What remained of the god was hardly a body anymore, just a mangled trunk of flesh dragged through dust and broken light. His legs had already been severed earlier; now he knelt only because gravity had claimed the last scraps of his ruined form. His once-resplendent golden blood, corrupted by the warping of divine rage, had turned thick and black as tar.
His breath rattled wetly as the tiger spirit tore out his eyes, two perfect orbs that once saw through epochs, chewing them like fruit. The dragon wound around him like a living storm, each coil crushing ribs, cracking the divine spine, shattering the celestial marrow that hummed inside.
"Grahhh—! You… you little insect!" His voice was broken thunder, shaking only out of hatred. "How… how are you still alive? I destroyed you!" His head rolled, barely attached, glaring blindly through bloody sockets. "I burned your flesh to ash! Why - how - did you come back?!"
The boy didn't answer.
He simply stood among the drifting remains of divine organs as if he were looking at an old, uninteresting painting and his outline began dissolving, scattering like mist caught in moonlight.
The god's trembling lips tried to form curses, but the sound was useless.
The boy finally spoke, his voice strangely gentle, even pitying. "It wasn't me," he said. "You killed me in your dreams. But..." He turned his back, melting further into the air. "This wasn't death.... Just the power of someone even your whole lifetime will take to understand but still not able to understand."
The woman's breath hitched. Her smile vanished instantly, replaced with icy confusion. She understood none of it, not the boy's tone towards god, nor the meaning hidden behind the fading silhouette.
The god, even as a severed head, suddenly began to laugh.
From the torn stump where his neck had been, a thick, black, viscous bead of blood floated forward and beating like a heart. The girl flinched as if stabbed. The god's cracked mouth stretched unnaturally wide. "That's it… yes… yes!" His laughter rose, ancient and rotten.
The bead burst apart into a cloud of golden-black vapours, forcing the world to shudder. The god's dismembered flesh began dragging itself inward, weaving together, reforming. Bones twisted out of nothing. Veins braided like living serpents. His chest inflated with light. A spine burst upward like a tree branch through soil.
Moments later, he sat cross-legged in the air. "I am not done," he murmured, pressing blood-slick fingers into a hand seal. "You think you witnessed my death?" His eyelids fluttered closed. His forehead split open. A gigantic vertical eye emerged on his forehead and an ancient array ignited beneath him: rings of symbols older than language, spinning, grinding, snapping into place. It bloomed until it was larger than a stadium. The sea trembled. The sky cracked like a sheet of ice.
From the array, something enormous began rising.
A shadow, first. Then a torso, then arms thicker than mountain ranges, carved with celestial tattoos and scars from forgotten wars. The fog-covered cliff in the distance, once towering and untouchable, looked like a child's toy in front of the emerging figure.
The god's laughter drifted across continents. Thunder responded. Again and again lightning scrawled across the heavens, as if the sky tried desperately to keep up with its master.
The girl staggered backward, breath trembling. Her eyes burned with silver fury. "No… even my death arrive, I will not bow to any one. I'm also not dying here." She lifted both hands. Her veins lit like moonlit rivers.
"Domain—open. "Her voice cracked through reality. "Infinite Moon Sea."
The world froze.
The chaos sea beneath them shifted colours, becoming impossibly blue, calm yet bottomless. The sky inverted into soft night, and moons multiplied and multiplied until their reflections filled the sea like an endless field of broken mirrors. Cool wind carried whispers of forgotten prayers. Silver light wrapped her like a mantle.
The god's giant form stepped into existence completely now. Lightning dripped from its muscles. Every breath bent the sky. His voice boomed: "This time… no monk will crawl out of his rotten cave to drag you away from judgment. No monkey. No pig. No one."
He dissolved into his colossal avatar, merging like molten gold poured into a mould. The giant shuddered, alive now, eyes burning like mythical furnaces.
Eight arms unfurled.
Six held weapons: A thunder-hammer that made the heavens weep. A blade forged from the bones of dying stars. A trident humming with ocean storms. A staff carved from the last World Tree. A curved saber pulled from the deepest abyss of the sea. A spear whose tip was a compressed singularity. The last two arms formed mudras.
"True Form of the Primordial God."
The colossal deity's eightfold silhouette towered over the Infinite Moon Sea, and when his mouth opened. An ancient voice echoed from every direction at once.
"Cease your heretic glow. Bow before the true god.
Offer faith, not fear. Pray with your heart, surrender your soul.
Through me, your sins will be washed clean. Woman… come.
I can guide you toward the rightful path -
the only path -
to godhood.
Why flail like a blind beast? Do not resemble that former heretic you defended."
The entire domain shook as if an earthquake hit it.
But she tilted her head slightly, moonlight dripping from her hair, and let out a laugh so sharp it sliced the silence in half. "A dog may kneel to you, piglet god. But I? We finished talking the moment you chose slaughter. Descent of Infinity - descend."
The moons trembled in the sky above, then answered her call.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Every moon and every reflection in her Infinite Moon Sea quivered like awakened soldiers, spirits of light, halos sharpened into blades.
They fell like white meteor storms or, like divine punishments meant for ancient sinners. Each moon shattered atmosphere, ripping open thunderclouds, carving scars into the chaos sea as they hurled toward the god's towering avatar.
The deity roared in challenge. His six weapon-bearing arms swung out in every direction.
The star-bone blade carved crescents through the sky, splitting moons in half with single strokes. The thunder-hammer ignited storms as it moved, vaporizing dozens of lunar suras at once. The abyssal saber drank the light of fifty moons, cleaving them into streams of broken silver. The trident lashed the sea, calling up tsunamis tall enough to swallow mountains whole. The staff whirled like a cyclone, grinding moons into powder. The singularity spear tore holes in existence itself.
Thunder fell like rain. Sea rose like wrath. Light shattered like bones.
The world became a storm of white and gold, thunder and moon-fire, sea and void.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of roaring, clashing, and destruction, the final moon collided with his chest in a burst that drowned the horizon in white. Silence came like a final blade.
Dust. Ash. Shattered lunar fragments drifting down like dying fireflies. As the light weakened, her breath caught. The god still stood same as was but once-perfect divine frame was riddled with holes—massive, cylindrical wounds bored straight through flesh, as if giant drills of moonlight had punched through him. Four of his arms, half his arsenal, were gone entirely, ripped off at the shoulder or shattered into divine debris.
Black-gold ichor rained from the wounds, sizzling as it hit the sea. Yet his remaining four arms twitched with fury. The giant vertical eye above him flickered, furious, hungry. The god's remaining four arms flexed, dripping black-gold ichor that steamed as it hit the air. His eightfold spine straightened, and the sky shook like a living drum. When he spoke, his voice cracked the horizon.
"Even your little moon-sea cannot kill me. Two days of rest, these wounds will be gone. But you will not live long enough to witness that."
Clouds twisted behind him, forming spirals like halos carved from storms. His giant form began to rise higher, eclipsing the last remnants of her fading domain.
"At first, woman, I thought of using you as a vessel to descend completely. A beautiful, stubborn shell… fitting to birth my true form. But now?" He laughed, a broken temple collapsing. "Now I see the danger. If you reached my realm, even for an instant… I'd die before I could summon my full might. You are, as always, a true Sovereign. And for that very reason—you must die."
His colossal hand, wide enough to cover a thousand kilometres of sea, rose above her. The clouds behind him funnelled downward like an enormous vortex, feeding power into the strike. When his palm descended. It came down like the Buddha's Palm.
She felt pressure of it before it reached her. Her soul cracked under invisible pressure. Her vision bled white at the edges. Her limbs stung like they were unravelling thread by thread.
Her domain, Infinite Moon Sea, shuddered violently. The calm blue surface split apart. The sky full of moons flickered, then shattered like dropped porcelain. Her sword slipped from her fingers. When it touched the sea, one last moon reflected in the blade. Then both sword and moon sank together, dissolving as if the ocean had always been empty. The domain vanished.
Only the dark chaotic sea remained. The god laughed, triumphant and feral. "Both of you are dead. Now… no one can harm me." He flexed his remaining arms, watching the holes in his body slowly clot with golden-black tissue.
"If I hadn't been sealed here… if you two hadn't destroyed the power I stored for centuries… I could have unleashed divinity in full." A pause. His smile faltered. "Then why… why does this unease still cling to me? Why does this curse still shackle me?"
His palm dropped the final distance toward her. Her soul understood it, this time, truly, death was absolute. But despite that, a faint, serene smile tugged at her lips. As if she had seen something the god could not. As if she knew a truth he had missed. The god's palm was millimetres from crushing her -
When the sea below blossomed. From the chaotic depths, flower petals surged upward, black, blood-red, bone white, twisting like serpents. They wrapped around her gently, shielding her like a living cocoon.
Then the petals turned, coiling outward and striking at the god's hand. Nature itself twisted. Daylight evaporated. The world burned into a palette of blood, ashen white, and abyssal black.
The sea became a swirling grave of colours. The sky inverted. The petals pierced through the god's palm as if it were wet paper. "A—AHHHHHHH!My… hand? WHAT IS THIS? !WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!"
His roar rattled the heavens as his divine flesh dissolved under the serpentine blossoms.
The god gritted his teeth, black ichor bubbling from the edges of his jaw. His arm, the one devoured by those serpentine petals, trembled like a collapsing pillar. Still he staggered upright, howling through the raw wound.
He couldn't understand why did her presence fade like a ghost yet leave no corpse behind? Then clarity stabbed him like a needle of ice.
"She… she died before my hand touched her. That's why… that's why she escaped the law!"
His scream shattered into madness, a cry torn between grief and fury.
"ENOUGH—ENOUGH NOW! If the heavens intend to erase me, then I'll drag every last one of you into oblivion WITH ME! Even if I perish… I will perish with you all!"
His voice cracked the air like chains breaking.
He looked toward the horizon, but the horizon was gone.
Instead, two clouds were drifting across the sea, one molten gold, the other seething crimson. They spiralled like twin storms crossing the sky with agonizing slowness, as though the world itself feared to let them arrive. "Law is coming..."
A chill crawled up his spine. He gathered the remnants of his eight hands. Three remained physical and five flickered as energy phantoms, unstable but obedient. He slammed them together, forming a seal powerful enough to call a heavenly calamity.
But nothing answered.
Again, he roared—
"Why?! Why hasn't the calamity descended? Where is the divine strike?! WHY IS NOTHING HAPPENING?!"
A soft childish, calm voice rose beside him. "Are you looking for something?" The god turned and his entire mind froze. The boy, whom he thought dead, was alive, standing right next to him, hand shading his eyes as if searching for birds in the sky. He lowered his arm, smiled with a tilt of innocence.
"If you tell me what you're trying to find… I can help. I'm really good at finding things."
The god's thoughts twisted. Confusion. Rage. Fear he refused to name.
Without hesitation he lashed out, eight phantom hands and the three remaining real ones swung together. A blow that could split continents passed… straight through the boy.
The attack left only ripples of ink. The god recoiled. His own arm was dripping with black ink instead of blood. The boy's image blurred like wet paint… then dissolved entirely. A strange laugh rang across the sea. The god whirled—
But the world had already changed. From all sides, waves rose, taller than mountains but not in chaotic manner. It was orderly, as if choreographed by an unseen hand. He was at the middle of it. The cliff, the battlefield, the shattered valley, everything that once existed, had devoured. Through the walls of water, the god saw something emerging something, same mountains, same valley where he fought the boy.
lotus burst through the water's surface. Their blossoms opened in eerie silence. Wind blew, though there was no air. Day and night began flickering, alternating like heartbeats. The cycle accelerated—
Flowers bloomed, rotted, bloomed again. Leaves fell, decayed, mis with water and vanished. The seasons spun faster and faster until they became a blur.
The god stared, trembling.
"The flaw… The flaw in the world he created… It's being corrected. The end of all things He's forcing it to appear." Then something else rose, the same torii gate. It emerged from a sea of blooming lotus, lotus that were no longer heartless, but full, luminous, alive. Some blossoms climbed up the legs of the gate. Others drifted upward, glowing faintly in pink, gold, and white.
Atop the gate, a silhouette began to materialize. The shape of a boy. Seated exactly as before—cross-legged, serene.
Behind him, a ring slowly pulsed, Two semi-circular arcs: One black as ink, One white as bone.
They turned like the halves of a celestial wheel.
Within the ring, patterns emerged, dragons, trees, swords, fish, rivers, and beasts, sculpting themselves in endless motion.
The god felt his pupils shrink. "What is the point of all this?" the god spat, voice trembling with something dangerously close to fear. "You couldn't save her. She saved you, and you STILL failed! What use is resurrection if you come back alone?"
The boy opened his eyes. "Why do you always speak as if you understand everything?" he answered quietly.
"Our conversation ended long ago. What remains now… is the conclusion. I still have many things to do in this life. You are only one obstacle among thousands." He looked at the god as one might look at a broken tool.
"Remember this. If creation were constant, unchanging, no world would ever know beauty.
If beauty never faded, nothing new could be born. Thus," he raised a hand, "balance demands destruction. Not out of malice, but necessity."
The ring behind him shone brighter, the black arc releasing dark blossoms, the white arc releasing shimmering dust.
"You are no divine mastermind. Just a pawn who stumbled into a role too big for his mind to comprehend." He smiled. "And for killing my clone… thank you. It allowed me to witness a truth: Every creation must reach its end. Even gods."
Mountains slid forward from the horizon like titans waking from a death-sleep. Blossoms erupted across their slopes in waves—crimson, violet, pale white, yet each bloom lasted less than a heartbeat before withering, blackening, rotting away. Life and death flickered across the landscape as though someone were flipping pages of a cosmic book too fast.
The god sensed all of it, but what chilled him was something else entirely: His laws were useless. His thunder was being devoured. The dark clouds he commanded gone as though swallowed by an invisible maw. Only raw strength remained, and even that felt like it was being chewed from the edges.
Then he saw the torii gate was growing. Rising. The wooden red pillars now towered toward the heavens, lotus petals scattered from it as though pushed by a gentle breeze, but there was no breeze in this dying world. When the torii gate reached the level of his head, the god finally saw the cross-legged, calm boy. Yet the gate's presence pressed upon him like an invisible mountain of ink and starlight.
The boy tilted his head lightly.
"You want to start, or should I?"
A tremor passed through the god's body. Anger? Fear? Even he did not know. He forced a grin, raising the remnants of his hands. Three flesh, five energy illusions, eight in total, forming a seal so complex it twisted the air. From his forehead, the colossal god-eye groaned open.
"Tiny ant, you should kneel. For a creature of your level… I am ashamed to use my divine power. Rejoice, your death shall be recorded as an honour." The boy blinked slowly.
"Why work so hard to kill a 'puny ant'? Sacrificing yourself like this… isn't it a little dramatic?"
A female, sharp voice answered before the god could. "It's not sacrifice, you idiot.
He's burning his last divine essence to call calamity. He wants to surpass you, force an ascension, steal a path never meant to be his."
The god, trembling with effort, grabbed the divine eye on his forehead and tore it out. The scream that ripped from him shook the sea itself. The eye glowed crimson, like a blood-soaked gem. Its light bled into the air, and the ocean split beneath him as a pitch-black liquid, thicker than tar—boiled up from the abyss. A massive array unlocked itself beneath the surface.
Lines of ancient markings lit one by on Then, FWOOM...
A pillar of light shot toward the sky above, the storm clouds twisted into a whirlpool. Inside the clouds shadows gathered, tall, nameless silhouettes with godlike posture and eyeless faces. Their outlines flickered like extinguished stars dragged back to life.
The woman whispered behind the boy, "They're coming, shadows of forgotten gods. He was trying to reach the calamity's heart and after absorb it he will step into half divinity. You must defeat him quickly before they descend. Because his blood..." Her voice trembled. "His blood has already summoned them faster."
The god raised his mangled arms high, laughter cracking like shattered metal.
"You forced me into this! Witness it—this is the calamity of ascension! Under this tribulation, I will rise… AND YOU WILL DIE! The heavens themselves have chosen ME!"
Lightning cracked open the heavens as the god hurled himself upward, vanishing and reappearing before the roiling vortex like a shadow teleporting through light. His voice boomed, heavy with arrogance and hunger.
"A trifling thunder dares bar my ascent? Insolent whelp of the sky, come, be devoured."
The first bolt struck him like a spear. He swallowed it whole. The second crashed against his chest, he chewed through it like brittle bone. The third blazed across his remaining divine eye; he inhaled it, veins bulging, skin splitting as light poured from the cracks.
Then the calamity reacted. Like waking beasts, the thunders multiplied. What had been one bolt became a dozen. A dozen became a hundred. Their descent turned into a tidal wave of blinding violence. Behind the god's head, a ring of divinity ignited, spinning with five symbols, each one a different colour, each one vibrating with a different cosmic law. The symbols rotated faster, carving the sky into fragments of red, blue, gold, obsidian, and marrow-white.
He spread his arms, what remained of them and roared. "I shall transcend through devouring! All calamity exists to feed me!" He swallowed bolts like a starved beast clawing through the world's marrow, going deeper and deeper into the heart of the storm and then everything froze.Wind. Lightning. The black water below. Even time seemed to halt.
Only one thing still moved. Beneath him, the Eye of Calamity, now stared at the boy on the torii gate. Its iris spun like grinding gears. The air around it tightened. A whisper of thunder slithered out. Then the sky screamed. Thousands of thunder dragons burst from the calamity-eye, coiling downward like serpents made of storms and hunger.
The woman's voice trembled slightly as she spoke next to the boy, though she hid it behind her sharp tone. "That bastard now conquered the eye of calamity and did not absorb it but marked you for your doom. Why are you not doing anything? Now the calamity thinks you are the rightful offering."
The boy exhaled with a half-laugh, eyes narrowing. "It's stronger now… far stronger." From the clouds above, massive, serene, and terrifying eight colossal arms pushed through, like a warped parody of a Buddha descending for judgment. Their palms glowed with heavenly mudras.
The woman hissed, "Those are his hands. Move, quickly, before he merges with the calamity fluid."
The sky hissed as the colossal arms lunged downward, the entire storm collapsing behind them like a waterfall made of lightning. The boy yawned.
"You're noisy. Go to sleep." He said it with a childish irritation, as if scolding a neighbour's dog. He lifted his brush. "Clause Four… Echoing Beasts of the Sundered Dawn."
A single petal drifted upward from the raging sea, boy flicked it into the incoming bolt.
Life exploded from lightning. Dragons coiled out of the bolt's shattered spine. Garuda wings tore through clouds. Monkey-spirits leapt screaming from splintered arcs of electricity. A storm of living myth ripped upward, tearing the descending thunder apart.
The eight divine arms clashed with the spectral beasts. From the heaving sea below, lotus stems burst forth, spiralling like massive green dragons. They wrapped themselves together, forming towering columns that struck the divine arms.
Each lotus-column birthed new forms as it broke, half-petal, half-stem, half-born monsters and flowers. They blended like unnatural evolution: new limbs, new faces, new weapons. Some held the arms at bay. Others were crushed instantly. New ones bloomed.
Behind them all, the torii gate began to expand, endlessly, stretching upward like a path being carved to worlds beyond.
To be Continued...