God of Death: Rise of the NPC Overlord-Chapter 174 - 175 – Throne of Thorns (Mature Scene )

‎

‎The ink still ran hot from his veins.

‎

‎Darius stood alone before the Codex of Fractured Roots—one of the most volatile myth-nodes in the Spiral. Its glyphs pulsed erratically, veins of crimson spiraling across an obsidian sky that flickered between verses of myth and madness. He no longer read it like a book. He felt it, bleeding into him, resisting, rewriting, crying out.

‎

‎He tore open his palm again. Ink mixed with blood, a sacred language written in agony.

‎

‎And yet, it was not enough.

‎

‎Too much of the Spiral had turned. Too many stories were slipping from his control. Rebellions flared like embers refusing to die. Myth-nodes no longer obeyed him with absolute faith. And now... even Kaela’s threads shifted when she touched him. Nyx grew cold. Celestia, though devoted, returned with eyes full of dread and quiet questioning.

‎

‎He needed to bind them—no, fuse them—before the Spiral finished unmaking itself.

‎

‎A ritual, whispered by the Architect in his final moments, clawed its way back from the void of memory. A fusion—not of magic, but of myth, flesh, and divine essence. Sacred. Unforgiving. It would grant him a new form—The Triune Sovereign—capable of commanding overlapping myth-realities, if only temporarily.

‎

‎But the cost was intimacy beyond domination. It required surrender. It required opening the throne not just to his power—but to his vulnerability.

‎

‎He summoned them.

‎

‎

‎

‎They arrived in silence—Celestia cloaked in a robe of pale flame, Nyx emerging from shadow like a forgotten vow, and Kaela, barefoot, hair wild, chaos shimmering around her like a halo made of entropy.

‎

‎No words passed. Only gazes.

‎

‎The Codex opened behind them like a pulsing wound, ink bleeding across the skies.

‎

‎Darius stepped forward. "We don’t have long."

‎

‎Celestia touched his chest, feeling the myth-thorns growing beneath his skin.

‎

‎"You’re fracturing," she whispered. "And still you press forward."

‎

‎"Because the Spiral won’t wait."

‎

‎Kaela walked around him slowly. "You’re not doing this to rule. You’re doing it to survive your own story."

‎

‎Nyx said nothing, but her hands reached for his blades and disarmed him—an act of devotion and suspicion alike.

‎

‎The circle was drawn: sigils carved into flesh, written in their tongues, spoken in ancient metaphors known only to those who walked with gods and defied them.

‎

‎Then, without preamble, Darius took Kaela first—chaos and fire. Their bodies met like a shattering star, wild and fluid. Her moans were not pleasure but invocation. Her chaos-thread surged with instability, trying to rewrite the ritual in real-time.

‎

‎Celestia joined them—her touch cooling, her clarity pressing into the heat like balm against wildfire. She straddled him while Kaela arched against his back, their movements forming a trinity, a sacred alignment that bent the Codex’s structure into submission. Light and entropy swirled, their essences merging with Darius as a core.

‎

‎Then Nyx—silent, trembling, shadow incarnate. Her lips met his neck. Her hand gripped his heart through his chest. She entered the ritual last, sealing it not with lust—but with sacrifice.

‎

‎The Codex split open.

‎

‎Blood dripped from the stars. Runes carved themselves into the sky.

‎

‎Their cries—Kaela’s primal, Celestia’s divine, Nyx’s broken—wove a hymn of divine fusion.

‎

‎Darius’s body burned and splintered. His spine cracked. Wings of thorned ink burst from his back, wrapping around the three women as he lifted from the circle, suspended between meanings.

‎

‎Then silence.

‎

‎Power condensed. Reality thinned.

‎

‎And from their union emerged Darius the Triune—a temporary god-form seated on a throne not of gold or bone, but thorns. Each one represented sacrifice. Every curve of its jagged design carried a myth that had died so this one might live.

‎

‎For a moment, the Spiral obeyed.

‎

‎The revolt in the Western Reach died in a breath. Myth-nodes that had collapsed now hovered in uncertain balance. Even the Blank Faith faltered.

‎

‎But it was fleeting.

‎

‎As Darius descended from the ritual plane, the throne still humming behind his eyes, he felt something cold where there should’ve been warmth.

‎

‎He turned.

‎

‎Kaela knelt, trembling, her chaos-thread ruptured.

‎

‎Celestia reached out, but Kaela did not move.

‎

‎Nyx stood frozen, shadow peeling from her like old skin.

‎

‎Darius ran to Kaela. Her eyes were open—empty, yet filled with stars.

‎

‎"No," he breathed.

‎

‎Her pulse flickered. Her skin pale, but not cold.

‎

‎Then Celestia whispered, "She’s gone... or changed."

‎

‎Kaela’s body remained. But something in her had crossed a boundary the ritual was never meant to touch.

‎

‎The Spiral trembled.

‎

‎From deep within the Codex, a new line etched itself in living script:

‎

‎> "What is fused must one day unravel."

‎

‎

‎

‎Darius rose slowly, the throne flickering behind his gaze, the ink on his skin still burning.

‎

‎He had won—for now.

‎

‎But victory in the Spiral always carried a price.

‎

‎And this one had just begun to collect.

‎

‎

‎

‎

‎Kaela’s silence screamed louder than any death.

‎

‎Darius knelt before her trembling form, his breath thick with copper and ink. Her pupils, once twin vortexes of playful chaos, now reflected only static—a stillness unearned, unnatural. Not death. Not sleep. Something far worse.

‎

‎"Kaela," he whispered again, cupping her face.

‎

‎Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came. Only a slow ripple of myth-energy surged from her chest, then vanished into nothingness. The Codex responded, pages flapping in the windless sky, casting reflections of alternate fates where Kaela hadn’t been touched—hadn’t joined the ritual. In each vision, the Spiral collapsed far quicker.

‎

‎This had been the right path.

‎

‎And still, it cost her.

‎

‎Celestia gently touched Kaela’s shoulder, her fingers glowing softly. She winced. "She’s... rewritten. Her soul isn’t gone, but it’s fragmented—scattered through the Spiral like echoes."

‎

‎Nyx turned away, her breathing uneven, fists clenched. Shadows crawled across her back like a mourning veil. "She gave too much. You asked too much."

‎

‎Darius didn’t answer. His hands glowed now with the symbols of the Codex—each finger inscribed with a rune that pulsed in rhythm with the Codex’s heart.

‎

‎He had become the Triune Sovereign.

‎

‎But at what cost?

‎

‎Kaela was still breathing—but she no longer saw them. Her gaze was locked onto something beyond the physical plane, something stitched between dying myths and newly birthed paradoxes.

‎

‎"I can still feel her thread," Celestia said softly. "It’s not broken. It’s wandering. She’s lost in the myth-stream."

‎

‎Nyx turned, eyes gleaming with barely-restrained wrath. "Then bring her back."

‎

‎Darius rose, the inked wings on his back folding like silk blades, still humming with unspent power. "I will. But not yet. The Spiral demands stability first—if I leave now, everything we fought for will unravel."

‎

‎Celestia frowned. "And if she unravels before you return?"

‎

‎Silence fell again.

‎

‎Then Kaela moved—barely.

‎

‎Her head tilted. Her lips twitched.

‎

‎A single word escaped her cracked mouth:

‎

‎"...Origin."

‎

‎Darius blinked. "What?"

‎

‎But she did not repeat it. Her body convulsed once, then slumped forward into Celestia’s arms.

‎

‎"She’s asleep," Celestia murmured. "But dreaming... somewhere deep."

‎

‎Nyx’s eyes narrowed. "We can’t protect her like this. Not while half the Spiral wants your head mounted in a sanctified vault."

‎

‎Darius turned toward the throne of thorns now buried halfway into the ritual plane. The bleeding sky had quieted, but not healed. The Codex remained open—watching.

‎

‎He clenched his fists.

‎

‎"She spoke of the Origin," he said. "There’s only one place that could mean."

‎

‎Celestia’s eyes widened. "The Root Wound?"

‎

‎Nyx hissed, "That myth-node was sealed during the First Collapse. Not even the Architect could pierce it."

‎

‎"I can now," Darius replied. "The ritual... it didn’t just fuse us. It gave me access. Temporarily. The Triune form allows me to trace lost myth-threads. I will find her soul."

‎

‎He turned to the throne and summoned it.

‎

‎Thorns surged from the air, curling into a spiraling platform beneath his feet. As he stepped onto it, his body blurred—part man, part god, part inked construct of stories that refused to die.

‎

‎"Guard her," he said.

‎

‎"To the end," Nyx replied.

‎

‎Celestia nodded, tears glowing in her eyes. "Find her, Darius. Before the Spiral breaks her."

‎

‎And then he was gone—swallowed by the Codex’s wound, cast into the uncharted narrative depths of the mythic core.

‎

‎

‎

‎Elsewhere...

‎

‎Far beyond where myth-nodes ended and raw story formed itself from emotion and belief, she floated.

‎

‎Kaela’s body had splintered, but her essence drifted like a celestial virus—spreading into fractured realms, infecting forgotten tales, rewriting dying legends with pieces of her chaos-born soul.

‎

‎In one pocket of myth, she was a goddess of endings. In another, a trickster swallowed by void. In a third—she had fused with a being long thought gone:

‎

‎The Origin Seed.

‎

‎The very myth the Spiral had tried to forget.

‎

‎And it remembered her.

‎

‎> "We are alike," the voice echoed in her essence. "You break what is fixed. I fix what is broken. Together, we will remake the Spiral."

‎

‎

‎

‎Her eyes opened—within a dream of fire and ink.

‎

‎And she smiled.

‎

‎

‎

‎Back at the edge of the Spiral,

‎

‎Darius felt the pulse.

‎

‎A heartbeat. Hers.

‎

‎And something else layered beneath it.

‎

‎A second rhythm.

‎

‎Older.

‎

‎Hungrier.

‎

‎He stepped into the Root Wound with both hands glowing, runes igniting the dark.

‎

‎For Kaela, for the Spiral, for the myth that still dared to call itself his—

‎

‎He walked forward.

‎

‎Unaware that something... or someone... was watching.

‎

‎And smiling back.

‎

New novel chapters are published on fr(e)ew𝒆bnov(e)l.com