My mind, which had been reeling in the featureless void, snapped into focus. Fear was a cold spike in my gut, but the voice wasn't immediately hostile. It was... conversational. Terribly, terrifyingly conversational.
"Who... what are you?" I managed to project the thought, as I still had no mouth to speak with.
The twin vortexes of lightning seemed to swirl with amusement. "Who I am is a long and rather violent story. For now, let's just say I am the long-term, involuntary tenant of this little pocket dimension you've stumbled into. As for what I am... well, your ancestors used to call me Voltaris. The Storm God. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
A god. A god was trapped inside my F-Rank gift. The idea was so ludicrous, so utterly insane, that my fear was momentarily replaced by sheer disbelief.
"A god? My gift is F-Rank. The weakest in existence. It can barely make a spark."
A sound like a thousand sheets of metal tearing at once filled the void, a sound that I somehow interpreted as a dry, sarcastic laugh.
"Oh, you mortals and your little letters. F-Rank? Boy, that's not a measure of its power. That's the measure of the seal they put on me. It's the thickest, most pathetic, energy-choking magical cage they could devise. Your precious Assessment Orb didn't see a 'weak gift.' It saw a prison so dense it barely registered as having a pulse. Congratulations, you've been blessed with the divine equivalent of a maximum-security black site."
The pieces clicked into place with dizzying speed. My gift wasn't weak. It was suppressed. It was a cage holding... this.
"So," the voice of Voltaris continued, its tone shifting, becoming sharper, more focused. "Here we are. You, a boy with nothing. Me, a god with no freedom. I sense your despair, your rage. It's quite potent. A delicious little appetizer. You want to prove them wrong, don't you? You want to make the girl who scorned you regret the day she was born. You want power."
"Yes," I thought, the single word filled with all the venom and desperation I felt.
The lightning eyes seemed to narrow, to bore directly into my soul. "Then we have a deal to make, little mortal. You are the key to my prison. Your will, your energy, can slowly chip away at this seal from the outside. In return, every piece of the seal you break, I will feed the power that leaks out directly to you. You will become my vessel, my agent in the outside world. You help me get free, and I will give you the strength to burn your enemies to ash and stand at the pinnacle of your world."
He paused, letting the offer hang in the void. Power. Real power. The power to change my fate. The power to make them all see. What choice did I have? Return to my life as a Zero, or make a pact with the entity trapped inside me?
It wasn't a choice at all.
"I accept."
"Excellent," Voltaris rumbled, a note of satisfaction in his voice. "Now, wake up. We have work to do."
The world snapped back into place. I was sitting on my bed, gasping for air, my body drenched in sweat. The darkness of my room was no longer empty. The air crackled with a faint, unseen energy. And deep within my mind, I could feel it. A slumbering, ancient consciousness, now linked to my own. I was not alone anymore.