The child with void black eyes stood beneath a bleeding sky
Its skin pale like dusted bone its silence deafening
Around it the shattered world began to stir as if creation itself hesitated
Not out of fear but confusion
For the balance had been undone and now something new had taken root
This was not a rebirth
This was a replacement
The ashes of gods hung heavy in the air
Their forgotten prayers swirled like dying embers
The child looked upward toward nothingness
Its gaze burned through what little remained of the heavens
Far beyond
Kael stood in the void he had created
A space with no time no weight no sound
And yet he heard it
A heartbeat that did not belong to him
Faint distant steady
He moved through the dark
Not walking not flying
Simply existing forward
With each step the void bent around him obeying the will of something that should not have existed
He arrived at the source
The child
Born in a world without gods
Born from silence from vengeance from everything Kael had destroyed
Their eyes met
The child did not flinch
Did not blink
It only stared as though Kael were a memory and it were truth
Kael reached out
But something stopped him
It was not fear
It was recognition
This child was not his enemy
It was his echo
His consequence
Everything he had cast into the void
Every scream
Every betrayal
Every soul he had crushed now condensed into this single vessel
And it began to speak
Not in words
But through the fabric of the world itself
I am not your end
I am what comes after
Kael watched as the ground beneath the child cracked
From it rose creatures not of flesh
But of thought and pain
Twisted things that remembered life
Shadows of those he had slain
Demons with no names but his memories carved into their faces
Kael stepped back
Not from fear
But from clarity
His vengeance had not ended the cycle
It had forged a new one
He turned and walked through the empty world
Not to escape
But to search
Because something within him still remained incomplete
Behind him the child grew
Not in size
But in presence
It spread like rot through what was left
Not consuming
But transforming
Mountains bent
Skies cracked
Rivers flowed in reverse
Reality shifted as the new godchild began shaping existence not through rules but through will
And far across the wastelands
In a city swallowed by time
A figure awoke
A woman once betrayed by kingdoms now cloaked in red
Her eyes opened
Blood dripped from her palms
She remembered the name Kael
And she remembered the man who destroyed everything
She smiled
Because now
She too had returned
In the land of cursed towers the air trembled
The soil pulsed with energy that should have been long dead
Gates once sealed now cracked open
Armies that had died centuries ago began to crawl from their crypts
Led not by kings
But by hatred given shape
And in the heart of that ruin
The woman in red began her march
Her path would collide with the godchild
And between them Kael would stand once more
Not as savior
Not as demon
But as the truth they all feared
The world had no more gods
Only monsters
And none were more dangerous than the one who had already died once