the yearner
After losing his parents to a hidden conspiracy, fifteen-year-old Daniel Ceasar dies with a single wish echoing in his mind: the power to protect what he loves… and the freedom to never be powerless again.
He awakens in a world unlike any other — a solitary celestial body with the radius of a star. Its horizon curves too slowly for the eye to notice, its gravity shifts with depth, and its sky glows with constant plasma auroras drawn by magnetic storms beneath the crust. Day and night do not exist in cycles but in gradients of radiation and shadow. Matter behaves almost normally, yet pressure, heat transfer, and energy flow follow unfamiliar rules shaped by immense scale. Mountains rise thousands of kilometers high yet remain standing under altered structural physics. Oceans are shallow but stretch endlessly, pulled by tidal forces from unseen masses beyond the sky. It is a world balanced at the edge of collapse — stable only because something is holding its laws together.
That “something” calls itself a god.
The entity is erratic, curious, and unsettlingly human in its loneliness. It offers Daniel a bargain: become its vessel — a living interface through which it may experience existence — and in return he will gain the strength to shape his environment, resist the crushing forces of this star-sized world, and perhaps uncover truths beyond death itself.
Daniel soon learns he is not alone. Other gods are participating in a silent competition, each cultivating a chosen vessel within this impossible world. They observe, test, and interfere according to motives no human mind can fully grasp. No one knows what a god ultimately seeks. Survival? Creation? Understanding? Entertainment? Even the gods themselves may not know.
As Daniel adapts to altered gravity fields, energy-dense ecosystems, and physics that reward resilience over fragility, grief evolves into purpose. He longs for the warmth of family, for friendships he dares not fully trust, and for power strong enough to shield others from the fate that claimed his parents. Yet every connection risks manipulation — by humans, by rivals, or by the god that chose him.
In a universe where emotion becomes force and survival reshapes identity, Daniel must decide whether he is a grieving boy given power… or a vessel being shaped into something no longer human.
And if the gods are competing to create the “best” vessel —
the only question that matters is:
Best for what?
