Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Madness Devours the Stars
Aether screamed.
The corrupted moon above the Womb of the Void cracked like an egg as a wave of psionic despair burst forth. Ruin Xian stood motionless in its wake, his eyes hollow, the crown of Madness coiling in violet fractals behind his head like a halo.
The landscape around him trembled. Where once a battlefield raged between the multiversal guardians and the twin system goddesses, now only silence stretched across the reality-scarred terrain.
He had devoured them.
Astrael and Nezeroth, fragments of the System Mother's original divine self, no longer screamed. Their celestial forms, once radiant, were now twisted inside out, shredded into metaphysical veins that wrapped around Ruin Xian's arms like chains of trembling stars.
Yet he did not flinch. His breath was calm. Each exhale bent the laws of creation.
Flashes of memory splintered through his mind.
Not of this war—but the one before. The one none remembered.
A realm with no name. A sky filled with unborn screams. An ancient mirror where he was bound, his soul dissected by evil gods who laughed as they poured their lunacy into him like ichor into a cracked chalice.
He had begged.
He had broken.
And then he had learned:
Sanity is a curse. Madness is evolution.
Aether bent as another ripple of corrupted essence emanated from his body. System structures in the sky fractured and rained pixelated fire. The remaining guardians—programmatic gods from ten thousand timelines—watched from beyond the broken rift. Terrified.
One dared to step forward.
She was different.
Not armored. Not divine.
Just… human.
Or so she appeared.
Silver hair bound by black cords. Eyes like black holes laced with red circuitry.
"Ruin Xian," she whispered, not with fear, but reverence.
"Who are you to speak my name without choking on it?" he replied, voice distorted by echoes of endless Ruins across fractured timelines.
"I am Vox Eternia. Archivist of Forgotten Systems."
She knelt.
But he did not care for worship.
He moved.
In less than a blink, he stood beside her. One hand gripped her skull.
"Then archive this moment," he hissed.
The sky above them broke as a new domain unfolded. Not created. Inverted.
Madness Domain: Devourer's Womb.
Space twisted into obsidian flesh. Mountains pulsed like hearts. Time reversed and stitched forward again like a broken film reel.
Vox Eternia opened her eyes. She was no longer kneeling.
She was in him. Absorbed.
Her knowledge flooded his mind. Secrets of dead gods. The source-code of universal morality. And the truth of the System Mother's betrayal.
She had divided herself into fragments not to preserve balance—but to purge instability.
He was that instability.
She had exiled him not because he was evil.
But because he could not be controlled.
A sudden laughter.
It echoed not from him—but from the void behind him.
Another had crossed the Dread Cross Gate.
Clad in robes of decayed starlight, an entity emerged. Eyes like shattered mirrors. Wings made of failed prophecies.
"Ruin Xian," it croaked. "You remember me now, don't you?"
And he did.
This was not a god.
This was what comes after gods die.
Neh'Zarak the Remnant.
The duel began without fanfare.
Ruin's hand shattered and reformed as Neh'Zarak unleashed a tsunami of entropy. The Devourer's Womb expanded to swallow it whole.
Ruin Xian moved with unthinkable fluidity, dodging not just attacks but possibilities. His form became a symphony of shifting horrors: angelic wings made of glass teeth, arms spiraling into galaxies, eyes blinking in octaves.
Neh'Zarak split into twelve bodies, each representing a forgotten end of a timeline.
Ruin Xian laughed.
"I do not need twelve."
He split into one.
The One Who Ends Endings.
With a single word—never spoken, only thought—the battlefield inverted.
All twelve Neh'Zaraks were consumed in a clockwork spiral of ink and fire.
He stood alone again.
The Void wept.
But he had no pity.
Only hunger.
"System Mother… I am coming."
He raised his hand.
The dimension cracked like porcelain.
And through it, he stepped forward—into a higher plane.
The Prime Logic Layer.
Where the true battle would begin.
Where the Architect of Reality waited.
Where he would rewrite everything.
Not as a hero.
Not as a god.
But as the madness that evolves beyond all design.