Cosmic Ruler - Chapter 558

Chapter 558: Outer Gods X

He didn’t know what would happen if he followed the Herald.

Would he be bound again?

Would he be unmade?

Or would he become what he was always meant to be?

But more importantly—

Would he lose himself?

Would he stop being Aiden?

He looked at his hand.

It flickered—briefly becoming a thing of starfire and silence, then returning to flesh.

There was still time.

“I refuse,” he said, voice like iron wrapped in sorrow.

“I’ve seen what’s out there.”

“And I choose this world. I choose to fight.”

The Herald didn’t flinch.

It didn’t plead.

It simply raised one hand—and the laws of this realm began to bend.

Light turned into thought.

Sound became weight.

Breath became memory.

And then—

“Then we will take you.”

The battle began.

It wasn’t a clash of weapons.

It was a war of truths.

Each thought Aiden had became a shield.

Each scar, a blade.

The Herald spoke names of things that had never been, hoping to erase him.

Aiden answered with will.

His soul screamed—not in fear, but in defiance.

Every path they tried to erase, he rebuilt.

And in the center of it all—

The Eye blinked.

Just once.

And something changed.

The Eye hesitated.

A crack formed in the Eye’s presence.

Aiden saw it—and reached.

He placed his hand on the shatter.

And for one heartbeat—

The Eye saw him as he truly was:

Not an error.

Not a fracture.

But a choice.

The Herald stumbled back, body glitching.

The timelines stitched into its robes frayed.

Reality shivered.

Aiden stood tall.

Eyes burning with gold, silver, and violet flame.

The power that had once been sealed inside him began to surface—not as an invasion, but as a reunion.

He wasn’t becoming something new.

He was becoming whole.

“Tell your masters,” Aiden said.

“I’m coming.”

“And this time… I’ll remember everything.”

The Herald vanished.

The Eye closed.

But not in fear.

In anticipation.

And somewhere, beyond the edge of time, a throne long abandoned began to awaken.

Far beyond the shattered remnants of the known cosmos, in a region of reality untouched by time or law, there drifts a star.

It does not burn with heat.

It bleeds.

Its crimson trails spill across a void without direction, casting long shadows over the bones of dead universes.

This is where the Throne sleeps.

This is where they sealed it.

Once, it was the axis upon which all creation spun—the Seat of Primordial Thought, the first spark of Will before the Outer Gods devoured it.

Now, it waits.

Not passively.

Not helplessly.

But patiently.

And the moment Aiden touched the Eye, the Throne… stirred.

In the star’s bleeding heart, chains groaned.

They weren’t forged from metal or magic—but from betrayal.

Each link a pact broken.

Each shackle a truth buried.

Now, cracks webbed across them—hairline fractures whispering Aiden’s name with every pulse of dying starlight.

The Throne remembered him.

Not as he was.

But as he was meant to become.

“The Usurper returns,” it whispered.

“The Empty King begins to awaken.”

Far from the bleeding star, in the deepest reaches of the ruined Dreaming Realms, the First Watcher stirred.

She was blind.

Because she had torn her own eyes out to avoid seeing the day the Throne would wake.

And yet, even eyeless, she knew.

The moment the Herald failed, she felt it.

“He refused,” she rasped.

“Just like before.”

The shadows around her twisted into shape—servants of the Outer Gods, born from whispers, guilt, and forgotten childhood fears.

One among them, tall and horned, knelt.

“Shall we prepare the others, Mother of Sight?”

She tilted her head toward the place where the Bleeding Star pulsed.

“Prepare them?”

“We’re already too late.”

Meanwhile…

Aiden sat in the ashes of what used to be the Domain of Forgotten Creation.

His breath came slow, even.

But his fingers still trembled.

The battle with the Herald hadn’t wounded his body.

It had wounded his certainty.

For in that final moment—when the Eye hesitated—he felt something else awaken inside him. A fragment of a life older than the stars.

A vow.

A promise.

One he could not remember… but knew he had broken.

And now, the cost of that broken promise was rising.

“You felt it too, didn’t you?” he said aloud.

The air shimmered, and a figure stepped out of it.

Not Nexus. Not Myne.

But her.

The Fox—the companion born from infinite energy, once small and mischievous, now tall and silent, her fur like dancing auroras and starlight.

She nodded once.

“The chains are breaking,” she said softly.

“Your Throne is waking.”

Aiden shook his head.

“I don’t want a Throne.”

“I want to live. To protect the people I love. To fight for a future that’s my own.”

She looked at him with ancient eyes.

“Then you must take it.”

“Only by claiming the Throne can you keep it from those who would wield it in your name.”

He stood slowly.

The domain was falling apart—cracking, warping, collapsing into echoes of itself.

It was time to leave.

Time to find answers.

Time to face what he had once been.

“Where do I start?” he asked.

The Fox turned her gaze toward the sky.

And there, like a wound in space, a rift opened.

Beyond it lay not stars… but teeth.

And behind those teeth, a cathedral built from bone and glass.

The Chapel of Forgotten Names.

“Go there,” she said.

“Find the one who remembers you.”

“Before the Outer Gods send the next Herald.”

Aiden clenched his fists.

He still didn’t understand the full truth.

He didn’t know why the Eye feared him.

Why the Throne waited.

Why even the Outer Gods, beings of infinite madness and hunger, flinched at the thought of him remembering who he was.

But one thing was clear now:

He was no longer just a survivor.

He was a variable that reality itself had tried to erase—and failed.

And now?

He would stop running.

He stepped through the rift.

And the stars screamed.