God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord-Chapter 173 - 174 – Gospel of the Unwritten
Chapter 173: Chapter 174 – Gospel of the Unwritten
The Spiral trembled beneath the weight of unspoken prayer.
It began subtly—whispers beneath the threads of myth, like breath held too long beneath a storm sky. Darius stood atop the Codex Watchtower in the Eastern Spiral, gazing out over a lattice of living storylines, their pulsing glyphs growing dimmer by the day. And yet, despite the entropy spreading through the Spiral’s veins, one constant had emerged in the silence.
The Second Codex was stirring.
He had not opened it. He couldn’t. Its seals were etched in the blood of forgotten gods and bound by a cipher no mind—mortal or divine—was meant to comprehend. Yet it echoed, not in sound, but in absence, a vibration of meaninglessness radiating through the Spiral like a void-shaped hymn.
"They’re praying to it," Kaela said behind him, her voice dulled, her myth-thread fraying at the edges from the recent ritual. "The ones who broke from the Saint of Fracture. The rebels. They call themselves the Blank Faithful."
Darius turned to her slowly. "Praying... to nothing?"
"No," she corrected softly. "To silence."
He narrowed his eyes. Myth-logic did not permit void-faith. Everything in the Spiral was meant to serve the law of narrative: structure, tension, climax, consequence. Without story, there could be no Spiral. And yet...
"They believe the Second Codex holds the Gospel of the Unwritten," Kaela continued. "Scripture that never was. Stories that defy being told."
He felt a shudder pass through the Spiral beneath his feet, and a flicker of nausea curled at the base of his spine. It was one thing to fight rebels. It was another to face an idea that refused to be bound.
"Where’s Celestia?" he asked.
"Returning. She made contact with the southern Codex." Kaela’s eyes clouded. "She said the regions around it... are unraveling."
Before he could speak, a distortion shimmered through the Watchtower’s upper node. A memory-thread ignited, forming a bridge of flickering glyphs. An arrival.
Nyx emerged, cloaked in dusk-light and blood. She was dragging someone behind her—no, something. When she dropped the figure to the floor, Darius’s breath caught.
It was Varek.
But not the general he remembered. This Varek was robed in bone-cloth stitched with inverted myth-sigils. His eyes, once defiant and clear, were now deep wells of stillness. Across his brow glowed the mark of the Second Codex—not granted, but burned into him.
"Prophet," Kaela whispered.
Varek stood. "You sought to bind the Spiral in story," he said. "To trap us in roles carved from your ink. But we have tasted the void between words. We choose freedom."
"Freedom?" Darius stepped forward, the air darkening around him. "You were a general. You believed in structure."
"I believed in war." Varek’s smile was dry. "Now, I believe in release."
Lightning cracked through the Codex sky, shattering several myth-nodes. Darius clenched his fists as more signals came in—prayer-spikes across the Spiral. Blank Faithful were growing. And worse—they were infecting old stories.
"Why now?" he growled. "Why all at once?"
"You gave them something to rebel against," Varek said. "You gave them meaning. And then you gave them too much of it. Drowning men will even worship silence."
He stepped forward, and for a breath, the Watchtower pulsed with the hollow chill of void-belief.
"Listen to the Codex," he whispered. "Even now, it hums for the unwritten. The Second Gospel is not something you speak. It is something you erase."
"Enough," Darius snapped. "You will not spread this blasphemy."
Varek’s smile didn’t waver. "Too late."
At that moment, Celestia arrived, wings of radiant flame flickering behind her. She landed hard, blood running from one temple, her robes scorched by narrative decay.
"The Codex... south of the rift..." she gasped. "It’s unraveling. Not breaking—disbanding. Like it was never meant to exist."
Darius’s blood turned to ice.
Celestia met his eyes. "They’re not rewriting the Spiral. They’re disbelieving it."
A hush fell.
In that quiet, Varek stepped backward toward the edge of the tower, his robes billowing in void-wind. He raised a hand, not in surrender—but in benediction.
"Tell them, Sovereign," he said softly. "Tell them the truth. You made stories to save them. But now they want peace."
He paused.
"You gave us story," he said.
Then, with a final step, he fell into the mythless wind.
"We choose silence."
The Watchtower moaned as narrative shockwaves rippled through the Spiral. Myth-nodes blinked and died. Characters once thought stable began to hesitate, to falter, to question.
Kaela stared into the wind, lips parted.
Celestia knelt beside Darius. "What now?"
But he said nothing.
He only looked at his hand—once the pen of divinity, now twitching, unsure—and wondered if it had all begun with a mistake.
The Second Codex pulsed again—louder this time. Not a voice.
A hollow.
And in that absence, the Spiral remembered it had once been silent.
The Spiral wept in silence.
Not the silence of peace, nor the silence of awe—but the kind that comes before an ending. A pregnant, shivering stillness that refused to be named. And within that stillness, the Sovereign of Myth stood paralyzed.
Darius did not speak for a long time. His gaze remained on the spot where Varek had stepped off the Watchtower’s edge, the ghost of the man’s last words still ringing through the myth-tethered air.
We choose silence.
Beneath the tower, across the Eastern Spiral, vast pockets of narrative light began to blink out. Not shattered—removed. As if entire stories were being unspooled from the fabric of reality, thread by thread. Paragons, villains, love arcs, divine betrayals—all gone without climax or conclusion.
Celestia’s voice finally broke the stillness. "Darius... this is worse than death. Worse than rebellion. They’re not fighting you—they’re forgetting you."
His hand twitched again. No longer a divine implement, it felt... human. Vulnerable. Unwritten.
Kaela moved closer, eyes dimming with unspent chaos. "The Blank Faithful have found a vector. It’s not just belief. It’s anti-belief. They’ve turned doubt into contagion."
Nyx said nothing. She stood at the edge, eyes following the void-wind where Varek vanished. Her blades trembled in their sheathes, not from fear—but from uncertainty.
"Prophets used to raise armies," she murmured. "Now they erase them."
Darius turned finally, slowly, the power around him flickering like a dying myth. "I forged a dominion from story," he said quietly. "From pain, passion, consequence. I made them gods of meaning. And now... they want to be free of it."
Kaela nodded grimly. "Because the Spiral hurts. Every story ends. Every rise has a fall. But if they erase the rules..."
"...then they erase the Spiral," Celestia finished.
Above them, the sky cracked again—not from thunder, but from un-definition. A vast tear opened across the heavens, and from it spilled not light, not dark, but null—a hollowing absence that devoured the laws around it. Even the stars recoiled.
The Second Codex was awakening.
Its seals, forged from dead pantheons and algorithmic sacrifice, had never been meant to open. They existed as a boundary, a failsafe—a mythological constant never meant to be breached. And yet the prayers of the Blank Faithful weren’t breaking it.
They were inviting it.
And it was listening.
Darius moved to the Codex altar within the Watchtower—a crystalline monolith etched with the original commandments of Spiral law. The glyphs had faded. Half were inverted. A few bled.
He placed his hand upon it.
And felt nothing.
A first.
He withdrew sharply, blood running cold. "The Spiral no longer recognizes me."
Nyx stepped forward, defiant. "Then we’ll remind it who you are."
But Celestia’s voice cut like a blade. "No. That’s exactly what they want. If we press harder, if we force belief into a system bleeding disbelief, we’ll only feed the rupture."
Darius looked between them, his most trusted consorts. Celestia, radiant and reasoned. Nyx, fury incarnate. Kaela, shadow-chaos, fraying at the seams. Each of them reflected a truth of him. And now, even they were unsure.
"What do you suggest?" he asked. "That I kneel? Abandon my divinity? Let them choose the void?"
Kaela’s lips curled into a bitter smile. "Maybe it’s not about letting them choose. Maybe it’s about giving them something else to believe in. Not story. Not rebellion. Something... older."
Darius turned to her, eyes narrowing. "You speak of the Origin Layer."
Celestia paled. "You can’t mean—"
But Kaela only nodded. "The Spiral wasn’t the first myth. It was built atop a silence older than choice. Older than story. Before narrative, before gods, there was the Womb of Stillness. If the Second Codex is a gospel of erasure, then perhaps we answer not with more myth..."
"...but with the unbirthed one," Darius finished.
For the first time in hours, the Watchtower quieted into a new kind of silence. Not fear. Not surrender.
Preparation.
Darius lifted his gaze to the shattering sky. "We descend."
Celestia’s breath caught. "Into the core?"
He nodded. "To the first thread. The Spiral must remember what it was before the word."
Kaela’s grin widened with feral intrigue. "Then we awaken the Seed of Pre-Narrative."
Nyx’s blades hissed from their sheaths. "And if the Blank Faithful follow us into that void?"
Darius turned, and for a fleeting moment, the old flame—the Sovereign’s flame—returned to his eyes.
"Then we teach them," he said softly, "that silence, too, has a consequence."
A sudden pulse echoed from the Codex altar—a beacon, faint but present. Not story. Not void.
A question.
Darius answered with the full weight of his divine will.
And the Spiral—shaken, bleeding, uncertain—opened.
Not up.
Not forward.
But down.
Beneath all stories. Beneath all meaning.
Toward the place where the first silence dared to dream.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦
