In a world where gods were never myths—where they walked beside humanity, bled beside them, and died beside them—the question was never if divinity existed, but what force could ever place them on such equal footing; the wretched whom walked this ground and the divinity that secured the heavens a clear distinction.
What power could drag gods from the heavens and keep mortals from kneeling?
When asked what brought forth the world as we know it, there is only one conceivable answer. The same thing that floods the chest with terror and, in the same breath, grants a sense of serenity so absolute it becomes something you seek to depend on. The thing the world itself draws breath from.
The Heart.
The Heart that brought forth the world we now mistake as "common." There are no gods and humans here. Those ideals burned away long ago. Only one being ever stood above all others on this mortal plain. The Heart—the god who claimed mortality.
But no one knew the Heart as I did.
Because the Heart was no god.
He was a mortal. A man brimming with power beyond reason. A man who wanted change, no matter the cost. After his reforming of the world—and the extinction of every being stupid enough to stand against him—the way the world worked shifted. To even attempt being a hero or a villain, you had to be comparable to the Heart himself, or you had to at least make him struggle—a feat impossible for most.
If you couldn't, you were nothing.
Your powers meant nothing your ideals stayed ideals. Stripped back into a civilian. Forgotten and believe it or not that was a good thing humanity was never meant to have powers we were created to have ideals and fight for them naturally not with some unnatural "gift".
And some however through persistant defiance or refusal to kneel—were punished with fates far worse than death.
No matter what any man says The Heart may be a savior but he is not a hero.
Naturally, a being like that brought peace. Prosperity. Order.
And like all things built too perfectly, it demanded an opposing destruction.
The only thing capable of blanketing an era so prosperous in darkness was our very own Shadow.
No one knows where the Shadow came from. Over the years, people spoke rumors that it was born from the resentment, hatred, and suffering humanity kept under wraps. That it was the collected yearning of more from the people given form.
Absurd.
And yet—what else but an ideal could ever stand against the Heart that pumps the world itself?
Enough of that.
Let me speak plainly.
The Heart had a name.
Anurak Rom Ran.
Names are dangerous. Attach a mortal name to a being that powerful and they start to sound more real. More human. More like something you can understand.
I should know.
Before he was a flying, godlike thing—before the world bowed to him—he was my friend plain and simple Anurak.
He was a year younger than me. I was five. He was four. From the moment we met, we were inseparable. We played together. Ate together. Drank together. Lived our lives together.
Then the comet fell into my backyard.
And the cosmic entity inside it—Furestmore—dragged us both inside.
Six years.
Six years we spent dead inside a stone no god nor man could break. Our flesh was torn from our bodies and regrown repeatedly. The stench of our decaying bodies never left. The liquid kept us silent no matter how hard we tried to scream; it kept us at a mere gurgle, burning our lips shut. Our bones were reduced to ash and rebuilt. Our eyes were burned away so we couldn't see—then returned so we could watch the other suffer.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Six years of watching each other die without dying.
When we finally broke free, we emerged into a laboratory filled with melted corpses and one woman screaming that the comet had opened. Our limbs regrew faster than ever and this time there was nothing to take us apart. We were tested. Dissected. Measured.
Anurak fell in love with the nurse.
I fell into despair.
Time passed. Too much of it. Our ideals split. And just as children bicker and fight so did we, every moment we clashed waves of that same liquid from the comet erupted from our bodies. Every punch, every kick, every wound dealt was slowly unraveling earth, the universe, our loves, our home.
Until there was nothing left.
Just two battered beings healing from each other's dealt blows.
One of us laughed.
The other wept.
In our power, we discovered we could create virtually anything and so over time we rebuilt everything together—although it leaned closer to Anurak's ideals than mine. We created a world and named it Darunak, a fusion of our names. A planet the size of the sun we once orbited, full of crystal-blue water.
We created Five continents with names we decided to keep rather short so in relation to that I shall keep the explanation of them short as well.
Anu, frozen plains and endless ice.
Zha, forests of towering red trees.
Qui, beautiful plains riddled with pits of fire and water—I honestly have no idea what we were thinking when we made this,
Gin, sandy and hot, one of the few places that held large cities.
And Bun, farmland and sprawl, cities stacked on cities—so similar to the america i once knew so much do its familiarity made me uneasy.
Darunak was beautiful.
And I knew I deserved no such beauty I couldn't relish in it; I couldn't stay.
After everything I'd done, hiding was the only mercy I had left to offer the world. I became a civilian. I disappeared.
Anurak did not.
He acted exactly as he always had—openly, violently, honestly. He crowned himself The Heart. He married a nurse which i found quite ironic. They had two children. For a while, they were a happy family.
And then the story did what stories always do.
The Heart was killed.
A god died.
My friend Anurak Rom Ran was slain by the Shadow.
And I was that Shadow.
His sons—Dino Rom Ximena and Nieve Rom Ximena—were taken with their mother to Sagrie, a massive city in Bun, dozens of territories away from their old home, New Katiena. The boys adapted. Their mother did not. She cried every day. Her body threw itself into a rageful impulse, her excuse as she abused her sons and threw objects around the house but it was never her fault she claimed it all to be her violent spasms a unfortunate side effect of losing her husband as well as seeing his body on national television.
Still, the boys stayed strong—for her.
Until some random day they came home from school.
They found her collapsed like normal. Nieve being the caring son he is reached out to her. To hold her. To console her.
she in response grabbed a broken beer bottle and pierced it into his throat. As Nieve bled out on the floor only able to cry as he watched his mother run out of the house to chase after Dino.
He died alone and scared.
She chased Dino for hours, trying to kill him too.
When she finally stopped, she claimed clarity returned.
She screamed and cried, supposedly just then realizing she had murdered her son.
Naturally you'd expect someone who did not intend such horrors would turn themselves in, however she refused to go to prison. So she sickeningly framed Dino for murdering his own brother.
He was only six years old.
Five years of his life wasted in juvenile detention. He was released at ten and due to him refusing to go home to his mother they called his aunt who took him in to her home without even knowing or understanding the situation a true maternal instinct you could say. He enjoyed his life there—after a much needed break returned to society and started attending school in Sagrie Middle, life was good for once the boy could rest knowing he was safe. However such security is a fleeting feeling.
Around two years later an unnamed villain slaughtered his aunt, uncle, cousin, and dog.
Whereas Dino by being in an after-school program lived; you could say he was lucky but I'd say he wished he'd died along with them instead he survived once again.
He was transferred to a foster home a couple months after the incident. He lived with a man named Tommy and his daughter named Clara. Dino hated every single second he spent in that home, Tommy beat him, Clara on the other hand was at first a sense of comfort for him, she was pretty and cared for him however as time went on she grew more selfish and more interested in the male anatomy she'd strip him down and mock his body.
His sense of comfort disappeared after that he was now in a very dark room without any light to look out to; a tunnel of despair.
Dino however for a good couple of months behaved well and took it all without any reaction however even the strongest materials can break, and so he snapped.
He saw next his head while clara was beating him into the ground a broken beer bottle and so he used it just like his mother did. He was greeted with blood and death—again.
Although he did indeed kill her let it not be mistaken Dino killed Clara by accident.
Tommy seeing his daughters body brought forth a paternal instinct and nearly beat him to death before the police arrived, you may wonder how they arrived; it was the sound of his bones hitting the floor and echoing loud enough the neighboring houses could hear.
He was only thirteen.
Back to juvenile detention he went to serve three more years. Despite the Abuse and Sexual assault, he only got a couple years off of his sentence.
Dino was released at sixteen and had nowhere to go so the government gifted him with a small cubic home with only one room for every need, a bathroom, a bed, and a kitchen, it was very crammed but it was better than the juvenile detention center. He was forced by that same government to attend school straight out of juvenile detention and naturally with no social skills he was bullied for the entirety of high school mainly as he could not bring himself speak.
And now
Dino Rom Ximena is set to be attending Varnya University one of Bun's top institutions. In every way its clear Dino earned his place there, he was accepted despite his record due to his phenomenal educational prowess. He earned a 9.2 GPA and 1700 on his SAT.
I am proud of him.
And I am ashamed.
I wish I took him in after his mother lost herself but how could I have ever stood before him—
knowing the death I brought to his father.