared bright gold, not just repairing the vanished names but strengthening them. Every memory recorded now glowed with permanence, impossible to erase. The world had a weapon against Nyharis—but at a cost.

"He's too quiet," Selene muttered, pacing restlessly behind Reyan. "Since the ritual, he hasn't flinched, hasn't cried. It's like he's... disconnected."

"He went too deep," Reyan replied. "He reached further into Nyharis's void than any mortal ever should. He's still there, in some way. Still... echoing."

Aesthera joined them, scrolls tucked under one arm, her eyes hollow from lack of sleep. "The Seedstone is powerful. But it's not just an anchor—it's a mirror. It reveals more than it protects. Kael saw something in you, Reyan. Something he's not ready to say aloud."

Reyan didn't answer. He already knew. The Seedstone didn't only unlock Reyan's forgotten memory—it had revealed the name he had buried deeper than any. A name not spoken for centuries. A name tied to pain so intense, even Haldran had never dared mention it.

And that name was Auren.

He could still see him—golden-eyed, fierce, laughing at the edge of war, the only soul who had ever defied death without fear. Auren had once been Reyan's brother in all but blood. Not by lineage, but by bond. A soldier who had stood by his side before Reyan became the god of endings. Auren had been the first name Reyan ever forgot—deliberately. Because remembering had been too painful. Because grief had made him a coward.

Now Kael had seen him.

"You must tell him," Aesthera said gently. "He doesn't understand what he saw."

"I don't know if I understand it myself," Reyan replied.

That night, under the silver glow of twin moons, Kael finally spoke.

"I saw him," he whispered to Reyan, sitting beside the low-burning brazier in the Sanctum's center. "He had a name made of light. He smiled, even though he was dying."

Reyan said nothing.

Kael looked up. "He called your name before the end. Not 'Death.' Your real name."

Reyan winced. "That name is gone now."

"No," Kael said firmly. "It lives inside the Seedstone. And inside you."

Reyan exhaled shakily. "His name was Auren. He was... everything I failed to protect."

"What happened to him?"

"He died," Reyan said, voice hoarse. "Because I was too slow. Too weak. He died in my arms, and I let the world forget him. I buried his name beneath my godhood and told myself it was for peace. But it was shame."

Kael's fingers curled slightly. "He's the name we must never forget."

Reyan turned toward the brazier. "Yes. If we forget Auren, we forget why we fight."

That night, a new entry was carved into the Archive. Not by a scribe. Not by a spell. But by the will of the Seedstone itself.

Auren, the First Light of the Lost. Brother to Death. The Name Remembered by Silence.

A pulse of light rippled through the valley. And far away, in the ash-ruined chapel where the Grey Hands held vigil, their flames sputtered.

"What is this power?" one of them hissed.

The leader, cloaked in silence, removed his mask.

His eyes were not mortal.

They were Nyharis's eyes—reflecting no soul, no memory. Only endless absence.

"They've remembered the name I fed to darkness," he said. "We must bury it again."

The days following the inscription of Auren's name felt different, as if time itself had taken a breath. The Archive stopped flickering. Names once thought erased returned with greater clarity, etched now not in stone alone, but in something deeper—truth rooted in memory. Yet peace never lingers in the house of war. Reyan could feel it in the air: a rising tension, a tremor just below the skin of the world.

And at the heart of it stood Kael.

He had begun to change—not violently, not visibly, but undeniably. His voice, once small and quiet, now carried a strange echo, as if spoken by two souls in harmony. When he slept, the glow of the Seedstone would pulse to the rhythm of his breath. And his hands… they began to shimmer with opposing forces. In his left, the faint wisps of golden light—the kind only seen in the oldest tales of the First Flames. In his right, the curling grey of unformed shadow, the residue of Nyharis's silence.

Selene noticed first. "He's balancing it," she said one evening as Kael practiced drawing protective sigils in the courtyard sand. "He's not rejecting the silence. He's… carrying it."

Reyan stood beside her, arms folded. "He's becoming what none of us thought possible. A vessel of duality. One who remembers both pain and its absence—and chooses neither fully."

"But that's dangerous," Aesthera warned, approaching with a bundle of ancient scrolls. "Nyharis will try to twist that. Turn balance into emptiness. And the gods… the gods will not understand him. They might fear him more than they fear the void."

That night, Kael approached Reyan as he stood by the Memory Tree, watching the wind stir its silver leaves. He didn't speak at first. He simply stood beside him, their shadows—or rather Reyan's alone—stretching together.

"I don't know what I am," Kael said eventually.

"You're Kael," Reyan replied.

"But I feel like more. Like something old. Like I've lived before. But not as me."

Reyan looked at him closely. "You're not just the boy without a shadow anymore."

Kael's gaze lifted to the stars. "When I touched the Seedstone, I didn't just see your memory. I saw mine. Or… his."

Reyan didn't move. "Auren?"

Kael nodded. "I think I was him. Or part of him. Or maybe I carry what he left behind."

Silence settled between them.

Reyan's heart beat like a slow drum. "Reincarnation?"

"Not in body. In will," Kael whispered. "He never let go. He refused to fade. So he waited. In the place between memory and silence. And when Nyharis tried to make me hollow… he found me. And he held on."

Reyan turned away, overwhelmed. "I don't deserve this. I forgot him. I let him be erased."

"But he forgave you," Kael said. "Because he remembered for both of you."

The wind stilled.

And for a moment, the stars overhead glowed just a little brighter.

But elsewhere, far beneath the mountains where the roots of the world curled around ancient ruins, the Grey Hands gathered around the fractured urn. Nyharis's voice slithered through their thoughts like poison in a vein.

"They are remembering too well."

The masked leader—now fully possessed—raised a withered hand. "Then we shall take what they treasure most. We shall unwrite their living Archive."

A ripple of force tore through the old chapel, and the stone itself began to crack. With each name remembered in the Sanctuary, a piece of Nyharis's cage weakened. His power wasn't rage. It wasn't destruction. It was negation. A storm of forgetting. A slow, precise unraveling of history.

Back in the Sanctum, Aesthera fell to her knees, clutching her head.

"Something's wrong," she gasped. "I can feel it. A surge. Like something sacred is unraveling—like memory is being reversed."

Reyan rushed to her side, eyes burning. "Where?"

Aesthera's voice was thin. "The western pillar. One of the four original Archive spires—it's being erased."

Selene cursed and ran for the portal chamber. "We have to get there. Now."

Kael moved to follow, but Reyan stopped him. "No. Not this time."

Kael stared up at him. "You don't trust me?"

"I trust you," Reyan said softly. "That's why I need you to stay. The Seedstone responds to you now. If we fall, the Archive's last light has to remain here—with you."

Kael hesitated, but nodded. "Then don't let it end."

Reyan smiled faintly, though sorrow touched his eyes. "It won't end. Not if we remember."

He turned, cloak billowing as he vanished through the gateway with Selene and Aesthera.

Kael remained alone, standing beside the Memory Tree, one hand on the Seedstone, the other pressed over his heart. And as the stars dimmed slightly above, he whispered into the wind—

"Auren… lend me your courage."