The path to godhood begins with a single question.
I stared at the flickering candle across the room.
Its flame danced quietly on the edge of the wooden windowsill, swaying each time the wind crept through the cracks in the cabin walls. I wasn't cold. I hadn't been cold for some time now. Heat answered me when I wanted it—clung to my skin, sank into my bones like a second soul.
The door creaked open behind me. Footsteps, familiar ones. Heavy, slow. My father.
He entered without a word, as he always did, and placed a woven basket of root vegetables by the door. His hands were rough, arms built like tree trunks, face blank and unreadable. I watched him in the reflection of the frost-covered window—he moved with the weight of someone who had seen too much and said too little.
I said nothing. I never did when he was near.
Not because I feared him. But because the silence felt safer. He seemed to like it that way.
When he left, I turned back to the flame.
With a quiet breath, I reached toward it.
Not with my hand. Not even with my body. Just... thought. I imagined the heat rising and folding, imagined pulling it closer—not touching, just guiding. And the flame bent.
Just a little.
Just enough.
A grin crept up my face.
Time passed in quiet sparks.
Days bled into one another. I couldn't count them properly—not yet—but I knew the difference between cold mornings and warm ones. Between sunlit beams and firelit shadows. Between empty hours and the ones where my mind cracked open and something new came out.
Solara was the first to help.
"You're using too much will and not enough soul," she whispered once, as I sat cross-legged on the floor, sweat beading on my forehead.
"How do I use my soul?" I had asked, confused, my voice still clumsy from youth.
She didn't answer at first. Just floated behind me, her translucent form brushing the edge of my thoughts.
"Let go," she said. "But keep wanting it. Want it enough that the world hears you."
That made no sense to me. Not then.
So I tried again. Candlelight. Wind. Pebbles on the floor. Leaves curling near the hearth.
Every object was a puzzle waiting to be bent, twisted, broken, or remade. And I wanted to solve them all.
Weeks passed.
Aelira taught me movement.
"Jump higher," she giggled once, bouncing beside me, her wild white-blonde hair sparkling like starlight.
"I'm two," I mumbled.
She laughed harder. "You're you. That's different."
She pushed me. Not physically. But with her presence. Her aura. The moment she did, my legs reacted. I flinched, leapt, landed harder than I should have—but didn't break.
"Good," she clapped. "Next time, dodge."
From then on, dodging became instinct.
Nyssara taught me discipline.
"You flinch too much," she said one night.
"I'm two," I said again.
"And? Weakness doesn't care."
Her lessons were colder. Calculated. A single feathered strand of darkness would lash near my cheek if I hesitated too long. She never hurt me—she didn't need to.
Fear of failure was sharper than pain.
But with her help, I learned stillness. Balance. Precision. Where Aelira wanted me to move, Nyssara taught me when not to.
By the end of that year, I could shape aura around my arms without shaking.
Not much. Just enough to make my father pause when he saw me holding a log double my weight.
He said nothing. But I saw it in his eyes.
Confusion. Then... concern.
He thought I was a prodigy.
He didn't know I was cheating.
I kept it all secret.
The spirits were mine. My thoughts, my senses, my experiments. I didn't speak of them to the others—no one in the village. Not even to the quiet boy across the field who always watched the stars like they'd answer him.
They wouldn't.
The stars spoke to me. Or rather... the void between them did.
It was a whisper in my dreams—one I hadn't told even my spirits about.
Anima came last.
Or maybe... it was always there, waiting.
My shadow twitched one night when I wasn't moving.
I thought it was a trick of the firelight—until it rose.
A shape. Feminine. Fluid. Flickering with white lightning and deep black fire.
It knelt before me without a word.
Solara gasped. Aelira shrieked. Nyssara narrowed her eyes.
"She's not one of us," Nyssara said coldly.
"She is," Solara said, voice trembling. "But not like us."
I reached out, hand shaking.
The spirit's forehead touched my palm—and the world went black.
Then white.
Then everything.
I saw magic crumble, rebuild, twist, merge, bend.
I saw people become gods and gods become dust.
I saw myself—older, taller, smiling with blood on my hands.
And I saw her—my shadow.
My protector.
My essence.
When I awoke, she was gone.
But her voice lingered in my ear like a brand:
"Learn. Devour. Survive. Ascend."
I didn't know her name. But I would.
One day.
A few more months passed. The village never changed. Same fields. Same clouds. Same tired faces with tired chores.
But I changed.
In the dark, in silence, in shadows—my power grew.
And still... I played the fool.
I stumbled in public. I asked too many questions. I pretended to be amazed when a firestarter lit a torch.
They laughed, patted my head.
"Smart kid, but too curious," they'd say.
Good.
Let them believe it.
Let them believe I was harmless.
Let them think I was ordinary.
Because soon—
No, not soon.
Eventually—I would be everything.
And they would never see it coming.