The world was broken.
The evidence glowed on the phone screen, a cold, hard fact lodged behind Deo's ribs. Every scroll brought more. Acivil war in Zambezi. A photograph of a child soldier, small hands struggling with a rusted rifle too large to hold. Factory fires in Dhaka, charred skeletons of buildings clawing at a smog-choked sky. A plague slinking through the favelas of Rio. Famine. Corruption.
Each headline was a weight, another leaden coin of sorrow sinking into his gut.
Cross-legged on a worn Persian rug, the phone sat like a cold, black slab in his hand. A thumb moved with a numb, mechanical rhythm, scrolling through the endless feed of human misery.
At 181 cm, with dark skin that drank the afternoon light and sharp cheekbones that carved intensity into his face, he was impossible to ignore. But the eyes held people deep, watchful, seeing the cracks in the world's painted facade.
A restless fire burned behind those eyes, a ferocious, helpless yearning to reach into the universe's core and reforge it.
"Fuck… this world is a mess." The whisper was absorbed by the room's silent hunger.
A gaze turned upward, almost against its own will. A silent challenge coalesced, directed at the uncaring ceiling. If there really is a creator… why is this so goddamn messed up? Why all this meaningless suffering? I could do a better job running this fucked-up shit.
The room held its breath. The only sound was the city's faint hum, a distant mechanical sigh.
Ping.
Eyes snapped to the phone. No number. No sender. Just a single line of text: Isaiah 55:8.
"WTF is this…?" A blink. A brain scrambling for a rational anchor. A spam text? A glitch? A Bible verse, just out of nowhere.
A finger tapped the screen. As if alive, a second line typed itself beneath the first: "Do you truly think you can do a better job?"
Breath hitched. A cold knot seized his chest. This was no software update.
Air shuddered from his lungs. "Yeah… yeah, I fucking can!" A defiant scream into the void. "Yes!"
Silence. Then, the air thickened, vibrating with a sub-audible hum that thrummed against his ribs. Stripes of sunlight on the wall warped into impossible angles. The rug beneath him rippled like the skin of a great beast.
Blood drained from his face. Oh fuck… I'm about to die.
The world shifted. Not a sound or a light, but a fundamental recalibration of reality. A Presence filled the room not a shape, but an all-encompassing pressure of immense warmth and infinite vastness.
"Deo." The voice was in his mind and bones. "You have challenged me. You have claimed you can do better."
Terror and exhilaration clawed at his throat. "Yes… I did," a whisper, trembling yet defiant.
"Then so be it." A cosmic decree. "I shall grant you my authority. The mantle is yours for 300 days."
A transparent, blue screen materialized in the air. « Divine System Initializing » « ERROR: Host Vessel Compatibility: 0% » « Implementing gradual integration protocol.»
"But know this," the Voice continued, "a human vessel cannot inherit my totality at once. Your perception will soon stretch across the tapestry of human history. These 300 days will encompass 300,000 years of human time. Guide it. Shape it. Heal its wounds. Fail, and all will be annihilated."
Raw, overwhelming power blasted through him. The planet spun. The tides pulled. Time itself became a river to stand beside. The infinite threads of every life, every decision, shimmered a beautiful, terrifying kaleidoscope of cause and effect.
As quickly as it arrived, the infinite vision snapped shut, leaving a gasping man on an apartment floor. Everything looked normal. But it wasn't.
A new notification glowed on the blue screen: « System Notification: Passive Divine Aura is active. Probability manipulation aligned to user's subconscious is ongoing. »
"What the hell is that?" The question hung in the empty room. "This 'Passive Aura'?"
« Query recognized, » intoned a genderless, mechanical voice in his mind. « Passive Divine Aura is an autonomic function. It maintains your vessel's stability by aligning local probability fields with your subconscious desires. »
"My subconscious desires?" A chill crawled down his spine. "So I'm warping reality just by existing?"
« Affirmative. The effect diminishes with control and distance. »
The screen faded. Focus turned to the dying spider plant on the windowsill. A simple, fierce will for it to be whole.
Instantly, brown leaves turned a lustrous emerald. Limp stems stiffened. Tiny white buds swelled and burst into star-shaped flowers, their sweet, cloying perfume flooding the room.
Elated, senses cast outward. A sparrow nudged from a collision course. A falling wrench slowed, clattering harmlessly at a pedestrian's feet. It was working!
But then the ripples appeared. The woman who avoided the wrench missed her train. Because of that, she wasn't there to mediate an argument, subtly altering a relationship years into the future. A single act of salvation had created a cascade of tiny alterations.
Changes closer to home, too. The barista held a gaze a second too long. A forgotten envelope contained a $500,000 check. These weren't conscious commands. The power was reading deepest wants and warping reality to fulfill them.
"I'm not a god yet," a whisper to the empty room, cold fear coiling in his gut. "I'm a hazard."
Emboldened and terrified, gaze turned to a village dying of famine in the Sahel. Will focused, replenishing the soil, summoning water, rewriting the genetic code of the blight.
Overnight, the desert turned green. The children grew strong. Laughter returned. A heart swelled with pride. I did it. I saved them.
Perception expanded, checking the threads of cause and effect. Pride curdled into horror. The village's miracle broke the local economy. Salt merchants went bankrupt. Aid was pulled from a neighboring region. A local warlord saw the new wealth and moved in with his soldiers.
A famine solved had created a war.
"Even small acts…" a breath, reeling. "The consequences… I can't see them all."
And on pulling back, a new sensation. The manipulation had created a friction in the fabric of the real. A sound. And something had heard. Something old, and hungry, and cruel. A minor god of dust and drought. Its attention brushed against his mind a sensation like cold scales and possessive hunger.
A snap back to the apartment, a heart pounding against its cage. Noticed.
For three days, nothing. A mouse hiding from a hawk. On the fourth day, the helplessness returned. Another try. Carefully.
Focus on a struggling street artist in his own city. Let one person see his art. Just one.
A well-dressed woman paused, captivated. A painting bought. A perfect, tiny miracle.
And the moment it was done, the cold attention returned. But this time, not just noticing. It had been waiting. It had traced the ripple back to its source.
« Alert: Foreign Divine Entity has detected user's spatial signature. »
The presence was no longer in the Sahel. It was here. In Havensbrook. A psychic stench of decay, like a tomb opened after centuries, seeped through the walls. Found.
A floorboard creaked in the hallway outside the door. This creak was different. Deliberate. Heavy.
A freeze. Blood turning to ice.
Another creak. Right outside the door. A presence felt there an embodiment of thirst and despair.
It had come for the new, mortal god.
The cheap brass doorknob jerked once, then began to turn with a gritty, metallic shriek.
« SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: 0.1% COMPLETE » « HOST VITAL SIGNS: CRITICAL » «… »