Darkness.
It was the first thing I felt. The second I opened my eyes, I regretted it. Shapes that should not exist danced before me. Tentacles of shadow, chittering limbs of bone and smoke, geometries that defied sanity. My mind recoiled, but the visions pressed in, endless and merciless.
And then… it came.
A clicking echoed in the void, sharp. Something moved, a grotesque mantis, taller than me, chitinous arms glinting in the dim. Its compound eyes shimmered like obsidian glass, and its voice crawled into my ears.
"You wasted the second chance you got."
I couldn't speak. Its presence pressed down like gravity made thought itself heavier.
"You were given power. Absolute and yet, you let your own creation, your inferior spawn dominate you?"
It leaned closer, its mandibles twitching.
"You are nothing. Give up. Drift in the void like the useless husk you are."
I closed my eyes, the weight of it all made sense now. Maybe it was okay, drifting in this void… it was peaceful. No pain, no expectations and no disappointment. Just the cold quiet.
"…Maybe giving up is fine," I whispered. "It's not like I'll feel anything anymore."
Silence followed. Then… a flicker of something.
No.
Something rose in me, like a spark catching kindling.
No!
My eyes shot open.
"I am a god," I snarled through gritted teeth, the void vibrating with the power rising in me. "The force I wield created this damn world!"
The human part of me soft, scared, emotional felt like it was peeling away, shedding like old skin.
"I said—" I lifted my hand. "OBEY ME!"
Golden light erupted from my core, blinding and absolute. The mantis screeched as it was caught in the storm of divine power, its form melting into sparks before vanishing completely.
The void shattered and my vision returned. I was back, now lying in the center of a massive magic circle, glowing with symbols carved in ancient tongues. I hovered off the ground, my body burning with divine essence. The Arcana in me surged like a storm, rumbling through my veins.
Then I felt it.
My soul, separated, rising above me, pulsing with golden light, then folding downward to wrap around my body like a second skin. I gasped as the fusion completed, the union of divinity and humanity merging into something different from either.
All around, cultists watched, trembling. Some knelt. Others wept. A few dropped to the floor in spasms, unable to breathe beneath the pressure of my aura. The very air cracked, the walls bent and the floor groaned.
Reality itself splintered.
"Begone," I said, voice echoing like thunder.
The humans before me vanished. Not in fire. They were… erased. Reduced to motes of dust in the current of time, all except one. A lone figure, Eric stood, shivering, his eyes rolled back. His mouth opened, but the voice that came was not his own.
"That little power you're so proud of… is nothing before true void dwellers. A mere demi-god."
Before I could respond, he too disintegrated, but not like the others. His form turned to purple essence, dark and oily, and began to disperse into the air.
I clenched my fist, golden energy surged and trapped the essence within a radiant orb.
Void dwellers
I looked up and with a thought, the chamber rebuilt itself. The shattered stone reformed, the cracks in reality sealed. The blood, the chaos was all gone. Now only silence remained. I descended gently, my feet touching the stone. New clothes, dark and regal, wove themselves over my skin, golden trim wrapping around my arms and collar.
I walked calmly to the far wall, placed my palm against it and it vanished. A tunnel lay ahead anf I walked up… until I reached a manhole. Pushing it open, I stepped out from beneath the city and felt the light touch my skin.
The orb pulsed in my hand and I felt dozens, hundreds, of similar energies scattered across this world, each one whispering, each one watching. I looked toward the strongest one, lingering there for a moment. My gaze hardened.
I turned away from the noise and chatter of the academy courtyard and slipped into the heavenly realm, the stillness of it wrapping around me like a blanket. With a thought, the microcosm bloomed before me, a map of the mortal world in miniature, every detail rendered in perfect clarity.
I marked the locations of the purple essences. They glowed faintly, like infection spots on a living body.
With a snap of my fingers, they were torn from their hiding places and dragged screaming into the empty space beyond creation. The moment they were freed, their forms twisted and stretched, warping into eldritch horrors. Tentacles writhed in every direction, each one bristling with unblinking eyes that slid over their bodies like liquid.
A shiver ran down my spine, but I forced myself to stay calm.
I raised my hand and willed spears of stardust into existence. They shimmered like meteors frozen in time, then launched forward. A few struck true, tearing through alien flesh and spraying violet ichor into the void. The rest missed, glancing off writhing limbs.
The creatures screamed, a noise that made my teeth ache and hurled searing blasts of purple plasma. I ducked and twisted through the void, letting instinct guide me. My counterattack was simple but satisfying: I summoned the fury of a dying star. A supernova bloomed from my palm, swallowing a cluster of horrors in a white-gold inferno.
Some of them burned to ash instantly. Others kept coming.
I grinned despite myself and conjured two handguns into existence, the metal warm in my grip. "Time for the power of democracy," I muttered. The barrels glowed, feeding on divine essence, and I unloaded round after round. Each bullet was a sliver of condensed sunfire, punching clean holes through tentacles, shredding eyes, burning everything they touched.
Half of them went down fast.
The survivors stopped. Their countless eyes turned toward each other, and without warning, they slammed together, merging into something far worse. Limbs fused into a mountain of flesh and churning mouths. The writhing only grew faster, the air around it humming like a swarm of hornets.
Then it screamed. Not one voice, but hundreds, layered together into a shockwave. The blast hit me square in the chest, shredding parts of my clothes into threads of pure essence that scattered into the void.
The sound itself hurt. My power reacted instinctively, my body flashing gold against the tide.
"Alright," I said under my breath, rubbing my ears. "You want epic? Let's go epic."
I clapped my hands together, and behind me, hundreds of mirror-like shields appeared in a great dome, all angled inward. In my palms, I gathered a single orb of light until it burned like a piece of a star, then I fired it upward. The mirrors caught it, reflected it, multiplied it, until a rain of blazing lances fell from every angle at once.
The monster thrashed, tentacles burning away, eyes bursting like overripe fruit. It retaliated with a beam of concentrated plasma that tore through the void like molten glass. I caught it on a single mirror, redirecting the blast right back into its own body.
Its howl shook the fabric of space. I didn't wait.
I called for something simpler, something primal, a sword. The blade formed in my grip, humming with divine essence, gold light trailing along its edge. I surged forward through the void, cutting past the last of its flailing limbs, and brought the sword down in one clean, brutal arc.
The creature split in two. Purple essence poured out, thicker and richer than anything I'd taken before. I trapped it in a bubble of golden light, feeling its weight even in my soul, then pushed it deep into my inner world for safekeeping.
Only when it was gone did I realize I was panting, my skin slick with sweat despite the cold void. I turned and began the long flight back toward creation, heart still racing from the fight.