Chapter 7 – The Ones Who Buried God
Some truths aren't buried in earth or time. They're buried in silence—because even the dead fear remembering them.
The storm above the Forgotten Plateau had gone quiet.
Zareth stood at the edge of the crumbled sanctum, blood-soaked and heaving, with the stolen relic humming in his palm. His reflection shimmered in the obsidian floor below him—except it wasn't his reflection.
It grinned.
[Title Acquired: The One Who Carries the Forbidden Memory]
[Your Presence Has Been Detected]
The system's message lingered like cold breath against the back of his neck.
Then the plateau shook. Not from wind, not from magic, but from a sound that shouldn't exist—a reverse scream. Silence roaring backward.
Zareth turned sharply.
And saw them.
A procession. Hooded. Faceless. Clad in robes stitched from pages older than language.
The Ones Who Buried God.
They didn't walk. They glided.
Each step erased part of the world behind them—grass, stone, even memory.
"What the hell are you?" Zareth asked, breathless.
They answered by stopping.
A hand extended. Not human. Not alive.
And in the center of its palm—burning—was his name.
Zareth.
"Impossible."
[Memory Imprint Detected. Retrieving Locked Echo…]
Time didn't freeze. It inverted.
The sky became the ground. Light bled from below. And Zareth saw a boy. Himself. Younger. Standing before the same procession. Begging.
"Don't make me forget her—please."
They answered the way gods did: with silence that shattered worlds.
Zareth stumbled backward, clutching his head.
It wasn't a memory. It was an echo, torn from time and rewound.
"Why are you showing me this?"
The leading figure lifted its hood.
Zareth didn't see a face.
He saw every face he had forgotten.
A lover. A sister. A friend. Himself.
Gone.
Stolen.
Buried.
"You're the ones who erased me…"
The relic in his hand—now trembling—began to crack.
[WARNING: Artifact Resonance Breach Imminent]
He didn't drop it.
He drove it into the ground.
The world screamed.
A dome of reversed time exploded outward. For a moment, Zareth stood before his own erasure—where it had begun.
The Ones Who Buried God recoiled.
Not in fear.
In recognition.
"You gave it to me," Zareth whispered. "This memory. This curse."
"No," the wind whispered through their hoods.
"We gave you the key."
[System Update: Echo Path Unlocked – "Divine Burial Protocol"]
[New Passive Acquired: Echo of the Forsaken God]
[Effect: Grants immunity to timeline erasure for one loop. Memory fragments of divine beings will seek you.]
Zareth collapsed to his knees. He wasn't breathing from exhaustion.
He was breathing from knowing.
A god hadn't died.
He was the grave.
And something was still buried in him.
Waiting to wake up.
[Next: Chapter 8 – The Bell That Rings at the End of Time]