It's warm.
The light hurts my eyes — these stolen eyes — as I walk outside the temple.
Millennia. Millennia buried in stone, silenced by enchantments, forgotten by cowards who pretend to rule in the name of a God they themselves murdered.
Now I hear cars.
Cars. "What a ridiculous sound for something that crawls."
There's a smell of plastic. Too many lights. Loud, hollow voices.
The world... has rotted.
...
The archaeologist's clothes irritate me. Too loose, too human. So is the body: weak, limited, breathing wrong. Yet — functional. I've worn worse.
A nearby town. A tourist village, perhaps. Wooden walls, glass boxes filled with colorful candy and people. Too many people. Rushing without purpose.
I see a girl taking a selfie in front of a shrine.
"Pathetic."
She's laughing. Alone.
I get close. Very close.
She looks at me and hesitates. There's something in me her body feels. Something primal, ancestral. The memory of the end. She tries to smile.
"Sir… are you okay?"
My eyes trace her expression. I see fear and curiosity dancing like worms under her skin. The will to live. The craving to be seen.
I bring my lips to her ear and whisper:
"Your face is ugly. Not even the Void wants it."
She stumbles back as if pushed. Falls. Others glance over, but I'm already gone.
...
A square. Children. A clown. Music.
The sound assaults me. The color insults me.
I pass a group of teenagers. One of them stares at me. The typical alpha youth, with an air of urban royalty.
"Yo, old man, you lost?"
I stop.
I stare deep. He tries to hold my gaze.
"You look like the kind of worm who's never had to swallow his own teeth," I say, smiling.
"You got a problem?"
He steps closer.
Mistake. He breathes in my aura.
His body trembles. Throat locks. Knees buckle.
"You... you..."
"Do you know what you felt, worm?" I murmur, crouching near him. "That was just... absence. A fragment. Like smelling the trail of something that no longer exists."
He pisses himself.
And I laugh.
...
A modern temple. Cameras. A "priest" preaching via livestream.
I enter. No one stops me. I'm invisible to their logic.
The priest speaks of faith. Of light. Of forgiveness.
"Hypocrite." My voice echoes to myself alone.
I sit in the last row. A crucifix above the altar.
I observe the symbol. The crucified's pose. The expression.
"Suffering... as a form of glory? What a cosmic joke."
With every word the priest speaks, my boredom grows. The congregation nods like cattle in trance.
I decide to act.
I raise my hand. Snap my fingers.
The mic cuts out. The lights flicker. The crucifix… falls. Backward.
People scream. He tries to calm them.
Then, I use 0.1%.
A word. A syllable.
"Shh."
And sound vanishes.
For three seconds, the church falls silent.
Not from reverence.
But because **the Void** answered.
...
I walk under the gray sky. The archaeologist's body begins to fail. Signs are showing: tremors, hearing loss, reddened eyes. This body wasn't made for me.
But that doesn't matter.
"Because they noticed me."
I pass a billboard. An ad for spiritual energy. A warrior school.
Familiar faces. The face of the bastard son of God. Aureon'el.
He's everywhere. His symbol, his presence, his damned artificial harmony.
"You fear me that much, throne-born? That you have to plaster your face on every wall?"
I place a hand over my chest.
I feel it.
The seal is still there. Heavy. But... something shifted.
Today. With these gestures. With these crimes.
**The expression has grown.**
From 0.1% to something more. Still imperceptible, maybe. But **my concept is reacting.**
Things around me grow... quieter.
The world feels it.
The Void remembers me.
...
And at the end of the day, standing before the mirror of a public restroom, I see the archaeologist's face. Sweaty, fragile, tense.
I lean closer to the cracked glass.
"They forgot me."
I grin.
"But I'm back, worms."
And every step I take...
every glance I cast...
is another nail.
Another...
**Among the worms.**