Seated at the mouth of the mountain cave,
I watched goblins wage their little war—
chasing evolution through slaughter.
A necessary part of life,
one that always demands a foundation strong enough
to bear what comes next.
In their case, that foundation is the flesh of their own kin.
Each death births another spark of growth.
Every fallen body becomes nourishment,
rolling forward like a snowball of death-energy
that fattens the survivors.
They rise from mud and blood
into higher forms—
creatures aligned ever more closely
with my domain of darkness.
Cruel?
Perhaps.
But cruelty is only perspective.
Even gods end,
and every ending feeds the next beginning.
It is the cycle that allows existence
to keep breathing.
Many still call it madness—
this notion that divinity and logic can meet.
Mortals reach for explanations until they break their minds,
mistaking mystery for chaos.
They label it logical madness
and convince themselves the infinite
should behave like arithmetic.
They never realize understanding itself has limits.
These goblins, however,
are honest in their ignorance.
They do not question the order I've written for them.
They advance fearlessly, accepting
that what comes next is simply next.
Some even whisper prayers
to a nameless lord who blesses them in the dark,
never daring to define what that lord truly is.
They only know the gift works—
and to doubt a working miracle
is the purest form of madness.
"My lord,"
a voice rasped behind me.
"We prevented the collapse.
The black one sends a good report…
but he says you should come trim the weeds."
I didn't turn.
That voice had walked beside me
since my master first drew the map of death—
a skeleton older than sky,
a relic of the first Death Court.
When one of them suggests I intervene,
the world itself courts ruin.
Granting a shard of my concept
is both trust
and investment.
Each bearer is proof of faith—
testament that even Death can delegate.
My vessel shudders—
half decaying, half renewing—
yet I rise
and turn toward the cave.
Within waits a secret older than this sky:
the last refuge
of the Forgotten Gods.
Calling them a "couple" is generous.
One escaped;
one lingers only as echo.
Their fate tangled in the belief of humanity itself—
so obscured that even I
cannot read it cleanly.
To find them,
I bargained with Gaia.
Her earth-mother crown let me enter this world
as a native god,
anchoring my power
without tearing the veil.
Unlike Earth,
this goblin world was never crafted by the One.
It is a derivative realm,
a branch grown from another's root—
fertile soil where new realities sprout.
Yet this world is rotten.
An F-rank world,
fallen squarely into Death's domain.
Its gods barely outrank
soldiers from C-tier worlds.
Even my fractured divinity
crushes their Sky-Father into silence.
Their Gaia—Mutarex—scours the land hunting for me,
yet the crown I wear hides my scent
until I choose otherwise.
I do not fear her.
Defeat by such a low-grade Gaia is impossible.
Her attempt to chain all inhabitants
under a "Demon God" banner
only wastes her dwindling strength.
While she gathers worship,
I gather results—
turning every monster species
into a living Gu ritual.
From the weakest mortals
I breed the strongest races.
Even I once deemed them worthless,
but talent paired with a generous homeworld
makes them useful.
Measured by potential alone,
this world stands among the finest
within the Astral Sea.
By decree,
Astral Gods are barred from Death Domains—
an old pact between my master and Life herself.
Yet loopholes abound.
When a pair of promising worlds
drifted too close to our border,
we claimed them.
They became tributaries to Earth—
prime seeds
to graft into its flesh.
Humanity will never understand the gift,
just as the Astral Gods failed to.
When these worlds merge,
Earth will gain a starting boon beyond reason:
the Devour Nature of this Gaia
feeding into Earth's Gaia,
the true daughter of Life.
Assimilation or consumption—
call it what you wish.
The result is the same.
Between Gaias,
there is no diplomacy—
only the feast.
Even rivals find agreement there.
Life's daughters compete more savagely
than Death's sons ever could.
And so, paradoxically,
Gaia and I—ancient opposites—
must now work side by side.
After eons of conflict,
we have no choice:
cooperation or extinction.
Order or the void.
Those are the only laws left
worth obeying.
———-
My vessel moves deeper
into the cave,
each step a tug-of-war
between rot and renewal.
Stone shifts under my feet—
not from weight,
but from recognition.
This place remembers me.
The air tastes of old oaths,
the kind spoken before worlds had names.
Roots coil around broken pillars
where the Forgotten Gods once kept court,
their thrones now dust,
their voices now static in the dark.
This garden
is not made of flowers.
Its blossoms are bones.
Its vines are chains.
Its fruit is memory
devoured by time.
And still—
it grows.
Mortals would call this corruption.
They always do
when they see life
that isn't theirs.
But this is the hunger
that built every world
that learned to breathe.
I place a hand on the cold roots.
They shiver.
They know the crown I wear
does not belong to Mutarex.
They know
who shaped the Death Domain
long before she learned
to envy it.
A low hum answers—
the signal from my skeleton servant.
Something moves beyond the far wall:
a pulse of divine presence too thin to stand,
too stubborn to die.
One of the Forgotten Gods stirs.
The echoed one.
The one trapped
in belief's half-light.
I breathe once,
and the cave exhales back.
Every drop of air tastes like prophecy,
words forming before I speak them.
"Trim the weeds,"
my servant said.
He meant the overgrowth of fate,
not the monsters.
He meant:
prepare yourself.
Because when a god half-dead
and half-believed
rises again,
only two outcomes exist:
consumption
or assimilation.
And I?
I am Death's heir,
but also Gaia's reluctant ally.
I trim
so the world does not choke
on its own miracles.
I step forward,
hand resting
on the roots of a dead pantheon.
"Wake," I whisper.
"Rise as god…
or rise as food."
The cave shakes.
The roots recoil.
Memory ignites.
And somewhere
in the garden of bones,
a forgotten divinity
draws its first breath
in centuries.
The world above
has no idea
what is coming.
But I do.
Because in the Death Court's Garden,
nothing grows
without paying the price.