Chapter 3: Death and Divine Ascension
Three days passed in a haze of sleepless nights and mechanical routine. Tae-Hyeon worked his shifts at the convenience store like a ghost, scanning items and making change while his mind replayed the sounds he'd heard through So-Young's bedroom door. The other employees gave him worried glances—his usually cheerful demeanor had been replaced by a hollow-eyed stare that made customers uncomfortable.
On the fourth morning, Tae-Hyeon's supervisor handed him an envelope that had been delivered by courier. The Park family seal was embossed on expensive cream paper—the same seal that had been on his wedding invitation four years ago.
Inside was a formal invitation to a family dinner, written in Mrs. Park's precise handwriting: "Your presence is requested tonight at 8 PM. Business matters to discuss. Formal attire required."
The words were polite, but Tae-Hyeon could read between the lines. This wasn't an invitation—it was a summons. His execution date had been set.
The mansion glowed with warm light as he approached that evening, but to Tae-Hyeon, it looked more like a funeral home than a family residence. Every window seemed to mock him with its promise of warmth and belonging—things that had never truly been his.
Mrs. Park answered the door personally, but this time her smile was different. Not cruel or dismissive, but almost... pitying. It was worse than her usual contempt.
"Tae-Hyeon," she said softly. "You came. Good. We have much to discuss tonight."
The formal dining room had been set for five people. Mr. Park sat at the head of the table in his usual position of authority. Mrs. Park took her seat to his right. So-Young sat across from her mother, looking radiant in a way that made Tae-Hyeon's chest ache. And there, in the seat that had traditionally been Tae-Hyeon's, sat Lee Min-Jun.
"Ah, the guest of honor arrives," Mr. Park said, gesturing to the single empty chair at the far end of the table—the seat typically reserved for servants. "Please, sit."
Tae-Hyeon remained standing, his eyes fixed on So-Young. She looked beautiful tonight, wearing the sapphire necklace he'd saved for months to buy her on their first anniversary.
"So-Young," he said, his voice hoarse. "We need to talk."
"Sit down, Tae-Hyeon," she replied without meeting his eyes. "We'll talk after dinner."
"No." The word came out stronger than he'd intended. "We'll talk now. As husband and wife."
Min-Jun leaned back in his chair, a slight smile playing at his lips. "I think that particular conversation would be better suited to a more... private setting. Don't you agree, darling?"
The endearment hit Tae-Hyeon like a physical blow. So-Young reached across the table and placed her hand over Min-Jun's. The gesture was small, but it spoke volumes. She had made her choice.
Mechanically, Tae-Hyeon moved to the designated chair. The soup was some expensive delicacy that tasted like ash in his mouth. Around him, the others made polite conversation about business deals, discussing a world where Tae-Hyeon had never existed.
"The merger documents are nearly finalized," Mr. Park was saying. "Both families are aligned in their vision for the future."
"What exactly are we celebrating here?" Tae-Hyeon interrupted, his voice cutting through their casual conversation.
Min-Jun's smile widened. "We're celebrating new beginnings. Sometimes, to build something beautiful, you have to clear away what no longer serves a purpose."
"What no longer serves a purpose," Tae-Hyeon repeated slowly. "You mean people like me."
"Successful families make decisions based on practical considerations," Min-Jun continued, "not sentimental attachments."
The main course arrived—perfectly prepared wagyu beef. Tae-Hyeon watched the others eat while his own plate remained untouched.
"You know," Mrs. Park said conversationally, "sometimes you have to remove elements that are holding back progress. Usually, it's kinder to make a clean break."
"We were thinking fifty million won," Mr. Park said suddenly. "Enough to set you up somewhere new. Far from Seoul, of course."
"And in return?"
"A quiet divorce," Mrs. Park said smoothly. "You simply... fade away."
"Like I never existed at all," Tae-Hyeon said bitterly.
"Like you never belonged here in the first place," So-Young corrected, her voice cold as winter rain. "We both know this was a mistake, Tae-Hyeon. I call Min-Jun my future. Something you never were."
The words were designed to wound, and they succeeded. Tae-Hyeon stood abruptly, three years of suppressed rage finally finding its outlet.
"You want reality? Here's reality: I loved your daughter more than my own life. I worked myself into the ground trying to be worthy of this family. I endured three years of humiliation because I believed that love could overcome anything."
His voice rose with fury. "But you're right about one thing—I was living in a fantasy. I thought I was fighting for a marriage, but I was really just providing entertainment for people who never saw me as human to begin with."
"Keep your money," he continued. "But understand this: someday, somehow, there will be consequences for what you've done."
Min-Jun laughed outright. "Consequences? From who, exactly? You're nobody, Tae-Hyeon. You always were, and you always will be."
"Maybe," Tae-Hyeon agreed. "But nobodies have nothing to lose."
He turned to leave, but Mrs. Park's voice stopped him.
"Wait," she said urgently. "You haven't finished your dinner."
She was holding a wine glass filled with deep red liquid—the same expensive vintage they'd served at his wedding.
"One last toast," she said, extending the glass toward him. "To... closure."
Something felt wrong, but Tae-Hyeon was too emotionally drained to analyze the warning signals his instincts were sending.
"To closure," he agreed, taking the glass.
The wine went down smoothly, warming his throat. He drained it completely, savoring what would be his last taste of their world.
He was halfway to the front door when the first wave of nausea hit him. His legs gave out beneath him, and the marble floor was cold against his cheek as consciousness flickered.
Through the haze, he heard footsteps approaching.
"How long?" So-Young's voice, clinically curious.
"Ten minutes," Mrs. Park replied. "Maybe fifteen."
"And there won't be any complications?"
"None," Min-Jun's voice, confident. "It will look like a heart attack. Very believable, given his recent troubles."
Tae-Hyeon tried to speak, to move, but the poison was shutting down his systems one by one. His vision blurred as his organs began failing in sequence. First his liver, overwhelmed by the toxin. Then his kidneys, struggling to filter the deadly compound. His heart stuttered, beating irregularly as the poison attacked his cardiovascular system.
"Was this really necessary?" So-Young asked, watching dispassionately as her husband convulsed on the floor.
"Divorce would have taken months," Mr. Park replied. "This way, everything is clean. Final."
As paralysis crept up his limbs, So-Young knelt beside him. For one desperate moment, he hoped she would show mercy—call for help, express regret, reveal some trace of humanity.
Instead, she leaned close to his ear, her breath warm against his skin as his body temperature began dropping.
"You want to know the truth, Tae-Hyeon? I never loved you. Not for a single day. You were a rebellion against my parents, nothing more. A phase I went through, like dying my hair purple in college." Her voice was conversational, almost casual. "You were always so pathetically grateful for any scrap of attention. It was embarrassing to watch."
She straightened up, smoothing her designer dress as his breathing became labored, each breath a monumental effort.
"You said someday there would be consequences? You're right. The consequence is that you die forgotten and unloved, while I get to live the life I was always meant to have with a man who's actually worthy of me."
Tae-Hyeon's heart seized, stopped, stuttered once more, then fell silent. His eyes fixed on the crystal chandelier above, its light fading as his pupils dilated. Blood stopped flowing to his brain. His organs shut down in cascade failure.
At 9:47 PM on a Tuesday night, Kim Tae-Hyeon died alone on cold marble, surrounded by people celebrating his death.
His last coherent thought was not a plea for mercy, but a prayer for justice—a cry for vengeance that pierced through the veil between worlds and reached something vast and terrible in the darkness beyond.
* * *
**DEATH**
For seventeen minutes, there was nothing. No consciousness, no thought, no existence. Tae-Hyeon's soul drifted in the absolute void between life and death, untethered from reality.
Then, like the birth of a star, awareness blazed back into existence.
But this was not the gentle afterlife promised by religions. This was something older, more primal, more dangerous.
Tae-Hyeon found himself standing in a space that defied description—not darkness, but the absence of light itself. Not silence, but the negation of sound. Here, the fundamental laws of reality held no sway.
And in this place beyond existence, something noticed him.
"**INTERESTING.**"
The voice did not speak—it rewrote the fabric of reality itself to convey meaning. When it spoke, galaxies trembled. When it thought, universes held their breath.
Before Tae-Hyeon materialized a presence so vast, so overwhelming, that his mortal mind simply could not process it fully. What he saw was a fragment, a shadow, a single facet of something infinite and terrible.
The figure that stood before him was impossibly tall, wreathed in armor that seemed forged from collapsed stars. Each plate gleamed with the light of dying suns, and cosmic storms raged across its surface like weather patterns. The being's face was hidden behind a helm that radiated authority so absolute that reality itself bent around it.
But the eyes—the eyes burned with the accumulated fury of ten thousand millennia. They were the eyes of something that had never known defeat, never experienced weakness, never felt anything but absolute dominion over existence itself.
"**I AM CHEON-WANG,**" the being declared, and with each syllable, the void around them reshook itself into new configurations. "**SOVEREIGN OF THE ETERNAL THRONE. EMPEROR OF THE INFINITE ARMIES. THE GOD BEFORE WHOM OTHER GODS KNEEL.**"
As he spoke, images flooded Tae-Hyeon's consciousness—armies of celestial warriors stretching beyond horizons, their numbers uncountable. Worlds burning at Cheon-Wang's command. Civilizations that had existed for millions of years reduced to cosmic dust with a gesture. Other gods, beings of immense power themselves, prostrating themselves before his absolute authority.
"**FOR EONS BEYOND MORTAL COMPREHENSION, I HAVE RULED OVER ALL THAT EXISTS. EVERY WAR FOUGHT, EVERY BATTLE WON, EVERY ENEMY CRUSHED—ALL HAVE BEEN BY MY WILL. I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA OF CONFLICT. I AM THE BEGINNING AND END OF WRATH.**"
The pressure of his presence was crushing. Tae-Hyeon felt his very soul compressing under the weight of such absolute power.
"**BUT PERFECTION... BECOMES TEDIOUS.**"
For the first time, something almost like emotion entered the god's voice. Not sadness—something far more dangerous. Boredom. The boredom of a being who had achieved everything, conquered everything, destroyed everything worth destroying.
"**I HAVE WON EVERY WAR WORTH FIGHTING. I HAVE CRUSHED EVERY REBELLION WORTH CRUSHING. THE UNIVERSE HOLDS NO MORE CHALLENGES FOR ME, NO MORE ENTERTAINMENT. EVEN OTHER GODS FLEE BEFORE MY NAME IS SPOKEN.**"
Around them, the void began to shift, showing glimpses of Cheon-Wang's domain—infinite realms where his word was absolute law, where entire species existed solely to serve his will, where the very concept of resistance had been eliminated so thoroughly that it no longer existed in any form.
"**BUT YOU, LITTLE MORTAL... YOU INTRIGUE ME.**"
Cheon-Wang leaned forward, and Tae-Hyeon felt the full weight of divine attention focusing on him like a laser that could cut through the fabric of reality itself.
"**YOUR PAIN AMUSES ME. NOT BECAUSE I ENJOY SUFFERING—I AM BEYOND SUCH PETTY EMOTIONS. BUT BECAUSE YOUR DESIRE FOR JUSTICE REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING I HAD FORGOTTEN. THE HUNGER FOR REVENGE. THE SWEET ANTICIPATION OF WATCHING ENEMIES BREAK.**"
Images flashed through Tae-Hyeon's mind—So-Young's smirk as he died, Min-Jun's casual dismissal of his humanity, the Park family's cold calculation as they planned his murder.
"**THEY THINK THEY HAVE WON BY POISONING ONE PATHETIC HUMAN. THEY HAVE NO CONCEPT OF WHAT THEY HAVE TRULY AWAKENED.**"
Cheon-Wang extended one armored hand, and power radiated from it in waves that made reality itself ripple like water.
"**I OFFER YOU A BARGAIN, BROKEN MORTAL. I WILL GIVE YOU MY BODY. MY POWER. MY IMMORTAL STRENGTH. MY INFINITE AUTHORITY. YOU WILL RETURN TO YOUR WORLD NOT AS THE PATHETIC WRETCH WHO DIED, BUT AS ME.**"
The implications hit Tae-Hyeon like a cosmic tsunami. This wasn't resurrection—this was apotheosis. Transformation into something beyond human comprehension.
"**YOU WILL HAVE THE POWER TO RESHAPE REALITY WITH A THOUGHT. TO COMMAND THE ELEMENTS THEMSELVES. TO MAKE YOUR ENEMIES BEG FOR DEATHS THAT WILL NEVER COME. MOUNTAINS WILL CRUMBLE AT YOUR DISPLEASURE. OCEANS WILL PART WHEN YOU REQUIRE PASSAGE. THE VERY STARS WILL REARRANGE THEMSELVES TO SPELL OUT YOUR VENGEANCE.**"
More visions flooded his consciousness—himself standing atop the ruins of the Park mansion, the family groveling before power so absolute that their minds could not even comprehend it. Min-Jun reduced to something less than dust, his very existence erased so completely that the universe itself would forget he had ever been born.
"**BUT UNDERSTAND THE PRICE, MORTAL. WHEN YOU ACCEPT MY POWER, YOU ACCEPT MY NATURE. YOU WILL REMEMBER YOUR HUMAN LOVES AND LOSSES, BUT THEY WILL SEEM AS DISTANT AS DREAMS. YOU WILL BE CAPABLE OF MERCY, BUT YOU WILL CRAVE DESTRUCTION. YOU WILL RECALL FORGIVENESS, BUT YOU WILL PREFER ANNIHILATION.**"
Cheon-Wang's eyes blazed brighter, and Tae-Hyeon saw the true extent of what was being offered—not just power, but the fundamental transformation of his very essence.
"**YOUR ENEMIES WILL NOT SIMPLY DIE. DEATH IS A MERCY I RESERVE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EARNED IT. THOSE WHO WRONGED YOU WILL BE ERASED SO COMPLETELY THAT THE UNIVERSE ITSELF WILL FORGET THEY EVER EXISTED. THEIR NAMES WILL VANISH FROM EVERY RECORD. THEIR BLOODLINES WILL BE SEVERED FROM THE STREAM OF TIME. EVEN THE ATOMS THAT ONCE COMPOSED THEIR BODIES WILL BE SCATTERED ACROSS DISTANT GALAXIES.**"
The god's voice dropped to a whisper that nevertheless shook the foundations of existence itself.
"**DO YOU ACCEPT, KIM TAE-HYEON? DO YOU WISH TO TRADE YOUR BROKEN HUMAN HEART FOR THE POWER TO MAKE THE UNIVERSE ITSELF TREMBLE AT YOUR NAME?**"
Tae-Hyeon looked into those burning eyes and saw eternity—infinite power, endless authority, the ability to reshape existence according to his will. He thought of So-Young's final cruel words, of the casual way they had planned his murder, of three years of humiliation that had ended with poison and mockery.
"Yes," he whispered into the cosmic void. "I accept."
"**THEN PREPARE YOURSELF, MORTAL. FOR YOU ARE ABOUT TO DISCOVER WHAT IT TRULY MEANS TO BE A GOD.**"
* * *
**THE TRANSFORMATION**
The merger began instantly, and it was beyond description. It was beyond pain, beyond sensation, beyond anything the human mind could comprehend.
Tae-Hyeon felt his soul expanding—no, exploding—as divine consciousness poured into him like molten starlight. His mortal essence, tiny and fragile, was suddenly expected to contain the accumulated power of eons.
His scream echoed across dimensions as every atom in his being was rewritten with celestial fire. His DNA didn't just change—it was completely replaced with something that pulsed with cosmic energy. His bones became denser than neutron stars while remaining perfectly flexible. His muscles were infused with strength that could shatter planets.
But the physical changes were nothing compared to the mental transformation.
Memories that were not his own flooded his consciousness—ten thousand years of absolute rule, countless battles fought across dimensions, the worship of entire civilizations, the fear in other gods' eyes when his name was spoken.
Knowledge beyond mortal comprehension filled his mind. He suddenly understood the fundamental forces that held reality together, could see the quantum strings that connected every particle in existence, knew instinctively how to manipulate time and space as easily as breathing.
His human memories—So-Young's betrayal, his years of humiliation, his death on cold marble—became just one thread in a tapestry of experiences that spanned galaxies. But instead of diminishing their importance, the cosmic perspective amplified them. Now he had the power to make his personal pain into universal law.
Power continued to flow into him—not just strength, but authority. The fundamental forces of the universe began recognizing him as their master. Gravity bent to his will. Electromagnetic fields realigned themselves in his presence. The strong and weak nuclear forces awaited his commands.
His senses expanded beyond human limitations. He could perceive across all spectrums of light, hear the songs that atoms sang as they danced through space, feel the gravitational pull of distant galaxies, taste the emotional resonance of every living being within a thousand miles.
And still the transformation continued. His soul, once small enough to fit within a human body, expanded until it touched the edges of reality itself. He became simultaneously finite and infinite, mortal and divine, human and cosmic force.
The merger reached its crescendo, and for one impossible moment, Tae-Hyeon contained both his original human consciousness and the full awareness of Cheon-Wang. The contradiction should have torn him apart, but instead, it forged something new—a being that retained human emotion but wielded divine power.
When the transformation completed, he was no longer Kim Tae-Hyeon. But he was not quite Cheon-Wang either. He was something unprecedented—a fusion of mortal desire and immortal capability, human love twisted into godlike wrath.
"**IT IS DONE,**" Cheon-Wang's voice whispered from within his own thoughts. "**RETURN NOW, MY VESSEL. RETURN AND SHOW THESE INSECTS WHAT IT MEANS TO ANGER A GOD.**"
* * *
**THE RESURRECTION**
Reality twisted like a pretzel, space folded in on itself, and suddenly Tae-Hyeon was back in his physical body on the marble floor of the Park mansion.
But this body was different. Every cell had been reconstructed according to divine specifications. His heart, which had stopped twenty-three minutes ago, began beating with a rhythm that resonated through dimensions. His lungs drew breath that contained not just oxygen, but the essential forces that held the universe together.
The poison that had killed him was still in his bloodstream, but now his body processed it like a fine wine, converting the deadly toxins into raw energy that fed his newfound power.
He could feel everything—the electromagnetic signatures of every electronic device in the mansion, the gravitational pull of the moon overhead, the quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space, the terror beginning to build in the hearts of four humans who stood twenty feet away.
The Park family was still standing over his "corpse," discussing cleanup details. They had been debating whether to call it in as a heart attack or make the body disappear entirely. Mrs. Park favored the medical examiner route—less risk of investigation. Mr. Park preferred complete disposal—no body, no questions.
Min-Jun was in the middle of suggesting they use his contacts at the crematorium when Tae-Hyeon's eyes snapped open.
They didn't just open—they ignited. Literal fire danced in his pupils, cosmic flame that burned with the light of dying stars. The temperature in the room dropped thirty degrees in an instant as reality itself recoiled from his presence.
So-Young, who had been checking her phone for messages from friends, looked down and met his gaze. The phone shattered in her hands, its circuit boards overloading from the electromagnetic pulse that radiated from his divine essence.
"Impossible," she whispered, stumbling backward. "You're dead. We watched you die."
Tae-Hyeon sat up with fluid grace, his movements carrying an otherworldly elegance that no human body should possess. As he rose, the marble floor beneath him cracked in perfect geometric patterns, unable to withstand the weight of divinity pressing down on it.
"Death?" he asked, and his voice carried harmonics that made the mansion's windows vibrate like struck tuning forks. The crystal chandelier above began to sway, its thousands of pieces chiming a funeral dirge. "Death was just the beginning."
Min-Jun, who had been so confident just moments ago, felt his bladder release as the full weight of supernatural presence fell upon him. This wasn't the broken man they had poisoned. This was something else—something that made every primitive instinct in his brain scream at him to run.
"Did you enjoy your little speech, my dear wife?" Tae-Hyeon asked, turning his burning gaze on So-Young. Where his eyes focused, frost began forming on the walls despite the summer heat outside. "Did you savor telling me how you never loved me? How I was nothing more than an embarrassment?"
His voice grew softer, but paradoxically more terrifying—the whisper of an avalanche, the gentle sigh of a volcano before eruption.
"I want you to remember those words, So-Young. Remember them well. Because they were the last cruel thing you will ever say."
The temperature plummeted further. Ice crystals began forming in the air itself, their geometric patterns spelling out Korean characters that burned with inner light: JUSTICE. VENGEANCE. RETRIBUTION.
Mrs. Park tried to speak but found her voice frozen in her throat. Her expensive jewelry—diamond earrings, platinum necklace, gold bracelet—began to resonate with an ultrasonic frequency that made her bones ache.
"What... what are you?" Mr. Park managed to stammer, his authoritative businessman's voice reduced to a child's terrified whisper.
Tae-Hyeon rose to his full height, and as he stood, his shadow fell across all four of them despite the fact that light was coming from multiple directions. The shadow was deeper than mere absence of light—it was darkness given substance, void given form.
"I am your reckoning," he replied, and the words carried such weight that they seemed to bend space around them. "I am the consequence you never saw coming. I am justice, and I am wrath, and I am the end of everything you have ever known."
He took a single step forward, and his foot left a glowing print on the marble—not burned, but elevated, as if the stone itself was trying to rise up to support divinity.
"But not tonight," he continued, pausing as cosmic winds that existed in dimensions adjacent to reality began to swirl around him. "Tonight, you get to live with the knowledge of what's coming. You get to lie awake wondering when the god you murdered will return to collect what is owed."
Min-Jun tried to run. His legs simply wouldn't obey him. He stood frozen in place, every muscle in his body locked by the overwhelming presence of something his mind categorized as APEX PREDATOR.
Tae-Hyeon turned his burning gaze on each of them in turn, and where his eyes lingered, they felt something fundamental within them begin to change. Not physical—deeper than that. Something in their souls was being... marked.
"Consider this a preview," he said, raising one hand. The air around his fingers began to distort, reality bending like heated glass. "A small demonstration of what you have awakened."
He gestured casually toward the far wall, and it simply... ceased. Not destroyed, not demolished—erased. Where solid stone and expensive wallpaper had existed moments before, there was now nothing but a perfect void that showed the garden beyond.
The mansion's security system went haywire, alarms shrieking as sensors detected impossible readings. The electromagnetic pulse from Tae-Hyeon's presence had fried every electronic device within a hundred-meter radius. Street lights outside exploded in showers of sparks. Car alarms wailed in harmony as their circuits overloaded.
"When I return," Tae-Hyeon said, his voice carrying absolute certainty, "when I truly return with the full measure of my power unleashed... you will learn what it means to beg for the mercy of death itself."
He began walking toward where the front door had been—though the wall was gone now, so the distinction was academic. Each step left glowing footprints that pulsed with inner fire, creating a trail that would remain visible for days.
As he reached the threshold, he paused and looked back one final time. In that moment, the four people who had murdered him saw something in his eyes that broke their sanity just a little—the infinite patience of divine wrath, the absolute certainty of inevitable justice, the terrifying love of a god for his chosen revenge.
"Enjoy these last moments of thinking you've won," he said softly. "Because when I return... you will discover that there are fates far worse than death. And I know them all."
With that, he walked into the night, his form dissolving into shadows and starlight and possibilities that mortal minds could not contain.
Behind him, the Park mansion stood partially destroyed, its remaining walls bearing frost patterns that spelled out promises of vengeance in a dozen dead languages. The four people who remained were forever changed—not just by what they had seen, but by what they had felt when true divinity turned its attention upon them.
They had wanted Kim Tae-Hyeon gone forever.
Instead, they had awakened Cheon-Wang, the God of War.
And gods, unlike mortals, understood that the best revenge was not swift.
It was eternal.