"STOP!" The entity's voice cracked with desperation. "I'LL LET YOU GO! I'LL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT! JUST STOP!"

"I don't want to go," Galthor said calmly. "I want everything you have."

He pulled harder.

The entity fought back with everything it had. It manifested its most powerful defenders, creatures of pure grief that towered over Galthor like mountains. It launched psychic assaults that would have shattered any normal mind. It even tried to self-destruct, to destroy itself rather than be consumed.

None of it worked.

The awakened memories of the barbarian god were too vast, too experienced, too hungry. So mighty that it shook Galthor himself.

They had waited for this moment, for a vessel capable of wielding their accumulated power. They weren't going to let it slip away.

The entity's defenses crumbled one by one. Its vast realm began to shrink, collapsing inward as Galthor consumed its essence. The floating islands merged with the ground. The perpetual twilight began to brighten, silver-red light breaking through the grey.

Through it all, the entity kept screaming. But its screams were growing weaker, fainter, as more and more of its being was absorbed into Galthor's expanding consciousness.

Then it tried something new.

Instead of fighting, it started showing. Memories flooded through the connection between them, it wasn't an attacks this time, but offerings. The entity's own history, its experiences, its pain.

Galthor saw the Comforter of the Dying as it had been before the war. A gentle god, beloved by its worshippers, dedicated to easing the transition between life and death. He felt its joy in service, its satisfaction in bringing peace to the frightened and the suffering.

He saw the Abyssal War through its eyes. The horror of millions dying at once. The unbearable weight of feeling every death, experiencing every final moment. The snap of the worship chains breaking, one after another after another, until nothing remained but emptiness.

He also saw things...things that the entity dared not look at. Gods and Demons as they clashed in a way that warp and twisted the whole world.

He saw the transformation. The gentle god, drowning in grief, becoming something else. Something hungry. Something that fed on the same suffering it had once tried to ease.

"Please," the entity whispered. Its voice was barely audible now, a fading echo of what it had been. "Please, I didn't choose this. I didn't want to become a monster. I just... I couldn't carry the weight alone. I needed someone to share it. Anyone. The gods. Him...they...."

Galthor hesitated.

He could feel the entity's sincerity. It wasn't lying, wasn't trying to manipulate him now. It was simply telling the truth of its existence, the loneliness, the desperation, the slow corruption of something good into something terrible.

For a moment, he considered stopping. Letting the entity go and finding another way.

Then he remembered the barbarians it had killed. The travelers who'd stumbled into the canyon and been consumed. The three gods whose essences were trapped here, suffering eternally.

The entity might not have chosen to become a monster, but it had become one nonetheless. And monsters, no matter their origins, couldn't be allowed to keep hunting.

"I'm sorry," Galthor said. And he meant it. "But I can't let you continue."

He resumed the consumption.

The entity didn't fight anymore. It simply... accepted. Perhaps it was tired. Perhaps it recognized the inevitability of its end. Or perhaps some small part of it, some remnant of the god it had been, was grateful for the release.

Either way, it stopped resisting.

The absorption accelerated. The entity's essence flooded into Galthor, bringing with it everything the creature had been. Memories. Power. The accumulated grief of millennia. It was overwhelming, a tsunami of experience that threatened to sweep away Galthor's identity entirely.

But he held on. The memories in him drank greedily.

He held on because he'd spent twenty-two years learning to endure. Because he'd survived a first life of helplessness and emerged into a second life with purpose. Because he had worshippers counting on him, a race waiting for salvation, a destiny that wouldn't allow him to fail.

He held on, and slowly, painfully, he began to integrate what he'd taken.

The entity's grief became his grief. Its power became his power. Its memories settled into his consciousness like sediment at the bottom of a river, adding to the vast ocean that already resided there.

And when it was finally over, Galthor stood alone in a realm that no longer existed.

He opened his eyes.

He was at the bottom of the Weeping Canyon, standing on solid rock beneath an open sky. The white fog still churned above him, but it felt different now. Familiar. Like an extension of his own body.

He raised his hand and watched shadows coil around his fingers. Darkness that moved at his command, that existed in the spaces between things.

Galthor blinked. "I.. wasn't expecting this."

He took a breath, and the fog responded, swirling in patterns that matched his thoughts. They curled around his mouth and bellowd from his nose.

Control over mist and shadow, the ability to manipulate the boundary between seen and unseen.

And beneath it all, the grief. A vast reservoir of accumulated sorrow that he could draw upon, channel, transform. Grief that, combined with his anger, formed something entirely new.

Something the world had never seen before.

"What am I?" Galthor murmured, echoing the entity's final question.

The answer came from deep within, from the awakened memories of a perished god who had waited eons for this moment.

You are Unchanging Warth.

The memories called as they began to settle once more as if they did not just devour an entity.

And this is only the beginning.

Galthor looked up at the distant rim of the canyon, where his masters waited. He could feel them through the worship chains, their fear, their determination, their faith in him.

It was time to reward that faith.

But first, he sensed something else. A path leading deeper into the earth, hidden behind a fall of rock. The entity had been guarding it for millennia, keeping anything from passing. Now, with the entity gone, the path was open.

Galthor felt the pulse of the Abyssal land once more.

Galthor had found a shortcut.

☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆

Author's note.

Yes! I opened my backlog, they're Chapters that should take me through this month and next one but I'm doing mass release anyway.

So...ya...if you want to gift you can go on :)

Cheers!

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