As the memories of a world long buried beneath ash and ruin resurfaced, Exile clenched his fist.
Earth, once teeming with life, had rotted into a nuclear wasteland. In that age, to reject religion was to reject safety itself, a price few could afford to pay. He remembered the fear, the hypocrisy, the blind devotion to a god of "balance."
Given that, he should have hesitated now. After all, he was preparing to do the very thing he had despised most: to play god. To embody the root of the faith he had once condemned.
By all logic, a part of him should have resisted, should have felt the weight of guilt or contradiction.
Yet he didn't.
Instead, a deep, burning anger stirred within him. Anger at the man he had been. At the world that had forced him into submission.
He had been a stealth bomber operator. He knew what it was to be a silent reaper, one that lurked in the shadows, claiming lives like herbs.
He had beared witness to the downfall of society, of which he played a significant part of, when all was said and done.
But that feeling… that regret, that guilt: those belonged to a man. Only a mortal could drown in the sorrow of the lives he'd taken for a cause he barely understood.
Exile was no longer that man. The echoes of Luca's humanity had long since faded. Now, he was something else entirely, a being beyond remorse or redemption.
Revenge held no meaning for him. Reclaiming Earth, freeing its worshipers from false hope. Those were the fantasies of mortals clinging to purpose.
For Exile, such goals were insignificant. On the endless list of his divine tasks, they lay buried near the bottom. Just below ruling over a cluster of worlds, yet still a step above spreading hollow faith to the desperate.
Exile materialized a skull, and crushed it between his bony, slender fingers. The skull of a human.
Feeling the object disintegrate into powder under his godly strength, Exile looked up.
The past was behind him now. He would not let his emotions of a life long lost dictate the events of this one.
Nevertheless, he shan't forget. Deep within his crooked soul of someone who denied faith to enter his heart, he will remember.
For now, he'll play the part of a contender in the Gods' game. A pawn, no, not even a piece on the chessboard. An insect.
He will wait. Power would come. Exile would grow beneath the eyes of the monsters laughing at his struggles now.
He remembered a saying his mother used to say to him. Before all the war and bloodshed:
"Reach for the stars. When you'll look back, the others will be left in your dust."
Only a few days had passed since the games began. Exile's tribe had made tremendous progress, so much that he was willing to bet no other player had come close, unless fortune favored them beyond reason.
But that wasn't enough. From now on, he would dedicate every minute, every heartbeat, to expanding his domain.
Where others might hesitate, plan, or wait for the perfect moment, Exile would act. The early bird gets the worm, and he would be the one awake at dawn, ready to seize it.
"Reach for the stars. Leave everyone in your dust."