I stood up from the concrete ring around the Well of creation and looked around.
This was not the city.
No marble, no pillars, no ash stained streets. Just dry land stretching in every direction, cracked earth and pale stone under the ashen dull sky. The same empty wilderness that had greeted me when I first arrived in this world.
"This is where your journey begins," the void said, its voice everywhere and nowhere.
"A warning would have been nice," I shouted back, turning in a slow circle.
No answer.
"I really cannot catch a break with you and this damn universe" I muttered.
"Begin by creating spaces," the void said calmly. "Spaces for the consciousnesses that will inhabit your fragments. Each will carry an element."
I exhaled and sat down heavily with a huff on the ground. Closing my eyes, I reached inward, searching for that sensation again. The one I felt before, when something inside me opened instead of resisted.
At first, nothing happened.
Then slowly, painfully, a space formed. Not a place, not a room. Just an absence where something could exist. I focused and forced myself not to rush.
A second space followed, then a third, then a fourth.
By the time I tried for a fifth, my head throbbed sharply. Pressure built behind my eyes. My thoughts slipped, overlapping, like they were grinding against each other.
I gasped and stopped.
Trying again felt like my skull was being pried apart from the inside.
"Enough," the void said. "Rest. Let your mind stabilize, we will continue later."
I let myself fall backward, staring up at the sky. It was still the same ugly gray, flat and lifeless.
Where did the sun go?
"Small pockets of chaos energy are approaching," the void continued.
"Devour them."
I shot upright.
"What?" I asked, scanning the horizon. There was nothing, no movement, no sound not a trace of any chaos energy.
Then the ground rippled.
Shapes pulled themselves accross the dry and cracked earth as if they were wires breaking across dry skin. Short, thick bodies with distorted limbs and leathery wings far too small for their mass. Their eyes burned a sickly green, and their mouths split too wide when they shrieked.
Imps, but not like before. These were heavier and bloated. The very air around them pressed down on my chest.
Low rank high tier. I swallowed. I was barely low rank low-rank lower-tier.
The first one lunged.
I barely reacted in time, golden energy flaring weakly from my palm as I slammed it aside. The impact rattled my arm all the way to the shoulder. Pain bloomed instantly, and my hand felt slightly numb.
"Damn it," I hissed.
Another came from the side. I ducked, rolled, and sent a burst of golden sharp threads upward. It took thirteen strikes before the thing finally collapsed, dissolving into a thin mist that rushed into my chest.
The next was worse.
They came in groups, screeching, clawing, smashing into me with barely restrained force. Every fight felt like dragging myself uphill. My breathing grew ragged and my limbs felt heavy.
I stopped trying to face them all at once. I picked them off. Strike, retreat, strike again and retreat.
When they swarmed, I fled into the air. My flight ability barely held me up, but it was enough. They could not follow, their small wings flapped uselessly as they shrieked from below.
I dove back down when one strayed too far from the others.
Strike strike strike strike strike, dead, absorb. Move.
By the time I had torn through fifty of them, my hands were shaking, my chest burned, but something inside me felt fuller, and warmer.
The next one fell in ten strikes, then eight, then five. My golden divine energy responded faster, my body hurt less. My thoughts were getting clearer and faster.
When I reached a hundred kills, the remaining imps hesitated. Their shrieks turned sharp, and panicked. Then one by one, they pulled back, trudging through the dried earth the same way they came.
I stood alone in the wilderness, chest heaving.
"Good," the void said. There was no mockery in its voice this time.
"That will suffice."
I lowered myself to the ground, legs barely holding.
"Now rest properly," it added. "You will need it."
I did not argue, I felt so tired. My body was not tired, it was my mind that was exhausted.
I lay back on the cracked earth, staring up at the gray sky, I let exhaustion take me. Pinning my hopes on the void, I trusted it would wake me if something came for me.
I dreamed.
I was standing in a forest that had been ruined beyond saving. Trees were snapped and burned, their trunks twisted like broken bones. Bodies lay everywhere, bloated, misshapen, some I recognized. Some I did not.
Blood soaked the ground beneath my sandals. It pooled around my feet, warm and viscous. I followed the trail instinctively, my steps slow, my chest tight, until I reached the source.
A pile of corpses.
Heads. Limbs. Bodies torn apart and stacked without care. Eyes rolled back. Mouths slack, blood still dripping like it had not finished spilling.
Standing on top of them was a figure in a red toga.
The fabric was torn and frayed at the edges, clinging to his body. It was soaked through, so dark it barely looked red anymore. In his hand was a spear made of golden energy, humming softly.
The moment I saw it, my stomach turned.
I stared at his back, and a deep, crawling dread settled into me. Something about him felt familiar, too familiar.
The wind shifted, he turned, he saw me, and I saw him.
It was me.
No. Not me. That was a thing, a thing that was wearing my face, but there was nothing behind his eyes. No warmth, no anger, just, boredom? Like the world in front of him meant nothing at all.
Still looking at me, he smiled a wide, toothy grin. Chaos flared around him, thick and alive.
Then he laughed, the sound echoed through the ruined forest, hollow and endless.