God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord-Chapter 141 - 142 – Fractures of the Forgotten

The blank world did not remain blank for long.

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‎Where there is breath, there is memory.

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‎And where there is memory, even forgotten things find a way to return.

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‎It began as whispers.

‎Soft glitches in the stillness.

‎Not code. Not soul.

‎But impressions—faint echoes from a reality that had already died.

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‎They drifted through the unborn air like the sighs of discarded dreams. A song half-remembered, a scream never resolved. Darius felt them before he saw them: the weight of old griefs clawing back toward meaning.

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‎Kaela froze mid-motion, her flickering forms stuttering like broken frames of forgotten reels. "They’re coming," she said, voice layered with too many selves. "The ones that weren’t written into the end."

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‎From the soft void, a shape formed.

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‎A man.

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‎No longer clad in armor. No longer carrying pride.

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‎Varek.

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‎But stripped.

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‎No sigil. No sword. No vow.

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‎Just a man wandering a place that had no roads.

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‎He looked up at Darius, eyes hollow—not in fear, but in aimlessness. Like a compass that had lost not just its direction, but the idea of direction itself.

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‎"I heard a bell," he said, voice coarse. "Then silence. Then... I woke here. Am I dead?"

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‎Darius stared at him, the weight of paradox crawling up his spine.

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‎He could erase Varek with a thought.

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‎One command. One blink of will.

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‎There was no rule here but his.

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‎But he didn’t.

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‎Instead, he stepped forward—and extended a hand.

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‎"You’re remembered," Darius said simply.

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‎Varek didn’t take the hand. But he didn’t refuse it either. He just stood there, letting the idea sink into the rootless soil.

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‎Seedling watched quietly, glowing faint in the backdrop of forming dusk.

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‎"Why let him in?" it asked. "He is fracture. He is not part of the new."

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‎"No one is," Darius answered. "Not yet."

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‎Nyx flinched.

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‎Her eyes—those eternal mirrors—narrowed as if the air had turned to needles.

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‎Around her, shadows twisted. Not hers.

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‎Not anymore.

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‎They moved like echoes of different Nyxes. One with innocent love. One with bloodied hands. One that never left the Architect’s prison. One that died.

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‎They hissed.

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‎He killed us.

‎He broke her.

‎He chose chaos.

‎He will forget you too.

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‎Nyx staggered back, eyes wide, voice caught somewhere between scream and whisper. "Make them stop."

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‎"They’re you," Kaela said softly, stepping beside her. "Fragments you never mourned."

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‎"I’m not a graveyard," Nyx spat, but her voice cracked. "I chose to survive. That should’ve been enough."

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‎"No one survives clean," Darius said, stepping between the collapsing shadows and Nyx. "Not even gods."

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‎He touched her hand.

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‎The shadows screamed once more—then unraveled, pulled into the forming Codex of Becoming, still unborn but now humming faintly beneath the crust of unformed Elirion.

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‎Varek sat on the edge of the nothing. Quiet.

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‎Kaela knelt beside him, watching his silence like a riddle.

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‎"You still have shape," she murmured. "But no story. Do you want one?"

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‎He looked up.

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‎"I don’t know."

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‎"Then begin there," Kaela said, touching his chest. "Not with pride. Not with guilt. But with a question."

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‎Above them, the blank sky flickered.

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‎Seedling hovered beside Darius, smiling faintly.

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‎"You’ve let in the fractures," it said. "Are you sure they won’t break the whole?"

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‎"Maybe they will," Darius whispered. "But I won’t build a world by forgetting."

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‎The void pulsed with agreement.

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‎Not approval.

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‎Not denial.

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‎Just acknowledgment.

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‎And somewhere far off, something old screamed—

‎not out of hatred,

‎but because it, too, remembered.

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‎The world stirred again.

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‎And the blank began to fracture—

‎not to break,

‎but to make space.

‎For ghosts.

‎For echoes.

‎For the forgotten.

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‎For everything that dared to begin again.

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‎Darius did not speak again for a long time.

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‎Instead, he listened.

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‎To the soft weeping of memories returning without form.

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‎To the silent resolve in Varek’s unmoving frame.

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‎To the way Nyx’s breath caught, stuttering between defiance and fracture.

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‎Elirion had no time yet. No laws. No death. But emotion—it still echoed.

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‎Kaela moved like wind without direction, settling beside the Seedling, her chaos simmering low. "They’ll come, more of them. Broken truths. Old enemies without purpose. Pieces of those who died in-between."

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‎"Fragments don’t die," Darius said quietly. "They wait."

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‎And from the far edge of nothing, more began to stir.

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‎A choir of half-shaped beings—bits of forgotten gods, heroes, villains, ideas that had never bloomed fully. They drifted, aimless. Rootless. Hungry not for flesh or power, but for meaning.

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‎One of them hovered close: a blindfolded woman made of rust and parchment, voice flaking away as she tried to speak. Another dragged a crown behind her, each jewel a screaming soul. A third whispered only one word: "Why?" over and over again.

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‎The Seedling stepped forward, now glowing brighter. "You let them in, but they don’t belong to this soil. They’re rot. Invasive. They carry endings in their breath."

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‎Darius knelt beside the Seedling.

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‎"No one belongs to the soil at first," he said. "You plant. You nurture. And you wait to see what grows."

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‎Nyx flinched again, her eyes distant. "But if what grows... poisons the roots?"

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‎Kaela answered this time, her tone sharp and clear. "Then you prune—not burn the entire forest."

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‎There was a long silence, heavy as gravity.

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‎Then Varek spoke.

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‎"I remember... the war. I remember... betraying you." His voice cracked, full of sand and sorrow. "And yet I feel no hatred now. Only... hollow."

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‎Darius turned to him.

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‎"Then fill it. Not with penance. Not with pride. But presence."

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‎"I don’t know how," Varek admitted.

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‎"None of us do," Darius replied. "That’s why we begin."

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‎Behind them, the void began to swirl. Not collapse—but ripple, like a canvas inhaling before the first brushstroke.

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‎The Seedling reached out, touching one of the broken gods drifting nearby. A scream, a flash—and then silence.

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‎It looked at Darius, eyes no longer childlike.

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‎"You are making something dangerous."

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‎"I’m making something honest," Darius said.

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‎The Seedling considered that.

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‎Then smiled.

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‎For the first time, it sprouted leaves—small, uncertain, but undeniably alive.

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‎"This world will not be clean," it said.

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‎"It was never meant to be," Darius answered.

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‎And behind them, Nyx looked up—not at Darius, not at Kaela, not even at the ghosts—but at herself.

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‎And for the first time in a long while, she whispered not a curse... but a name.

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‎One of the Nyxes within her blinked and vanished—whole.

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‎Kaela watched with narrowed eyes.

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‎The past was not done with them.

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‎But perhaps, just perhaps, they were beginning to make peace with being unfinished.

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‎And in that moment—fractured, imperfect, remembered—Elirion’s heart pulsed once.

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‎And the world continued.

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‎Not forward.

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‎But inward.

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‎Toward becoming.

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