The death of Thomas White was a cosmic clerical error.
One moment, he was navigating the university quad under a sky so clear it looked polished. The air was still, the sun was warm, and Thomas was preoccupied with a Hellslave build he'd been theory-crafting on his phone. Then, the universe stuttered. A single, jagged bolt of white-hot lightning descended from the cloudless blue, striking him with the force of a collapsing star. He didn't even have time to feel his cells vaporise.
He awoke in a void that tasted of ozone and ancient silence. Before him stood a Being of shifting, geometric light—a God whose presence felt like a weary bureaucrat caught in a mistake.
"My apologies," the Being resonated, its voice like glass bells. "A celestial discharge was misaligned. Your thread was cut decades too early. To balance the scales, I offer you reincarnation in a world of your choosing, with the gift of any power your soul can envision."
Thomas didn't mourn his old life; he had always felt out of place in a world of spreadsheets and fluorescent lights. He thought of the grit, the demonic hierarchy, and the raw, unapologetic power of his favorite game.
"I want the power of the Six," Thomas said, his voice firming in the nothingness. "Not just one. I want the essence of the Demon Rulers from Hellslave. I want the true source of Infernal Energy."
The God paused, the geometric lights shifting into a hue of surprise. "Exotic. That energy is the pure, undiluted fire from which all lesser magics are merely smoke. Very well. Go, and let the spheres tremble."
The transition wasn't a fall; it was a birth.
Thomas slammed into the muck of a grey, sodden forest. The air stank of peat, stagnant water, and old blood. He stood up, wiping mud from his face. He was still in his human form—Thomas White—lean, dark-haired, and wearing the scorched remnants of his jeans.
But beneath his skin, it felt like he was holding back an inferno.
"Shift," he whispered.
He let the pressure go. His human form didn't disappear so much as it was overtaken by a nightmare. His skin hardened into obsidian plates, his height surged, and six massive, tattered wings of shadow and amethyst fire erupted from his spine. His eyes became pits of violet heat, seeing the world not in light, but in raw energy.
He looked at the trees and squinted. He could see a faint, shimmering haze clinging to the mud. It was the "Chaos" of this world, the magic the locals whispered about in fear. To him, it looked pathetic—like thin, grey veins of stagnant sewage. It was diluted, weak, and volatile.
"Thomas is dead," he said, his voice a tectonic rumble that made the swamp water ripple. "I am Iblis."
A wet snarling sound broke his focus. A pack of Drowners skittered out from the reeds, drawn by the scent of a fresh arrival. They saw a figure larger and more terrifying than anything in their primitive memories.
Iblis didn't reach for a sword. He simply exhaled. A wave of pure Infernal Energy—the master magic—rolled off him. When it touched the diluted energy animating the Drowners, the reaction was violent. The monsters didn't just die; they unraveled, their weak magical essence being sucked into Iblis's aura like droplets into a vacuum.
He shifted back into his human form, the transition seamless. He was Thomas again, but the power stayed coiled in his marrow.
Wading out of the muck, he found a narrow, dirt-beaten path. At a fork in the road stood a weathered, wooden signpost, its paint peeling from years of rain. He leaned in to read the jagged, unfamiliar script:
"VELEN - NO MAN'S LAND"
He didn't know the name. To him, it was just a word on a board in a world he didn't recognize. But the direction was clear. He looked down the path toward the horizon, where the smoke of distant, charcoal-burning fires rose into a grey sky.
"Velen," he repeated, testing the weight of the word.
He started walking. He didn't know the politics of this land or the names of its kings, but he knew one thing: he was the only being in this world with the "High Definition" power of the Source.
The village of Downwarren was a cluster of rotted hovels huddled together like wet dogs in the rain. Above the entrance, a macabre "Trail of Treats"—ears and fingers tied with twine—swung in the wind.
Thomas walked through the center of the settlement in his human form. His modern shoes were ruined by the mud, but he didn't care. He was focused on the atmospheric pressure. The air here was thick with a greasy, cloying aura that tasted of stagnant blood. It was the "Magic" of the Ladies of the Wood.
To the terrified peasants, the Crones were primal goddesses. To Thomas, who could see the high-definition reality of the Leviathan and Asmodeus energies, they were nothing more than parasites. He could see their influence: a flickering, putrid version of the energy in his own veins.
"Frauds," he whispered. "They're just scavenging on the leftovers."
That night, as the village succumbed to a fitful, hungry sleep, Thomas sat beneath an ancient, gnarled oak. He didn't shift his physical body yet. Instead, he tapped into the Lucifer and Satan essences to project his will outward.
He didn't just enter their dreams; he seized them.
In an instant, every man, woman, and child found themselves standing in a vast, silent cathedral of violet fire. The mud of Velen was gone, replaced by a floor of polished obsidian.
At the center stood Iblis.
His six wings spanned the width of their shared consciousness. The villagers cowered, but Iblis raised a hand. His voice resonated with the physical weight of Beelzebub's authority.
"Do not bow," he commanded. "I am not here to demand your ears. I am here to show you what you have been worshipping."
With a flick of his wrist, the violet fire surged. The "holy" images of the Crones—the beautiful tapestries and the whispered legends—were burned away. In their place, Iblis projected the raw, unfiltered truth.
The villagers gasped as they saw the reality: three bloated, necrophagous hags squatting in a mire, their skin sagging with the weight of the human flesh they had consumed. He showed them how the Crones manipulated the "diluted" magic of the earth to keep the people in a state of perpetual fear.
"They are not goddesses," Iblis said, his violet eyes locking onto every soul. "They are scavengers. They feast because you believe they are the Source. They are nothing but smoke. I am the Fire."
The sun rose over Velen with a sickly, grey light, but for the villagers, something had fundamentally shifted. They awoke with a cold, sharp clarity. The "Trail of Treats" no longer looked like a sacred tribute; it looked like garbage.
Thomas was sitting on the edge of the village well. As the villagers emerged, they didn't see a traveler. They saw the man from the dream.
An elder, his hands shaking, approached. "The Ladies... they will know. They will send the monsters to burn us for this."
Thomas stood up. He looked toward the deep, dark heart of the Crookback Bog.
"Let them," Thomas said, his voice calm but vibrating with the power of the Six Rulers. "I didn't come here to hide. I came here to evict the frauds. Tell them Iblis is waiting."