November 17th, 11998 YN (Year of Name)
The morning began with a humbling of the Divine.
I woke not to the sound of trumpets or the whisper of cosmic secrets, but to a cramping pressure in my lower abdomen.
The vessel demanded evacuation.
I stared at the ceiling, feeling a profound sense of betrayal. I had rewritten the laws of physics, commanded Princes and stopped my own heart and restarted it with sheer Will.
But I could not command this.
Biology is a tyrant that respects no rank.
I walked to the bathroom. The tiles were cold. The mirror showed a pale man no older than 18 with dark hair, dark pupils and dark circles under his eyes—a God trapped in a leaking meat-suit.
I will not describe this. Imagination is a burden I leave to you.
I washed my hands afterward. I scrubbed them with hot water and lavender soap until the skin turned red. I felt soiled. Not by dirt, but by the sheer, mundane animalism of existence.
"Inefficient," I muttered, drying my hands with a towel that cost more than a worker's monthly salary.
I exited the bathroom.
"We are leaving," I announced.
Kael and Malakor were waiting. They sensed my mood—brittle, sharp, dangerous—and said nothing.
We descended.
The lobby of the Obsidian Spire was a quiet cathedral of wealth. The staff bowed as we passed. They bowed too low. They didn't see a guest; they saw the "Gravitational Wizard" who had cracked their windows and terrified their manager. Fear is a better currency than tips.
We stepped out onto the pavement.
The air was heavy. The smog lay low over Zonia, pressing down on the skyscrapers like a grey lid.
Static.
I could feel it on my skin. The Law of Probability was dense today. It felt like walking through a room filled with invisible, charged wires. The Universe was watching, waiting for an error.
The limousine glided to the curb.
Kael reached for the door handle.
He froze.
His hand stopped inches from the metal. His entire body went rigid, vibrating like a tuning fork struck by a hammer.
"Master!"
The scream tore from his throat—a raw, jagged sound of absolute agony.
He fell.
He didn't crumple; he was slammed into the pavement by an invisible fist.
CRACK.
The concrete beneath him shattered.
The gravity around him fractured.
It wasn't a spell. It was a seizure of physics. The tiles of the sidewalk groaned and pulverized into dust. A nearby streetlight bent slowly, metal screeching as the local Gravity spiked to crushing levels.
"My Lord!" Malakor dropped to his knees, covering his head, terrified of being flattened.
I didn't cower. I stepped forward.
The gravity field hit me—a heavy, suffocating wave. I walked through the pressure as if it were a strong wind.
Kael was curled on the ground, clawing at his skull. His eyes were rolled back, showing only the whites. He was seizing, his mind boiling.
"Kael!" I shouted, my voice cutting through the noise.
He didn't hear me. He was drowning.
I knelt beside him. I grabbed his wrist. His skin was burning hot.
"Reflect," I commanded.
I pulled the Ring of Illumination from my pocket.
"Ring. Interface."
I jammed the ring onto Kael's finger.
"Project his internal state. Show me his Syntax!"
The Ring flared.
"Yes... Light... Reflect..." the artifact whispered in my mind.
A beam of white light erupted from the stone. It hit the mist above us and fanned out, creating a jagged, three-dimensional hologram in the air above the street.
It was a vivisection of a soul. The image was chaos.
A storm of white, razor-sharp lines was attacking a core of brilliance. The lines were precise, mathematical, and cold. They were slashing at Kael's essence, trying to cut something out.
Embedded deep in Kael's blue soul-structure were specks of infinite, radiant Gold. My Divinity. The contamination.
The White Lines (The Law) were trying to surgically remove the Gold. They were tearing him apart to delete the anomaly.
"Aaaaawwwwww!" a woman screamed from the sidewalk.
Pedestrians stopped, staring at the eldritch surgery projected in the air. They saw a boy's soul being butchered by light. They screamed and ran.
Malakor stared, paralyzed by the beauty and the horror.
"Enough," I hissed.
I ripped the ring off Kael's finger. The hologram vanished.
I knew the diagnosis. The Universe was trying to debug him.
"Kael," I said, grabbing his hand and slamming it against my chest, right over my heart.
"Focus."
He writhed, his gravity crushing the pavement into sand.
"Listen to me, child! Apply gravity to my blood!"
He gasped, his eyes fluttering. "Master... It hurts..."
"Do it! Anchor yourself to me!!"
He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed.
I felt it.
My heart suddenly weighed a hundred pounds. It turned into a stone in my chest, beating with slow, heavy thuds.
Simultaneously, my lungs became light as helium balloons, trying to float up my throat.
The contrast was sickening. Heavy blood, light air. My veins strained against the pressure.
But it worked.
The "Circuit" was closed. The Law of Probability sensed our connection. It saw that the "Gold" in Kael was tethered to me.
The white lines receded. The surgery stopped.
Kael gasped, sucking in a huge breath. The crushing gravity around us evaporated.
He lay there on the ruined sidewalk, panting, sweat soaking his hair.
"Master..." he whispered, crawling close to me, dragging himself across the gravel, shaking.
He stopped exactly at the one-meter line.
He looked up at me, terrified, waiting for permission.
I looked at the boy. He was a beautiful, broken thing. A glitch that the Universe wanted to delete.
"You are allowed," I sighed.
Kael collapsed forward. He buried his face in my coat, his hands clutching my lapels. He sobbed, a dry, hitching sound of relief agsint my chest.
I looked down at the back of his head.
This will get worse, I thought cold logic surfacing. The Law will try again. He is a walking error.
My hand hovered over his neck.
I should kill him this instant. Snap the vertebrae. It would be efficient. It would solve a lot of problems.
"My Lord?"
Malakor's voice broke my concentration.
The priest was standing, brushing dust from his knees. He was looking at Kael with wide eyes.
"What... what exactly happened to him? That light... those golden sparks..."
I lowered my hand patting Kael's head instead of breaking his neck.
"You saw the Gold," I said, my voice flat.
"Yes. It was... blinding."
"Kael was contaminated with my Divinity during the resurrection," I explained. "You know this."
"Yes."
"But consider the narrative, Malakor."
I looked at the grey sky.
"In the history trails of this universe, my vessel is now 'Father Mollian'. A genius human Archivist."
I stroked Kael's hair mechanically.
"Humans can possess Divinity... but only after they learn the 30th Name. The First Name in Demigod Sphere."
I looked at Malakor.
"Has humanity learned the 30th Name?"
"No, My Lord. We are stuck at 29."
"Exactly. Therefore, in the eyes of the Universe, Father Mollian cannot have Divinity. He is human."
I pointed at the trembling boy in my arms.
"And if I have no Divinity... then Kael cannot be contaminated by it."
"The Law," Malakor whispered, realization dawning. "It thinks the Gold is a mistake."
"It thinks it is a corruption file. A bug. It tried to format his soul to remove it."
"But... but you do have Divinity!" Malakor insisted. "You are a Primordial Entity! The Law is wrong!"
"The Law is blind," I corrected. "It sees only the rules it was written with."
I looked down at Kael. He had stopped sobbing. He was listening.
"Tell me, Luggage," I whispered. "There is no being in this universe who generates Divinity from themselves. All divine things come from...?"
Kael looked up. His eyes were wet, but they burned with a fanatic's certainty.
"The Great Creator Deity," he answered.
"Correct."
I looked at Malakor.
"My vessel cannot generate this Gold. The Universe knows this. So it tries to delete the Gold from Kael."
"But it failed," Malakor said.
"It failed because I forced a connection," I said, feeling the heavy thud of my heart. "I forced the Law to acknowledge that the Gold is mine, even if it defies the logic of 'Father Mollian'."
I stood up, pulling Kael with me.
"We are walking paradoxes, Malakor. And the Universe is starting to get angry about it."
I opened the car door.
"Get in. The Cathedral is waiting. And I am tired of being audited."