Chapter 54: Mad God
A mad God.
The reason Cillian chose to describe it this way, and used the word ’mad’, was not without reason.
He had already noticed the abnormality of this world, and It was not just because the world had been ruined by chemicals and cursed magic. The Hayes clan, who were born within it, also carried signs of ’madness’ in their very body structure.
Twisted and deformed organs, brains and eyes "protected" by cursed sorcery, even the gray threads that clung to their souls...All of it struck Cillian as fundamentally deranged.
It was like looking at a lunatic dressed in divine power, a god of least mid-level strength, who had chosen to unravel his own creation in the most grotesque way possible.
Why? Why would such a being do this?
Cillian’s curiosity burned. He wanted to understand not only the truth behind this destruction, but also how such a wild god, one who ruled over a secret dark world, had been born.
What would a god without order or restraint look like? He had to know.
Raising his head, Cillian gazed toward the far horizon, where the earth split into a palace buried beneath countless layers of corruption and fear. The master of this place, he could sense it, was hiding there, buried deep within the poisoned veins of the world.
"Why don’t you show yourself? How discourteous."
At that moment, countless demons poured into the ruined land as Cillian dragged a fragment of the Endless Abyss into this reality.
The newcomers did not falter, instead they thrived.
While the Hayes struggled to breathe the rust-stained air, the demons found it no different from clean skies. The poisonous waters that twisted flesh were drinkable to them. Even the warped Hayes themselves became delicacies.
Ruined fortresses and collapsed towers, what the Hayes mourned as lost, became perfect nests for abyssal fiends.
And because Cillian had anchored part of the Abyss itself into this plane, the demons fought with home advantage. The very laws of the Abyss spread like a plague, devouring and reshaping the Hayes’ world at terrifying speed.
"Mon-monsters!"
Where Mirethane’s steps landed, the earth drowned in swamps of filth. Cillian stood on one of the demon’s vast head, expressionless, watching the Hayes flee from their land’s collapse.
Gas masks and sealed armor were useless against the corruption Mirethane carried. Whole families fell screaming. Even so, Cillian recognized that the Hayes were no weaklings. Their bodies were sturdier than most races shaped by Grimstone’s graduates. Their potential could have led them to alchemy, industry, and peak mortal sorcery.
Yet the god of this place had twisted them into a mockery, cursed flesh, deformed souls, a race used as a cruel joke.
Cillian did not pity them, he was only interested in the truth.
"Mirethane, we’ve arrived."
The abyssal titan, brought him to the edge of a tunnel dripping with toxic waste. At its end waited the palace of the Mad God.
Cillian descended from Mirethane’s crown.
"Master..." Mirethane rumbled, his gaze uneasy. "Allow me to clear the way."
A direct clash of gods was no trivial matter. Even Cillian, who had avoided battles for so long, knew the danger. The presence buried here was not weak, it felt like a mid-tier god, perhaps worse.
Cillian only smiled.
"No need."
He advanced alone, stepping past the piled corpses of Hayes soldiers strewn before the palace gates. All of them had perished to the very curses that leaked from within. Around them, grotesque heaps of warped creations lay discarded like offerings.
With a sweep of his hand, Cillian conjured black mist to shield himself, then pushed the doors open.
"Let me see your true face."
Inside, cries of torment echoed.
Upon the throne, bound in a web of black and gray threads, writhed a figure. Its roars twisted between pleading and anger.
It was the Mad God himself.
A Monster.
Deformed and Twisted. Bound in black and gray threads, chained like a grotesque offering upon the throne.
It was a sight so revolting that any mortal who laid eyes upon it would lose their mind. Even a Demi-god would shudder, able to feel the depth of its pain and the collapse of its sanity just by sensing its aura.
A monster,in the very sense of the word.
It looked like a heap of melted flesh, slumped across the throne as if it had been poured into place. From its warped body sprouted several mismatched limbs, each one supporting eyes that clearly belonged to different races.
Those eyes turned toward Cillian, staring at him from the darkness, their expressions torn between pleading and desperation. They did not just look, they begged. They prayed. They sought release.
But the creature’s mouth was sewn shut with the same black and gray threads that bound its body. No teeth lurked behind its lips, only a mass of tongues, knotted together. And somehow, through that tangle of flesh, the monster forced out muffled words of supplication.
Cillian stepped out of the black mist that swirled around him, laughter spilling from his lips.
"Hahahahaha! Incredible... Truly incredible. I haven’t laughed like this in ages. My tears are about to fall." He wiped at his eye, grin sharp as a blade. "I cannot decide who is worse-you, or me."
His tone dropped, cold as the Abyss itself. "For the love of creation, how did you manage to become this? No..." he raised a finger, correcting himself, "it isn’t you. It is.."
Behind him, countless tentacles of black mist erupted outward, lancing into the monster’s flesh with merciless precision. His divine fire surged through them, performing a grotesque "operation" on the thing before him.
"...all of you."
The throne shook with the monster’s scream, a roar so piercing it rattled the poisoned tunnel outside.
The mass began to shift. Heads emerged one after another...hideous, malformed, yet recognizable. They were the faces of different species, all fused into the same writhing body.
Cillian’s eyes narrowed. He understood at once. This was not a god born from ascension, but a fusion, a grotesque weaving of creatures bound together at the level of soul and flesh alike.
Their minds fought within. Their bodies warred against one another for dominance. Their souls, their very spiritual seas, were tangled in constant agony. That endless struggle had forged the hideous being before him.
And yet, its aura rivaled that of a mid-tier god. Worse, there was divinity within it. A divine spark, real and undeniable.
But no fire. No divine flame burned at its core. This was a god only in form, not in truth. A half-made deity, an incomplete failure.
The gray threads that marked the Hayes were no divine symbols at all. They were parasites, the fractured soul marks of this abomination, forcibly branded into the clan as it spread fragments of itself to every child born in this world.
Cillian’s eyes glinted with dark amusement. Each new life in the Hayes was nothing but another limb for the monster, another piece of soul shredded and forced into its sea of pain.
No wonder their existence was so pathetic.
The agony must have been unbearable, worse than torture. Like burning a soul alive.
And still, this creature clung to existence.
"Save us!"
"Please!"
"End me!"
"Separate us!"
The heads, freed for a moment by Cillian’s fire, screamed and wailed. The clarity of sanity flickered across their faces as if his presence alone burned away a fragment of their suffering.
But Cillian’s gaze only grew colder.
"Shut up," he hissed.
The tentacles shifted threateningly behind him. His voice cut through the throne room.
"I have no interest in your begging. Tell me, what did you do to become this?"
The monster quivered. Its overwhelming aura shrank under his gaze until it seemed no stronger than a pile of trembling refuse.
Curiosity lit Cillian’s eyes. "You fools," he whispered, almost to himself. "In your madness, you have achieved something remarkable. You have expanded your sea of mind... far beyond the ordinary. While others radiate outward, yours folds inward, spiraling deeper and deeper. An inversion of the soul’s sea. You peculiar thing"
His lips curved into a smile. "Tell me. I want to know, how did you do it?"
Silence stretched. Then one of the heads, a woman’s face, marked with pain but still sharp with intelligence, spoke. Her voice trembled, yet her eyes were shrewd.
"No... If we give you this knowledge, we will no longer be of use to you. Swear to us! swear that you will save us if we tell you!"
Cillian studied her, the black and red vortex in his eyes shimmering.
Then, to their astonishment, he smiled gently. His tone turned smooth, almost kind.
"I swear by my divinity. Tell me, and I will take you from this prison and deliver you to my world. I will ’save’ you."
The heads murmured to one another in fearful argument. At last, the woman clenched her jaw and spoke.
"We... we attempted an experiment. To reverse the rise of the soul’s sea."