Hunger Sharpens
Delta stopped distinguishing between threats and potential threats.
That shift happened quietly.
At first, he still waited for intention — empires consolidating armies, leaders speaking the language of necessity, beings whose rhetoric smelled too much like Heaven rebade. He destroyed those cleanly, efficiently.
Then he started arriving before the speeches.
Before the fortifications.
Before the justifications.
Civilizations learned to recognize the signs:
Sky pressure changing without storm
Gravity tightening around centers of power
Silence where prayer used to be
Then Delta arrived.
He did not announce judgment anymore.
He did not explain.
He culled.
Nyx followed as long as she could.
But she no longer walked beside him — she trailed behind like a shadow that had lost its owner. Every world they passed showed the same pattern: no collateral when possible, no mercy ever.
She watched him drain constructs, absorb defensive lattices, consume artifacts meant to regulate divinity. Not as tools.
As fuel.
"Delta," she said once, standing amid the ruins of a dynasty that had never finished becoming tyrannical, "this one hadn't chosen yet."
He didn't look at her.
"They would have," he replied.
That certainty terrified her more than rage ever had.
Blood Becomes Information
Power stopped being a means.
It became a language Delta understood more clearly than speech.
When he killed now, something changed inside him — not pleasure, not joy, but clarity. Each execution sharpened his perception. Blood was no longer gore.
It was data.
He could read systems faster as they collapsed. Predict reactions mid-scream. Absorb structure from dying gods and repurpose it instantly. He fought less because he needed to.
He fought because it made him better.
Nyx began waking to find him gone — hunting alone.
When she finally found him again, she stood frozen at the edge of a star system that no longer existed. Not destroyed.
Processed.
Planets reduced to raw causal matter. Stellar cores siphoned. Reality smoothed flat like meat stripped from bone.
"What did you do?" she whispered.
Delta turned toward her slowly.
His eyes were lucid.
That was the worst part.
"They were building weapons," he said. "I removed the possibility."
"There were billions of lives here," Nyx snapped.
He tilted his head slightly. "There were billions of vectors."
She took an involuntary step back.
Because for the first time—
He hadn't lied.
He hadn't justified.
He had simply reframed existence into terms that excluded emotion entirely.
Hell Watches
Hell had followed Delta longer than Nyx had.
At first, it aligned willingly. Delta had broken Heaven — Hell respected that. Power recognized power.
But Hell was not blind.
When entire strata began reporting total silence where life once existed, Hell's Lords convened.
This was not rebellion.
This was concern.
"His kills no longer stabilize," one said.
"They erase."
"He's not enforcing balance," another argued. "He's preempting outcome."
"And if he decides Hell qualifies?"
That question ended the debate.
Hades himself rose from his throne — not in fear, but in grim acknowledgment. The Guardian of the Dead had witnessed enough endings to recognize when something stopped respecting death as a boundary.
Delta returned to Hell unannounced.
The ground did not welcome him this time.
Hell did not attack either.
It measured.
"You are changing," Hades said carefully.
Delta looked at the God of the Underworld like one might look at an outdated map.
"Yes."
"You are consuming," Hades continued. "Not just killing."
"Yes."
Silence stretched.
"You were Hell's ally," Hades said. "Are you still?"
Delta considered the question longer than Nyx had heard him consider anything in a long time.
"I don't ally with systems," he said finally. "I terminate trajectories."
That answer spread through Hell like poison.
Nyx felt it immediately — the first tremor of possible opposition.
Nyx Breaks First
Nyx confronted him in a place devoid of witnesses — a quiet void between universes where nothing existed to die except thought.
She stood directly in his path.
"You're not alone," she said. "But you're acting like you want to be."
Delta stopped.
For a moment — just a moment — she saw the old hesitation.
Then it vanished.
"Step aside," he said.
"No," Nyx replied.
"You're becoming something worse than Heaven," she said, voice shaking now. "At least they lied to themselves."
Delta's eyes hardened.
"I don't lie."
"That's the problem!"
She moved closer, desperate.
"You're not ending tyranny anymore," she said. "You're erasing unpredictability. That's not justice. That's—"
"—control?" he finished calmly.
She nodded.
"Yes."
Silence.
Then Delta did something he hadn't done in centuries.
He laughed.
A single, quiet sound — empty.
"You think Heaven fell because it was cruel," Delta said.
"It fell because it hesitated."
Nyx's breath hitched.
"I won't make that mistake."
She realized then that this wasn't grief anymore.
This wasn't trauma.
This was preference.
"You don't need me anymore," she whispered.
Delta didn't deny it.
"That doesn't mean I'll kill you," he said. "You're not a threat."
Nyx stepped back.
"That's worse," she said.
She left him there.
Not because she stopped caring.
But because she understood something devastating:
Staying meant endorsing.
Berserk Without Trigger
The second berserk event did not need provocation.
No ancient threat.
No cosmic beast.
Just delay.
A civilization refused to collapse when Delta arrived. They scattered. Hid leadership. Removed hierarchies.
It took too long.
Delta snapped.
Reality screamed.
He no longer targeted nodes.
He targeted existence density.
Where complexity persisted, he erased it.
Where resistance slowed him, he vaporized structure until nothing remained capable of slowing anything.
The mask no longer screamed in berserk.
It purred.
Delta moved faster than thought, leaving behind a corridor of erased causality that took the universe days to heal behind him.
When it was over, there was nothing left.
No survivors.
No lessons.
Just quiet.
And Delta standing alone — calm, centered, breathing evenly.
Elsewhere, across Hell, alarms rang.
Not warnings.
Mobilization.
Hades closed his eyes.
"It has begun," he said.
The Question No One Wanted
Nyx watched from beyond reach as Hell's borders fortified.
She felt systems aligning against Delta — reluctantly, fearfully.
She knew what the universe was becoming willing to consider.
The God Killer had become too effective.
Too absolute.
Too certain.
Delta sensed the shift too.
And for the first time since Heaven fell—
He smiled.
"They've decided," he murmured.
Hell raised its armies.
Not in hatred.
In survival.
Nyx whispered into the void, unheard:
"I don't know how to save you."
Delta stepped forward anyway.
Blood no longer meant loss.
Power no longer meant burden.
Certainty no longer meant peace.
The universe had created him to end lies.
Now it faced the price of truth without mercy.