Five hundred years is a long time to be nothing at all.
This was something Kael learned slowly, painfully, one humiliation at a time. The shelter that greeted him held on to him only until he could walk independently. Then he was discarded like garbage.
"You're in the way," Brother Caldris had said. "The divine realms are not interested in the powerless. Find somewhere else to exist."
Somewhere else was nowhere at all.
The divine realms weren't one place but thousands. Dimensions stacked on dimensions. Hells and heavens and everything in between. In the middle was the High Throne from which Vorath the Resplendent ruled all that is.
At the margins, where Kael survived, there was chaos and evil.
He resided in the gaps between worlds. Slept in abandoned temples. It fed on scraps abandoned by lesser gods who found it too tiresome to eat the food they ordered. Drank from streams that flowed between dimensions, their waters tasting of dust and forgotten things.
It wasn't living. It was existing. Barely.
The first one was the most painful.
Kael had no power. None at all. Each divine being had some power—even the weakest could use energy as a weapon, heal more quickly, outlive mortals. Kael had only his body and his will.
He tried to grow stronger. Trained until his muscles screamed. Meditated until his mind emptied. Found within himself the embers that every other creature bore.
He found only emptiness.
No—not emptiness. Something else.
He could sense it deep in his soul. A wall. Fluid and capacious and completely impermeable. Something was sealed behind it. Something that was rightfully his.
But no matter how hard he pushed, the wall didn't budge.
Eventually, the other gods grew aware of him.
Not as a threat — he was too weak to threaten anyone. They saw him the way predators see wounded prey. Something to toy with. Something to break.
"Check this out," a voice sneered one day.
Kael was rummaging through rubbish behind a low-influence god's house. Food scraps. Anything edible. He'd learned not to be proud.
Three young gods stood in his wake. Their auras shimmered with power—not as much as true divine, but infinitely more than Kael had.
"Is that the empty one?" another asked. "The one they call the Crawling God?
The name had spread. He didn't know who'd initiated it, but everyone used it now. The Crawling God. Because he slithered through life like a worm.
"He doesn't have power at all," the third said. "Watch."
A wave of power slammed into Kael's back. He flew forward and collided with the wall, hearing bones snap. Pain exploded through his body.
Laughter echoed behind him.
"He can't even defend himself!"
Another blast. More pain. More laughter.
Kael was lying in the dirt, blood pooling out around him. He couldn't fight back. Couldn't run. Could only endure.
Eventually, they got bored. They always did.
"Pathetic," one said on the way out. "Should have died at birth."
This became his existence.
Scavenge. Hide. Survive. Get beaten. Recover. Repeat.
The pattern continued for decades. Then centuries. The faces were different, but the cruelty was unchanged.
He was assaulted more times than he could count. Beaten for sport. Abandoned in the dusty nooks of long-ago places. His body shattered and healed and shattered again, all the wounds leaving scars that his slow regeneration could never fully remove.
But he never stopped.
He had something inside him that wouldn't give up. A fire that was warm when everything else was cold. A voice that would speak in his nadir.
You are more than this. You will rise.
He did not know where it had come from. Did not know why he believed it.
But he did.
Two centuries into his torment, Kael encountered the Radiant Sons.
There were five of them — young gods who presided over a tiny domain at the fringe of the realms. Not important enough to call the attention of the High Throne. Strong enough to do whatever they willed to others below them.
Kael had passed through their territory when they found him.
"What's this?" the leader asked. His name was Aurelius; his golden aura identified him as one who had never known weakness. "A rat in our domain?"
"Just passing through," Kael said softly. "I don't want any trouble."
"Hear that? He doesn't want trouble." Aurelius laughed. The rest chimed in. "Sorry for you, we're bored.
They brought him to their compound. Cast him into a pit thirty feet deep with smooth walls. But left him there for three days, starving and thirsty.
Finally, when they dragged him out, they brought him into a courtyard where dozens of other gods were watching.
Here's how this is going to work," said Aurelius. "We're going to hurt you. And you're going to try to resist. "We'll punish you worse when you lose.
The torture lasted a month.
They were creative. They knew precisely how much agony a body could withstand without dying. Right down to the prescription for how best to maximize suffering while keeping the victim alive.
Burns. Cuts. Broken bones. Each wound healed for just enough room for the next one.
Through it all, Kael memorized.
Their faces. Their voices. Their laughing eyes. The way they moved. The techniques they used.
He remembered every detail and filed it away in a dark place inside him.
It was the warm voice of hope that whispered through the pain one day. One day they will pay.
They released him on the thirty-second day."
"It's not fun anymore," one of them said. "He just takes it. No begging. No breaking."
"We could kill him," another said.
"And waste all that effort?" Aurelius looked at Kael with cold eyes. "We'll let him go. Let him return to whatever hole he came out of."
He leaned close.
"But remember this, Crawling God. Remember what we did to you. Remember that you were helpless."
He spat in Kael's face.
So they cast him out of their territory. Literally threw one of them through a dimensional tear. He fell into a desolate wasteland, broken and bleeding.
But alive.
Recovery took three months.
Some wounds scarred over his slow regeneration. Others throbbed in ways that never quite went away.
But his mind was clear. Crystal clear.
He remembered everything. Every face. Every voice. Every technique they'd used. Aurelius. Vance. Thorn. Marek. Silas.
The Radiant Sons.
He inscribed their names in his heart with letters of fire.
Something changed after the torture.
The wall inside him — the border between him and whatever existed beneath it — felt different. Still solid. Still impenetrable.
But thinner.
As if his suffering had somehow worn it away. As if he could break and achieve something his training never allowed.
He didn't understand it. But he used it.
Each beating afterward, each humiliation, every near death — he experienced them differently now. Not as burdens to bear, but tools to wield.
Every time the wall splintered a little more.
And something great stirred behind it.
Three centuries after his birth, Kael made a choice.
The passive approach was taking too long to work. The wall was weakening, sure, but at this rate it would take millennia to break through.
He had to speed things up.
He needed more suffering. Not random suffering—controlled suffering. Battles he chose. Pain he could direct.
He had heard about this place. The Chaos Dimensions. Realms at the fringes of reality where desperate creatures battled tirelessly over remnants of power, land, existence. Violence was the only constant.
No one went there by choice.
Kael chose to go.
The evening before he departed, he sat by himself in an empty temple and gazed at the stars.
Out there somewhere lived his parents. His parents who'd abandoned him on the steps of that sanctuary. Who'd decided it was better to give him up than bring him up.
"I don't know who you are," he addressed the darkness. "I don't know why you left me. But I'm going to change into something. Something the universe can't ignore."
He stood.
"And when I do find you — when I discover what you did and why you did it — you had damn well better have a good answer."
The stars offered no response.
Kael turned and walked to the edge of existence.
And behind him, the wall of his soul quaked.
Something was waking up.