Reincarnated as a Death : vengeance against the Creator

The Western Pillar stood at the edge of a forgotten coastline, where the sea no longer reached and the wind howled like grieving spirits. The spire was once a beacon of the Archive's reach, etched with ancient runes that sang memory into the world. But now, that song had grown hoarse, fading into silence as a voidstorm clawed at its base—unmaking the very foundation it stood on. Not breaking. Not burning. Erasing.

Reyan emerged from the portal first, blade in hand, the air around him already fraying at the edges. Selene followed with her blade drawn, scanning the horizon, while Aesthera whispered binding runes under her breath. All around them, the world shifted, as if uncertain of its own past. Trees appeared and vanished. Stones flickered between cracked and untouched. The storm ahead was not made of wind or water—it was made of forgetting.

"What are we seeing?" Selene asked, her voice taut.

"The past breaking down," Reyan replied. "The voidstorm eats reference—once it touches a place, even time forgets it existed."

They approached the Pillar cautiously. The storm lashed against its foundation, bleeding violet and grey threads across the stones. A shrine lay half-swallowed, its altar cracked in two. Names once carved into the base of the tower—those of ancient scribes and keepers—were dissolving into dust mid-letter.

Aesthera stopped abruptly. "My own name—it's fading from the Archive."

Reyan turned, alarmed. "You've been marked."

"No," she said, eyes wide. "We all have. Nyharis isn't waiting anymore. He's moving. He wants to wipe us not after death—but while we still live."

Selene's jaw clenched. "Then we hold the Pillar."

As the first wave of cultists appeared from the void, cloaked in grey and crowned in silence, Reyan stepped forward. His blade flared with the light of the Seedstone, and memory surged like fire. "You do not erase what remembers itself," he said.

But the cultists didn't flinch. Instead, they held out scrolls of shadow, words unspoken, and chanted in tongues that made the stones crack.

From the heart of the voidstorm emerged something new—not a man, not a god, but a tear in reality. A swirling eye of emptiness, blinking open with slow hunger. And behind it, a figure stepped forward—tall, cloaked in ash, wearing the face of Auren.

Reyan froze.

Selene drew in a sharp breath. "That's not possible."

"It isn't," Reyan said through clenched teeth. "That's not him."

But the figure smiled—a perfect mirror of Auren's grin. "You remembered me. How sweet. Shall I remind you how you let me die?"

The illusion was cruel. Designed to wound, not to fight. And yet Reyan could feel his grip faltering, his soul fraying at the edges.

Aesthera reached for him. "It's a construct, Reyan. A weapon of doubt. Don't give it power."

"I know," he said. But his voice had lost its force.

Back in the Sanctum, Kael stirred from meditation.

He sat beneath the Memory Tree, the Seedstone beside him, glowing with unrest. Its warmth had turned sharp, like a warning. And deep within its glow, a sealed memory pulsed—one Reyan hadn't unlocked.

Kael touched the stone.

And was pulled.

The world Kael fell into was not real—but it felt sharper than any dream. He stood in a memory suspended within the Seedstone itself, a place untouched by Nyharis, preserved through Reyan's forgotten grief. The sky above was molten gold, fractured by ribbons of blue lightning. A battlefield stretched to the horizon—bodies frozen mid-fall, swords hanging motionless in air, as if time had gasped and refused to exhale.

And at the heart of it, Reyan stood with Auren.

Not the Reyan Kael knew—the tired, cold god of endings—but a younger version. His armor gleamed like star-forged silver, and his face bore no scars. Auren stood beside him, clad in golden plate that glowed even beneath a dying sun. They faced an army of wraiths, thousands strong, but it wasn't fear that filled them. It was purpose.

"This is where it began," Kael whispered.

He wasn't just watching. He was inside the moment.

Auren laughed as he parried a ghostblade, spinning with unnatural grace. "You always take things too seriously, Rey. If we're going to die, at least let's do it with flair."

Reyan grunted as he drove his sword into a phantom. "I'd rather we live. There's still so much we haven't done."

"I've already done what I needed," Auren replied, eyes fierce. "I made you remember how to fight for more than duty."

Kael moved closer, his presence undetected by the memory. He reached toward Auren—and something clicked. A pulse from the Seedstone within him. And then the memory shifted.

It was no longer the battlefield.

Now Kael stood in a dim temple. A funeral pyre burned before him. And Reyan, silent and alone, stood over Auren's body—cold, bloodied, cradled in his arms. His divine aura cracked at the edges. He wasn't Death here. He was just… a man who had failed.

"I should've protected you," Reyan whispered. "I should've taken the wound. You weren't meant to die. I was. I am."

He pressed his forehead to Auren's, and the memory fractured with raw pain. "No one will remember. I'll make sure of it. Not even the gods will speak your name."

Kael's breath caught.

This was the moment.

This was when Reyan had made the choice to forget. To bury the one soul that mattered most.

And in doing so, he'd weakened the Archive. He had unwritten something essential.

Kael opened his mouth. "You didn't lose him. You locked him away."

The pyre flared—and Kael awoke.

Back in the Sanctum, his body trembled with power. The Seedstone glowed like a second sun, brighter than ever before. And Kael knew—Nyharis hadn't simply attacked the world. He had been born in the moment Reyan erased Auren's name.

A wound in memory. A god of nothing, created by a single act of grief.

In the Western Pillar, Reyan struggled to keep his footing as the voidstorm howled louder. The fake Auren circled him like a shadow, voice dripping with venom.

"You don't deserve to wield the Seedstone. You gave me up. You turned your back. You made me Nyharis."

Selene fought beside him, but the cultists were endless, and the void refused to retreat.

Until the wind stilled.

Until the storm parted for just a breath.

And Kael stepped through the portal.

His eyes burned with the light of the Seedstone. In his left hand, memory shone like a blade of gold. In his right, silence curled like a serpent of smoke. And between both, Kael stood—not broken, not possessed, but balanced.

He looked at the false Auren. "You're not him. You're what was left behind when grief chose silence. But now I remember."

With a single motion, Kael thrust both hands forward.

The Seedstone's light exploded outward—not to destroy, but to restore. The Western Pillar reformed, its base solidifying as runes reappeared. The cultists screamed, falling to the ground, clutching their heads as memory surged back into them like fire. Even the voidstorm itself reeled, retreating into the horizon, unable to consume what had been truly remembered.

The false Auren flickered.

"You cannot kill what has no memory."

"No," Kael replied. "But I can rewrite what you tried to erase."

With that, Kael whispered Auren's name.

Once.

With truth.

With love.

With will.

And the illusion shattered.

Reyan fell to his knees, stunned. "Kael…"

Kael looked down at him—not as a boy, but as something new. Something reborn in remembrance.

"I'm not just Kael anymore," he said. "I'm the part of you that remembered when you couldn't. I'm your second chance."

Aesthera's voice trembled. "Then what are you?"

Kael smiled softly.

"I am the memory that survived death."