Cillian watched the blackboard in silence.
A fresh formula glowed across the board, a skeleton of rules written in a hand that had clearly labored for years. The woman who had been writing it had collapsed to the floor, chalk still in her fingers.
Cillian moved closer and read the lines with slow interest. The room was quiet for a long mont.
"It’s wrong," the woman finally said.
She laughed, a tired, bitter sound. "Of course. I will be wrong until I die." Then she rose and began to speak of why she’d stopped trying other thods. Why she had given up trying to force ordinary creatures to ignite divine fire.
Before he could gather anything the mories sped up. Scenes flickered past and each ti the woman returned to the blackboard, redrafting the formula, testing, failing, growing more exhausted. Cillian could not see her face clearly, but he could feel her fatigue, bitterness, and slow grinding despair that thickened the air.
The woman paused, then her hand trembled as she spoke to the empty room, and Cillian realized she was addressing whoever would read these mories in the future.
"Every divine world is different," she said, touching the board. "Sa base formula, Sa types of creatures, but no two worlds are identical. Small internal or external changes cascade. Those changes reshape the domain."
She tapped the glyphs with a chalk-stained finger. "And every divine world has limits. Size, resources, the conversion rules, every realm is bound, from the mont the first formula is seeded, the potential of that realm is set."
Her voice hardened. "Even Star Gods, the high, mighty gods you think immutable are shackled. They crave a world without limits, they pursue the sa thing I pursue. But they will not tell you this. It is their secret."
The woman leaned close and smiled.
"You feel a tingle of regret, don’t you? Afraid of getting involved?" She laughed.
" Good. That reaction was expected. But I will not stop."
She explained her plan. She would go to a secret realm inside the Chaos Dead Sea to finish her work and hide her results. She would bury her discoveries and her wealth deep inside, protected and nearly impossible to reach. She would die there if she had to; she would then carve the coordinates on the board as a map to her hoard.
Then she turned in the direction of Cillian.
"Two paths," she said. "First: forget everything you saw, walk away and take a vast portion of my remaining divine fla. Enough to lift you into godhood, perhaps a lower god. I grant you peace and power if you let this mory beco a sweet lie."
She paused and smiled. "Or second: chase what I left behind. Then you will face horrors, unknown enemies, and co across trials that will try to break your will. You will lose alot, perhaps even your soul. In fact, you’ll probably fail and never reach my treasures."
Cillian’s expression hardened. He had heard of the Chaos Dead Sea, it was not a place even high gods would tread lightly, which is exactly why he hated the way it tempted him, but he wasn’t stupid either, her directions, even her offer was a trap dressed as a treasure map, wrapped in the sa arrogance and cruelty as had been in the final test.
As the mory folded, she spoke again, now there was tears building around her eyes. "When you leave,if she is still around, tell Elara I’m sorry, I lied to her face and chose my work over her. please tell her that I’m sorry."
The vision cut out and Cillian returned to himself. The last sight before the mory broke was the woman’s low, strained voice: "I... I’m sorry."
When Cillian looked up, he felt his divine fire count soaring. The numbers at Grimstone’s registry leapt. The power the mories had poured into him accelerated the rise.
He was standing at the fork.
The world humd. The blackboard’s formula glowed faintly in his mind, with the Chaos Dead Sea coordinates burned on the board.
He had a choice to make
——————x——————
Cillian closed his eyes, steadying his breath. He drew his consciousness back into the sea of his mind.
This ti, it was almost entirely lit. Countless rays of divine fire shimred across his inner sea, he stood in the midst of it all, dazzling in its warmth.
"So it begins," he whispered. "The sublimation of life itself."
From the start, his ambition had been to walk the endless divine path. Now, standing on its edge, he could feel the threshold before him. His heart thundered and excitent mingled in his chest.
The fires sward toward him, each fla a piece of power he had gathered, a fragnt of his journey. They embraced him, lifting him down into the depths of the Endless Abyss.
The coronation of a god must be witnessed by their divine world, as Creation itself had to rise and acknowledge its master.
The bottom of the abyss greeted him with familiar silence, darkness, desolation, not a trace of life. Just as he had designed it.
"This is where it all began," he said softly. He sat cross-legged on the barren floor.
As divine fire dissolved into him, mories surged. The first ti he seeded the abyssal formula. The first fallen soul he shaped into life. The rise and decay of abyssal creatures. His history was replayed in fragnts, carried by fla.
The fires fed his soul, tempered it, and pushed it to its limit.
Then his body began to dissolve.
⸻———x——————
The Endless Abyss boiled.
Its hunger tore through the assessnt world, devouring faster, dragging all of it into its black maw. The vortex spun violently, shredding the very fabric of the world.
The Ring of virtue, a radiant symbol of the world’s core, cracked and collapsed under the abyss’s corrosion. It shattered and fell into the deep, to be remade, not as virtue, but as sin and desire.
Next ca the thirteen planets. Caught in the pull, they fragnted and fell, their lands breaking into pieces. Abyssal demons stood on the ruins, howling their joy and celebrating their master’s triumph.
But the assessnt races that still fought lifted their eyes to the sky in terror. They saw their end.
Layers of land collapsed into the abyss. So fragnts scattered into other planes, swallowed by chaos. Others reford in the abyss itself, becoming a new layer, another step in its endless spiral.
Black mist surged at the abyss’s heart.
It gathered where Cillian’s body had been, consuming the last fragnts of his flesh. His form diminished, replaced by vast swarms of shadow as fog seeped outward, filling every crevice of the abyss, spreading until even this endless realm felt crowded.
And yet his mind remained intact, for now.
The abyss knelt.
Demons pressed themselves to the ground, whispering his na in awe. Abyssal lords bowed, and fallen angels prayed.
"Father ..." Mirethane’s voice trembled with reverence.
"Lord ..." Osiris and Raku lifted their cries.
"Almighty ..." countless demons begged, their voices rising like a tide.
"Creator..." every condemned soul whispered, praying their creator would grant their desires.
The black mist swirled, heavy with their voices.
Then sothing vast stirred.
The fog began to coil, thickening into a throne. Bone and fire wove together, shaped by chaos and madness, until a Dark Throne rose from the abyssal floor. It radiated a sense of fear, and to glimpse it was to feel one’s sanity unravel.
Upon it, Cillian’s figure reford, his body sculpted from the mist itself.
And the abyss sang.
It was not music, but whispers and laughter, cries of longing and release. A hymn of corruption and ruin, woven from the abyss’s countless voices.
Cillian opened his eyes.
A black-and-red vortex spun in their depths, as symbols of his dominion.
"My na... Cillian, Cillian Carter."
He rembered his na, he rembered his origin. But more importantly, he claid what he had beco.
"I am Lord of the Endless abyss."
The throne pulsed with fla and the abyss roared in answer.
A new god had risen.
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