Scene 1
"Help…"
"Please no…"
"Just kill me…"
I listened to the mortals cry out for mercy.
Elves ran from ogres, demons, and astral beasts through the burning corpse of their village, all of it gathered around this dying tree-god I had allowed to survive. Smoke climbed into the sky in thick black coils while the roots beneath the village pulsed weakly with divine residue. Too weak to save its followers. Too alive to die cleanly.
Perfect.
I had waited for this.
Waited for its followers to regain enough population that another strike would actually be worth the effort. Allowed years to pass. Allowed births. Allowed prayer. Allowed them to believe their young divine tree had survived the first blow and would continue growing.
Then I struck again.
That was the problem with weak gods who touched divinity too early. They mistook reaching upward for arriving. They thought tasting rank meant they were beyond the jaws of those already feeding in the dark.
I looked down toward the village.
My ogres were doing their work well.
They caused terror first. Always terror first. Broken bones, dragged bodies, screaming children, women chased through the fire until their legs failed them. Fear sweetened the soul before death captured it. Madness loosened the walls of self. Despair made essence easier to tear free.
All of that would feed the incomplete Soul Core I had buried beneath their village.
Twenty thousand years of work had gone into this effort. Twenty thousand years preparing to gain the Soul Domain and complete my trinity. Death. Wood. Soul. Once the set formed properly, no other Minor God in this stretch of No Gods Land would be able to speak my name without caution.
Above the slaughter, I held myself still and listened.
The heavenly tune of those on the edge of madness always carried best in the final breaths. Mortals never understood how beautiful terror sounded to beings who could actually use it.
"Tuv, how much longer?"
The voice came from beside me.
Ruv had arrived without ceremony, as usual. The Fire God looked more demon than god, his single eye fixed on the dying tree below us while flames seeped through the cracks in his body. In both hands he carried captured elves, tossing them casually into the second mouth split open across his torso.
They no longer screamed.
The burn marks around their necks had already ruined that. Their eyes were empty too, stripped of any real will to live as they watched the horror below with the dead stillness of prey that had already accepted they were meat.
"My demons have already finished collecting Golden Hearts," Ruv said. "How much longer do you need?"
Below us, one of my ogres forced itself onto its victim before crushing her moments later. Another ripped a hunter apart limb by limb while laughing through broken tusks. The astral beasts had begun feeding too, uncaring which corpses had belonged to elves and which had belonged to demons. Chaos always made the lesser predators bold.
"It takes time, my friend," I replied. "If done correctly, we can all split the domain of this dying godling. The Death Laws it learned are useless to me, just as the Life Domain here is wasted unless Kort takes it. Being hasty will only draw the eyes of other gods."
Ruv frowned at that.
The mention of our fellow gods always soured his mood.
I understood why.
This region of No Gods Land existed between Zeus and Gaia like a forgotten scar both God-Kings had chosen not to bother with. Neither cared enough to kill us all. Neither cared enough to force us fully under them. So long as we stayed out of their deeper territories and did not grow too troublesome, this land remained ours to stain.
A place with just enough mortals for each of us to play king in the Minor God rank while hunting each other in the dark.
A place where weak gods called themselves lords over mortal tribes and surviving beasts. A place where those of us smart enough understood what we truly were—scavengers fighting over scraps beneath the gaze of powers too high to bother stepping on us.
I looked back toward the tree and smiled faintly.
"This one almost made it," I said. "A young divine tree that touched divinity fifty thousand years ago. If I had not found it before it stabilized itself at Mid Minor rank, it might have extended Gaia's reach through offerings and faith just like my last target."
Ruv let out a low sound that might have been amusement.
"Then it should be honored," he said, lifting another elf to the mouth in his torso. "Its failure feeds better than most."
I did not answer.
He was right.
That was the beauty of this place.
Survival meant nothing if someone stronger noticed it first.
Scene 2
"Kort, you're done as well?"
Looking down, I watched an earth pillar rise from below until it matched our height. The last of our trio emerged from it, his body made from packed earth and stone pulsing with Laws of Burial. Kort always looked like a grave that had taught itself how to stand.
"Yes," he said. "I've finished compacting the elves and beasts for Laws of Blood. Once I have my side of the Tree, I'll take my leave."
His stony face shifted slightly.
"But who is this friend?"
Confused, I turned toward Ruv. My brother looked back at me with the same uncertainty before both of us followed Kort's gaze.
There, behind us, stood a godling.
He held both sides of his head as if trapped in silent pain. His white hair shifted black and back again in uneven waves. For a breath I thought the light around him was wrong. Then I finally got a true look at his face—
and saw it falling apart.
Not rotting.
Not burning.
Peeling away in strips of divine flesh to reveal a god-skeleton beneath unlike any god I had ever seen.
Ruv inhaled sharply.
"His trinity," he said, voice cracking with greed. "I need it."
Only then did I look past the collapse of his outer form and truly sense what stood before us.
The purest Death Laws I had ever felt.
So pure that my own hands moved on instinct, reaching toward it while my mind lagged behind. Sun and darkness clung to the same being, but those no longer mattered to me. They blurred at the edges. The Death itself was too bright. Too complete. Too far beyond what a Low Minor God should have been able to carry.
Even the massacre below us lost importance in that moment.
The village.
The souls.
The tree.
The years of preparation.
All of it suddenly felt smaller than the godling behind us.
"We can split hi— Wait, Ruv, not yet!"
I shouted too late.
My brother lunged.
The godling's face fell away completely as the skeleton beneath roared. Light burst from him like a second sun born in the middle of our hunt. White radiance carrying Death spread outward at once, and my brother slowed the instant it touched him.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
As if the law itself had judged his movement unworthy of continuing at full pace.
Regardless of their difference in rank, the purity of those Death Laws devoured the advantage Ruv should have held as a High Minor God. A spear of light formed in the godling's hand and launched forward in the same motion.
It punched into my brother's torso.
The force drove him backward straight into Kort's pillar.
Then Ruv began to decay in the open.
Not wounded.
Not dying.
Decaying.
His divine flesh came apart faster than I could have rushed to him even if panic had not frozen me for that first impossible breath. Kort attacked at once, only to be slammed into the ground so hard the pillar above us cracked apart. His earth body tried to rebuild itself, but the surrounding rock collapsed each time he forced it back into shape. He cursed, fought, and then abandoned the surface entirely, diving back into the earth to survive.
That should have stabilized the moment.
Instead it shattered everything.
Our barrier broke.
I felt several distant eyes lock onto our location immediately. More presences had already begun moving in this direction, drawn by the clash and the impossible quality of the Death Laws now flooding the region.
Then I felt something worse.
My Soul Core.
Kort was trying to steal it.
The bastard was stripping me to keep himself alive beneath the earth.
I lifted my eyes in fury—
and finally understood what had happened.
The godling had hidden himself inside those same white Laws of Death. Ruv had not failed to fight because he was weak. He had failed because he never truly saw what stood in front of him. He had lunged at radiance and death and purity without understanding the real form hidden within it.
My own minor Laws of Death rushed to protect me.
They failed.
Everything began to fall apart.
My pearl-white skeleton hands reached outward by instinct alone, and even they turned to ash in the face of those Laws. My body followed them piece by piece, the cleaner death stripping me down faster than my own divinity could answer.
The godling had gone mad.
Not the petty madness of weak gods corrupted by bloodshed. Not fear. Not frenzy.
A deeper thing.
A being driven beyond restraint by the amount of death here.
And more of my kin were arriving to die in front of him.
I only glanced once at the war now being waged by that golden skeleton, who slaughtered every god rushing into this place as if they had come only to be judged.
Then my rage finally snapped my mind.
And I blacked out.
Scene 3
Village Elder POV
"Etay… ETA… my boys. I'm so sorry."
I stared at the body of my eldest son lying where he had fallen at the entrance to the Great Tree.
He had died where a son should never have to die—between ruin and what little remained worth protecting.
My youngest had fallen at the border of the village. No doubt trying to aid our kin as the slaughter spread too far for any one defender to hold back. Even now, with the screams fading and the roots beneath me trembling with the remains of battle, I could still picture them both as children beneath these same branches.
The tears stained my face freely.
I no longer had pride enough to stop them.
That god had proven my punishment was a trick.
What I had once viewed as a chance granted by the Great Tree—a way to save my people by connecting my once-youthful body to our dying god—had been twisted into something else. I had endured this root-bound existence believing sacrifice would preserve the tribe long enough to carry us into renewal.
Instead I had been made to watch my sons die in front of me.
My eyes could not leave my eldest's body.
Not even now.
Not even as the Great Tree pulsed weakly around me, its law unraveling and its burning branches raining ash over the dead.
The village was no longer a village.
Only corpses, fire, and the last breaths of those too wounded to flee.
And still—
still I had not given enough.
So I began offering more of myself to the Great Tree.
The roots invading my body deepened at my command, piercing farther through old flesh, old bone, old spirit. Pain followed at once, but pain had become ordinary long ago. I welcomed it this time. Welcomed it because there was nothing left in me gentler than anger.
The decaying roots beneath the ground answered.
They spread outward through blood-soaked soil, through burning homes, through broken streets and the corpses of kin and beast alike.
"If the heavens sent this plague," I said, voice shaking with grief and fury together, "then I won't hold back my anger."
The roots drove deeper into me.
I let them.
I forced the Great Tree to hunt anything still in reach.