Cold light flooded Dante's vision.
Not sunlight.
Not firelight.
Something else—something that vibrated faintly inside his bones, even though he wasn't sure he still had bones.
He gasped and sat upright.
An endless marble plain stretched out in every direction. Soft white, smooth as still water, reflecting nothing. No sky, no ground—just a glowing emptiness above and below.
Dante clutched his head.
"What… where—what is this?"
A voice trembled behind him.
"Dante?"
He spun.
Anarissa stood only a few feet away, her breathing rapid, eyes wide with fear. Pale gold light danced around her like broken sunlight caught in a storm. Her hair flickered between light and dark, as if undecided which it wanted to be.
Dante stumbled to his feet and grabbed her shoulders.
"Rissa! Are you hurt?"
"No, I—" She looked down at her hands. Light dripped from her fingertips like liquid fire. "Dante, what's happening to us?"
"I don't know."
He meant it.
He knew nothing.
No memories beyond—
A car bending metal around them.
Glass exploding.
A drop.
A scream.
Then—
Darkness swallowing everything.
His voice cracked.
"I… remember dying."
Anarissa's breath hitched. "Me too."
Before either could say more, another voice echoed across the plain.
"Hey! Someone else is awake!"
Dante turned.
They weren't alone.
Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people sprawled across the marble, groaning, panicking, touching unfamiliar bodies, or staring in horror at glowing hands or crystalline skin or limbs made of starlight.
A reptilian woman clutched her head and hissed, "Where is this!? What is this place!?"
A feline boy cried, "Why can I see through everything?! What is happening?!"
A man made of smoke wailed, "I'm not supposed to look like this!"
Anarissa gripped Dante's hand tightly.
"They're all… like us."
"Confused?" Dante asked.
"No. Alive when they shouldn't be."
A deep bell tone rolled across the expanse.
Everyone flinched.
A ripple of white light washed outward—and an elderly figure appeared in the distance, walking toward them with slow, deliberate steps.
He looked almost human. White hair. Weathered face. A simple robe that shimmered with symbols Dante couldn't comprehend. A staff floated beside him, not held, drifting like the old man couldn't be bothered to touch it.
He approached the center of the awakening field.
Everyone stared.
The man's voice carried effortlessly, steady and calm.
"Do not be afraid. Your senses are simply adjusting to divinity."
Dante whispered, "Divinity? What is he talking about?"
Anarissa whispered back, "We're dreaming. This has to be a dream."
The old man smiled gently, as if he heard her from a hundred meters away.
"This is no dream, child. You are awake—more awake than you have ever been."
Murmurs spread. Panic edged them.
A crystalline youth stepped forward, trembling.
"What happened to us? Where are we? Why are our bodies—wrong?"
"You stand," the old man said, "in the High Divine Realm, a sanctuary between worlds. You stand here because your souls have ascended."
A reptilian woman shouted, "Ascended from what?! We were dying!"
A man with fire leaking from his eyes yelled, "I didn't die! I was in the middle of a breakthrough—then everything went white!"
The old man nodded patiently.
"Yes. Some of you perished. Some transcended through power. Some through sacrifice. Some through catastrophe. The ways to godhood are many."
Dante stepped forward before he realized he had moved.
"What about us?" he asked. "Me and my sister. We were in a car. We crashed. We… we died."
Anarissa swallowed hard. "If we died… then how are we here?"
The old man—Aethrion—turned his gaze fully on them.
The marble trembled.
For a moment, every newly risen god seemed to sense something vast and ancient surrounding the twins. A warmth like the sun mixed with a cold, eternal stillness.
Aethrion approached them slowly.
"Your path," he said softly, "was… complicated."
Dante's heart pounded. "Meaning what?"
"You did die," Aethrion said. "But that was only the beginning. Your souls fell into an Oblivion Zone—where existence itself unravels."
Anarissa shivered. "That—black place. Before this. I remember… something pulling at me."
"Yes," Aethrion replied. "Oblivion tried to erase you. And it would have—had another power not intervened."
"What power?" Dante asked.
"A Divine Spark," Aethrion answered. "And not only that. A second pair of souls—versions of you from another world—were drawn into the same convergence."
Anarissa's voice wavered. "There were… others? Us?"
"Yes. Royal children of a star-faring empire. Slain in a ritual gone wrong, their world collapsing around them. When their souls and yours collided inside Oblivion, the Divine Spark reacted. It fused you. Strengthened you. Elevated you."
Dante felt nausea and awe and grief mix into a painful knot.
"We're… four people?"
"No," Aethrion said gently. "You are one. The fusion completed. The identities harmonized. You are the result."
Anarissa took a shaky breath. "So what are we now?"
Aethrion stepped back, raising his staff toward a forming gateway of swirling light.
"You are newborn gods," he said. "Raw, untrained, but whole."
He spread his arms.
"Walk. Enter the Hall of Origins. There you will learn the nature of your divinity… and the burden it carries."
Dante looked at Anarissa.
"You ready?"
She squeezed his hand. "I don't know. But I'm not going alone."
"Good," Dante said quietly. "Neither am I."
Together, they stepped into the light.
The journey of gods had begun.