Chapter 2: Godslayer
Something ancient was stirring.
He had felt it hours ago—or days ago; time bent here, warped, staggered. It came in vibrations through the dark. Like someone walking through still water a thousand miles away.
But the ripples reached him.
Vaylen stood at the edge of a continent that hadn't existed an hour earlier, or maybe he had only now imagined it. Floating structures curled upward behind him—spires that bent in spirals, hollow cities made of thought and pressure. Lightless stars flickered overhead, orbiting the impossible geometry he had willed into existence.
He was not weak.
He had formed galaxies in miniature. Split space to give his realm dimension. Created stars just to see if he could kill them.
But this...
This was not something he made.
A rift had opened in the far edge of his domain. He hadn't summoned it. And that alone made it dangerous.
Then the figure arrived.
Not like a man. Like a shadow deciding it no longer wished to be hidden.
He stepped through the breach, barefoot on the void, hair silver and flowing like molten silk. A sword grew in one hand, as if his hatred needed a body. His armor breathed in slow, seething pulses. His presence dimmed the stars around him. Space recoiled.
Vaylen didn't flinch.
"You're not part of this place," he said.
The figure stared.
"I was part of everything. Until you infected it."
His voice was velvet and knives. Cold, but theatrical.
"You bled into the old dark. Made fire where there was stillness. Built shape. Walled off a corner. You carved a name onto nothing."
"Then maybe nothing needed a name," Vaylen said.
The figure tilted his head.
"I am Knull," he said. "I do not share."
He walked across air that bent beneath him. His blade hummed with negative heat.
"You don't know what you've awakened," Knull continued. "What you've called attention to. There are things older than you—stronger than sentiment, louder than memory. And you've made them curious."
Vaylen looked around at the stars he'd birthed, the sky he'd bent. The geometry was unstable, but beautiful. Brutal and alive. It was his.
"I'm not giving it up," he said.
Knull smiled.
"You won't have to. You'll die in it."
Knull didn't lunge.
He strolled forward, slowly, dragging the edge of his blade along the air like a painter pulling charcoal across canvas. Wherever the weapon passed, the world split. Stars blinked out. Gravity lost interest.
Vaylen raised his hand.
The dimension surged to obey.
A wall of jagged black glass erupted from beneath, a thousand feet high, curved and glittering like obsidian teeth.
Knull smiled and whispered a word—
The wall shattered mid-rise, shards pausing in the air for a single breath before reversing direction and hurtling back toward Vaylen.
He stepped sideways—
Reality bent.
The strike missed—but just barely.
The impact behind him tore a new hole in the sky, swallowing one of the lesser moons he'd crafted for balance. It vanished with a crunch.
He didn't have time to mourn it.
Knull was already close.
The blade came down—a single, beautiful arc.
Vaylen raised both arms and screamed with thought.
The sky folded in on itself, a black mirror slamming down between them. The sword hit the barrier and sparks exploded—except there was no fire, no light. Just raw physics unraveling.
Knull tilted his head.
"You're fast," he said. "But not focused."
He slashed again.
And again.
Each strike unwove a part of the realm.
Vaylen gritted his teeth. He opened both hands, palms outward, and pushed.
The world answered.
Spikes of molten metal burst from the air, orbiting him like a crown. He launched them like a storm—dozens, hundreds, each honed by sheer will. Knull ducked the first, cleaved the second, let the rest come.
The storm hit him full on.
The void screamed.
Vaylen exhaled—
And then Knull stepped through the smoke.
Bleeding shadows. Face cracked down the cheek. But smiling.
"I've destroyed gods older than language," he said. "You think your pretty storms make you worthy?"
Vaylen didn't answer.
He pulled the stars from behind him—four of them, still burning from the day he made them. He crushed their mass into a single orb of collapsing light and hurled it at Knull like a comet.
It hit.
Everything disappeared in a burst of folding black and white.
For a moment, there was no realm. Just recoil.
And then Knull's blade pierced through the burst.
Vaylen barely shifted aside. The sword grazed his shoulder—and he felt it. Felt the part of himself that was still mind and memory scream in pain.
His knees hit the fractured floor.
Knull walked toward him slowly, smoke rising off his cloak, wounds already closing.
"You're not weak," he said. "But you're not ready."
He raised the sword.
"I'll keep your corpse as a reminder."
Vaylen dragged himself backward, knees cutting lines through the fractured stone beneath him. He could feel the pain now—not just in his form, but in the fabric of the realm itself. The Dark Dimension was fraying. Cracking under Knull's pressure.
Worse—resisting him.
Not Knull.
The realm.
His realm.
And that terrified him.
Knull stepped forward, dragging his sword behind him. The weapon carved silence through the floor, as if it had grown bored of simply wounding flesh.
"You've built something strong," Knull said. "That's rare."
Vaylen coughed. The sound echoed off the sky in irregular ripples. Everything felt thinner now. Weaker. Like the rules of this place were slipping away.
"You don't get it," Knull continued. "You can't rule the dark. You are the dark. Or you aren't."
He raised the blade.
Vaylen's mind was racing. He couldn't outrun Knull. Couldn't overpower him. Couldn't outlast him.
But then something shifted—not outside—inside.
He reached deep—not for a weapon, not for a spell—but for understanding.
This dimension... it wasn't a tool.
It was an extension. A mirror. A nervous system.
His pain was its pain.
His rage, its storms.
His fear—its tremble.
He'd been trying to control it like code. Like tech.
But this wasn't a machine.
It was a being.
Him.
Knull took one more step, blade raised high.
And Vaylen whispered:
"Stop."
The entire realm froze.
The air solidified mid-motion.
The cracks stopped spreading.
Even the stars above, which had begun to collapse under Knull's presence, steadied themselves like loyal sentries returning to position.
Vaylen stood up.
His shoulder still burned. His form still leaked energy. But his voice was different now.
He didn't shout.
He commanded.
"This isn't a battlefield," he said. "It's my spine. My lungs. My thoughts made solid. You're not fighting me."
He extended his hand.
"You're trespassing inside me."
Knull hesitated.
Then laughed—deep and low.
"Good," he said. "Then I won't feel bad when I tear it all apart."
He charged.
Vaylen didn't move.
The dimension did.
A canyon split beneath Knull's feet. Spires collapsed inward like jaws. The sky inverted. Space folded—then bit down.
Knull vanished inside the fold.
And the Dark Dimension swallowed itself shut.
The sky convulsed.
It didn't break—it convulsed. Like a living thing coughing up poison.
From the fold where Knull had vanished, black veins began to spread. Not part of the realm. Invaders.
They pulsed like heartbeats, pumping corruption into the structures, the laws, the very concepts that held the Dark Dimension together.
Vaylen staggered back, clutching his chest. It wasn't metaphorical—he could feel it. The breach was infecting him directly. His thoughts grew heavy. Space around him bent the wrong way. Shapes refused to obey geometry.
Knull was trying to rewrite the realm from inside.
And he was doing it well.
A whisper slithered through the cracks:
> You're still thinking too small.
Vaylen dropped to his knees.
The sky flickered.
A floating structure collapsed behind him and fell into itself, forming a sphere of negative mass that detonated in reverse—unmaking a piece of the realm.
Knull's laughter followed.
> I've done this before, little spark. You're not the first fire I've drowned.
The veins began forming limbs. Long, skeletal silhouettes crawled through the void. Echoes of things Vaylen had never imagined—teeth where there should be eyes, joints bending the wrong way, figures wearing his shape like a mockery.
He gritted his teeth.
The fear was rising again.
But he reached past it.
Deeper.
Beyond pain. Beyond identity.
He didn't need to think.
He needed to feel.
He closed his eyes.
And breathed.
The realm answered.
A single pulse echoed across the sky.
Not lightning.
Not flame.
Will.
The false stars reignited, bright and hot. The inverted skies cracked outward, light pouring through.
The limbs hissed and recoiled.
And then—
Vaylen opened his mouth.
And roared.
The sound tore through the dimension like a nuclear wave—not sound, but force. It bent the horizon, reversed the collapse, shoved the infection back toward its source.
The fold writhed.
Knull's voice returned—no longer smug.
> Wait—
Vaylen raised both arms and slammed them down.
The dimension snapped shut.
Not softly.
Not surgically.
Like a vault door forged in rage and welded with hatred.
The fold vanished. The limbs disintegrated. The black veins shriveled like dried rot.
And in their place—
Silence.
Real silence.
Not absence.
Peace.
Vaylen fell forward, gasping.
Not from the battle.
From the cost.
His realm had nearly died.
And he had nearly died with it.
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(Thank you very much Headshot gaming for the power stones .. Appreciate it very much)