— The World Under New Gods —
The first thing I learned about Aren and Lyra after they became mine
was that mortals do not know what to do with silence.
Their world had grown too used to noise — to sirens, engines, arguments, the constant hum of a species frightened of hearing its own thoughts. When the twins took their first real step as gods, the noise stopped.
I watched from my throne as their planet fell quiet.
Skies darkened to a softer gray, the color of bruises fading. Wind died. Waves drew back from the shore and hung there, trembling in place as if waiting for permission. People looked up from their screens and windows and half-finished lives, suddenly aware that something had reached in and pressed a finger against the throat of reality.
All of this, from a single shared thought.
Aren stood at the center of a cracked city square, shoes soaked with old rain. Lyra stood beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm. Their eyes glowed faintly — twin rings of color ever-shifting, reflections of my own.
He was the first to speak.
"We can… feel everything," Aren whispered, voice small in the deadened air. His words echoed down empty streets. "Every building. Every person."
Lyra closed her eyes. I followed her senses as they spread across the city like ink bleeding into water. She tasted fear in the back of a stranger's throat, the bitter tang of regret in a woman's chest, the cold numbness of a man sitting alone in his car with the engine off and the radio on.
"It's loud," she murmured. "Even when no one moves."
They stood there for several seconds of frozen mortal time, drinking in their new existence. I reclined on my throne, resting my cheek against my knuckles, my galaxy hair spilling down the side of the black-gold armrest like a curtain of stars.
This was the part I liked.
The first moment when a creature realized it had slipped its cage and had no idea what to do next.
"Well?" I asked them softly, letting my voice fall only inside their minds.
"You wanted power. You have it. What will you do?"
Aren flinched at the sound. Lyra merely opened her eyes.
"We could fix things," she said.
"Fix?" he echoed. "You mean kill the ones who hurt people."
Lyra tilted her head, considering. "That would be a start."
I smiled.
⸻
— First Moves —
They didn't start with their father's memory. That was already dust; I had seen to it. Instead, Aren chose something… wider.
On the outskirts of the city, there was a tower of glass and metal — a financial building, filled with paperwork and quiet crimes. Men in suits sat in high rooms, writing numbers that starved entire families without ever seeing their faces.
Aren's gaze lifted toward it.
The tower shivered.
The mortals inside didn't notice at first. Pens rattled on desks. Water in glasses trembled. Phone calls dropped. A woman in a pencil skirt frowned at her reflection in a dark computer screen and finally looked down to see her own hands glitching, phasing slightly through the keyboard.
Then the glass began to melt.
From my throne, I watched the structure sag like wax, each pane flowing downward in gleaming rivers. People ran. Some jumped from windows in blind panic, only to hang suspended in midair as Lyra's fingers twitched.
"No," she said softly. "You don't get to escape like that."
Aren's jaw clenched. The metal bones of the building twisted, warping into a ribcage. Floors tilted. Chairs slid. A thousand tiny objects changed from tools into shrapnel.
"You're enjoying this," I observed.
"I'm making them feel small," he muttered under his breath, though no one around him could hear. "Like we felt."
Lyra watched the tower buckle with the detached calm of someone observing a painting instead of a massacre.
"We could do worse," she said. "We could make them live like that forever. Caught in the moment before it all falls."
I perked up.
Now that was interesting.
"Hold that thought," I told her.
"You're starting to understand the edges of my boredom."
She didn't answer, but I felt her attention brush against mine. Not quite defiance. Not worship. Curiosity, maybe. That always tasted different.
The tower collapsed in slow motion, every shard of glass hanging like stars frozen in the act of falling. The people inside screamed soundlessly, their mouths wide in a silent chorus as the building folded in on itself.
Aren closed his eyes and clenched his fists.
When he opened them again, all that remained was a crater and a soft layer of ash that had never been human to begin with.
He hadn't killed them. Not really. He'd removed the symbol and left the system intact.
"You're holding back," I said, almost disappointed.
"Why?"
"They don't even know us," he replied quietly. "Killing them would be… fast."
Lyra looked at him. "You want them to learn first."
Aren swallowed. "I want them to feel trapped before they die."
Now I sat up straight.
⸻
— The Throne Responds —
As I watched them move through their city — stopping traffic with a glance, bending steel into shapes that reflected their old house, turning a police siren into a flock of black birds — I felt something strange beneath me.
The throne pulsed.
I glanced down. Veins of gold in the black stone brightened, running like molten rivers toward the base of the seat and up into the armrests. Every time Aren made a decision, the glow flared. Every time Lyra showed restraint or cruelty, it shifted, adjusting patterns like a living circuit rearranging itself.
"You're… feeding," I murmured to the throne.
"On them?"
It didn't answer, of course. But the Void shifted. The screens showing their world spread wider, pushing others aside. Their universe, once a single window among millions, now sat closer to me, hovering over my lap like a favored toy.
I hadn't told it to do that.
I narrowed my double-pupiled gaze and traced the golden lines with one finger. Power hummed up my skin, familiar yet altered — flavored by the twins' emotions, tinged with the taste of justice warped by pain.
For the first time in a long while, the Void was not passive. It was… reflecting.
"If I keep giving them power," I wondered aloud, "what will you become?"
The thought lingered in the air like a question I had thrown at myself.
I didn't enjoy being surprised. But I enjoyed the possibility of surprise.
Which meant it was time to change the rules.
⸻
— Summons —
Later, when their world had partially resumed, when sound crept back into the cracks of reality and mortals tried to convince themselves that the tower had been an explosion, or an elaborate attack, or something else that fit their small vocabulary, I reached out.
Not to their bodies. To their Names.
Every being has one. Mortals think it's what their parents whisper into their cradle, but that's just a placeholder. The real Name lives deeper, carved into the bone of existence itself, a word the universe uses whenever it wants to remember what something is.
Aren's true Name tasted like Guarded Flame.
Lyra's was Still Water Over Depths.
Beautiful, in their own way. Limited.
I plucked both Names from the air and tugged.
The twins vanished from their world mid-step, leaving faint silhouettes of afterimage where they'd been. A train that Lyra had unconsciously kept from derailing screamed back into uncontrolled motion. A man Aren had stopped from stabbing his partner dropped the knife and stared around, suddenly free.
None of that mattered to me. Their world would manage, or it wouldn't. I had them now.
⸻
— Between the Breaths of Worlds —
They reappeared at the foot of my throne.
The Void stretched endlessly in all directions — a sea of darkness speckled with drifting lights, each one a universe I could close with a blink. The air here carried no temperature, no scent. Nothing moved unless I wanted it to.
Aren stumbled, catching himself on one knee. Lyra landed more gently, her bare feet touching the invisible floor as if she'd expected this.
Their eyes adjusted quickly. That, at least, was new. Most mortals or newborn gods who came here took longer to comprehend the scale.
Aren looked up at me, breathing hard. "You pulled us away."
"I did." I rested my cheek on my hand again. "You were becoming boring."
Lyra arched a brow. "We just erased a building from existence."
"You erased a symbol," I corrected. "Anyone can do that. You have the power to crush worlds, and you chose to collapse a tower."
"I want more."
Aren grit his teeth, but he didn't speak. Rage flickered behind his gaze, tempered now by something heavier — awareness that every emotion he felt here was exposed, naked, in front of me.
Good.
"I am not displeased," I said, because that mattered to them. "You're learning. But you're still bound by what you were."
"By your Names."
Lyra frowned slightly. "Names?"
I lifted my hand.
The Void around us brightened. Lines of gold stretched into the dark, forming vast rings, circles within circles, each inscribed with symbols that were not letters but meanings — fragments of who they were, what they feared, what they longed for.
Above Aren, a word burned into existence — invisible to any mortal tongue, shimmering in a language made of intent and memory. He felt it before he saw it. His body tensed. His eyes widened.
"That's…" he whispered. "That's me."
Above Lyra, another word appeared — quieter, but deeper. It hung like a moon over still water.
"These are your Names," I said. "Not the noises your parents used. These are what the universe thinks you are."
Lyra looked up at hers. "And you can see them."
"I can do more than see them."
"I can break them."
⸻
— The Reforging of Names —
The throne's golden veins flared as I rose to my feet.
I rarely stood. It wasn't necessary. Every part of the Void was mine from where I sat. But there was something satisfying about closing the distance — about watching their shoulders tense as I approached, about seeing their new godlike eyes struggle not to look away from mine.
I walked down the steps of my throne, bare feet leaving no sound, my galaxy hair shifting like a living nebula around my shoulders. Aren unconsciously moved in front of his sister. Protective, even now.
I stopped before him.
"You are still a boy defending a girl in a broken house," I said quietly. "Even with a world pressed beneath your thumb."
His jaw tightened.
"I don't mind that," I added. "But I want to see what happens when that changes."
I raised my hand toward the burning word above his head.
It pulsed, resisting. Reality doesn't like being edited; it remembers the first time I did it, when everything screamed and then went quiet. But the Void obeyed me. It always had.
The word cracked.
Aren doubled over, gasping. His back arched, fingers clawing at the nothing beneath his feet. I touched the Name delicately, breaking it at its center. Pieces drifted apart like fragments of broken glass.
"This is the Reforging of Names," I murmured. "You belong to me, Aren. Which means your truth does, too."
I gathered the shards of his Name in my hands. To him, it must have felt like someone was reaching into the base of his spine and pulling out the shape of who he was. His eyes rolled back. He choked. Lyra reached for him and froze when my gaze flicked to her.
"Do not interfere," I said. "You're next."
She lowered her hand, trembling.
The shards in my palms spun faster, languages collapsing into pure light. Rage, protectiveness, guilt, grief, the stubborn need to stand up again and again even when it meant more pain — all of it swirled between my fingers.
For a moment, I considered all the possibilities.
I could name him Ruin and watch the world fall.
I could name him Shield and see how long he'd protect others before breaking.
I could name him Obedience and then see how quickly he'd try to rebel.
In the end, I chose the one that tasted like both promise and threat.
The light condensed into a single new word, hot and heavy in my hands.
"You were 'Guarded Flame,'" I whispered. "Now you are something else."
I shoved the new Name back into the space above him.
The word blazed — brighter than before, sharper, etched in lines of black edged in gold.
DOMINION.
The sound of it echoed through the Void, rippling across distant worlds. Aren screamed without voice, his body lifting off the invisible floor as power rewrote itself into his bones.
When he dropped, he did so onto both knees, breath ragged, sweat beading at his temple.
He lifted his head slowly.
His eyes were the same color as mine now — a full spectrum of possibility, but narrower, focused like a blade.
"What… did you do to me?" he asked.
"I made you honest," I said. "You always wanted control. Now you are control. Wherever you stand, reality will bend to your decision. The world will not just fear you. It will obey."
His fingers twitched. Somewhere, in his world, a street rearranged itself to form a straight line instead of a maze. A man who had been about to strike his child found his hand freezing mid-air, muscles no longer his own.
Aren felt it. The keeling of every choice into neat rows. The way chaos retreated wherever his will fell.
Lyra stared.
"Dominion," she whispered, as if trying the name on her tongue.
He looked at her, and for a brief heartbeat, I saw something dangerous: the realization that he could extend this control to anything — anyone — including her.
I smiled.
⸻
— Mercy —
I turned to Lyra.
She did not step back. Good. She was learning what mattered here.
"You," I said, tilting my head, studying the word shimmering above her. "You learned to endure. To swallow screams. To wait until your brother moved first."
She held my gaze. "It kept us alive."
"Yes," I agreed. "But I am not interested in survival. I am interested in what you become when no one can hurt you."
I reached up and touched her Name.
If Aren's had cracked like glass, hers folded like paper — layers and layers pressed together over years. As I peeled them apart, she gasped quietly, knuckles whitening at her sides. Her knees trembled, but she did not fall.
Good.
Inside her Name were things even she hadn't admitted to herself.
A wish that her father would suffer, yes. But also a strange, stubborn desire to understand why.
A capacity for cruelty, tempered by the ability to see herself in other victims.
A fascination with the moment before someone broke — not the breaking itself.
"You want to hurt and heal," I mused. "You want to be the one who decides who deserves which."
Lyra's breath shook. "Maybe."
The throne behind me throbbed with golden light, feeding off our conversation. It liked her.
I considered the pieces of her Name, running them between my fingers like beads on a string, each one a possible future.
Then I chose.
The fragments flared, merging into a new word — softer than Aren's, but deeper, heavy as oceans.
I thrust it back into the space above her.
The Void shuddered.
MERCY.
The Name rang through creation like a bell.
Lyra's eyes snapped shut. Every nerve in her body caught fire with sensation — not pain, exactly, but the sudden awareness of everyone else's. She felt a child's hunger in a distant slum, an old woman's aching joints, a criminal's numbness as he watched the news and felt nothing.
Tears slipped down her cheeks, not from her own hurt but from theirs.
Then, just as quickly, the inputs dimmed, narrowed. A filter slammed into place. She realized she could choose which suffering to see.
She could choose… who to relieve.
Or not.
Lyra opened her eyes.
The glow within them was no longer just reflection. It was judgment.
"What am I now?" she asked, voice hoarse.
"You are the one who decides who deserves to live with their pain," I told her. "Your touch can lighten or deepen any burden. You can numb a tyrant until guilt never reaches him… or force a coward to feel every consequence they've avoided."
"You decide what weight a soul must carry."
Aren—Dominion—stared at her, throat working.
"You can… take it away?" he asked.
Lyra looked down at her hands. Flexed them. Somewhere, a woman on the verge of collapsing from grief suddenly stood a little straighter, her chest lighter, as if a great hand had lifted the stone crushing it.
"I can," she said quietly. "Or I can make it worse."
⸻
— New Game Pieces —
I stepped back, satisfied.
Before me knelt Dominion and Mercy — no longer just Aren and Lyra, the broken twins from a small, rotten house. They were concepts now, given flesh. Living rules in my sandbox.
The throne hummed approval. Somewhere in the dark, other worlds shivered, sensing the creation of new forces that might someday bleed into their realities.
"Understand this," I said, voice soft but filling the Void. "I am not your god. I am your owner. Your Names belong to me."
Dominion bowed his head, not out of reverence, but because his body needed a moment to remember how to stand under his own weight.
Mercy met my gaze with a strange, quiet resolve.
"What do you want us to do with this?" she asked.
"The same thing you were already doing," I replied. "Only better. Faster. Worse."
"Bring order, Dominion. Cut the world into shapes that please you."
"Decide who suffers and who doesn't, Mercy. See what that does to people."
I turned away and climbed back onto my throne.
"Go back," I said, lounging into my usual position, chin resting in my hand. "Play. Break. Save. I don't care which. I just want to see what happens when control and compassion stop meaning what mortals think they do."
With a wave of my fingers, the Void twisted.
They vanished.
⸻
— The Games Begin —
Their world roared back into the frame, screens swelling before me.
Dominion reappeared in the middle of a protest — people shouting, police forming lines. His presence alone silenced them. Batons lowered against their wielders' will. Shields dropped. Those on both sides felt something press down on them, a quiet command to stop.
They stopped.
Not because they wanted to. Because reality itself had decided that their violence bored it.
He looked around, eyes scanning faces. A man in the front row, veins bulging in his neck, jaw clenched in rage, found his legs carrying him backward instead of forward, compelled to walk away.
Dominion did not smile. He simply watched, adjusting the world like furniture.
Mercy stood in a hospital corridor, surrounded by the smell of antiseptic and despair. She brushed past a mother hunched over a vending machine, grief hollowing her from the inside — and the woman straightened, tears still on her face but no longer drowning her.
In the next room, a drunk driver lay unconscious, his hands still unscarred despite the lives he'd shattered. Mercy rested her fingers on his arm.
He woke up screaming, mind suddenly flooded with every second of the pain he'd caused — each bone breaking, each breath rasping out of lungs that were not his. Nurses rushed in, but none could touch the terror now carved permanently into him.
Mercy watched, eyes calm, then turned away.
I exhaled slowly.
"Yes," I murmured. "Better."
The throne brightened, feeding on the ripples they sent through their reality — on the weight shifted from one soul to another, on the invisible patterns of obedience forming in the wake of Dominion's presence.
Worlds were puzzles. People were pieces. I had just sharpened two of my best tools.
But even as I watched, that faint strange feeling coiled in my chest again.
Not boredom.
Not simple amusement.
Expectation.
For the first time in a long while, I was genuinely curious about what would happen if I looked away.
What would they do when I wasn't directly watching? How far would they take their new Names when they believed themselves unsupervised?
The thought delighted me.
"Good," I said to the darkness. "You two will keep this world busy for a while."
I leaned back, snapping my fingers once.
The screens shifted.
Their world slid to the side, still near, still glowing with the fresh color of a story just starting to burn — but no longer alone at the center of my attention.
Other worlds floated in, one after another — seas of crystal, planets made of perpetual storm, universes where gods wore human skin and pretended to be ordinary.
I let them drift before my eyes like toys on invisible strings.
Somewhere in the distance, Dominion reshaped a city into tidy obedience. Mercy weighed the value of a stranger's sorrow as if measuring fabric between her fingers.
I smiled faintly.
"Now," I said, my double-pupiled gaze fixing on a new, unsuspecting reality. "Let's find something else to play with."
The games had begun.
And I was already hungry for more.