Chapter 280: God 2

Words : 1033 Updated : Oct 1st, 2025

Chapter 280: God 2 And somewhere deeper still—beneath even the drifting fragments of temples and the broken rings of chanting worlds—the cathedral moved. Not with grace. Not with sound. It simply existed in a way that made space tilt around it. Reality bent, not because it wanted to, but because it had no choice. Like an old servant who had bowed so many times, it no longer remembered how to stand. The cathedral wasn’t built. It had grown. Its shape wasn’t planned. It was felt. And it hadn’t stopped growing. Columns wider than canyon mouths reached upward into nothing. There was no ceiling. Only that ever-shifting canopy of warped light and oily color, like something between liquid and fire, swirling across a surface that didn’t exist. The walls breathed. Not always in rhythm. Not always softly. Sometimes they cracked like bones under pressure. Other times, they whispered. Not with mouths, but with impressions—echoes from voices that had long since forgotten what their bodies looked like. This wasn’t a place. It was a condition. And at the center, upon a platform grown from fused stone and raw nerve, the god remained. He didn’t need to move. Most of the time, he didn’t. But now? Now, something had shifted. His awareness pressed outward, and the cathedral trembled—not visibly, but inwardly. The air changed. The temperature thickened. The sense of being alone vanished. That flicker. That thread of awareness. It had snapped. Not faded. Not dissolved, but snapped. Snapping meant force. Contact. A hand that wasn’t supposed to reach. And the staff—the ancient thing that carried a sliver of his link to the waking world—was not meant to respond without an active bearer. Which meant someone else had been involved. His body didn’t stir, but his presence did. And slowly, as the silence deepened, he opened one eye. Just one. There was no iris. No pupil. Just a void that swirled inward, as if the eye saw not out, but through. It didn’t fit in the room. Not really. But space didn’t argue. The eye existed, and so the air peeled back around it like skin retreating from fire. He said nothing. No words. No thoughts. But the cathedral responded anyway. Low laughter began—not from mouths but from things that wore mouths. The cathedral’s ribs quivered, as if remembering humor. The stained glass, shaped like lungs, eyes, and sorrow, pulsed with a sound like chuckling. Even the organ pipes groaned softly—pipes that hadn’t played since the day they were birthed from the spines of saints and fed on screams. He didn’t smile. Not really. But the space where a smile could have existed curled faintly. He sat up. Slowly. Deliberately. Not out of effort, but out of patience. One massive arm dragged across the rail of the throne, leaving deep gouges in its wake without any true pressure. The other hand lifted and moved through the air, not casting spells, not summoning magic. Just... moving. And the cathedral bled for him. Blood floated upward in lazy strands from cracks, pores, and eyes along the walls, drawn to his fingers like smoke curling toward heat. It wasn’t his blood. The god didn’t bleed. The cathedral did. He drew patterns in the air. Symbols. Shapes. Not geometric. Not logical. Spirals that looped into themselves and lines that defied the concept of sequence. Time didn’t flow here—it tangled. A map appeared. Crude, to human eyes. But not to him. To him, it was clear. He saw the rupture. The point where reality had touched what it shouldn’t. He saw the world that still called itself whole, still thought of itself as safe. He saw someone, but he couldn’t see clearly. But it looked like a boy. No markings. No training. Not chosen. But somehow... present. Somehow, the signal had touched him. That wasn’t just unusual. That was impossible. The laughter grew louder. Not cruel. Not insane. Just... amused. He traced the threads again. The staff hadn’t been chosen. It had reacted. That meant the signal was still unstable. Still echoing. And the death of the cult leader? Not expected and not planned. It lined up too perfectly. Too fast. He leaned back, but not to rest. To see. The throne shifted with him, like a beast curling around its master’s weight, built not of comfort but obedience. And across the walls, eyes opened. Not a metaphor. Actual eyes. Burnt into flesh. Sewn into bone. Twisted from material that had no right to live. They blinked. Then locked onto the patterns in the air. He raised one finger. Just one. And below—far below the visible base of the cathedral—something old awoke. Gears began to turn. Not machines. Not metal. Living engines. Organisms shaped like memory and rooted in old thought. They unsealed themselves with a hiss of ancient breath. And into their cores, he fed the signal. Just a flicker. That was all they needed. The engines processed it not into weapons. Not into armies. But into ideas. Ideas shaped like people. Ideas shaped like hunger. Faith that didn’t ask. That didn’t explain. Faith that consumed. This wasn’t a conquest; this was an infection. One thread was enough. Mortals would carry it for him. They always did. Survivors. Witnesses. Those who barely lived through what they didn’t understand. They would bring it home. Spread it in stories. Dreams. Panic. And slowly? That idea would root. And once it did, it wouldn’t need guidance. It would grow. The cathedral pulsed. A breath. A beat. A memory. He closed his eye again, but the curled expression never faded. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even awake. Not fully. This wasn’t retaliation. This was curiosity. A reaction. Something had poked the edge of his world. And now, he simply wanted to see who did it. He raised his hand again. Not to create. Not to attack. But to listen. The strands hung in the air like spider silk. Most of them were fading. Dull. Dead ends. But one... One thread was still warm. Still pulsing. Someone had brushed the staff and lived. Not bound to him. Not sworn. But touched by the echo. Not by design. By proximity. And what did that mean?

Chapter 280: God 2

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