Betrayed By Heaven, I Became The Demon Lord
Chapter 24: The Weight After Godfall
The sky continued to collapse, a slow but undeniable descent into chaos and ruin.
Not all at once-Heaven performed its unraveling with an unsettling lack of clarity and cleanliness; it was not a singular event but rather a series of violent convulsions, as if the very fabric of the universe were engaging in a desperate struggle, pondering whether it had the right to perish. Rings of broken cosmic law spiraled inward, grinding against one another in a tumultuous dance reminiscent of celestial gears stripped of any purpose or meaning. Shards of what once constituted divine architecture ignited as they plummeted toward the earth, leaving molten scars sculpted into the land below, a reminder of the oncesolid foundations of reality now dismantled.
The Demon Lord, fierce and unwavering, kept his hand raised.
Not in triumph, as many would interpret such a gesture.
No, he raised it in fierce resistance against the maelstrom of destruction surrounding him.
The pressure of the cacophony was immense, an almost tangible weight pressing down on him. Godfall was more than just a cataclysmic event; it was the resulting wave of consequences spread across existence. When a single pillar of Heaven splintered and broke, the entire weight of every lie and deception it had once supported came crashing down onto the fragile reality like an avalanche of despair.
He felt it deep within his very bones.
Abyssal Will roared to life within him, reinforcing his spine, filling his lungs, and steadying the relentless beat of his heart. This formidable ability had seen him through the depths of despair before; it would not abandon him now. The power that could endure beyond irrelevance was a force potent enough to withstand everything.
As if to illustrate the point, a second god screamed in anguish as its form unraveled middescent, violently torn apart by the backlash of authority it could no longer wield. The sound emanating from it was not divine; it was primal, raw with the animalistic terror of being undone.
So this is what happens when certainty dies, he thought bitterly.
In that moment, the ground split beneath his feet, cracking and splitting in an unsettling echo of the chaos above.
He dropped to one knee, the sharp pang of pain rushing through him as blood splattered onto the scorched stone beneath him. The crater from their previous battle grew ominously wider, transforming into an expansive basin of ruin filled with collapsing gravity wells and flickering remnants of oncemighty commandments.
There was no silence amid the chaos.
There would absolutely never be silence again.
At long last, a surviving god descended into the fray, landing with a thunderous impact-there was no grace, no ceremonial entrance to lend dignity to its arrival. Its wings, once symbols of divine beauty, had become broken constructs, light streaming from jagged fractures that marred its chaotic form.
"You've unbalanced the system," it snarled, vicious fury lacing its words. "Worlds will burn because of you."
The Demon Lord forced himself to rise, fighting against the gravity of despair.
"They already were," he replied sharply, his voice steady as steel. "You simply hid the fire behind the veil of prayer."
This was not an instance of philosophical debate meant for comfort; it was philosophy sharpened by the harsh consequences borne from action. These words had been earned through trials and hardship.
He stepped forward with deliberate intent.
That choice mattered now more than ever.
If he chose to retreat at this juncture, the ongoing collapse would spread unchecked into the vast expanse of creation. If he advanced, however, the burden of this calamity would center squarely upon him. Conflict was not merely optional; it was a directional imperative that he could not evade.
He chose to carry it, to bear the weight of this impending cataclysm.
Grave Dominion expanded within him once more, its power anchoring the dead to the present moment. The fallen did not rise in defiance; they rose as a stabilizing force. Their memories weighed heavy upon reality, anchoring it against the relentless tide of destruction threatening to tear everything apart. Forgotten lives acted as a counterbalance to forgotten lies, grounding the instability.
The god's eyes widened in alarm, pupils dilating as it grasped the enormity of what he was doing.
"You bind the dead without worship?" it gasped in disbelief.
"I bind them with truth," he asserted, his voice resolute. "They do not require faith; they require acknowledgment of their existence."
Enraged, the god lashed out, casting a net woven from the threads of rewritten causality-an attempt to erase the very moment the Demon Lord had ever existed from the continuum. The air screamed in defiance as timelines wrestled with each other, desperate to fold and conform to the god's will.
Judgment Sight ignited within him like a flame, illuminating the chaotic streams of possibility.
He saw it all: the manipulation, the insidious revisions, the quiet edits that Heaven had woven into the tapestry of existence over centuries to ensure obedience felt as natural as breathing rather than enforced submission. He traced the threads backward, past rigid doctrine, through ageold ritual, well beyond the obscuring layers of myth.
And then, with ruthless precision, he cut again.
The net unraveled before him like a discarded cloth, useless and frayed. The backlash surged through the god's chest, blasting a gaping hole of empty space where a core once resided. The divine being staggered, barely managing to maintain its corporeal form.
"You don't comprehend the stakes," the Demon Lord said, advancing with an unyielding determination. "You mistakenly believe that losing control is synonymous with losing the world."
The god fell to one knee, panting heavily, its expression morphing into one of desperation.
"If we fall," it rasped, voice hoarse and trembling, "mortals will destroy themselves without guidance."
The Demon Lord halted directly in front of it, a physical monument to the determination of humanity.
"Then let them choose how," he declared with conviction. "That risk-and its potential for growth-is theirs alone, not yours to eradicate."
Above them, the grand expanse of Heaven continued to cave inward, spiraling into chaos another degree. Entire divine districts collapsed into frenzied storms of raw, unbridled mana. The horizon ignited with crimson and gold flames, a vivid manifestation of reality thrashing against the void of imposed order that was now irretrievably lost.
This place, once a sanctum of divine authority, was no longer abstract, no longer a mere summation of ancient stories.
Stone cracked and splintered beneath their feet. Heat rolled in suffocating waves, like the breath of some great beast awakened from a long slumber. The acrid smell of scorched metal and the metallic tang of blood served to solidify everything in a painful yet undeniable physical truth. There was no longer a white void; no disembodied debate served to cloud their judgment.
Only a battlefield-a violent, chaotic arena-deciding the very future of existence hung heavy in the air, ripe with tension, and alive with possibility.
As the god lifted its gaze to meet his, a flicker of something resembling understanding sparked in the depths of its eyes. It was a moment where the celestial and the infernal seemed to converge, each grappling with the weight of their shared history.
"You were never meant to survive," it said in a tone so quiet that it almost faded into the surrounding chaos, yet it carried the gravitas of a thousand years of forgotten truths.
The Demon Lord met its gaze, a complex swirl of acceptance and defiance swirling within him. "I know," he answered, his voice steady despite the tumult rising around them. "That was the first betrayal."
With a deliberate motion, he raised his hand as if to strike, but something held him back. The urge to unleash fury dissipated like mist in the dawn. Instead of delivering a lethal blow, he turned away, a choice that seemed to resonate through the very fabric of their reality.
That singular decision reverberated like a shockwave, more profound and destructive than any act of violence could have been. Without the Demon Lord standing as an anchor to its existence, the god found itself spiraling into the abyss created by Heaven's collapse, a chaotic demise wrought by the very system that it had fought so fiercely to maintain. The air filled with the god's agonized scream, which was gradually consumed by a choking static until it faded entirely into nothingness, leaving only silence in its wake.
The Demon Lord exhaled deeply, the breath escaping him like a whisper carried away by the winds of change.
He did so slowly, allowing the weight of the moment to settle on him. This was not merely an act of triumph; this was the heavy toll exacted for starting the story at its very core. There would be no returning to the mundane rhythms of an average day. Each step he took into the unknown burned bridges behind him, severing the ties that had previously anchored him to a different existence.
Above him, the sky began to stabilize-not healed, not restored, but left wounded and resilient in its suffering. A torn tapestry of the firmament hung overhead, gaping open like an eye that had witnessed too much and was now scarred and bleeding light, casting a haunting glow upon the ruins below. It was a painful reminder that some wounds, once opened, never truly mend.
In the distance, the mortal armies stood still, transfixed by the extraordinary sight unfolding before them. They were an assortment of responses-some sank to their knees in reverence or despair, some turned and fled, and others simply stared upward in awe, grappling with the harrowing realization that gods could indeed fall from grace-and once fallen, might never rise again.
In the midst of the devastation stood the Demon Lord, utterly alone, the weight of the world pressing heavily upon his shoulders, his silhouette casting a long shadow that stretched behind him like an echo of the past.
"Power doesn't prove righteousness," he murmured contemplatively, more to himself than to anyone else who might still be listening. "It proves only what you choose to protect when you finally wield it."
His gaze drifted toward the fractured heavens, contemplating the tumultuous shift that had just unfolded. This was not a climax; it was a realignment of existence itself.
The war was no longer a desperate battle against the celestial beings that had reigned supreme; it had transformed into a struggle for survival amid the vacuum they had left behind, a gaping void that threatened to consume everything. And at that moment, the world had just taken its first tentative breath, free from the weight of Heaven pressing down upon its lungs.
Resolute, the Demon Lord stepped forward again, embracing the path ahead.
The story of their existence moved with him now, a living testament to the choices made, and the consequences that would shape the world anew.
To be continued...