Consciousness returned like a trembling candle in a room of darkness.
No explosion of power.No divine chorus.Only warmth — damp, soft, and suffocating — like being wrapped in wool underwater. A distant heartbeat echoed above me, slow and rhythmic, accompanied by muffled voices speaking in a language I had never heard before.
I remembered instantly.
I wasn't supposed to be here.I died.And then — reincarnated.
Not as a blank soul, not with memories washed away, but intact, whole, carrying the knowledge of my previous life like a sealed library in the back of my mind. An adult consciousness trapped inside the fragile body of a newborn.
I tried to breathe, but what came out was a cry — thin, weak, unfamiliar.
My first sound.
The world was bright. Too bright. Shapes blurred, colors bleeding into each other like wet paint. A woman's face swam into view — dark hair plastered to her forehead, eyes shining with exhaustion and awe. Behind her, a rough ceiling of clay and wood beams, the faint scent of smoke, herbs, and old walls.
Not a hospital.Not modern.Not safe.
Voices surrounded me — deep, rugged, frantic. Men spoke outside, their words sharp like struck flint. Later I would learn the language was Arabic mixed with Kurdish, the dialect common in a war-scarred village near the old plains of Mesopotamia — the land once ruled by gods men called Sumerian.
But on that first day, I understood nothing except instinct.I cried again, and the woman embraced me tighter.
Her heartbeat was steady.Her skin was cool, rough from labor.Her scent — like earth after rain — grounded me.
So this is my mother in this world.
A strange thought.A heavy one.
I remembered how I used to live — sleeping at odd hours, scrolling through Fate forums, arguing about power levels, laughing at memes about Lostbelt gods. An ordinary human, unremarkable in every way. If I had friends, they were digital avatars. If I had dreams, they died whenever I woke for school or work.
Yet now, inside me rested something impossible —the template of Zeus from Lostbelt V.The Machine God.The Thunder Emperor.The one whose authority could rewrite the sky itself.
Not active.Not awakened.Just potential — like an unlit sun in the core of my soul.
A gift. A burden. A second life with hidden divinity.
But as an infant, I couldn't even control my own fingers.
Days passed like drifting clouds.
At first, the world was only sensations:
Warm milk on my tongue.Rough cloth against my skin.My mother humming ancient lullabies.The deep rumble of my father returning with dust in his beard and fatigue in his bones.
I couldn't speak, couldn't move freely — but I could observe.I watched shadows on the wall, memorized the rhythm of prayer at dawn, learned the name they gave me:
Arman.Hope.
They didn't know how fitting it was.
My father carried me outside one evening. The desert wind brushed my face, sharp with sand. The sun bled gold into the horizon, and for a moment warmth bloomed in my chest — familiar, electric, like a thread connecting me to something far beyond flesh and bone.
Thunder murmured from a cloudless sky.
My father looked up, puzzled.I looked too — and deep inside, something stirred.
Power sleeping. Waiting to grow with me.
Not a gift freely given — but one earned with time.
At night, in the half-dreaming lull, memories of my previous life resurfaced: scrolling through Fate Wiki pages, reading theories about Divine Spirits, imagining Zeus as a cybernetic god overshadowing Olympus. Now that knowledge wasn't just fiction — it was blueprint, foundation, my inheritance.
But I was powerless.
Even lifting my head required effort.Even sound came only as babbling.
Divinity meant nothing without strength.
When I turned one year old, I spoke my first word.
Not mother.Not father.
"Sky."
My mother froze. My father blinked, stunned. Babies usually said simple things — yes, no, mama. But I, with memories I shouldn't possess, was drawn upward. The ceiling, the open window, the rolling clouds — the sky called to me like an old friend.
That night, wind swirled outside our home though every door was shut. A clay pot trembled and cracked, lightning whispering silently inside my veins before fading again.
My power was slow, shy — like a cub yet to become a lion.
I grew year by year.
At age three, I could walk, speak, even read scraps of history my father kept — stories of Gilgamesh, Enlil, Inanna. My mother smiled, proud of her "gifted" child. My father joked I was born with an old soul. If only he knew how literal that was.
Sometimes, I felt electricity under my skin — tiny sparks dancing along my fingertips. Never enough to manifest. Never enough to show.
Just promise.A distant future waiting patiently.
I spent days under the old palm tree near the riverbank, staring at the sky. Clouds rolled like ivory ships. Birds traced invisible constellations. In the silence, I could hear faint thunder that no one else noticed.
Grow. Mature. Become.
That was the message I felt — not spoken, but imprinted by the Zeus template itself.
Not power now.Power at adulthood — when body and soul aligned.
Until then, I was mortal. Vulnerable. Human.
When I reached seven, war visited our region like a hungry beast.
Night explosions lit the horizon crimson. The ground shuddered. Smoke curled into the air. My mother shielded me as soldiers marched through the village. My father hid our valuables and told me not to speak, not to look directly at them.
Fear surrounded us like cold water.
And for the first time, I wished for strength.
Not to rule, not to dominate —but to protect the hands that held me when I was helpless.
Yet all I could do was tremble in silence.
No lightning came.No divine wrath answered.
The Machine God slept inside me, indifferent to my childish desperation. Power would come only with age, with growth, with understanding. I had to earn it — not inherit it.
So I watched.I endured.I learned patience — the virtue of gods who wait centuries to move.
The village rebuilt slowly after conflict passed. People planted new crops, repaired broken roofs, and prayed to the heavens for mercy they never expected to receive.
Sometimes I wondered:
Should a god stay silent while humans suffer?
The question never left me.
At age ten, I discovered something new — the ability to feel energy like threads in the air. I could sense storms hours before they formed. I could predict rainfall, hear electricity buzz in power lines, feel atmospheric pressure as if it were breathing.
Not magic —a connection.
The Machine God inside me was evolving with age, step by tiny step.
Still no lightning in my palms.Still no roar of thunder from the sky.
But awareness — deepening — like roots sinking into fertile soil.
I trained alone: meditation at dawn, breathing with the wind, imagining the circuits of divinity winding through my soul. I molded discipline from longing, patience from frustration. Each day, I felt a grain more power.
Just a grain.
Others saw only a quiet child — too thoughtful for his age, eyes always tracing clouds, never loud, never reckless. Teachers praised my intelligence but worried I lacked ambition. They didn't know ambition was carved into my bones like prophecy.
I didn't want fame.I didn't want fear.I didn't want Olympus.
I wanted to rise quietly.Unnoticed.Undisturbed.
Because the Marvel world was vast — full of cosmic entities, abstract beings, hungry gods and watchers. If they sensed Zeus' authority awakening here, attention would fall upon me like shadow and fire.
So I forged an answer:
I would walk the world not as Zeus,but as Marduk —a forgotten god wearing borrowed thunder.
Identity not to deceive mortals, but to avoid the gaze of immortals.
A child cannot fight a Celestial.
But a child can prepare.
My childhood was built of two realities:
In the day — I was Arman, son of ordinary parents, running barefoot across dusty fields, chasing goats, laughing at village festivals.
In the night — I was a god unfinished, listening to whispers of thunder in my blood, dreaming of cosmic thrones and storm-forged authority.
Both truths shaped me.Both worlds belonged to me.
One taught me love and humanity.The other promised power enough to reshape stars.
I was born twice — once mortal, once divine.
And my story had only just begun.