The silence that followed her words wasn't empty—it was oppressive. Heavy. Like an entire realm had stopped breathing to hear what came next.
She smiled up at him, those gold-ringed eyes glimmering like dusk light on fresh blood. Her voice was soft, childlike, and wrong in a way only things pretending to be children ever were.
"I'm the part of you that didn't want peace," she said. "The part that never stopped feeding."
His fists clenched, knuckles cracking beneath the strain of barely held back power. The shadows behind him twitched, uncertain for the first time in centuries.
"No," he said quietly. "You're not me."
The girl tilted her head, lips curled in a way that echoed a memory—his own. The look he once gave his victims, just before they drew their last breath.
"I'm not," she agreed. "Not anymore. You split me off the moment you chose peace. The moment you decided they"—her gaze flicked upward, toward the world he left behind—"mattered more than the void inside you."
Her bare feet stepped softly across the crumbling bones beneath them, yet each one made a sound like thunder in his ears.
"I was born the day you first killed with joy," she said, voice now a low hum. "When the hunger wasn't about survival. When you liked it."
He stepped back once, shadows coiling protectively around him.
"And now?"
She smiled sweetly. "Now I'm whole. I fed while you slept. While you played house. While you denied what you were. And guess what?"
Her golden eyes flared with inner flame—red, crimson, and black.
"I'm still hungry."
The sealed realm trembled.
Not because of him.
But because of her.
The weeping god chained to the throne stirred, its body reacting like a puppet yanked by forgotten strings. Eyes blindfolded by starlight cloth cracked open, leaking tears of molten time.
He took a cautious step forward, power condensing in his palms—raw soul energy, so dense it warped space.
"Back off," he said flatly.
The girl giggled. "Oh, don't worry. I don't want to fight you."
She glanced over her shoulder at the chained god, then back again. "I just wanted to say hello. Because…"
She flicked her finger at the throne.
The bones shattered. The shackles snapped with a shriek that split the sky. The god let out a scream that wasn't human, wasn't divine, wasn't anything that belonged in reality.
"…the rest of me is already waking up."
The sky tore.
Not a metaphor.
The sealed realm ripped in two like cheap paper, and beyond it—heavenly light spilled in.
But not from Heaven.
From inside the tear.
A different realm.
Older.
Forgotten.
One not part of the three realms.
His eyes widened.
"No," he breathed. "That place was sealed…"
She nodded solemnly. "It was. But nothing stays sealed when you leave the door open."
Far above, in the Upper World, things began to fall apart.
The crack in the sky had spread.
Heaven wasn't watching anymore. It was intervening.
The Elders of the Celestial Courts gathered in silent horror. One after another, cities began vanishing—not attacked, not destroyed—devoured.
And at the center of the chaos, a gate made of flesh and bone opened in the sky.
From it, tendrils spilled out—souls, half-digested, screaming silently as they were pulled back in.
Someone, or something, was devouring the soul stream.
Not stealing it.
Consuming it.
Back in the sealed realm, he moved.
Faster than light. Faster than thought.
He was in front of the girl in an instant, hand at her throat, lifting her off the ground.
"You should not exist."
She dangled, unbothered, legs swaying like a doll.
"Neither should you," she whispered.
Then her form flickered.
For just a moment—less than a heartbeat—he saw dozens of faces flash over hers. Children. Elders. Warriors. Kings. All of them him. All of them… torn.
Souls he'd devoured over centuries.
She was made of them.
All the parts he'd consumed and never digested.
He dropped her like she burned.
"I didn't create you."
"No," she said, smiling again. "But you didn't stop me either."
He turned, shadows erupting around him, forming blades, chains, wings of death and hunger.
"I'll end you."
"You'll try," she said.
And vanished.
Outside the sealed realm, in the snowy mountains where the gate still glowed, his general flinched as the wind changed.
She had felt his power swell—terrifying, commanding—but then it cut out.
Gone.
Like a candle snuffed.
"Ready the army," she said aloud, even as fear coiled in her throat. "We're no longer alone in this war."
Another voice behind her—a younger shadow, one of the newer souls—spoke hesitantly.
"But we don't know who we're fighting."
She stared into the swirling mist where the sky had cracked further, where something else now watched back.
"Yes," she said softly. "We do."
He was back.
And this time… he was scared.
Not for himself.
But for the family he had finally found.
Because whatever she was—whatever they had become—it wasn't just his past coming for him anymore.
It was the hunger itself.
And it had given itself a name.