Chapter 46: Pulse of the Forgotten God

Echo's eyes widened, pupils shrinking to pinpoints as the faint red pulse flickered again beneath the shattered remains of the Architect's Core. Her breath hitched, and without thinking, she took a step forward—boot soles scraping against the fractured obsidian ground with a grating screech.

Specter was instantly at her side, his damaged mask reflecting the crimson glow. His hand shot out, gripping her shoulder with bruising force.

"Don't," he warned, voice low, tight with something dangerously close to fear.

Echo had felt fear before—on battlefields, in the suffocating grip of the system's mind control. But this… this wasn't fear.

This was something colder.

A hollow dread that gnawed at her thoughts like invisible worms, whispering that what they'd destroyed wasn't the end.

It was only… a signal.

A heartbeat.

A god's final breath refusing to fade.

And in that moment, she realized—maybe gods didn't die.

Maybe they simply waited for the next believer to resurrect them.

The air grew thick, oppressive, like she was drowning in a sea of broken light. The red glow wasn't just light—it pulsed like veins exposed to open air, throbbing with a slow, malignant rhythm.

Each pulse echoed through her ribcage, as if her own heart was being forced to match its deadly beat.

Around them, the jagged remains of the Fracture Gate looked like the ribs of a colossal beast, its corpse still exhaling its final, poisonous breath.

And beneath it all… something ancient and hungry stirred.

Then the impossible happened.

The fractured ground beneath them shifted. A symbol, long erased from known history, burned itself into the stone—a perfect crimson circle, cracked straight down the center.

From deep below, a voice rumbled up through the earth, not through sound… but directly into their minds.

"A cycle may end… but the design remains."

Echo staggered back, her throat dry as ash.

Specter turned toward her, his voice barely audible through the rising static.

"It's waking up."