My soul watched as she placed her black pearl ring with me into the coffin. I would have smiled if I could have. My Vaelora, she was giving up her most priceless possession to keep me company, her ring of power. I had always known that in her own way, she loved me too, but this was proof.
The heavy lid of the sarcophagus closed me into total darkness, and I began dreaming, just like she had ordered me. I dreamed of her—of us. And it was glorious.
This time you need to awaken me.
Her words still echoed in my mind when I finally found the strength to stretch underneath the bandages, ripping them. I didn't know what she meant with her words, but I was certain I would figure it out. First though, I needed to regain my strength. Needed to rebuild my body.
Six months later
I had scoured every nook and cranny of this strange place and concluded I was in some kind of storage chamber, a tomb not for the dead but for forgotten things. Stacked wooden crates loomed like burial stones, their surfaces stamped with symbols. Not the sacred runes of gods or kings, but something crude, something mortal. Things lay scattered about, strange and unfamiliar—metal cylinders with long, slender necks, their surfaces dull with dust, and what looked like weapons, but not swords or spears. One had a wooden stock and a long, darkened barrel, its design alien yet unmistakably meant for war. Clothing, too, was draped over crates—coats of thick fabric, with brass buttons glinting in the dim light, and trousers stitched in a style unlike anythingI had ever seen. In the corner, a peculiar contraption with a wide, blackened horn and a crank handle stood silent, like some mechanical beast waiting to be roused. A dull hum vibrated through the walls unlike any pulse of power I had ever known, steady and lifeless. Overhead, a dim glow emanated from within a glass orb encased in metal like a trapped star; its flame flickered unnaturally, but it was the only source of light in this vast space. The air was thick with dust, but beneath it, I detected hints of something sharp—oil, metal, soot. The floor was smooth and cold beneath my toes, as though the stone had been tamed and polished into submission. I sat up, the stiffness of millennia cracking through my limbs, and listened—to the distant murmur of voices above me, the clatter of unseen contraptions, and the steady, rhythmic pounding of something vast, something moving beyond these walls. The world had changed, and I did not yet know if it would recognize me—or if I would recognize it.
Every once in a while, someone would come down a long set of stairs, bringing or taking unknown artifacts. Sometimes, when they brought or took heavier objects, it was two or three men talking in a strange tongue. I was a god, so any language spoken I knew, but still… Some of their words made no sense to me: musket, gramophone, gaslight, to name a few.
While I worked on regaining my strength, I discovered books bound and written on the thinnest paper I had ever seen. Written by such skilled hands that every repeating letter looked the same. Even the way they were arranged in even spaces was magnificent.
The first book that grabbed my attention was calledThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Empires rose and fell all the time, but still, it was quite fascinating. Another wasA New System of Modern Geography, laying out maps of continents I had never seen or heard of. Nothing looked familiar to me, and I was beginning to wonder if I was even still on Earth. Butthen my attention caught on the name of a river: Nile. Was it the same Nile as Orasis had been built by? Familiar mountains were drawn, but large, triangular structures were nothing like... except... hadn't Vaelora talked about something like that? What had she called it? A pyramid? Yes, that sounded right. Had she finally had them built? I remembered the scorched and salted Earth after the last battle. Had the desert taken over all of our splendor?
The Age of Reasonmade me laugh. A man named Thomas Paine criticized organized religion. Words likeBibleandChristianwere foreign to me, so I hunted for a book calledBiblenext.
The more I read, the more I realized how long ten thousand years truly were. Vaelora's wrath seemed eternal.Vengeful deity, I grinned. I couldn't wait to see her again, to physically hold her. I had enjoyed my dreams, but they were nothing compared to holding her in my arms, to feeling her warm body pressed to mine.
To pass the time, I read more, finding it a quite enjoyable form of entertainment.
ReadingFrankensteinmade me wonder about myself. Was I like Frankenstein's monster? No, I decided. The monster didn't have feelings; I did. Still, it was an entertaining book.
The next book I picked was thin by my standards, its pages rough beneath my fingertips, yet its weight in my hands felt heavier than the stone tablets of my forgotten temple.Zoonomia,it was called—written by a mortal man who dared to speak of creation without invoking gods, without invoking me.
I read the words slowly, the flickering light above me casting strange shadows over the lines.Life changes,the text claimed.It adapts.Not by divine will. Not by the decree of the gods. But by time, need, and chance.
I frowned. The mortal spoke of creatures shaping themselves, their forms shifting across generations, each one bending toward survival as a river bends toward the sea. As if the beasts of land and sky had molded themselves, inch by inch, until they fit the world instead of the world fitting them.
It was absurd. Heretical.
And yet...
I traced the lines of text, reading again.From one ancestor, all forms may arise. The strongest endure, the weak perish. Over time, their shapes refine, their nature alters.
My grip tightened on the book. I wondered if the author truly realized what he was suggesting. That the beings I had once ruled—creatures who had worshiped me, feared me, bled for me—had not been sculpted by divine hands, but by the indifferent passing of time? That their forms were not gifts of the gods but results of struggle, of endless suffering and survival?
I closed my eyes. I had seen civilizations rise and fall, watched men carve empires from sand and then crumble into dust, forgotten even by their own descendants. The weak had always perished; the strong had always thrived. It was nature, yes—but I had thought I was one of the ones who dictated it. That the wars fought in my name and the sacrifices left at my feet had determined who would inherit the world.
But what if the world had never needed me at all?
The thought was more chilling than any battlefield.
I snapped the book shut, tossing it onto the wooden desk with a thud. The mortal had been a fool, surely. He had seen a fragment of truth but mistaken it for the whole. The gods shaped the first of all things. That much was undeniable. But perhaps... once set into motion, life continued on its own, adjusting itself to a world that no longer called upon the divine.
That much became clearer to me with each book I read. People had moved away from gods and instead had chosen one they called God, and even He was questioned.
What had happened to the people?
My curiosity was so great that eventually I wandered away from the confines of the storage chamber and up the stairs, where I lurked in the shadows, watching.
Men moved through the grand halls, their voices carrying a carefully measured ease, their laughter polished and practiced. But it was their appearance that unsettled me most. These were warriors? These were leaders? Wrapped in layers of cloth so stiff and ornate, they walked as though burdened, not by weapons or armor, but by their own ridiculous fashions.
Their coats clung tightly to their torsos, their shoulders unnaturally stiff, as if they feared movement might ruin their elaborate attire. Their breeches did not extend to the ankles as they should, but left their lower legs wrapped in a strange, skin-tight fabric—too thin for armor, too fragile for battle. Their collars rose so high I wondered if they had been bound at the throat in some strange ritual. And atop their heads they wore tall, cylindrical structures—hollow towers of cloth and felt that served no purpose I could discern.
Where was the leather hardened by years of battle? The armor shaped by necessity? Where were the scars that marked victories and defeats?
