There was no world yet. No light, no matter, no movement. Just the Void. An endless nothing stretching across a silence too old to measure.
But even in that silence, three shapes floated.
Three presences.
Three gods.
The first was Quaros—a blinding sun suspended in the black. Burning with steady, unwavering light, he radiated law, structure, and control. The oldest of them. His heat wasn't meant to comfort, only to illuminate what must be seen. Somewhere in that searing mass was James, watching and waiting.
The second was Perseus—a pale, ghostly moon circling far off in the dark. Cold, but not uncaring. He pulsed softly with ancient intelligence, pulling in loose debris and whispering through invisible dust. Minerals formed around him. Thought layered itself into shape. He was the youngest—Noah, always searching for meaning in the quiet.
And in between them, not orbiting but drifting at his own pace, there was Evodil. A black hole in slow, constant motion. He didn't shine. He devoured. What little passed near him vanished. He was chaos, shadow, hate—and something else he hadn't decided on yet. No one ever really knew what he was thinking. Not even him.
They floated like this for what could've been seconds or centuries. Time hadn't been invented yet. Neither had boredom.
Still, they each did what they always did.
Quaros burned.
Perseus thought.
Evodil... existed.
Nothing had been made yet. Not a single world. Not a single story. But all three of them were already waiting for it. Whether they knew it or not.
Quaros moved first, as he always did. His light stretched outward in rigid lines, shaping invisible borders into the formless dark. His presence imposed rules. Space bent around him in organized loops, obedient.
Perseus followed, quietly. He hovered beneath Quaros' light but never fully within it, drawing thin lines of silver across the black like veins beneath skin. He traced patterns, embedded meaning in the void. Where Quaros created law, Perseus carved understanding.
Evodil did nothing. He turned slow and heavy, his pull constant, his presence a quiet refusal. He erased what the others built, not with malice, but as if clearing space that belonged to nothing and no one. Where Quaros built walls, Evodil unraveled them. Where Perseus sketched maps, Evodil swallowed the ink.
For a time—a long, immeasurable time—this was enough.
They moved in rhythms too large for sound, too ancient for thought. A perfect balance. A system of opposition that held.
But the void was not infinite in patience.
Quaros expanded farther than before, reaching into Evodil's pull without hesitation. Perseus lingered in the path between them, his light dimming as it stretched to cover both.
The balance shifted—barely. But enough.
No words passed. None could.
But Quaros shone brighter.
Perseus pulled away.
Evodil did not yield.
Each one turned, slow, silent, circling again. The peace still held—but the shape of it was changing.
As if something inside each of them had begun to wonder:
What if they didn't need the others?
What if one was enough?
The stillness began to crack.
Quaros pushed farther, his light pressing against the edges of everything. What once shimmered in balance now burned. His presence no longer upheld law—it demanded it. Straight lines turned to cages. His power no longer asked for order. It enforced it.
Perseus answered not with force, but with layers. He filled the darkness with structure—stone, mineral, thought. New elements spiraled around him, silent and cold. He did not resist Quaros directly. He simply complicated the space, burying it in logic, in creation, in weight.
And Evodil grew restless.
He began to tear.
Not with hands. Not with will.
But by existing.
What Perseus built, he unraveled. What Quaros lit, he swallowed. His gravity carved absence into their shapes, and the void welcomed it.
The peace dissolved into friction.
Quaros pulsed hotter, his light turning jagged. Perseus layered faster, denser, more tangled. Evodil widened, his pull deepening until silence itself bent toward him.
No screams.
No words.
Just a decision.
At once, they stopped.
No more weaving.
No more balancing.
No more waiting.
All three surged inward.
To clash.
Not out of anger.
But to prove.
Which one of them mattered.
Which one of them fate would spare.
Which god the void would keep.
The void shook.
Three lights, once distant, collided.
Quaros struck first, a flare of burning order crashing into Perseus' layered mass. Stone cracked, light split. Then Evodil crashed into both—silent, heavy, unraveling their forms with every inch of contact.
They circled, collided, broke apart, and came back again. A dance of destruction. Heat, weight, absence—all tearing into each other, not to end, but to overwhelm.
And then—
a rip.
In the distance behind them, the void tore open.
Not broken by one god, but by all three.
Color spilled through. Blue. Gold. Red. Green. Motion. Sound. Shape. Concepts poured from the wound like blood from a slit throat. The blackness couldn't hold it. Reality began to form.
Stars blinked into existence, trembling. Planets churned from dust. Air scattered where there was once silence. The gods shrank as the world expanded. Their massive forms folded inward, pulled into smaller, sharper shapes.
Limbs. Faces. Eyes.
Humanoid, but still more than that.
As the world bloomed around them, Evodil stopped moving.
A flicker of something ancient.
Familiar.
Wrong.
His gaze slowed. His form shimmered. And in that moment, his eyes closed.
Perseus reached out, glowing pale.
Quaros surged forward, a streak of golden flame.
Their hands never reached him.
Their screams echoed into the newborn sky.
Evodil hit the ground hard.
The rock cracked, then shattered beneath the weight of something that was no longer shaped like a god. His body spread across the crater in thick, slow waves—formless, shifting. Black liquid pulsed and curled like smoke drowning in tar. Shadow tendrils rose, swayed, collapsed. Some reached skyward. Others sank into the earth.
Around the crater, animals fled—hooves pounding, wings flapping, tails disappearing into brush. Every instinct told them to run.
But not humans.
They came closer.
One at first, then two. Drawn by heat or fear or fascination. They moved like children toward a bonfire they didn't understand. One slid down the edge of the crater, feet scraping rock. Another followed. Then more.
A group formed at the base, standing just beyond the reach of the leaking dark.
They spoke.
Argued.
Pointed.
Whispers filled the air as the mass of shadow twitched, shifted, breathed. The humans didn't run. They stared.
It didn't move.
It didn't speak.
It barely pulsed anymore.
So the humans decided: it was theirs.
Whatever it was—shadow, ash, divine rot—it had fallen into their world, and so it belonged to them now. They touched it, prodded it, marked the edges of where the black began and ended. When it didn't resist, they claimed it.
A small hut was built at the base of the crater, little more than a shelter from rain and wind. Tools were stored there, and stories passed down—about the day the sky tore open and a god-shaped thing fell.
Years passed.
The hut became walls.
Stone was dragged down the crater, carried by hand, stacked and bound. Rooms were carved into the rock. Fires burned longer. Guards were stationed. A castle bloomed at the heart of the impact, its towers rising just high enough to be seen from the forests beyond.
More time. More hands. More minds.
Stone turned to metal. Fire to circuits. Secrets fed by silence and ambition. The castle sank underground, brick by brick, as machines replaced myths. Labs grew beneath the crater like roots—clean, humming, unnatural.
Wires curled around the edge of the sleeping shadow.
Lights scanned what they could never name.
And the thing in the center never stirred.
In the main sector, fluorescent lights buzzed over a room too cold for comfort. Screens lined the walls, all showing the same thing—a silent black mass in the center of a glass chamber. No movement. No change.
Three workers sat around the main panel, coffee in hand, uniforms half-zipped.
"Easiest high-clearance job I've ever had," one muttered, leaning back in his chair. "Sit here, watch a shadow do nothing, and get paid more than surgeons."
The second snorted. "You say 'shadow,' I say art project. We could drop a match in there and it wouldn't flinch."
The first laughed. "Seriously though. They act like it's dangerous. What's it gonna do, brood us to death?"
The third didn't laugh.
He kept his eyes on the screen, watching the thing in the chamber ripple—just slightly, like breath under thick oil.
"Maybe it can do something," he said quietly.
The other two glanced over.
"C'mon, don't start that 'what if' crap again."
He didn't look away.
"I'm just saying," the third replied, voice low, "we don't know what it is. It didn't come from here. It didn't belong here. The higher-ups call it the 'Fallen Star' like that makes it easier to sleep."
He folded his arms.
"My name's on the watch roster. If this thing wakes up, I'll be the first one it sees."
The others fell silent for a moment, then laughed again, brushing it off.
Michael Moral didn't laugh.
He watched the screen.
And the shadow didn't move.
But something in the room felt off.
The laughter echoed too loud in the sterile room.
Michael kept his gaze on the screen—on the thing beyond the glass, that formless god they kept caged in wires and silence.
Then the door hissed.
Not the main exit. The other one. The one that was never supposed to open.
All three froze as the lock disengaged with a heavy thunk. A moment passed. Then the door slid open with a hiss of cold air and tighter authority.
She stepped in.
Long coat. High collar. Tired eyes sharp as scalpels. Amanda Petrikov.
Nobody called her by name here. Just The Boss—when they dared to speak of her at all.
Born in Russia, refined in American institutions, unmatched in scores, unbroken by bureaucracy. She was a ghost with credentials. A myth with clearance codes. And she was standing in their sector, unannounced.
No one spoke.
She didn't offer explanation. She just pointed—one gloved hand, efficient and final.
"You. You. You. With me."
No time to argue.
Michael rose with the other two, heart thudding.
They followed her through the winding corridors, down past the security rings, past checkpoints meant to hold back anything except her word.
They entered the containment chamber.
It was colder here.
At the center, the god pulsed faintly in its cage of light and reinforced glass, its form flickering like oil struggling to hold shape.
Amanda said nothing.
And none of them dared ask why they were there.
Amanda stepped forward with a calmness that unsettled all three of them.
The air around the capsule thickened, humming like it knew what was coming.
From her coat pocket, she drew a small, jagged stone—irregular in shape, almost humming on its own. A pale glow bled from its edges like it was breathing.
Michael took half a step back.
The others whispered—too quiet for her to care.
"Is she insane?"
"She's breaking protocol."
"She's going to die—"
There was one rule, etched into every wall and training file:
Do not approach the capsule.
Do not open it.
Do not reach inside.
They all knew what happened to those who tried.
But Amanda reached the capsule anyway.
She tapped in a command. The seals disengaged. Metal locks groaned. The glass split with a whisper of released pressure.
She opened it.
The god inside stirred, just slightly.
And without hesitation, Amanda slid her hand in—stone first.
The strange shard glowed faintly, rhythmically.
Then the shadows moved.
The moment her hand crossed the threshold, the god stirred.
Not with sound, not with fury—but with slow, deliberate motion. A tendril of living shadow lifted from its resting mass, drawn not to Amanda, but to the stone.
It latched on.
The glow intensified—then dimmed, swallowed by the inky black as the stone absorbed the touch.
The shadows clung to her skin, wrapping up her wrist like ribbons in a storm, then slithered back inside as if satisfied.
Amanda didn't flinch.
She pulled her hand out. The capsule hissed shut behind her with a smooth click, the seals engaging once more.
The stone in her palm was no longer glowing.
It was black. Entirely. No shine, no heat. Just a silent, perfect void wrapped in rock.
Amanda stared at it.
And smirked—subtle, satisfied, like she had just stolen fire from the gods.
The others watched in frozen disbelief, waiting for answers they'd never get.
She said nothing.
She just walked past them, gaze fixed on the stone like it whispered to her alone.
The door slid open with a quiet hiss as Amanda stepped into the hallway beyond.
Her heels clicked against the floor, steady at first—then uneven, as a sound slipped from her lips.
A snicker.
Then a giggle.
Then full laughter—sharp, delighted, echoing off the metal walls like the shriek of someone who no longer feared consequence.
She clutched the stone in one hand, grinning down at it like it had crowned her.
God of this age, she mouthed to herself, eyes wide.
By the time she slipped it back into her pocket, her expression had softened to something unreadable. Something dangerous.
She kept walking. Unbothered. Unstoppable.
Behind her, the three scientists didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Only when the sound of her footsteps faded did the whispers begin again—low, afraid, and fast.
"She's out of her mind."
"She's a lunatic."
"She's going to get us all killed."
Amanda neared her office, the black stone pulsing faintly in her pocket. Her steps were steady. Focused.
BZZT.
She stopped.
BZZT. BZZT. BZZT.
Alarms burst to life, red lights spinning across the walls.
From the far end of the hall, a violent metallic crash echoed—something had slammed through steel. A second later, a wave of smoke rolled down the corridor. The containment door was gone, ripped from its frame and embedded in the opposite wall. The impact left a deep dent, the metal warped and smoking.
Then—two bodies dropped from the doorway.
They hit the floor hard, necks torn wide open. Headless. Blood fountained out, staining the white walls deep red. Bone fragments stuck out from the meat, jagged and cleanly severed. The bodies twitched, once, then stopped.
The sirens kept screaming.
The lights cut out all at once.
The hallway fell into darkness, the only illumination coming from the red emergency lights that pulsed like a dying heart. The two bodies lay still in the dim light, twitching faintly—still leaking, still twitching.
Screams erupted in the distance. Footsteps. Panic. The lab cracked into chaos as alarms wailed on, blaring through every hallway, drowning out every voice.
Amanda couldn't move.
Her legs locked in place. Muscles frozen. Her breath caught somewhere in her throat, and for the first time in years, she felt it—real fear. It crawled up her spine like ice.
The smoke leaking from the chamber stopped.
The silence that followed was louder than the alarms.
From within the scorched frame of the containment door, a shape emerged—slowly. One step. Then another.
It was Michael's body, but not Michael.
His eyes were black, hollow pools of shadow, and at the center of each: a single, glowing white pupil that stared like the cold of deep space. His white horns curled back from his head like they'd been there all along. The lab coat he wore was drenched in blood—his, or someone else's, didn't matter.
He stood still. Tall. Silent.
The god had awoken. And he did not like what he saw.
The red emergency lights sputtered to life, painting the hallway in a deep crimson haze. Shadows stretched like claws, clawing at the walls as the metallic scent of blood crept into the air.
Screams rang out. Sharp. Human. Fleeting.
48 — A body hits the ground. Something wet splashes the wall.
43 — Another scream, cut short. Bones snap.
39 — A door slams, but it's not enough.
35 — Footsteps scatter like rats in fire.
27 — A throat is crushed under silence.
23 — Someone prays. Something answers.
17 — A shriek echoes from the lower labs, then nothing.
13 — A woman sobs into a radio that no longer works.
8 — Someone tries to climb a vent. Doesn't make it.
3 — The hallway trembles under heavy steps.
2 — A final breath. A last cry. Gone.
Then—nothing.
The silence had weight. It pressed on the bones. It waited.
And now he stood before her.
Not Michael. Not anymore.
White-pupiled eyes stared her down, framed by curling horns that gleamed in the dark. The bloodied coat clung to the new shape of something ancient. Angry. Awoken.
He did not speak.
He only waited, and she understood:
This was not a moment to survive.
It was a moment to be judged.
She screamed.
Spat at the figure, her voice cracking under fury and pride.
Words spilled like venom—about her achievements, her brilliance, the empire she built from stone and shadow.
"You're just an accident! A lab rat! My creation! I MADE YOU!"
Her face twisted with madness.
"You're NOTHING compared to human will! You hear me?! NOTHING!"
But the god did not flinch.
Did not blink.
Did not care.
Oh, how she wished it had listened.
One small tilt of his head.
One slow motion of a finger—barely even a gesture.
And suddenly, blood ran like a river down her neck.
Her scream turned into a gurgle.
The fire in her eyes dimmed.
Her knees buckled as she collapsed, crimson pooling beneath her.
Eyes wide with rage.
With disbelief.
With fear.
And then they closed.
The god finally moved.
A slow inhale through borrowed lungs, then a sigh—one not of exhaustion, but of long-denied irritation. He rolled his neck, the vertebrae snapping back into place with faint cracks, then flexed his arms as if testing out the limits of this new flesh.
His fingers twitched, shadows trailing behind them like smoke being peeled off glass. Blood still dripped from the tip of one finger.
He looked down at the bodies—some twitching, some not.
Then around at the corridor bathed in crimson light, metal walls warped from the heat of rage, plastic tiles melted and blackened.
"...Bit of a fixer-upper," he muttered, almost amused. His voice low, human, but far too calm for the massacre around him.
Boots stepped through puddles of blood, slow and even. He didn't glance at Amanda's body again. Didn't need to.
"Now then," he said, arms lazily folding behind his back. "Two idiots left unaccounted for. My dear, dear brothers..."
He turned down the hallway, still smirking.
"Might as well look around this strange little world first. I've earned the walk."
And with that, the god vanished into the smoke-laced dark, taking his first steps into Earth.
The walk was long. But enjoyable.
Even with flesh, even bound by bones and breath, he was still a god—one who knew how to pass time with chaos as his companion.
He strolled through the cities cloaked in neon and noise, their towers of glass and metal reaching higher than the gods of old had ever dared. So much ambition. So little understanding.
In one city, he erased a traffic system for five seconds. Five seconds was all it took—fifteen crashes, three explosions, and a man proposing to the wrong woman on live TV.
In another, he whispered doubt into the mind of a beloved president during a speech. By the end of the day, the man had fled the capital barefoot, screaming about "eyes in the storm drain."
And in a quiet town by the mountains, he simply stood still at the edge of a school during dismissal. Just stood. No motion. No speech. By morning, half the population had moved out.
He never smiled. Never laughed. But he was entertained.
Eventually, he found himself at the edge of a slow, winding river. The stars above looked too fake, too clean. A sky made by amateurs.
He sat at the bank, dipping a finger into the water. It hissed, steam rising around his hand like incense. His reflection twisted, unreadable.
"World's loud," he muttered, watching a fish float belly-up. "Not enough screaming. Not yet."
He looked up at the night sky, his eyes blank with memory.
"…Sure hope they kept receipts for all this."
And then, silence again, save for the river trying to pretend nothing had happened.
But alas… silence does not last.
Not for him.
Not ever.
Just as he rose from the riverbank, stretching like a lazy cat with godhood etched into his bones, something tugged at his attention. A ripple. A pulse in the fabric of reality he now wandered through. His gaze lifted—and there they were.
Almost comical.
Almost insulting.
The other two idiots.
Quaros, looking ever the self-righteous tower of discipline, arms folded, posture rigid, with an aura that screamed I hate joy. And next to him, Perceus, muttering something about "gravitational irregularities" like he was born allergic to fun.
Both wore forms that could pass for human. Too clean. Too polished. But their eyes gave them away. Burning with memory. With godhood.
They saw him just as quickly as he saw them.
The silence cracked.
Evodil vanished in a flash of light, a chaotic bolt ripping toward them like a star dying backwards—only for him to overshoot his landing by half a meter and slam face-first into the dirt, kicking up dust and pride in equal measure.
"Ow."
"Still haven't figured out inertia, have you?" Perceus muttered, scribbling on a folded napkin.
"Welcome back," Quaros said, not smiling, not frowning, just Quaros-ing as always.
Evodil groaned and flipped over, laying flat on his back like he owned the planet. "You're both still unbearable."
"Same could be said for you," Perceus replied, finally looking up from his napkin. "You crashed into the crust of reality last time we met. Care to not explode this one?"
Quaros exhaled through his nose. "This world is fragile. Don't ruin it before we learn its rules."
Evodil stared at the sky again. "No promises."
And just like that, the three primordial beings who once tore apart stars now stood as men. Talking. Grumbling. Remembering.
Their reunion, somehow, almost human.
The river breeze whispered between them, brushing across the grass like the world itself was holding its breath.
Evodil sat up slowly, brushing dried leaves from the blood-stained lab coat still draped over his shoulders. He plucked at it with a frown. "This... thing. Makes me look like I escaped a third-rate medical drama."
Quaros raised a brow, his golden armor gleaming under the sun, spotless, as if it had never seen war—though they all knew it had. "And you look like a burnt-out intern who lost a bet with fate."
Perceus smirked, adjusting the cuffs of his sharp navy suit, his tie floating slightly like gravity disagreed with it. "I'd say I fit in best here. You both look like cosplay rejects."
"Oh please," Evodil scoffed. "You look like you sell overpriced atoms door-to-door."
"And you look like a patient who bit the doctor."
Quaros just shook his head, expression barely changing but the twitch at the corner of his mouth gave away the deep, seething judgment. "Mortals will either run from us or worship us if we don't adjust. Blending in might be… wise."
They all paused.
They remembered the Clash. The screams of time tearing, the stars crying out, their final blows echoing through the void like thunder through bone. No apology had ever been offered. None accepted. But here they were again. Breathing the same air.
Maybe that was enough.
"…Fine," Perceus said first. "We need names. Human ones. Something simple. Adaptable. I'll go with Noah."
Quaros nodded once. "James. Traditional. Efficient."
They both turned to Evodil, who stared back like they'd asked him to put on clown shoes.
He shrugged. "I don't care. Call me Shadow, call me Dog, I'll answer if I feel like it."
"Very mature," Noah muttered.
"Utterly predictable," James added.
Evodil stood, stretching again, lab coat fluttering in the wind like a ghost's sigh. "So. Are we done playing family reunion, or are we going to figure out what the hell this world is hiding?"
James crossed his arms. "Agreed."
Noah tucked his napkin away. "Let's find a place to begin."
And so, the three gods—dressed like a science experiment, a general, and a finance advisor—walked side by side toward the nearest city. Not quite allies. Not quite enemies. But something in between.
Their arrival in the city was anything but subtle.
Towering buildings of polished glass stretched skyward like crystal monoliths. Neon signs danced across their faces. Drones zipped overhead, making metallic whrrr noises. Cars that looked more like spaceships whispered silently past. Evodil froze as one hovered by, its engine humming too clean, too smooth.
"The hell is that?!" he barked, stumbling back with a sharp hiss.
James smirked. "It's called progress."
Noah pushed up his glasses. "It's called a Tesla Model Zenith. 0 to 800 in under a second."
Evodil blinked. "That sounds like a weapon."
"It is," James muttered, eyeing one zip by. "If you hit someone hard enough."
The mortals around them whispered and gawked, some recording on tiny devices, others crossing the street without subtlety. Their eyes screamed: freaks.
Evodil leaned to the side, scanning their minds. "Anxious, divorced, suicidal, can't afford rent..." He grinned wide. "Oh, these people are deliciously broken."
Noah chuckled, grabbing a rolling briefcase someone left behind, thumbing through its contents. "They don't protect their intellectual property at all."
James, naturally, took it one step further—staring a police officer dead in the eye before yanking the pistol from his holster. "Civil Control, huh?" He gave the weapon a spin. "Let's see if law still fears gods."
The officer blinked once, then screamed. Chaos erupted.
BZZZT! Drones turned. Sirens whined. A crowd shouted.
And the gods did the most divine thing possible.
They ran.
Three ancient entities—one in a bloodstained coat, one in gold armor, and one in a navy suit—bolted down the street like drunk college students, laughing uncontrollably.
"I STOLE A GUN!" James bellowed, grinning like a madman.
"I STOLE A PATENT!" Noah yelled back, flipping a schematic in the air.
"I STOLE THEIR SOULS!'" Evodil roared, howling with laughter. "OH MY GOD, I MISSED THIS."
The city behind them roared in disarray. Police scrambled. Alarms flared. And somewhere, deep beneath the joy and chaos, the world began to shiver. Because the gods had returned.
And they were having fun.
They tore through nations like whispered storms, laughing as they went. Germany's data vaults were emptied in under an hour. Poland's military prototypes vanished before their creators even noticed. Spain's archives, Italy's relics, Switzerland's locked accounts—plundered. They wandered through Sweden like kings on a holiday and passed through Finland and Denmark like ghosts, barely seen, never caught. They didn't do it out of need. It was indulgence. A divine game. Every piece of stolen tech, every confused face, every glimmer of fear—they devoured it.
To the world, they were unidentified anomalies. To themselves? Just gods stretching their legs again.
Then came the cold.
A sharp wind clawed at them as their feet touched down on the last unbroken corner of the world—Antarctica. A place left mostly untouched by human ruin, vast and silent, nature's final fortress.
Evodil stepped onto the ice, and something in his expression cracked. Subtle—barely there—but James caught the stiffness in his shoulders. Noah noticed how long he stared at the horizon.
The crater was still there. A deep scar on the land, frozen mid-scream. His fall had shaped it, torn the earth open and buried secrets too old for science to explain. Near it sat the lab—half-swallowed by snow, steel ribs poking out like some sunken creature refusing to die.
He stared for a heartbeat longer, then walked on like it was nothing.
"What is this place?" Noah asked.
"Hell froze over," James muttered.
Evodil laughed. It was hollow. "Just another rock," he said, waving it off.
They moved forward, past the crater and into the white silence. He didn't speak of what had happened here. Not yet. It didn't matter.
They stood at the edge of the wasteland, silent. Antarctica stretched out before them like the end of the world—white, endless, cruel. The wind bit at their skin, but none of them flinched. Not even Evodil, whose eyes were still locked on the frozen crater like it had whispered his name.
James broke the silence first. "We've walked through cities ruled by wires and numbers. No gods. No faith. Just glowing screens and plastic hope."
He turned to them, voice calm but sharp. "So why don't we make one of our own? A land. A haven. A reminder."
Noah raised a brow, his arms crossed. "You sure this isn't just your ego talking again?" He looked at the ice below them. "We nearly tore each other apart once for less than this. You want to try building something together now?"
James shrugged, unapologetic. "So what if we do? We have the power. The humans forgot what it means to kneel."
Noah clicked his tongue but didn't object further. He glanced at Evodil, who hadn't said a word, eyes still pinned to the old scar on the earth where it had all gone wrong.
"Evodil?" Noah asked.
Nothing.
"Oi, shadow brain, you comin' back or what?" James said.
A long pause.
Then, finally, Evodil blinked and muttered, "Do whatever. I don't care. You're gonna drag me into this anyway." He turned his back to the crater and walked forward into the snow. "Just don't make it boring."
And thus the building began.
Noah was the first to act, stepping forward with a calmness that almost masked the power he was now tapping into. The air cracked. The ground shook. And before either James or Evodil could even blink properly, the earth itself obeyed him like a broken beast. Great jagged towers of black and gray stone burst from around the edges of the ancient crater, forming a ring of mountains so tall they seemed to stab at the stratosphere. The other two stood there, squinting through the snow and dust, until James finally muttered, "...what the fuck?"
Noah gave a lazy smile, arms folded behind his back. "City of gods. No mortals allowed. Keep out signs weren't gonna cut it."
James stared at him like he'd just grown a second head. Evodil looked like he was about to start mouthing off, but instead just blinked, unimpressed, then turned to look at the crater again.
Still, not to be outdone, James rolled his neck, grinned like a maniac, and clenched both fists. The sky began to shimmer. The winds halted. Pieces of rock and metal from the landscape started to lift. Then, with a rumbling crack, entire islands ripped out from the snow-covered plains and began floating into the sky, lazily drifting like forgotten gods themselves. Noah, now quite enjoying the game, helped layer the surfaces with thick vegetation—odd blues and purples, glowing faintly under the dull sun.
James looked up at the alien-colored forests and said, "Huh. Not bad. Might make a vacation home up there."
Meanwhile, Evodil finally broke his quiet fixation on the shattered lab entrance below. His hand twitched once. Just once. And then the entire crater shivered. Darkness pooled outward like ink in water, curling into every crack, every wall, swallowing stone and structure in an almost liquid mass of pure black.
"Hey, dumbass, we can't see anything down there now," James shouted.
Evodil didn't respond. He just smirked, still not turning around. "Good. I hate the look of this place."
Noah peered into the void below, narrowed his eyes, and then leaned back slightly. "...Ambiance's not bad, though."
And for the first time in a long while, the three gods began to build.
James built himself a citadel—no, a monument. A massive spire of white marble and stone, polished so finely it nearly reflected the cloud-choked sky above. With Noah's precise control over matter, the two of them raised walls that scraped the heavens and steps wide enough for a giant's march. Inside, however, it remained hollow and cold, a skeletal shell of grand intent. Only a handful of furniture pieces sat in its heart, all carved from obsidian-dark stone—thrones, tables, a long ceremonial bench across the side of the central hall. The floor matched the furniture: sleek, black, and almost alive with the faintest shimmer. There was no roof; James wanted the sky open above him, wanted to see it all, and if it rained—so be it.
Meanwhile, Evodil worked in silence. Not far from the Citadel's towering silhouette, he picked a steep slope along one of the crater-forged mountains and began to carve. Not build, carve. Hands in his pockets, eyes half-lidded, he sank a tunnel inward with just thought and will. No booming cracks, no fancy flourishes. Just absolute darkness peeling stone apart like butter. A single long path led into the heart of the mountain, where his "mansion" took form—not grand, not lavish, but undeniably his. A low-profile structure, cozy in its shadowed aesthetic, built from charred wood, volcanic rock, and something that shifted like smoke along its borders.
Noah, ever the architect of connection, forged a bridge from the Citadel to the mansion—sleek, simple, made of bright white steel. It curved gracefully between the two peaks like a thread of divine intent.
Above Evodil's dwelling, built right into the rockface, a watchtower rose—tall, narrow, and sharp, like a needle of night piercing through the fog. From there, Evodil could observe the whole of their strange new city: the floating islands, the jagged peaks, the pulsing glow of alien flora and half-formed ambition.
It was beginning to look like a kingdom. Or perhaps... a warning.
After a while, their new home stood finished—at least to their satisfaction. Evodil's manor had undergone several transformations, from absurd abominations of shadow and jagged glass to what now resembled a rustic mountain retreat. Old wood, stone, faint golden trimming here and there… something almost human, if still drowned in dark ambiance. He kept the tower, of course. Couldn't let go of that.
James, ever the purist, left his Citadel exactly as it was: massive, empty, arrogant.
They found themselves at the edge of one of the floating islands James had raised earlier, the sky stretched wide above and strange winds brushing past them. Noah sat cross-legged on the stone edge, legs tucked in as he stared at a sleek, silver tablet he had forged using schematics stolen from humans. Evodil lounged beside him, legs dangling freely into the air below, tapping his foot like he was bored of gravity itself. James stood behind them, arms crossed, half-watching the horizon.
Naturally, when the glow of Noah's new toy lit up, it didn't take long.
Evodil tilted his head with a smirk, "Look at this guy. First day as a god and already playing mobile games."
James snorted. "What's next? Gonna start making social media accounts?"
Noah didn't respond. Just raised one middle finger without looking up.
They stared at the empty stretch of sky and city below, letting silence hang like mist—until, predictably, it broke.
An argument.
Of course it did.
"What should we name this place?" James asked, arms crossed, already looking far too proud of whatever cursed idea he was about to spit out.
Evodil didn't answer. Not out of mystery, but sheer apathy. He leaned back on his elbows and watched a passing cloud roll by like it owed him money.
James cleared his throat and offered something... wrong. Something like Alzmarcheim or Straustwaltz. Whatever it was, it made even Noah give him a look of genuine offense.
"That sounds like the birthplace of war crimes," Noah muttered.
"At least it sounds dignified," James shot back.
Noah, meanwhile, started listing off slightly-tweaked human names. Neotera, Aurelia, Novastra. Fancy, empty syllables rearranged to sound important.
Then Evodil exhaled slowly, eyes half-closed. "Menystria."
The word slipped out like it had always been there, just waiting to be said. Strange. Unfamiliar. Elegant in its alienness.
The other two stared at him.
"…That actually doesn't suck," Noah admitted.
James looked away, almost offended by how much he liked it. "Fine. Menystria."
And just like that, it was decided. The name settled into the stone, into the sky, into their bones. A city of gods now had a name.
And that was that.
The three gods stared at the canvas of the future—a vast stretch of nothing waiting to be filled or destroyed. The wind passed gently over their shoulders, pulling at coats, armor, and suits alike, as if urging them to move, to act, to be.
A long pause. Then, words.
James spoke first, his voice firm, standing like a pillar carved from justice itself. "Law and Order."
Noah followed, fingers steepled around his tablet, eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he looked toward the horizon. "Knowledge and Sustenance."
And finally, Evodil. Legs still dangling over the edge, one hand lazily flicking a pebble into the air. "Fun and Chaos."
Three answers. Three philosophies. Three pieces of the same divine puzzle.
Different, distant, broken even—but belonging here, together. Whether the world was ready or not.