The temple collapsed around Galthor in a fall of white stone and ancient grief.

He rolled clear of a falling pillar, came up in a crouch, and immediately had to dodge a swarm of shadow creatures that lunged at him from three directions at once. His fist connected with the first, scattering it into wisps of darkness. His elbow shattered the second. The third he caught by what passed for its throat and crushed.

But they kept coming. They always kept coming. Just like before.

"You cannot run forever," the entity's voice boomed from everywhere at once. The serene temple had transformed into a nightmare cathedral, its peaceful architecture twisting into something predatory. Walls sprouted thorns of crystallized grief. The floor rippled like water, trying to swallow Galthor's feet with every step. "Your domain is impressive, but it's a candle against my storm. Eventually, you will falter. Eventually, you will fall."

Galthor didn't waste breath responding. He was too busy surviving.

Three more shadow creatures. Five. A dozen. They came in waves now, each one more coordinated than the last. The entity was learning his patterns, adapting its attacks to counter his defenses. And with each creature he destroyed, the payload of grief they released grew more targeted, more personal.

A barbarian woman, beaten to death by overseers while her children watched. A barbarian elder, worked until his heart gave out in a mine shaft. A barbarian child, sold away from his family and dying alone in a foreign land.

These weren't random deaths anymore. These were his people. The entity had realized that barbarian suffering hit harder than the grief of strangers, and it was exploiting that ruthlessly.

Galthor's divine domain flickered.

'...It's working. The bastard is actually wearing me down. If I stay on the defensive, I lose. I need to change the equation...'

He'd been thinking about escape. About finding a way out of the canyon, returning to his masters, continuing the mission. But that thinking was wrong. It assumed he was trapped, that the entity held all the power, that his only options were to endure or to flee.

What if there was a third option?

Galthor killed another shadow creature, a barbarian man who'd died protecting his daughter from slavers, feeling the father's desperation and love and ultimate failure wash over him, and forced himself to think clearly despite the emotional assault.

He had absorbed the faith of his worshippers. Every prayer they sent him, every moment of belief, added to his power. That was how gods grew. They consumed the devotion of mortals and transformed it into divine strength.

Why should the entity be any different? He didn't know how it's done but...

He's a god. And gods are known to do unknown things.

The entity was old. Strange. Vast in ways that defied normal comprehension. But at its core, it was still just power. Accumulated grief given form and consciousness. Power that could be taken.

Power that could be consumed.

The moment Galthor made the decision, something shifted inside him. His divine domain, which had been maintaining itself as a defensive bubble, began to change. The barrier that protected him from the entity's influence started to reverse, turning from a shield into something else entirely.

A mouth.

"What are you doing?" The entity's voice carried a new note. Not quite fear, not yet. But wariness. "Your domain is destabilizing. You'll destroy yourself."

Galthor didn't answer. He was too focused on what he was attempting.

The memories of the perished barbarian god slumbered in his subconsciousness like an ocean beneath a frozen surface. He'd touched them before, drawn fragments of knowledge and instinct when he needed them. But he'd never truly awakened it. Never opened himself fully to that vast reservoir of accumulated divinity.

Now he did.

The ice cracked.

The ocean rose.

And the god on the mountain was there to accept it.

Galthor's consciousness expanded beyond anything he'd experienced before. He was himself, but he was also more than himself. The memories of a dead god flooded through him.

And they it was hungry.

The memories was so hungry! Galthor had touched something with ancient hunger. Oh...he woke something.....!

The barbarian god had died violently, their existence cut short by betrayal and war. Their worshippers had been enslaved, their legacy erased, their names forgotten. For hundreds of thousands of years, they had slumbered in the void, waiting for something.

For someone.

For him.

Desperation had caused something that Galthor himself did not know he could recreate..

Galthor's divine domain exploded outward, in a consuming embrace. His expanded consciousness reached beyond his physical form, beyond his immediate surroundings, touching everything in the entity's realm.

The shadow creatures froze mid-attack.

The twisted architecture stopped its threatening movements.

Even the whispers of grief that saturated the air fell silent.

"No," the entity said. Its voice was different now. Smaller and frightened. Filled with so much fear! "No, you can't. This is my domain. My power. You can't just....."

"I can," Galthor said. His voice resonated with harmonics it had never held before, carrying the weight of a god. An authority! "You offered me a merger, a combination of our powers and I'm accepting your offer."

"That's not what I meant! I meant a partnership, a joining of equals, not....."

"There are no equals here." Galthor's consciousness pushed deeper, wrapping around the entity's essence like fingers around a throat. "There's a predator and there's prey. You've been the predator for millennia. Feeding on the grief of others. Taking and taking and taking.

"I am here now. I will take from you!"

The entity tried to pull back, to consolidate its defenses, to flee into the deeper parts of its domain.

But Galthor was faster. The awakened memories of the barbarian god knew how to hunt divine prey. They had done it before, in the ancient wars that preceded the Abyssal conflict. They remembered how.

"Now it's your turn to feed someone else."

Galthor began to pull.

The entity screamed.

It was a sound that transcended hearing, a psychic shriek that rippled through the entire realm. The shadow creatures dissolved instantly, unable to maintain cohesion as their master's attention fractured. The twisted architecture collapsed, returning to the grey stone it had been built from. The floating islands shuddered and began to fall.

And the entity's essence, that vast accumulation of grief and power, started to flow toward Galthor like water toward a drain.

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