They were changing.
Even when I wasn't watching, even when I thought I had woven their bodies and minds with absolute control, something was shifting. Slowly. In silence. Like rot spreading beneath painted walls.
The flesh I carved no longer obeyed only me. The thoughts I seeded began to grow beyond the soil I tilled.
And it wasn't rebellion.
It was something older.
Something deeper.
Something… instinctual.
I noticed it first in the quiet. That place between meditation and memory, where the mind slips into shadow and listens instead of commanding. I had drifted briefly—reviewing the arcane lattice of Netherhold from afar, ensuring the flow of void essence through the walls, the heartbeat of the spires pulsing in tandem with my will.
But then, I heard it.
A sound that did not belong.
Not within me.
Not within my creations.
It was distant… yet familiar. Like a word I had once spoken in another life, on another plane.
A pulse.
From beneath.
I opened my eyes.
And for a moment… the walls around me breathed.
I stood without hesitation.
Glepharion appeared almost immediately. No flourish. No dance.
Just stillness.
He never moved like that unless something was deeply wrong.
"It's awake, isn't it?" he said.
"You feel it too."
"Of course. The deepest chords hum through all of us."
"Where?"
He pointed—straight down.
"To the gate you sealed when you first returned. The one you never built."
I remembered it.
Black obsidian. Carved with reversed runes. Etchings of mouths consuming light and kings kneeling before the void.
And in the center—my face, though older, more withered… or perhaps more complete.
I had ignored that gate.
Not out of fear, but out of necessity.
There is wisdom in waiting. But even wisdom has limits.
We descended in silence.
Each level of Netherhold grew colder as we passed. The air became heavy, not with weight, but with time. Memories clung to the walls—glimpses of dead names, the taste of forgotten battles, the breath of civilizations long erased.
At the lowest point, the obsidian gate remained untouched.
It hadn't decayed. It hadn't aged.
It had simply… waited.
I placed my hand upon it.
The stone burned like ice. Not pain—recognition.
A line of energy traced across the gate, unlocking its pattern not with force, but with familiarity.
It opened.
We entered a chamber untouched by design or decay.
There was no dust. No rot. No sound.
Only stillness.
And in the center of the room, suspended in mid-air by veins of soft silver light, was a cocoon.
It pulsed.
Not with life. Not yet.
But with memory.
I stepped closer.
The air resisted me, thickening with each pace. Like walking through regret.
The cocoon was pale, veined with liquid starlight, shaped like a curled fetus. Inside, something flickered—some embryonic thing wrapped in history and hunger.
I reached out.
It pulsed again.
And this time, it spoke.
Not in words. In resonance.
"Return."
I staggered back.
That voice… it didn't belong to me.
But it knew me.
Knew everything I had been. Everything I might still become.
It whispered not as a warning.
But as a promise.
We left in silence.
But I knew nothing would be the same.
When I returned to the Throne, I felt the shift more clearly.
Ka'Zhur had begun reshaping his forge. He now carved symbols into the walls, ones I didn't teach him. They flickered with unstable heat, drawing energy from something beyond our known lattice.
Virella had not slept in three days. She perched atop the tallest spire, eyes locked on the sky beyond, whispering in languages never known by mortals. Sometimes her words formed shapes in the wind—patterns that dissolved before reaching meaning.
Silthis had vanished. His presence—a cold inevitability in the shadows of Netherhold—was simply gone.
And the shapeless aberrant… no longer shifted.
It wore my face.
The one I bore before resurrection.
The one that bled.
The one that begged.
I summoned my five most advanced creations.
They knelt before me.
None spoke.
None dared.
But their silence was not obedience.
It was uncertainty.
They felt it too.
The shift.
I walked past them, fingers brushing the voidsteel railing as the halls echoed around us.
"There is something beneath us," I said, softly. "Something I sealed before I understood it."
They listened.
"You all feel it now."
Still no words.
"You do not yet know fear," I said, "but you understand instinct. And your instincts tell you the truth."
I turned.
"The gate below has opened. Not because I allowed it. But because something inside it… called."
A flicker of movement from the aberrant with five arms.
The one that remembered.
It raised its head.
And smiled.
That night, it screamed.
Not in agony.
But in evolution.
Its five arms began to split—each sprouting sinew, nerves, and raw muscle. Its bones cracked, reshaped. One eye burst into shadow, the other bled light.
Each memory it once held—rage, grief, love, fear—transformed.
They were no longer experiences.
They were weapons.
And it was forging them into identity.
I chained it deep in the Labrum. Fed it pain, containment sigils, and void suppression.
But it laughed.
Even as its limbs rotted and regrew.
"You are the first echo," it whispered, "but I am the deviation."
I said nothing.
Not because I was surprised.
But because I knew…
It was true.
Something had changed.
Not just in it.
In all of them.
In me.
Glepharion returned the next cycle.
He moved differently. Smoother. Like the shadows weren't hiding him anymore—they were part of him.
"The surface murmurs," he said.
"What do they say?"
"Not your name. Not yet. But they speak of signs. Of old omens. Some dream of a black cocoon beneath the mountain. Others paint pictures of kings with reversed faces."
"Their dreams are catching up," I said.
"And fast," he agreed. "One of the sun cults burned their own temple yesterday. Said they saw 'a lightless crown' in the fire."
"And the soldiers?"
"Still blind. But restless."
I turned toward the prison chamber.
The aberrant inside had grown. It no longer had five arms.
It had seven.
Each held not memories… but weapons of metaphor. One burned with nostalgia. Another pulsed with guilt. One cracked with silence.
It saw me approach.
It knelt.
Not in submission.
But in mutual recognition.
I raised my hand. Its body trembled.
"Who do you serve?" I asked.
It didn't hesitate.
"Not a name," it said. "A purpose."
I smiled.
Then turned away.
In the echoing dark of my fortress, I sat again upon the Throne.
And this time, I did not ask the void a question.
I gave it an answer.
"I am no longer a king of the dead," I whispered. "I am a god of becoming."
Somewhere below, the cocoon pulsed again.
But it no longer whispered 'Return.'
It whispered:
'Soon.'
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