Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Dread Cross Gate - The Slaughtered Genesis
The Void was not a place. It was an echo.
An endless scream buried beneath reality, a scream that knew no throat, no mouth, no origin—only purpose.
Ruin Xian stood in that blackened limbo again.
Not by choice.
The Dread Cross Gate pulsed behind him like a wound in the cosmos, and yet before crossing, it had brought him back—back to the nothingness that birthed him.
The scarred space around him was heavy with remnants of forgotten Evil Gods. Their visages bled into the air like oil poured into water: faceless titans, hollowed serpents, and crowned skeletons etched with runes of chaos.
Ruin didn't speak. Not yet.
He felt them. Watching.
Then they formed.
First came Xephor, the Spine Tyrant, emerging from a swirl of bone dust and rib-like wings. His body was an amalgam of twisted vertebrae, his voice dry as an autopsy report.
"You survived." Xephor's bone crown cracked. "Worse, you remember."
Ruin said nothing.
Then came Maelha, Goddess of Static Flesh, crawling on a web of tongues and fused limbs. Her form rippled with stolen skin, each inch screaming.
"They opened the Gate for you," she hissed. "The first mortal to steal divinity from the code."
And last came Uruvann the Pale Heart, a thing shaped like sorrow, eyes leaking tears of reversed time, each drip unraveling logic.
"You are not us, Ruin Xian."
He raised his hand.
And clenched it.
The Void shivered.
"You're not me either."
From behind him, the Dread Cross Gate began to hum, casting rays of unlight that pierced even the non-space of the Void.
"You fear evolution," Ruin whispered. "Because I am not your successor. I am your replacement."
The three god-corpses lunged at him in silence.
And Ruin Xian broke the silence with slaughter.
He didn't remember how long he fought them. Or if time passed in the Void. There were no stars. No clocks. Only blood that wasn't blood and wounds that screamed in tongues only the mad could understand.
When Ruin stepped through the Dread Cross Gate at last, he was soaked in the memories of gods he had shattered.
His body pulsed with raw logos—power given form, truth given hunger.
And on the other side of the Gate, a multiverse awaited.
Multiversal Plane: Vhalkhazar
A world where planets floated like chained prisoners across an ocean of sky. Each orb tethered to a floating citadel ruled by dimensional warlords.
Ruin landed on one such citadel: Cradle of the Cruxborn, a fortress ruled by twelve monarchs of paradox.
Instantly, alarms screeched across the sky.
"INTRUDER BREACH AT CORE LEVEL. SCANNING: CLASS-NULL. DESIGNATION: UNKNOWN ERROR."
The system glitched trying to label him. As always.
Ruin Xian walked forward, barefoot on floating hexagonal platforms of data-steel. Each step he took corrupted the terrain, turning it into twisted black glass that moaned.
A legion of Cruxborn soldiers charged toward him. Their armor reflected fragments of dying universes, and their weapons were forged from gravity wells.
He raised one finger.
A single word whispered:
"Collapse."
The nearest fifty exploded inward.
Not from damage.
From conceptual erasure.
The system's scream returned.
"REALITY BREACH DETECTED. CODE CORRUPTION IN SECTOR 09-ROOT. CALLING ARCHWITNESS."
Suddenly, the sky peeled open like fruit, revealing the Archwitness of Vhalkhazar, a woman shaped like logic, clothed in equations and eyes that saw through thought.
"Who dares collapse code without a throne?!"
Ruin Xian stepped forward. "Me."
The Archwitness blinked. And in that blink, tried to rewrite him.
Failed.
"You carry the authority of forbidden recursion," she gasped. "The brand of the Primordial Loop."
"No," Ruin replied. "I carry my own name. That makes me more dangerous."
He moved.
It wasn't teleportation. It wasn't speed. It was denial of sequence.
And suddenly, he was behind her.
"Don't chase sanity," he whispered, "when madness is the only stable state."
And he shattered her with a thought.
Three more multiversal monarchs arrived.
Vaelox the Clockburned, who rewound time with every breath.
Dunari of the Soul Furnaces, who converted souls into cities.
Harexi the Bloomwalker, a god of decay in bloom, whose footsteps birthed forests that aged and died in moments.
They were the gods of this plane.
Ruin Xian unmade them like chess pieces.
Not with brute force.
But with narrative overwrite.
Their backstories vanished.
Their powers misfired.
Their very right to exist was revoked.
He carved a rune in the air: חיה (meaning "He who is what remains") and channeled it through his palm.
A beam of truth annihilated the lies that gave them shape.
And then the world turned red.
Emergency Protocol Omega initiated.
The final defense of Vhalkhazar: The Parallel Mirror Array.
Reality fractured into 13 versions of itself, each now attacking Ruin from different probabilistic outcomes.
In one world, he was pierced.
In another, he was erased.
In a third, he became one of them.
But Ruin smiled.
He let the versions reach him.
Then he inverted.
He became the reflection.
And now he was in every mirror.
13 Ruin Xians stepped out.
Each carrying a fragment of his true madness.
Together, they performed the Eschaton Slaughter Rite — a forbidden ritual of recursion that destabilized the array itself.
One by one, the mirrored universes screamed and folded.
And then...
Silence.
Only one Ruin Xian remained.
And Vhalkhazar was gone.
Not conquered.
Rewritten.
He stood on a fragment of what was once a world.
He held no crown.
He needed none.
A voice echoed from the fragments of the Dread Cross Gate, now stabilizing behind him.
"Next target locked. Realm: Aetherion Spires. Threat Level: Elder-Class. Reward: Divine Shard of Madness."
Ruin looked up.
The multiverse awaited.
And madness was no longer a curse.
It was his weapon.