The first thing I remember is a voice.
It isn't loud. It isn't even a sound. It's like the hum that lives under silence, the breath between heartbeats. It threads through the blur around me and says:
> "Who are you?"
"I…" My own voice cracks like a dry reed. "Who are you?"
> "I am not a name," the hum answers. "I am the high current, the level of energy your kind calls god."
The word god hits my skull like a dropped stone. The world around me is an unfinished painting—streaks of light and dark, pixels and static as if someone forgot to load reality's textures.
"Why am I here?" I ask.
> "Because the body ended and the current returned to its source. You call it death. We call it reunion."
"I died?" My throat tightens. "How? Why? Everyone wants to see God while alive, but why am I seeing you after death?"
> "Your time ended. That is all. I live everywhere. Every birth is a sliver of me. That is why you can still see me even after your death."
"But why couldn't I see you when I was alive?"
> "It's not like you can see the air that fills you. You searched for me in shapes, in temples, in other people. Even if you glimpsed me, you did not acknowledge me in you. How would you see what you deny?"
The blur shifts like a slow tide. My hands are barely hands—just outlines in static. My pulse races.
> "Some among you," the voice continues, "bow to trees, to beasts, to stones, to humans. You laugh at them, but they are not worshipping forms. They acknowledge the current inside the forms. Prayer alone is not the bridge. Love and sacrifice are."
"Sacrifice?" I echo.
> "Yes. The sacrifice of emotion, of certainty, of the small self to the great current that lifts you to a higher state. Energy does not die. It is born from me. Energy evolves if it passes the trial called life. Many do not. …But I am not here to lecture you. I am here to offer a chance."
"A… chance?" My voice is a tremor.
> "A chance to recover your true self. The primal energy inside you still sleeps."
"I don't understand."
> "You will. Slowly."
The surroundings ripple like water on a cracked screen. My own memories flicker. I try to rewind my last day, but the film keeps tearing.
I was reading a novel I wrote with OpenAI. Then I ate and went back to bed to read. Fell asleep. No… something else happened. I can't remember. The static deepens. I see dark and light like broken glass, a display coming apart.
Then the hum returns, closer now, and says:
> "Let me help you. Open your eyes."
Light bursts behind my eyelids. Suddenly I'm not standing in the blur anymore. I'm watching something vast unfold.
Darkness collects into itself, folds and refolds. Sparks bloom like stars in reverse. A single immense sphere of light swells, then contracts, then births a greater sphere, then more—small and huge, millions, until they all stream back into the first.
My chest seizes. I can't breathe.
> "What you see is the first creation," the hum says. "The creation of multiverse."
"Multiverse?" I whisper.
> "Yes. Multiple universes. In the beginning, the Creator of all multiverses cast portions of His own current to shape higher energies like us. We were born of His pure essence. We, in turn, can create universes inside ourselves. This universe is me—a higher-level energy, what you call god. And the multiversal god is Him, the highest value, the Creator."
My mind stalls. "…"
> "But…" the hum darkens, "then another being emerged. It was our level but unlike us. It had no loyalty. It wanted freedom. It wanted to be a new Creator. It devoured other gods. One day, by a disguise unknown, it consumed a portion of the Creator's own essence…"
"What happened then?" My voice is a thread.
> "Such power forced it into hibernation in an uncharted dimension. The Creator Himself faltered, losing the balance within. We faltered too. Universes went chaotic. Those born to protect became killers. Balance shattered. So we began searching for those who gazed into our worlds willingly. People like you."
"Me?" My stomach flips. "How? Why me?"
> "Dritrea's Blessings. Do you recall that name?"
The syllables hit me like a punch.
"Oh, f—" I bite my tongue. "No… I'll—no words."
> "But—"
My thoughts spin. How can I explain that I'm inside a novel? Not just any novel but the one that never updated after its thousandth episode five years ago?
In my own story, the MC of I Am the Harem God stumbles upon a webnovel called Dritrea's Blessings. I never even read it. But now the god is quoting it like scripture.
In my story, the MC meets a god and learns he must save the multiverse, reborn to gather young women as his believers. He rewards them with children. He becomes a "harem god" by accident—nothing more than looks and a curse of devotion.
But why me? This is the world I wrote off as trash. I don't want to be here.
The hum seems to sense my panic. It coughs—an echo in nothing.
> "As I was saying. You need to save our multiverse. You will not go empty-handed. I will help you evolve. I will awaken your primal energy. Your own unique Prana Shakti."
"Prana Shakti?" I repeat.
> "The primal energy inside the body. The strength and life unique to each being."
"I… see."
> "Goodbye."
"Ha? Wait—"
Darkness erupts.
Blood, water, lava, red mud—textures I don't have names for—fold over me. I drift without knowing, without even the will to speak. Time becomes a smear. When? Where? Why? I don't know.
Then, a dot.
Red.
It swells, slow as a heartbeat. More dots ignite around it, pulsing. They merge into a gate of crimson fire. I'm pulled inside. Then a white gate. Blue. Orange. Green. Gold. Each one a surge through my veins, tearing and remaking me. Memory, anger, desire, fear, hope—pieces of me burn and harden.
Where am I? Water. Water?
I jolt upright.
My bed. My room. Sweat soaks my sheets. My breath rasps.
"What happened to me?" My voice is barely a whisper. "Was it all a dream? Or…?" I touch my face. Skin. Real. "No. No, no. I'm in my room. I'm not dead. Ha. I'm not dead…"
The hum is gone. Only the buzz of my ceiling fan remains.
"…so nothing happened," I tell myself. But the colours of the gates flicker behind my eyelids, and something deep inside my ribs pulses once, twice, like a second heartbeat.