A man stood at the edge of existence.
Well—"man" wasn't quite accurate. "Stood" was generous. And "edge of existence" was a concept that didn't really apply to someone who existed before the concept of existence itself.
But King Von Deluxh—a name he'd just decided on, actually—was trying very hard to think like the mortals below.
He looked down.
Avalon spread beneath him like a canvas of possibilities. Seven regions. Countless lives. An entire world that pulsed with something he'd spent eons watching but never truly understanding.
Emotion.
They feel things, King thought, tilting his head. Anger. Joy. Fear. Love. They live and die and somehow find meaning in the between. How do they do that?
He'd seen countless worlds. Ruled over dimensions. Been worshipped, feared, forgotten, and remembered again. He'd watched civilizations rise and fall like waves on a shore he couldn't feel.
And he was so very, very bored.
No—not bored. Boredom implied wanting something else. This was different.
Empty, King realized. I'm empty.
Power without purpose. Eternity without connection. He could unmake reality with a thought, and yet he couldn't understand why that mortal child below was crying over a dropped pastry.
"That's it, then," King said to no one. His voice didn't echo—there was nothing here to echo against. "I'm going down there."
The void around him seemed to hold its breath. Not because it was alive, but because King's presence was so absolute that even nothingness paid attention.
He raised his hand and looked at it. Power flowed through every atom of his being—infinite, boundless, completely uncontainable. If he descended like this, the world would simply stop. Reality would look at him, fail to process what it was seeing, and politely cease to function.
"Need to seal this," King muttered. "Most of it. Maybe... ninety-nine percent?"
He concentrated. His divine power compressed, folded, tucked itself away into layers of consciousness he'd specifically created for this purpose.
The world didn't change. He didn't feel weaker. That was the problem.
"More," he said.
Ninety-nine point nine percent.
Still nothing.
"This is harder than I thought."
Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine percent.
There. He could almost feel something like limitation. Almost. It was like trying to fit an ocean into a cup and claiming you'd succeeded because you managed to get the cup wet.
Even at point-zero-zero-zero-one percent of his true power, King could probably sneeze and accidentally create a new mountain range.
I'll have to be careful, he thought. Then he smiled—a small, genuine expression. Being careful. That's new. I like it already.
Now for the vessel. His true form was... complicated. Too many dimensions. Mortals tended to have trouble perceiving things that existed in seventeen directions at once.
King shaped himself a body. Human-looking. Twenty-two years old in appearance—old enough to be taken seriously, young enough to attend an academy. Snow-white hair because he'd seen mortals with white hair who seemed interesting. Golden-emerald eyes because those colors reminded him of life and growth.
Lean build. Not too muscular, not too frail. Perfect proportions that somehow managed to look completely ordinary.
He examined his new form, turning his hand over. Flesh. Bone. Blood. He'd even included the need to breathe, though that was more aesthetic than necessary.
"Right," King said, and took his first breath as a mortal.
The air rushed into his lungs. It felt... it felt like nothing, actually. He'd existed in the void between universes. Air was conceptually identical to him.
But the idea of breathing—the act of it, the rhythm—that was interesting.
One more thing.
King reached into the fundamental code of reality and adjusted one tiny rule: No one, no matter how powerful, could sense his true nature unless he allowed it. All their measurement tools would fail. Their detection spells would malfunction. Their divine insights would return error messages.
To everyone else, he would be a mystery. An anomaly.
An F-Rank nobody.
"Perfect," King said, and smiled.
Then he stepped forward and fell into the world.
---
The transition was instantaneous and eternal at the same time. King passed through layers of existence like someone walking through morning mist, each one more "real" than the last, until finally—
His feet touched grass.
Grass.
King looked down. Green blades bent under his weight, and when he lifted his foot, they sprang back up. Such a simple thing. Such a wonderfully simple, real thing.
"Wow," he said softly.
A breeze blew past. He felt it against his skin, through his hair. Temperature. Texture. Sensation.
This is what they feel all the time? Every moment of every day?
King stood in a field outside what his borrowed knowledge told him was the capital city of Devas. In the distance, massive walls rose toward the sky, and beyond them, towers of stone and magic that mortal hands had built.
They'd built those. Actual people with actual limitations had looked at stone and thought, "I can make that into something."
"Incredible," King murmured.
He started walking toward the city, each step deliberate. Grass under his feet. Wind on his face. The distant sound of voices carried on the air.
I could get used to this.
---
The guard at the city gate barely looked at him.
"Name and business," the man said, bored.
King blinked. Someone was talking to him. As an equal. Not as a supplicant or worshipper or terrified sacrifice. Just... a person asking a question.
"King Von Deluxh," he said, testing the name aloud for the first time. "I'm here to—"
What am I here to do? I should probably have a plan.
"—enroll in the academy," King finished.
The guard snorted. "Academy? You got coin for the entrance exam?"
"Entrance exam?" King repeated.
"Yeah. Ten silver for the test, hundred gold for tuition if you pass. And that's just the first year." The guard finally looked up at him, taking in his plain clothes and lack of luggage. "You don't look like you got that kind of money, kid."
Kid. King was older than this man's civilization, and he'd just been called "kid."
I love it.
"I'll figure it out," King said with a smile.
The guard shrugged. "Your funeral. Gate fee's one copper."
King reached into his pocket—a pocket he'd created exactly three seconds ago—and pulled out a copper coin he'd materialized from ambient particles in the air.
The guard took it without suspicion and waved him through.
King walked into Devas.
---
The city was alive.
Thousands of people moving, talking, arguing, laughing. Merchants shouting about their wares. Children running between stalls. The smell of cooking food mixing with horse manure and magic residue.
It was chaotic. Messy. Imperfect.
Beautiful.
King wandered through the streets, absorbing everything. A baker pulled fresh bread from an oven. A mother scolded her son for running off. Two men argued about the price of fish. An old woman fed pigeons in a plaza.
None of them knew they were being watched by something that could reshape their reality with a thought.
None of them cared.
They were just... living.
"Excuse me," a voice said.
King turned. A young boy, maybe ten years old, was looking up at him with wide eyes.
"Are you lost, mister?" the boy asked. "You keep staring at everything like you've never seen a city before."
"I haven't," King said honestly. "Not like this."
The boy laughed. "Where are you from, the middle of nowhere?"
Further, King thought, but said, "Something like that."
"Well, if you need help, the Adventurer's Guild is that way," the boy said, pointing down a street. "They help people new to the city. Oh, and stay away from the tavern on Copper Street—the owner waters down his ale."
"Thank you," King said, genuinely meaning it.
The boy grinned and ran off to rejoin his friends.
King watched him go, then looked up at the sky. Clouds drifted past. Birds flew in formation. The sun was warm on his face.
This is what I wanted, he thought. This moment right here. Someone helping a stranger because that's what people do. A child running with friends. A world that continues spinning without my intervention.
A commotion erupted from a nearby alley.
"Please! Someone help!"
King's eyes shifted toward the sound. His divine senses—even suppressed—could see everything: three men cornering a young woman, magic crackling around their hands, intent to harm radiating from them.
He could stop it instantly. Could freeze them in time, rewrite their intentions, unmake them from existence.
But he was supposed to be mortal now.
So what would a mortal do?
King walked into the alley.
"Hey," he said simply.
The three men turned. The leader, a scarred brute with fire magic building in his palm, sneered.
"Walk away, white-hair. This doesn't concern you."
"She asked for help," King said. "That makes it concern me."
The leader laughed. "You got a death wish, pretty boy?"
King tilted his head, considering. Did he? Death was such an alien concept to him. What would it even feel like?
"No," he said finally. "But you should probably leave."
"Should we?" The leader's fire magic flared brighter. "Last chance. Walk. Away."
King didn't move.
The man fired. A lance of flame that could incinerate a normal human shot toward King's chest.
King raised one finger.
Carefully, he reminded himself. Very carefully.
He flicked.
The motion was almost casual. His finger barely moved. But the air itself seemed to compress, and the leader was suddenly gone—not dead, just gone, a rapidly disappearing speck in the sky, arcing toward the horizon.
The other two men stared.
"That was..." King frowned. "Too much. I'm still getting used to this body."
They ran.
King turned to the woman, who was staring at him with a mixture of shock and awe.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"What... what are you?" she whispered.
King smiled slightly. "Just someone trying to help. You should go. The city guard will be here soon."
He walked away before she could ask more questions.
---
That evening, King found himself standing outside the Magic Knights Academy of Avalon. The main building towered above him, all marble columns and floating crystals and architectural impossibility that only magic could maintain.
Tomorrow, he would take their entrance exam. Would try to blend in. Would attempt to live as one of them.
Would probably fail spectacularly at pretending to be normal, if today was any indication.
But that was fine.
King looked at his hand—this mortal hand he'd made—and clenched it into a fist.
I have eternity to learn, he thought. And for the first time, I'm actually curious about tomorrow.
Somewhere in the city, someone was laughing. Music drifted from a tavern. A couple walked past holding hands.
King Von Deluxh, the Eternal Supreme, the being who existed before existence itself, smiled.
"Let's see what being human is really like," he said to the night.
And the world, unaware of what had just descended into it, continued spinning.