Published at 4th of August 2026 8:37 am

Chapter 234: Age of Gods

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Chapter 234: Age of Gods

Rivers of blood began to pour down the stone steps like a waterfall, washing over the faithful below as they smiled, cheered, and reached toward it with open arms.

Seo-jin's heart hammered against his ribs. Sweat clung to his skin despite the cold emptiness around him, and as the boat drifted onward, his eyes lingered on the drowning crowd until they vanished from sight.

"We knew they were flawed. We had hoped that through our teachings they would find balance. Instead, we underestimated their fear."

The universe unfolded around them once again before the ferryman brought the boat to a stop. Seo-jin barely had time to steady his breathing before an explosion unlike anything he had ever witnessed tore through the cosmos ahead.

Throwing an arm over his face, he flinched from the blast. Even through the gaps between his fingers, the light stabbed at his eyes. Space twisted like rippling water, colors he couldn't name folded into one another, and every star in existence flared brighter for a single heartbeat before dimming again.

"It wasn't war. Not yet. But sparks soon became a blaze even we could not control. The gods grew dissatisfied and began to kill one another."

The shockwave finally passed, and the drifting sea of molten light slowly cleared. Hanging in the splintered remains of space was the body of the golden god.

A black spear was skewered through his chest.

Seo-jin didn't notice the pain until blood dripped from his clenched fists. His growing claws had buried themselves into his palms as his skin blackened and began to split. Horns tore from his scalp

Charon calmly raised his lantern...

A cool yellow glow spilled from the glass, washing over Seo-jin like cold water. His transformation halted at once, the black fading from his skin as the horns withdrew. With another slow wave of the ferryman's hand, the vision shifted.

Breathing hard, Seo-jin pressed a trembling hand against the rough wood beneath him. His temples pounded as he fought to steady himself with slow, even breaths.

Something had claimed the black spear.

The moment he saw its owner, it felt like a part of him deep inside had been set free.

Its skin was black, layered in jagged plates that looked more grown than forged. Black and violet flames wreathed its face beneath a crown of molten gold, while two immense horns curved back from its skull.

Seo-jin recognized it instantly.

It was a demon god.

They continued on, the boat riding waves of light until the stars streaming past abruptly halted. Before them floated an entire solar system. A blazing star burned at its center, and as Seo-jin watched, the worlds orbiting it began exploding one by one.

"It happened only once. Until then, we of the Veiled had remained neutral. Each of us embodies a core function of the universe. Naturally, our laws forbade intervention, but some of the gods mistook that for pity. Others believed it hid intent. Whatever the reason, in the midst of their growing madness... they tried to kill my sister."

Seo-jin's lips went pale. His fingers tightened against the edge of the boat until the wood creaked beneath his claws. Instinct screamed at him to shrink, to become smaller somehow, yet his eyes refused to blink.

Black tendrils had risen from the void and wrapped themselves around the blazing sun. They spread without haste, swallowing worlds, stars, and empty space alike until the darkness consumed the entire galaxy.

Standing behind Seo-jin, Charon lowered his hood slightly. The light within his lantern dimmed.

"Fear drove the gods to murder one another. They consumed each other's divinity in their attempts to escape death, only to discover that a god has limits. That realization led an entire pantheon to seek my sister's essence."

The ferryman paused.

"But a god cannot consume Death."

Everything vanished.

The darkness was absolute.

Cold pierced Seo-jin's chest like a blade, locking his muscles in place as his breath caught. The weight of watching an entire galaxy disappear settled hard inside him, it pressed against his ribs until it hurt to breathe.

"We believed that had ended it. Thousands of cycles passed in peace. The gods appeared to accept the truth, and a new age of cooperation began. From the bloodshed rose a united kingdom of the gods. Together they ushered in an era of advancement and prosperity that reached every corner of the universe."

Seo-jin sat rigid, his body still tense. Questions piled atop one another until they became a dull roar in his head, drowning out even Charon's voice. He forced himself to breathe, each inhale steadying him a little more. When he finally opened his eyes, his head dipped forward as his shoulders sagged.

He almost spoke. Instead, his mouth simply fell open.

The view had changed again.

A colossal structure revolved around a blazing sun. Vast mechanical rings turned in perfect silence, so impossibly large that his mind knew the distance should have made them seem small, yet every instinct screamed for him to run.

As the boat drifted farther back, Seo-jin searched for the planets that should have circled the star. There weren't any. In their place floated radiant kingdoms, each shining like a planet-sized fragment of heaven suspended in the void.

"They united the entire universe under a single faith. Combining their knowledge, they fused divinity with what you call science, creating what we believed to be a new direction for the gods. A way to honor those who had fallen in their blind ambition. We never imagined it was all leading toward a single purpose. The creation of the Godspark Engine."

As the boat drifted farther back, Seo-jin finally saw the whole design. The heavenly kingdoms weren't orbiting at random. Some revolved in opposite directions. Others stopped outright before cutting across impossible angles. Their paths accelerated until each left behind a brilliant trail, together weaving an intricate magic circle the size of a galaxy.

"With their union of science and faith, and through the willing sacrifice of thousands of gods and uncountable mortal lives, they sought to create something they believed would elevate a god to the rank of the Veiled. They called it an engine. You call it a System."

The kingdoms accelerated until Seo-jin could no longer follow them. The entire galaxy blurred into rings of light, filling the void with a radiance that seemed to drown out time itself. Then, for a single heartbeat

Everything stopped.

"They succeeded."

A black hole erupted from the galaxy's center.

In an instant it swallowed everything. Seo-jin never even had time to inhale before the darkness collapsed inward, folding into itself until only a single, perfect cube remained.

It shone with a blinding white radiance. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, Seo-jin could feel it.

It was full of souls. Not millions. Not billions. The lives of thousands upon thousands of solar systems had been sacrificed.

Death on a scale beyond imagination had occurred in less than a heartbeat.

"A single engine was created. Before its completion, the gods had put its ownership to a vote. The decision appeared decided, but once it existed...a faction broke away."

The boat drifted onward as the vision shifted around them. Without warning, the universe itself caught fire.

"Whoever inherited the Godspark would hold the fate of every god in their hands. In the right hands, its bearer would ascend and one day raise the others with them. In the wrong hands, every sacrifice would be for nothing...a god-tyrant would be born."

Seo-jin's chesttightened with every breath. Explosions swallowed entire planets, their shockwaves rippling through space. Burning debris ripped past the boat. Fractures split open across the void, while bolts of multi-colored lightning arced between stars and consumed them whole. The void itself seemed to vibrate against his skin.

He was watching the apocalypse, yet knowing why it happened made it seem a waste.

Greed and distrust, fear and envy. The gods, it seemed, weren't so different from the mortals who worshipped them. Seo-jin understood the fear. What if the chosen god was your greatest enemy? What if it was someone you despised for reasons only you understood? Vote or not, handing your future to another wasn't easy.

The boat rode the waves of destruction, rocking hard enough to make the wood groan beneath him. He gripped his seat until his nails bit into it. Even when a writhing electric mass of screaming maws streaked past in a storm of red lightning, he held his seat.

"The war raged for millennia. Gods fell like rain. Civilizations that had endured for billions of years vanished as though they had never existed. Had the Godspark been created differently, perhaps this fate could have been avoided. But its strict conditions for assimilation left them no other path."

The lantern dimmed as the light show around them intensified.

"So the war continued. The gods were reduced to a fraction of their former number, and the paradise they had built became cinders."

Fire surrounded them as if the universe itself was burning.

As the boat surged toward the heart of the inferno, colors burst through the flames. Rivers of lightning tore across the void. Spears of energy ripped stars apart, leaving glowing wounds across the darkness.

"The final battle had come. Throughout the war, the chosen candidates had changed again and again as they died in combat. In the end, only two stood above all others. Orashal, God of Light. And your species' progenitor, Hahn'mak, God of Sin."

Both names stirred something different within Seo-jin. Orashal was one he'd heard before. The chief god of the Realm of Light. Hearing that name now only deepened his suspicions about the winged eyeballs.

The name Hahn'man, on the other hand, was completely unfamiliar. Yet every inch of his body tingled at the sound of it. It was as if something buried within his blood had awakened, vibrating with admiration, demanding reverence.

He found himself struggling just to watch as the two forces collided.

A being of living darkness.

The demon god dwarfed planets. Seven pairs of arms shrouded in black flames floated behind a serpentine form, while a tail that seemed to stretch into infinity coiled around a nearby moon and hurled it at his opponent. His entire body was comprised of black fire, even his horns. Only one thing appeared solid within the infernoa golden skeleton with no arms, crowned by a seven-faced skull.

"He was the first to doubt. He planted the seeds of resentment and fear. He was the first demon god. Even before the war, his influence rivaled Orashal's, and his power was feared just as much. Even so little Ashkin, that day Hahn'mak was destined to fall. Light has always shone brightest against the dark, a weakness I believe you know well."

The memory of devouring the Cherub surfaced. Coupled with what he witnessed next, Seo-jin's desire to kill the angel waiting for him back home swelled until it bordered on instinct.

All seven faces roared as the golden skull within the flames began to rotate. Darkness erupted from every eye and every mouth in searing beams that tore across the battlefield. Armageddon swept through the heavens. Gods on both sides fled or were swallowed by the attack.

Then a sword descended.

Forged from pure light, it crossed the battlefield in less than a blink. Seo-jin's eyes burned as he watched the blade fall from above the demon god and drive straight through the center of his seven-faced skull. The impact unleashed a shockwave that ripped across the battlefield, hurling gods, shattered worlds, and burning debris into the stars.

When the twisting light finally settled, only Hahn'man remained.

The Sword still buried in his skull.

"Orashal won the battle, but at the same time he lost the war."

Blinding radiance poured down upon the demon god. Descending within it came a being of such absolute light that Seo-jin couldn't bear to look directly at it. Every time he tried to focus, his vision recoiled, leaving his gaze fixed on the fallen demon god instead.

"Unwilling to accept defeat, Hahn'mak sacrificed the greater part of his divinity and split himself into seven aspects. Free of Orashal's attack, the Seven Sins rushed the Godspark Engine and attempted to claim it by force."

Seo-jin watched it unfold. He leaned forward as the demon god's flames began to surge, their heat erasing entire planets and forcing the God of Light back. In that instant, the God of Sin's skull cracked. Black light spilled from it and split the cosmos, and from within, seven demon gods spilled forth.

Each absorbed the essence of their original form. Each became a different nightmare to behold. They all stirred a different feeling inside Seo-jin, yet every god felt strangely familiar.

And all of them filled him with deep, unrestrained envy.

All of it happened almost instantly, but Charon had slowed the fraction of a moment to a crawl. As the seven gods burst toward a dark stretch of space, the object they sought finally came into view.

Seeing the aspects of Hahn'mak's sin rush toward the Godspark, Orashal erupted in fury. He shot after them as dozens of pillars of different colored light converged on the demon gods. Within a breath, dozens of enemy gods were in pursuit.

None of them would arrive in time.

All Seven Sins threw themselves around the cube

And everything stopped.

"It was a choice I still question. Why did he do it? He had to know it would fail. Was it truly a desperate act in the end, or did he genuinely believe he could force it? It is a question that has plagued me."

Dozens of gods hung frozen in space. Even with time standing still, a handful continued to move, though only by inches, their momentum twisting in impossible directions. Their expressions shifted as well...

Anger became fear.

A sound emerged from the Godspark Engine. It wasn't loud, yet Seo-jin felt it in his soul. Several gods that had drifted too close simply came apart, their bodies dissolving into glittering dust.

The Seven Sins still clung to the cube, their bodies wrapped in a white aura spilling from its surface. Then, just as suddenly as the aura around them had appeared...

...its white glow turned black.

The space around them compressed. Then folded. Then shattered.

The Godspark Engine burst apart in a wave of light large enough to swallow a solar system. In less than a heartbeat, what looked like countless sparks erupted from its core and scattered across the cosmos like shooting stars.

"The Godspark shattered, and with it Hahn'man stripped the gods of their chance to ascend. All seven Aspects of Sin perished in the attempt, and more than half of the remaining gods died alongside them. Those who survived did not escape unscarred. Not only did the Godspark perish that day...the universe itself had taken too much damage. Between the war and the destruction of the Godspark, all of creation began to fall apart."

All around them, nebulae, galaxies, and every point of light across existence began to shift. Stars pulsed without rhythm. Entire clusters flickered in and out of existence. Cracks spread through the fabric of space while black holes bloomed one after another. The boat rocked gently as ripples passed thrugh reality itself.

"We wished to act sooner, but until all was threatened, we were forbidden from intervening. By the time we were free to act it was already too late."

His voice remained calm, yet for the first time, Seo-jin heard something beneath it.

Regret.

"The universe was dying."

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