Darkness.
Not the silence of night, but the weight of nothingness—thicker than tar, heavier than stone. When Kai opened his eyes, there was no ground beneath him, no sky above him. He drifted in a void without horizon, a place that was not place, a wound carved into the fabric of being.
And then he saw it.
A throne.
Colossal, carved from bones so vast they seemed to be mountains, polished until they gleamed like ivory under a light that did not exist. And upon that throne sat a giant.
At first, Kai thought it was another god, some unknown entity watching him with indifferent judgment. But the longer he stared, the colder his blood ran. For the giant bore his face.
It was him.
Not merely similar, not a resemblance—it was his body, stretched to titanic scale, every scar, every contour of bone and flesh, every faint shadow of expression mirrored with monstrous precision. The giant's chest rose and fell in time with his own ragged breath, though slower, heavier, as if the world itself exhaled through it.
Kai's thoughts twisted. He wanted to deny it, scream against it, but the truth seeped in like venom.
This was no accident.
The gods, with their immeasurable power, had not chosen him by chance. They had shaped him, molded him, hollowed him into a vessel. His flesh had been the altar, his blood the ink, his soul the cage. The blades, the chains, the sacrifice—it had never been about him. It had always been about what the gods needed him to hold.
They sealed something within me.
And yet… he still existed. Whether this was his soul, or a dream, or a shred of self lost in the abyss, he did not know. But he could feel it: he was alive. Perhaps not in body, perhaps not in truth, but alive enough to suffer.
A tremor passed through the void. The giant on the throne did not move, but the air itself shifted, thickening into a suffocating weight. And then—
A presence appeared.
Kai turned, and his eyes widened in horror.
The god stood before him.
But to call it a god was an insult, a reduction, like naming the sun a candle. It was a being both infinite and confined, a vastness that could fit within the hollow of a hand yet stretched beyond the edges of creation. Each glance broke it anew, for it shifted ceaselessly: at once a mountain of flesh and a single drop of blood, a thousand faces screaming and a silence so absolute it devoured thought.
Its form writhed in endless change. One instant it grew, swollen with life, birthing galaxies in its breath. The next it rotted, collapsing into pus and bone, leaking decay into the void. Then it was reborn, radiant and young, only to wither again. It was birth and death, rot and bloom, yet somehow unchanged, eternal, consistent in its very contradiction.
To behold it was to feel the mind unravel. Kai's thoughts split in a dozen directions, each chasing fragments of what it might be. Too large to comprehend. Too small to grasp. Too constant to shift. Too changing to remain. His soul buckled, and yet—he understood.
The god's face—if it could be called a face—shifted as it leaned close. A smile. A frown. Both, and neither. Kai's vision swam as every possible expression overlapped in the same instant. What pronoun could hold such a being? He? She? They? The god was beyond such trivial cages. It simply was.
And then it spoke.
Not in words.
Its voice tore across existence as a chorus of rupturing flesh and grinding bone, like the sound of veins bursting in unison, like hearts collapsing under infinite weight. It was thunder made wet, storms of blood echoing through the marrow of creation. The sound did not strike his ears—it crawled through his veins, gnawed his bones, sank talons into the meat of his soul.
It was not cruelty. It was enormity. A voice too vast for mortal bodies to endure.
Kai's mouth split with blood. His ears wept scarlet tears. His chest heaved as clots rose into his throat, choking him. The agony was not punishment; it was simply what it meant to hear the divine.
And yet—he understood.
The words, buried beneath gore and thunder, carved themselves into him. They were not language, but truth, brutal and unyielding. He understood, even as his body convulsed and his soul splintered.
And for the first time, Kai realized—
he was not merely chained by fate.
He was chosen to be its vessel.
Kai's soul trembled.
The weight of the god's voice, that chorus of ruptured flesh and thunderous bone, tore at him. His essence buckled under it, unraveling thread by thread. The vastness was too much—the infinite contradictions, the unbearable truth, the language of blood and agony that was not meant for any mortal ear.
He felt himself collapsing, dissolving into nothing. He would scatter across the void, forgotten, erased. Perhaps that was mercy.
And then—
it stopped.
Something like a hand, though not a hand, reached into the tatters of his soul and pulled the fragments together. He felt himself reformed, stitched anew, his shape remade not by his will, but by the god's indulgence.
The unbearable vastness shifted. The endless contradictions compressed. The being that could not be comprehended folded itself down into a shape his eyes could bear.
A man.
Or at least, something wearing the likeness of one.
The god now sat upon the void's throne in the body of a human—tall, ageless, radiant with a quiet gravity. Its skin shimmered faintly as though carved from twilight, and its eyes—those eyes—glowed with a molten gold that pierced straight through Kai, peeling him open to the core.
When it spoke this time, the words were not thunder and gore. They were human. And yet, even in that gentler tongue, Kai could hear the infinity folded behind each syllable.
"Hello, mortal. I suppose you are my next vessel."
The voice was calm, almost casual, like an old friend greeting him in passing. But Kai's chest tightened with dread, for he could feel the weight of eternity behind that calm.
The god tilted its head, studying him as one might study an insect that refused to die.
"How strange. Your soul still lingers. Still whole. Not fleeing to the spirit world as it should have. Not breaking. Not surrendering."
Its gaze deepened. Those golden eyes burned brighter, until Kai swore he could see his own soul reflected within them. His own essence, standing before the god, naked and trembling.
And then, impossibly, he realized—it was his soul.
The god was not merely looking into him. It had drawn his soul outside his body, suspended it like a jewel in its hand.
The avatar leaned back, sighing as though weary of infinity. A smile tugged at its lips, strangely human.
"Remarkable. You are the first bearer of my gift who has not succumbed to corruption."
Kai's mouth opened, but no words came.
The god continued, voice soft yet heavy with the echo of endless ages.
"Every vessel before you crumbled. Their souls were twisted into ash, their bodies consumed until nothing remained but screaming husks. But you…"
The golden eyes narrowed, as if amused.
"You endure."
The avatar's smile deepened, carrying something almost childlike.
"You know… I am a little lonely here. Alone, in this hollow throne, this endless prison."
Then, without warning, a sound split the void.
Not words. Not thunder. Something deeper.
A vibration that could tear apart stars, unravel galaxies, annihilate creation itself. The void shivered. The giant-throne cracked. Reality itself recoiled.
Kai clutched his chest, gasping, as though his soul was about to be ripped out again.
The god only smiled, serene in the face of the apocalypse that trembled at its presence.
"Ah. Ignore that sound. It is nothing you need concern yourself with."
The void steadied, though the echo of destruction still throbbed in Kai's bones.
Then, the god leaned forward, golden eyes gleaming, and its voice grew softer, carrying the cadence of poetry, of riddles, of endless knowledge condensed into mortal words:
"So tell me, little fragment of defiance… who are you, lost soul?
Are you the vessel I have chosen,
or the thief who has stolen himself from destiny?
Are you the echo of man,
or the whisper of god?
Do you even know what name your soul carries,
when the world has forgotten it?"
The god's voice was not accusation, nor demand. It was curiosity, ancient and infinite.
And in that moment, as the void stretched silent once more, Kai realized:
this was not merely a meeting.
This was a test.