There are voices that don't whisper.
They scream.
Raen heard them when he slept. When he breathed. When he blinked too long.
After killing the First General and consuming the sea of nameless memories, his soul no longer echoed with silence. It was a battlefield. Each thought belonged to hundreds of voices. They wept, begged, cursed. They showed him flashes of wives hanged by divine decree, villages burned for not praying, infants taken and turned into seers with no tongues.
And all of it... lived in him now.
The Bleeding Tree had warned him of this.
Consume too much, and the devourer becomes what he eats.
---
Lyra noticed it first.
The twitch in his left eye. The long pauses before he spoke. The way he stood still for hours, staring at things that weren't there.
"Raen," she whispered one morning, when the sun bled gold across the cursed valley, "you're talking in your sleep. Names. So many names."
He didn't answer. He didn't blink.
She walked closer. "You said one name four times. Eliel. Do you know who that is?"
Raen turned. Slow. Precise. Like a puppet given just enough string.
"She was six," he said flatly. "They made her walk barefoot across the shards of a broken altar. Each step was supposed to cleanse her. But her blood fed the god that cursed her family."
Lyra recoiled. "That... that wasn't your memory."
Raen looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
"It is now."
---
They continued toward the valley of Duskwatch, a cursed land where no moon rose and the dead whispered through the trees. They needed shelter. Answers. A place to breathe.
But breathing was dangerous for Raen now.
Every breath risked remembering. And every memory risked breaking him.
He saw things. A priest with hollowed-out eyes laughing in the mirror. A boy holding a decapitated goat and calling it mother.
And worst of all, he saw himself. But not as he was. As he could become.
The god-eater. The Thronebreaker. A creature with no past and too many futures.
---
The village of Duskwatch appeared like a wound in the forest. Houses without doors. Roads carved in circles. No people.
Lyra frowned. "It looks abandoned."
Raen heard breathing. "It isn't."
They stepped forward, and the mist thickened. Not natural mist. It pulsed. Like lungs exhaling around them.
They found the first child by the well. Eyes black. Face smiling. Voice wrong.
"You carry them," the child whispered. "So many inside you. Are you sure you're still you?"
Raen bent down. "What are you?"
The child laughed. "What you will be."
Then vanished into petals of ash.
---
In the chapel at the village's center, they found a mirror. Not reflective. Swallowing.
Raen looked into it. And it looked back.
He saw the demon god. Smiling. "I gave you power," the demon whispered. "But not control."
Raen screamed. The mirror shattered. But not before showing him a future: Him sitting on the throne. Lyra bleeding beneath it.
---
Later, Lyra confronted him.
"You're breaking. Piece by piece. You're taking in too much."
Raen shook his head. "I can't stop. If I do, the gods win."
"But if you keep going, you'll lose yourself."
He looked at her then. Truly looked. Her face. Her eyes. The storm she carried in her soul.
"Then tie me to reality. Hold me together. Be the name I never forget."
She touched his chest. "Then promise me. No matter how many names you devour, you won't forget yours."
Raen Valor.
He whispered it. He believed it.
But far beneath the village, something moved. Another godmarked. Watching. Waiting.
And it smiled. Because the shattering had begun.
---
The taste of memory was bitter.
Raen staggered through the ash-laden forest, his hands trembling—not from pain, but from the weight of everything he had devoured. The wind whispered with voices that weren't his own, memories clawing at his skull like rusted nails scraping bone. Gods. Mortals. Monsters. All trapped within him.
And for the first time since his rebirth, he felt fear.
Lyra walked behind him, silent, observing. She had seen his eyes glaze during the night, saw him wake screaming without a sound. The firelight could no longer reach the depths of his gaze.
"Raen," she said softly. "You haven't slept in days."
He didn't respond.
Instead, he dropped to his knees before a shallow brook, its waters glowing faintly crimson under the moonlight—tainted by some forgotten curse. He cupped the water in his hands and stared at his reflection.
But it wasn't him.
The face that stared back was twisted—half-burned, with black veins crawling across pale flesh. It shifted. A weeping child. A dying priest. A laughing god with golden eyes.
Raen flung the water away and fell back.
"They're bleeding into me," he muttered. "I'm not just consuming them—I'm becoming them."
Lyra rushed to his side, grabbing his hand. "You're not. You're still Raen. You're still—"
"Then why do I remember killing you?" he whispered.
She froze.
He turned to her slowly. "In another life… or in one of theirs… I saw your face. I slit your throat."
The silence wrapped around them like a noose. Lyra did not let go.
"I believe you," she said finally. "But I don't blame you."
---
Later that night, they made camp beneath the shattered roots of a giant, half-dead tree. The Bleeding Tree had given them visions before—but now, Raen feared what more it might show. Still, he could not stop.
He burned the ritual circle into the dirt with his sword, drawing lines with crushed bone dust and whispering the ancient words passed to him by the Demon God.
Lyra stood beside him, fingers trembling. "Are you sure about this?"
"No," he said.
But he knelt anyway.
The vision struck like a spear through the mind.
He stood in a throne room made of flesh and bone. The air stank of rot and incense. Atop the throne sat a mirror of himself—but older, cloaked in shadows, with a single eye burning like a dying star.
"Who are you?" Raen asked.
The mirror version smiled. "I'm what you'll become if you lose yourself. I've killed them all. Gods, mortals, even Lyra."
Raen staggered back. "No."
The mirror stood, stepping down the throne.
"You think you can consume gods and stay human?"
The vision shattered.
Raen collapsed, vomiting black sludge onto the roots.
Lyra screamed his name.
---
Days passed.
Raen spoke less and less. The voices in his head grew louder. He could no longer tell which memories were his.
Until, one evening, he stood on the cliff's edge and whispered, "Maybe I should end it here."
Lyra slapped him.
The sound echoed like a bell.
"You think you're alone in this?" she shouted. "You think I'm just following you because of a pact?"
He stared at her.
"I remember now," she said, voice cracking. "I remember my past life. You didn't kill me. I sacrificed myself for you."
He blinked. "Why?"
"Because you were the only one who didn't treat me like a weapon. You were already broken—but you never stopped fighting."
Raen dropped to his knees.
She embraced him, and for a moment, he didn't feel like a vessel. He felt human.
---
But peace never lasted.
They reached the Temple of Hollow Stars that night.
A godmarked enemy awaited them—clad in golden armor, bearing a sword made from crystallized prayers.
"I've been waiting, Raen Valor," the priest said.
Raen stood, sword already drawn.
The sky wept blood as their battle began.
---
To be continued....