The stars burned in the eternal sky, indifferent. Humans have a way of forgetting what has always been right in front of us. I watched them the way a condemned man stares at the last sliver of light before being buried.
My name? It stopped mattering a long time ago.
After so much effort, all I had left in the end was this infinite darkness. I was once human. Now, I no longer knew if that was still true. I reached my goal, built an empire, touched the peak of the galaxy… and still, I ended up here—betrayed by those closest to me. They stripped me of everything and abandoned me in a dead prison, suspended in the void of space. How ironic, the fall of the greatest businessman in the galaxy: locked away, powerless, my abilities sealed forever.
Then the light came.
Not just any light. It was an impossible radiance—immense, vaster than a sun. That place rejected all brightness, yet that presence advanced anyway, as if the void itself bowed before it.
A broken, wet laugh—like glass shattering inside a diseased throat—spread through the nothingness. The eyes within that light opened with absolute madness.
"Look at the tiny thing I've found in this pathetic place…" it said, with sick delight. "I've watched you for a very long time. So long. And look at you now… sitting among ruins, worshipping stars that no longer mean anything. How miserable. How pathetic. I chose you to be my weapon—not to rot here like some forgotten remnant."
The light grew even more intense, until the entire prison trembled under its glow. The silhouette began to warp, to condense, to take on a human shape.
An old man appeared.
Old, yes—but monstrously built. His body looked carved from stone. Every muscle in his chest and arms was a statement of restrained violence. His white hair fell to his neck like a cascade of luminous ash, and his face blended the majesty of a sage with the obscenity of a madman. His smile was not human—it was a crack opening into something worse.
"Do you remember me now?" he asked, his deep voice almost reverberating through the walls of the void. "A tool this valuable cannot be discarded."
With a flick of his hand, a golden scroll emerged from nothingness.
My eyes fixed on it.
"So it was you…" I said, my calm laced with venom. "After abandoning me, you return. And for what? I have nothing left to offer you."
The god let out a low, muffled laugh, as if a beast were enjoying itself inside his chest.
"That's what you think, little one. After all this time, tell me… don't you want revenge? Don't you want to tear the throats out of those who betrayed you? Don't you want to hear them scream until their souls break?"
The question didn't sound like an offer. It sounded like a blade.
"Revenge?" I replied. "Is that your proposal, old man?"
A smile of pure contempt spread across his face.
"Little fly… I don't offer you revenge. I offer you something far greater. Freedom. The chance to break your destiny, to rewrite your future with your own hands. All for the modest price of your soul. Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it cruel? Isn't it exactly what you deserve?"
I leaned closer to the scroll.
Only two words could be read upon the gold: Your Soul.
"In the end…" I murmured, a crooked smile forming on my lips, "…I end up making a deal with a demon."
There was no doubt in my voice—only a dry irony, sharpened by years of humiliation.
A black feather appeared in my hand. Dark as a bottomless night, with a strange, almost living glow. The moment I touched it, a chill ran down my spine.
I reached toward the contract.
The scroll looked ancient, noble—far too perfect to exist in that place. Its golden inscriptions pulsed beneath the god's sickly light. I touched it.
And it vanished.
The silence lasted only an instant.
Then the god erupted into a deranged laugh, so intense it seemed to revel in every second of the chaos.
"Very well, little one."
Space began to break.
The walls of the void cracked like glass under impossible pressure. Reality groaned. The place that had been my tomb for so long began to collapse before my eyes. And for the first time in a long while, a strange feeling washed over me: pleasure. A dark, almost cruel pleasure at watching that hell crumble in on itself.
Fragments of the prison floated around me like the remains of a cosmic corpse. The entire structure dissolved into a storm of light, shadow, and ruin. The ground exploded beneath my feet. The void tore me from its center and dragged me downward, into a bottomless abyss.
The god leaned forward, his eyes burning with madness and satisfaction.
"Ah… what a beautiful spectacle," he whispered, almost trembling with pleasure. "I've broken the laws of the universe just to amuse myself a little. Yes… yes… show me what you can do, Avaron."