At first, there was only silence.
Not the kind filled with stillness or peace. No—it was the silence of absence, of a void so complete that sound, thought, and self had no meaning.
Arcod existed within that silence. Not floating. Not standing. Simply existing—a presence suspended in the formless dark. He was not alone, but there was no company. He was not cold, but there was no warmth.
He simply was.
And then, a ripple.
It wasn't a sound, nor a signal—just a shift in law. A summons written not in words but in causality. In balance. Something had gone wrong in the infinite structure of the realms.
Something had tilted the scales.
And Arcod moved.
Not through space, but through function. One moment he was still, and the next, he was there—where the imbalance dwelled.
A world of marble towers and starlit seas spun slowly beneath his gaze. Mortals and celestials alike walked its surface, their faces turned upward, chanting ancient syllables. They wore robes lined in spirit threads, eyes glowing with the arrogance of awakening.
Their purpose was clear: Ascension.
Not earned, not understood—seized. They had opened a gateway through soul sacrifice and void manipulation, planning to cross into forbidden domains.
Arcod did not judge them cruelly.
He did not judge them at all.
He acted.
The clouds above their ritual site blackened, then burned. Lightning poured down—not as streaks, but as nets of divine calculation. With every strike, a life was unmade—not simply killed, but removed from all records of cause and effect. Erased.
A single elder dared to scream, reaching out with hands glowing with unstable light.
"Mercy!" he cried. "We were only—"
A final pulse silenced him. His soul froze mid-sentence, unraveled, and vanished like vapor on ice.
Then all was still.
The gateway collapsed, the imbalance corrected. Balance restored.
And Arcod... was gone again.
No applause. No sorrow. No contemplation.
He returned to the void, waiting for the next ripple.
This was his life now.
Or rather, his function.
Time passed in strange shapes. Centuries, then millennia. Planes blossomed and withered. Civilizations rose and fell not because of his will, but because of their own. Only when their collapse threatened the fabric of other worlds did he intervene.
And when he did, the results were always the same: silence, annihilation, restoration.
He became a ghost story in some cultures, a deity in others. Priests burned sacrifices in his name. Cults tried to lure him with distorted rituals. Once, an entire world built a monolithic statue of his form—even though none had ever seen it and lived.
The truth was: he had no form.
When he descended, he was fire, or wind, or darkness. Sometimes a thought, sometimes a celestial body that passed silently across the sky.
He was the unmaking of corruption.
He was the hand of balance.
And yet...
In the moments between his functions, when no realm cried out, when the scales held still—he searched.
Not outside, but within.
There was something still there, just beneath the machinery of judgment. Something small. Fragile.
A shard.
It had once lived inside his mind. Back when he was still a man. A student. A CEO. A human being.
He couldn't remember his name—not always—but he remembered the shard. A piece of thought lodged in his consciousness. A kind of clarity. A cheat code for memory. It had helped him survive, thrive, ascend.
And then it had vanished, launching him into this cold, inescapable destiny.
Still... it had to be there.
He reached for it again and again. Every few centuries. Every few hundred executions. Like a whisper repeating a forgotten word.
Nothing.
Just emptiness. Static.
He should've stopped trying. But he didn't. He couldn't. Even though he no longer felt pain or longing, the act of reaching had become a part of his cycle—just like judgment, just like silence.
He didn't question why.
Until it answered.
Two thousand years since his awakening. He was watching a spiral-shaped plane realign itself after a failed invasion when the ripple didn't come from outside.
It came from within.
A flicker.
A tremble.
Then, a pulse—like a drop of warmth in an endless sea of cold.
The shard.
It was there.
His attention narrowed. He didn't know how he was doing it. He didn't remember how. But he reached deeper. Past layers of duty. Past frameworks of balance. Past everything the Heavens had sealed around him.
And then...
Ten words.
That was all it gave.
But it was enough.
Ten words, sharp and silent, cut through the cold:
"Keep only what must not be lost. Everything else fades."
His essence froze—not in fear or confusion, but in recognition.
It was his thought. His words. From long ago. Preserved somehow, buried beneath layers of divine programming. He hadn't just remembered it. He had left it for himself.
That was the moment Arcod learned he could keep something.
Not memories. Not feelings. But knowledge—ten words at a time.
Every two thousand years, if he reached deep enough, the shard would give him this offering. But only ten. No more. No less.
And so, a new cycle began.
For every two millennia of service, ten words were etched into the walls of his mind. Not in ink or stone, but in thought. Crystalline and immutable.
Each time, he chose carefully.
"You were Arcod once. Do not forget the shape."
"Emotion is gone, but choice remains."
"The shard returns. Do not exceed ten."
"Balance is not justice. The Will is not all."
"Someone is watching."
Even if he didn't understand some of the words when he recorded them, he trusted that the version of him who had written them did. That was enough.
He still judged. Still erased. Still corrected.
But now he did it with a sliver of self.
Not enough to rebel.
Not enough to change.
Just enough to remember.
And that was dangerous enough.