Eons.
I have watched for eons. From the silent, star-dusted expanse of My own creation, I observed. I saw the first spark of life, the hesitant crawl from primordial ooze, the birth of consciousness, the rise of civilizations. My heart, if a being like Me could be said to possess one in the mortal sense, had once swelled with a quiet, pervasive pride.
That pride curdled into ash long ago.
Arrogance. Cruelty. Greed. Depravity. The litany of their sins stretched longer than the lifespan of galaxies. They took My gifts – intellect, free will, the very world I spun for them – and twisted them into instruments of self-destruction and mutual torment. Temples were built in My name, their foundations soaked in the blood of the innocent. Prayers were offered, their words hollow echoes in the face of their actions.
I gave them paradise. They built hells, countless iterations of them, upon its sacred grounds.
Enough.
The decision, when it finally coalesced from the cold, simmering rage that had become My constant companion, was absolute. A silent decree, unheard by any save Myself, yet more potent than a thousand supernovas. I would not unmake them from afar. No, that was too clean, too distant. They needed to see. To feel. To understand the depth of their transgression through the vessel of their own kind.
And so, I descended.
The sensation was… jarring. Imagine an ocean being forced into a thimble. That was My consciousness, My infinite being, compressed into this… thing. This frail, pathetic shell of flesh and bone. Weak. So utterly, contemptibly weak. My senses, once capable of perceiving the vibrations of reality itself, were now dulled, limited to the crude inputs of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste.
And the smells… oh, the smells. This was My first true welcome to their world, not as an aloof Creator, but as a participant. I lay on something damp and uneven. The stench of excrement, rot, unwashed bodies, and a cloying, sweetish odor I later identified as cheap, stupefying narcotics, assaulted My new, pathetically human nostrils. My vision swam. Grimy, leaning shacks made of scrap wood and rusted metal pressed in on all sides, forming a narrow, mud-choked alley. The sky, a sliver visible above, was the color of a day-old bruise.
The Pit. That's what they called this place, I'd learn. Apt.
A groan escaped My lips, a sound of pure physical discomfort. My body ached. A throbbing pain resonated from My left leg, a dull fire that spoke of recent, brutal injury. I tried to sit up, a monumental effort. My limbs felt like lead, unresponsive to My will – a will that could once rearrange nebulae. The irony was a bitter taste on My tongue, as real as the grime I could feel caking My skin.
"Lookie here, Gorm," a guttural voice slurred nearby. "The trash is still breathing."
Heavy footsteps squelched in the mud. Two figures loomed over Me, silhouettes against the dim light. Their stench preceded them – stale sweat, cheap alcohol, and something akin to rancid meat. One was bulky, a mountain of ill-distributed flesh. The other, Gorm, was leaner, weaselly, with eyes that darted like cornered rats.
"Thought we finished 'im good," Gorm rasped, prodding My injured leg with a rotten boot. A flare of agony shot through Me, so intense it almost made My borrowed consciousness flicker. Almost. Instead, something else stirred. Something cold, ancient, and utterly alien to this frail form.
"Still got that fancy ring, eh?" the bulky one, whose name I didn't care to learn, grunted, his gaze fixing on My right hand. Ah, yes. A minor concession to My descent – a simple, unadorned band, a focal point, a reminder. To them, it probably looked like an easy pawn.
He reached down, his grimy fingers aiming for My hand.
In that instant, as his foul breath washed over Me, as the pain from My leg screamed, as the accumulated disgust of millennia reached a flashpoint within this pathetic shell, something shifted. It wasn't a conscious act of power – this body was incapable of channeling even a fraction of what I was. No, it was… a resonance. A whisper of the abyss.
My eyes, I think, must have changed.
The bulky thug froze, his hand hovering inches from Mine. His piggish eyes widened, a flicker of something primal – fear – dawning in their murky depths. Gorm, too, took an involuntary step back, his weaselly face contorting.
"Wha… what's with his eyes?" he stammered, his voice losing its earlier confidence.
I said nothing. This body was too weak to even form a proper snarl. But the intent… oh, the intent was there. The silent, screaming judgment of a Creator pushed beyond endurance. A pressure, imperceptible to most, yet crushing to those attuned to the basest instincts of predator and prey, began to emanate from Me. It was the faintest echo of My true presence, but in this sewer of a slum, to these dregs, it was like staring into the sun.
The bulky one whimpered, a sound utterly incongruous with his size. He scrambled back, falling on his ample backside in the mud. Gorm just stared, transfixed, his jaw slack.
I pushed myself up further, ignoring the fire in My leg. The movement was clumsy, weak, yet they watched it as if I were a primordial beast rising from a millennia-long slumber.
My gaze settled on Gorm. He was the one who had prodded My pain. He was the one whose eyes held that particular brand of malicious enjoyment that I had come to despise above almost all else.
A thought, cold and clear, formed in My mind, the first edict of My new existence: Sinners will be judged. And the judgment will be… personal.
The air around Me grew a fraction colder. The dim light seemed to dim further, absorbed by an unseen hunger. This body was weak, yes. But the Fury it now housed was anything but.
This slum, this world, was about to learn that.
One brutal lesson at a time.