The glowing blue text floated motionless in the center of his vision, defying every law of reality he knew.
[ God of Absorption, Kazura, has invited you to meet him. ]
[ ACCEPT ] [ DECLINE ]
Deicya's mind reeled. His pulse hammered against his ears as he stared at the neon characters hovering in mid-air.
Am I losing my mind? Is this a hallucination?
He blinked hard, but the screen remained. Instinctively, he looked past the floating text and rushed to his kitchen window, peering up toward the darkening sky.
The air outside hummed with a terrifying, vibrating pitch. The clouds above Metro Manila ripped open as the colossal, blood-red meteor breached the atmosphere, its matte surface etched with glowing divine geometry, casting a crimson glare over the entire city.
"It's… it's really happening," Deicya breathed, his hands pressing flat against the glass.
Then, thousands of feet up, it stopped dead in the air, the roaring friction silenced in an instant.
CRACK—
The sphere split. Twelve crystalline shards tore outward in guided, unnatural arcs, scattering toward the twelve superpower nations of the world. Not one landed near the city below. The sky settled back into a bruised, ominous purple, laced with dying trails of red.
Deicya stood frozen, his reflection shaking in the windowpane. A global calamity had just unfolded before his eyes—yet here he stood in his quiet, empty apartment, staring at a floating system interface like something out of a video game.
He slowly turned his gaze back to the glowing blue prompt floating beside him.
His thumb twitched. His first instinct was to hit [ DECLINE ]. He didn't know what this was. He didn't know who—or what—Kazura was. Caution screamed at him to run, to reject it, to stay safe.
But stay safe for what?
The thought hit him like a cold bucket of water. The world had just changed forever. If he declined, nothing would change for him. He would still be sitting alone in a dark room, waiting for the fallout of a world-ending event, crushed under the weight of his own miserable life.
If I decline, I stay like this forever. But if I accept…
Curiosity outweighed his terror.
He reached out his trembling index finger and pressed the hovering [ ACCEPT ] button.
Nothing happened.
His finger passed straight through the light like cold air. He tried again, tapping frantically at the glowing prompt, but the interface didn't react to physical touch.
Panic flared in his chest—until the voice in his mind echoed once more, soft and guiding.
—Speak it.
Deicya swallowed hard, his throat dry. He opened his mouth, his voice barely a breath:
"Accept."
BZZZZT—
The world snapped.
The walls of his apartment distorted, blurring into streaks of grey and white. The familiar smell of ginger broth vanished, replaced by a suffocating, weightless pressure. The air turned pitch-black as his room dissolved into nothingness.
In less than a second, the light was swallowed whole.
Deicya stumbled, his feet planting onto a solid, invisible surface. He gasped, looking around in utter shock.
His apartment was gone. Quezon City was gone.
He was standing inside a vast, boundless Void Domain. Infinite darkness stretched out in every direction, so dark it felt heavy against his skin. High above him, where the sky should have been, a colossal, silent black hole spun slowly, pulling rays of phantom light into its event horizon.
"Where… where am I?" Deicya whispered, his voice eaten by the endless space.
Thump.
A single footstep echoed through the void.
Deicya spun toward the sound, his muscles locking up.
Out of the deep shadows ahead, a figure materialized, stepping onto the dark plane. The man was draped in a long, flowing black cloak, its edges trimmed with intricate, glowing golden lines that pulsed like liquid fire. He possessed an aura so overwhelming, so dense, that the very air around him seemed to warp.
Every step the man took sent ripples through the floor of the domain.
He stopped precisely ten meters away from Deicya.
The silhouette stood tall, bathed in the faint golden light of his cloak. When he spoke, his voice didn't just carry through the air—it resonated through the floor, vibrating straight into Deicya's bones with a deep, menacing, godly timbre.
"Welcome to my domain, Deicya."
The hooded man slowly raised his head, the darkness beneath his cowl shifting as two faint, golden eyes locked onto Deicya's trembling frame.
"I am Kazura," the god spoke, his voice heavy with ancient weight. "And I have been watching you for a very long time."
Deicya couldn't answer. He couldn't even draw a proper breath.
His entire body was frozen, his muscles locked in place as a visceral, instinctual terror pinned him to the invisible floor. The sheer density of the entity's aura felt like a crushing physical weight resting on his chest.
BZZT.
In the blink of an eye, Kazura vanished from ten meters in front of him.
BZZT.
Before Deicya's eyes could even track the motion, the cloaked figure materialized three meters to his left. The golden lines along the edge of his black cloak hummed with liquid energy, casting long, sharp shadows across the void.
"I watched you walk those streets," Kazura's voice echoed, not just from where he stood, but vibrating simultaneously inside the back of Deicya's skull.
BZZT.
Another instant flicker. Now Kazura stood directly behind him, his presence so suffocatingly close that Deicya could feel the atmospheric pressure drop.
"I watched you kick that stone all the way to your door," the god continued calmly, his deep, menacing voice cutting through the silent expanse. "A desperate attempt to give a meaningless day a tiny shred of purpose."
Deicya's eyes widened. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead. He tried to turn his head, but his neck refused to obey.
BZZT.
Kazura flashed to his right, towering over him, the dark cowl hiding his face while two faint, golden eyes burned from the shadows within.
"I saw the vision you had when you opened your door," Kazura murmured, his tone shifting from cold divinity to something almost unnervingly intimate. "The family that threw you away six years ago. The younger brothers you miss. The ache of a heart that was cast into the cold at twenty-two and forced to survive on crumbs."
BZZT.
In a final, silent flash, Kazura reappeared directly in front of Deicya—closer than before. The vast, swirling black hole high above them seemed to bend its light around the god's shoulders.
"You are broken, Deicya Deleor," Kazura said, stepping forward until he stood just inches away. "You sit in the dark, eating cold meals, begging the universe to tell you why you were left behind."
Deicya trembled violently. A single tear cut through the cold sweat on his cheek. Hearing his deepest, most shameful wounds spoken aloud by a cosmic entity tore his emotional defenses completely to shreds.
"W-Why…" Deicya managed to choke out, his voice cracking, barely audible in the vast darkness. "Why are you… showing me this? What do you want from me?!"
Kazura slowly raised a hand from beneath his black cloak. Dark, ethereal wisps of liquid shadows pooled in his palm, swirling around a tiny, brilliant speck of crimson light.
"The twelve shards fell to the world's strongest nations today," Kazura said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant rumble that shook the domain floor. "They were given to those who already held power. But I did not come for the powerful."
The golden lines of Kazura's power seemed to brand themselves into Deicya's mind.
"I came for the one who has nothing left to lose."
Kazura's golden eyes burned brighter beneath his dark cowl as he looked down at Deicya.
"Tell me, Deicya," Kazura asked, his godly voice echoing through the vast void. "Do you know what that meteor was?"
Deicya swallowed hard, his throat dry as bone. "T-The news… they said it was an extinction-level asteroid…"
Kazura let out a low, echoing rumble that sounded almost like a laugh—cold and ancient.
"Humanity and their naive labels," Kazura said. "That orb was no rock. Those twelve scattered fragments were the God Cores of the 13 Celestial Lights. Powerful divine anchors brought down to your realm to awaken the earth."
Before Deicya could process the revelation, Kazura raised his hand, gesturing toward the swirling black hole high above them.
"And while you stand here trembling before me, time moves differently." Kazura's voice dropped into a terrifyingly calm tone. "Inside this domain, time bends. One minute in my presence… is one entire year on Earth."
Deicya's breath hitched violently. "W-What?!"
"As we speak, a minute has already passed," Kazura continued smoothly. "One year has gone by in your world. And as the second minute ticks away… two years will have passed."
"Two years?!" Deicya's heart slammed against his ribs. Panic flared in his chest. "Wait—stop! My apartment! The city! What about—"
"Look for yourself," Kazura commanded, waving his black-and-gold sleeve.
BZZZT.
The infinite darkness around them warped. The void tore open, replaced by a massive, floating projection of Earth—scrolling through live, terrifying footage of the world two years after the impact.
Deicya gasped as his eyes took in the sights.
The global economy had completely transformed. Humanity had learned to extract the raw, overwhelming Crystal Essence bleeding out of the twelve God Cores. Superpowers like the United States, Japan, and South Korea had rebuilt their nations around these cores. High-tech cities, powered by crystalline energy, rose into the sky. Awakened humans—guarded by the power of the foreign gods—walked the streets like living legends.
Then, the vision shifted.
The camera zoomed into Southeast Asia. Down to the archipelago of the Philippines. Down to Metro Manila.
There was no glowing core here. No miraculous evolution.
While the twelve superpower nations thrived and advanced into a new age, the Philippines had been left in the dust—untouched by the core impacts, forgotten by the world, struggling to adapt in a monster-infested, core-dominated global market.
"The strong grew stronger. The weak were left behind to decay," Kazura murmured, stepping right beside Deicya as the glowing projection reflected off Deicya's pale face. "Your country is drowning, Deicya. And you… you were drowning long before the sky fell."
Deicya shook his head, backing away, his fingers digging into his head. "Why are you showing me this?! I'm just an ordinary guy! I don't care about the world! I couldn't even keep my own family from throwing me out!"
"I am showing you what is, and what can be," Kazura declared, his aura flaring until the floor of the domain vibrated. "I chose you, Deicya. Inherit my power. Accept the System… and accept who you truly are."
"Why me?!" Deicya shouted stubbornly, his voice cracking with desperation. "What do you want from me? Is there a catch? Am I going to die if I take this? What kind of twisted game are you playing?!"
Kazura didn't grow angry. He simply raised his hand, the crimson light in his palm expanding until it enveloped Deicya in a warm, suffocating pressure.
"There are no catches. No obligations," Kazura spoke, his voice softening into an authoritative decree. "Use this power in whatever favor your will dictates. Whether you choose to save, to destroy, to conquer, or simply to survive… the choice is entirely yours."
"Wait! At least tell me what this power actually—"
"Go, Deicya," Kazura interrupted. "Your new reality awaits."
FLASH—
A blinding, violent surge of white light consumed Deicya's entire vision.
The void vanished. The swirling black hole shattered. The weightless pressure dissolved into thin air.
GASP!
Deicya slammed back into physical reality, his lungs heaving as if he had just broken through the surface of deep water. He stumbled forward, grabbing onto a concrete pillar to steady himself.
The smell of ozone, rust, and heavy dust hit his nostrils.
He was standing in the exact same spot where he had disappeared—right in front of his apartment building in Quezon City.
But as his vision cleared, his heart dropped.
The air in the room felt suffocatingly still.
There were no sprawling alien cities on the horizon. No high-tech foreign spires towering over Metro Manila. Outside his square window, the streets of Quezon City looked almost exactly as he had left them—the same low-rise buildings, the same rusted iron gates, the same cracked asphalt.
Except… the life was gone.
It was rotten.
A deep, spiderwebbing crack ran straight through the concrete wall of his apartment, splitting the painted plaster in half. Dust sifted down from the ceiling in silent, steady trickles, piling onto the floorboards. The entire building groaned beneath his feet, a low, ominous creak echoing through the hollow structure like a dying beast.
It was on the verge of collapsing.
Deicya took a step back, his eyes darting across his cramped unit. Dust covered his bed, his small table, and the cold stove.
Nobody was here. No neighbors shouting downstairs. No hum of passing jeepneys. Just an oppressive, hollow abandonment.
'I can't stay here,' he realized, a knot tightening in his chest. 'It's going to cave in.'
He had nowhere to go. No plan. No destination. But sitting in this rotting tomb was suicide.
Deicya turned and pushed through his apartment door, descending the trembling, cracked staircase into the quiet street below.
The moment his feet hit the pavement outside, the silence shattered into a strange, heavy pressure.
People were there.
A few scattered pedestrians—scavengers, locals lingering in the dying neighborhood—were walking along the sidewalk. But the second Deicya stepped into the open, their footsteps stalled.
Eyes locked onto him.
An uncomfortable heat flushed up Deicya's neck. He looked down, averting his gaze, trying to keep his head low like he had done his entire life.
Yet, as he walked, the stares only intensified.
People stopped dead in their tracks, turning their heads completely as he passed. Group conversations abruptly died out. Whispers rippled through the ambient noise, sharp and suspicious.
'What is wrong with these people?' Deicya's pulse quickened. 'Why are they all looking at me?!'
He pulled his arms close to his sides, trying to make himself smaller, but a sharp, constricting ache pulled across his chest and shoulders.
His shirt was suffocating him.
The cheap cotton fabric dug painfully into his armpits. The sleeves, which used to hang loosely over his wrists, were pulled taut against his forearms, straining at the seams. His jeans felt impossibly tight around his thighs, binding his legs with every step he took.
Everything felt wrong. Uncomfortable. Restricted.
His center of gravity had shifted. The world felt slightly lower than it used to be. The horizon sat at a completely different angle.
'What… what happened to my clothes?'
Panic clawed at his throat. He needed a mirror. He needed to look at himself.
Up ahead, a dark, dusty sedan sat parked along the curb, its side window dark enough to cast a clear reflection.
Deicya quickened his pace, stepping up to the vehicle. He leaned in, peering into the tinted glass.
He froze.
His breath caught in his throat, dying before it could reach his lungs.
"What…"
The reflection looking back at him was not Deicya Deleor.
It couldn't be.
The pale, frail, scrawny twenty-two-year-old who had hidden in the shadows of Metro Manila was completely gone.
In his place stood a towering, imposing figure. He had grown visibly taller—his broad shoulders stretching the seams of his old shirt to their absolute limit. His chest was thick and defined, filling out the fabric until it clung to him like armor. The weak, slouched posture he had carried for years had been forcibly straightened, replaced by an innate, broad-framed physique that radiated an undeniable, quiet weight.
Even his face had changed. The soft, sunken features of a starved, exhausted youth had hardened into a sharp, carved jawline, paired with eyes that burned with a faint, dangerous clarity beneath his dark hair.
He looked less like a human who had survived a collapse, and more like a predator stepping out of the dark.
Deicya lifted a trembling hand, touching his own jawline in the reflection.
The hand in the mirror moved in perfect sync.
As he stared at his transformed body, Kazura's heavy, resonant voice echoed back from the depths of his memory—the terrifying revelation the god had shown him within the projection:
'The strong grew stronger. The weak were left behind to decay… Your country is drowning, Deicya.'
The memory hit him with brutal clarity. The twelve shards had fallen upon the world's greatest superpowers, leaving those titans to hoard divine power and thrive. But the Philippines? The Philippines had been completely bypassed by the meteor event. No divine core had landed here. No miracle had come to save them. While the rest of the world evolved, his home was left in the dust—forgotten, impoverished, and rotting away.
And now, stepping back into this left-behind country, he was no longer the weak victim it had crushed.
The god's parting command rang through his skull once more:
'—Accept who you truly are.'
Deicya lowered his hand from the glass, his fingers curling into tight, heavy fists that felt dense enough to shatter concrete.
He hadn't just survived the Void. He had been entirely remade from the domain of Kazura.
Standing on the cracked pavement of Quezon City, Deicya reached into his back pocket. His fingers brushed against his worn leather wallet. He pulled it out, flipping it open with trembling fingers.
Inside, his driver's license stared back at him—a picture of a pale, skinny twenty-two-year-old with slouched shoulders. Looking at the card, then down at his own thick, broad arms, felt like looking at a stranger's corpse.
Beside the ID sat three crisp, blue one-thousand-peso bills. Three thousand pesos. His entire life savings before everything went dark.
'I need clothes,' Deicya thought, adjusting his posture as the seams of his tight shirt dug uncomfortably into his shoulders. 'I need to get out of this neighborhood and figure out what's happening.'
Keeping his head low—a habit his towering new frame made almost impossible—he began to walk.
The walk toward the nearby public market felt surreal. The streets were strangely barren. The usual chaos of jeepneys, tricycle drivers shouting for passengers, and street vendors was gone. In their place were small, quiet clusters of people whispering on corners, carrying heavy canvas sacks, eyeing him with sharp, guarded suspicion as he passed.
Everything looked worn down. Unmaintained. Stagnant.
When he finally reached the crowded edges of the wet market, the smell of damp earth and raw meat filled the air. He spotted a modest clothing stall near the alley entrance, draped with simple t-shirts and heavy-duty cargo pants.
Relief washed over him. He stepped up to the stall, picking out a simple, oversized plain black shirt and a pair of dark pants that looked like they might actually fit his broad frame.
"Hello Miss," Deicya said, his deep, newly resonant voice startling the middle-aged vendor behind the rack. He pulled one of his crisp thousand-peso bills from his wallet and laid it neatly on the wooden counter. "Just these two, please."
The vendor stopped wiping down her counter. She looked at the blue paper bill, then slowly looked up at Deicya.
For two agonizing seconds, the stall was dead silent.
Then, the woman burst into a harsh, loud laugh.
"What is this?" She scoffed, picking up the thousand-peso bill between two fingers as if it were a dirty leaf. She held it up to the surrounding vendors, who turned and began to chuckle under their breath. "A thousand pesos? Boy, what rock did you crawl out from under?"
Deicya's brow furrowed. "That's… that's a thousand pesos. The shirt and pants shouldn't even be five hundred."
"Pesos?" The woman's smile vanished, replaced by a cold, disgusted sneer. She tossed the bill back into Deicya's chest. "You think you're funny, big guy? Trying to scam me with useless colored paper? The banks died two years ago!"
She slammed her hand against a wooden box on her counter, revealing a small pile of sealed canned goods, batteries, and a tiny glass vial filled with glowing, amber dust.
"You want clothes? Bring me canned meat, a pack of antibiotics, or half a gram of Core Essence," she barked, waving him off like a stray dog. "Get out of here before I call the guard!"
Deicya stood frozen in the middle of the crowded market path. The surrounding shoppers stared at him, whispering and pointing at the tall, broad man who didn't even know paper money was worthless.
His heart hammered against his ribs. The thousand-peso bill fluttered from his fingers, landing face-up in a puddle of muddy water near his shoes.
Three thousand pesos. Useless paper.
He had no food. No goods. No trade value.
Standing in the middle of a world that had moved on without him, Deicya Deleor realized the terrifying truth:
He wasn't just transformed. He was completely broke, helpless, and starving in a society where money no longer existed.