You get an early chapter today and its a double length chapter! Hope you enjoy the payoff of this chapter just as much I enjoyed writing it! :)
Also we are close to 250 stones and an extra chapter!
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The air within the sanctuary was thick; the usual purple glow was subdued, and everything was heavy with potential. Five concentric circles, etched deep into the crystalline floor, glowed with a soft, internal luminescence.
Each circle was a masterpiece of arcane geometry, woven with symbols of the oldest traces of a language of his own creation. The symbols within were found in the Atrium Primus Novum and were thus endowed with power through the countless hours of prayer performed over them.
This new script would be the basis of his new pantheon's system of magic, just as symbolically important as the Ancient Greek of Old, and more importantly, unconnected to any other pantheon but his own.
At the heart of this grand design stood Nicholas, his face a mask of calm intensity. Around him, at the other four cardinal points of the magic circle, stood Marcus, Julian, Jonathan, and Hercules.
This was the culmination of everything. The Apotheosis Ritual would not just create five Gods. It would forge a single, unified pantheon, its loyalty ensured by an inescapable stratagem.
Before the first syllable was chanted, Nicholas had implemented his final safeguard. The ritual's final, hidden phase was soul-splitting. The moment the divine transformation was complete, the instant their newborn, vulnerable god-souls were fully exposed and unanchored, his own soul would fracture.
Four sharp, intelligent fragments, each imbued with his core will and strategic dominance, would lance out. They would implant themselves into the very essence of his attendants, a permanent, guiding consciousness woven into the fabric of their newfound divinity.
They would be Gods, but they would forever be his Gods. It was a necessary cruelty, the only way to prevent the slow corruption and rebellion that had plagued Zeus for millennia. However, that was far from the only benefit this action would provide.
He began the chant. His voice was not a sound, but a vibration that shook the foundations of the pocket dimension itself; it was a sound that would soon shake the globe itself.
The first phase commenced: the Soul-Strip.
For Marcus, Julian, and Jonathan, the effect was immediate and violent. Three shimmering, ethereal forms were wrenched from their physical bodies. They hovered above their vacant shells, their human souls glowing with a soft, mortal light.
Then, the ritual's scalpel-like precision went to work. From Marcus's soul, the lingering, vine-like taint of Dionysus's authority was meticulously severed.
It withered, blackened, and dissipated into nothingness. From Julian's, the subtle, mercurial shimmer of Hermes's influence was peeled away like a layer of silver skin, dissolving into the charged air.
Their divine inheritance, the siphon their parents used for collecting their faith, was utterly annihilated.
For Jonathan, the process was simpler, cleaner. His mortal soul was simply separated, a bright, untainted spark lifted from its ageing vessel.
Hercules, however, was different. His soul was not a thing hidden within flesh; it was his body. He was a being of pure, manifested immortal essence. The ritual could not "remove" his soul. Instead, it began to unravel him.
His giant, heroic form started to dissolve at the edges, his substance pulling apart like thread from a cosmic tapestry, and as his past authorities were willingly relinquishing, just like a dye being removed from water, all that was left was just an intact mortal soul, if significantly bigger than the other mortal souls just in sheer size.
Huh, that's interesting. It appears that even without authorities, the Gods' souls are transformed, if not in quality then in sheer quantity. I should note that down.
He didn't have time to think much further before the second phase began: Anchoring. Tendrils of pure energy drawn from the ritual circles shot out and wrapped around the five exposed souls. They held them fast, a metaphysical anchor against the tremendous, sucking pull of the Afterlife.
They had no time delay, so thus came the crucial, world-shattering moment. Nicholas gave a mental command. The vast, oceanic reservoir of faith, the combined hope, terror, love, and devotion of hundreds of millions burst from its containment.
It flooded the ritual space, a roaring, chaotic torrent of raw, sentient energy. It did not gently envelop the souls; it smashed into them.
His soul surged out into the void, leaving behind spatial ripples from within the new cocoon that the faith had constructed for each of them.
His soul transcended the concept of space, following the trail the faith was leading him towards, the belief of millions of people was guiding him towards the place between existence and nonexistence from which all divine authority flowed.
Once it entered that space, his soul fractured into three different soul fragments that each followed the different faith streams to three different constructs in this space.
The first construction was Fate. It was a monstrous, beautiful tapestry woven from a billion glowing threads.
Each being shown not only the birth, joy, suffering of mortals and Gods but also the movement of the Stars, the shifting of the wind, the fate of all myriad phenomena flowed out from this place.
Some were silver and strong; others were black and frayed. Giant, ethereal scissors floated nearby, snipping threads with final, chilling clicks. Spools of potential unwound and rewound in an endless, dizzying dance.
The second construct was War. It was a swirling maelstrom of blood and smoke. Phantasmal armies clashed in silent, perpetual fury. Swords of shadow and shields of despair formed and broke apart. The scent of ozone, iron, and decay was a physical pressure.
But that wasn't all that it showed. The construct also displayed images of conflict between the elements fire and water, between seasons and between all myriad phenomena. It was the very concept of conflict given form.
The third construct was Magic. It was a kaleidoscopic vortex of pure concepts. The elements of water and earth materialised and vaporised.
Runic symbols blazed with impossible colours before dissolving into equations of light. The very elements—earth, air, fire, water—churned in a chaotic, creative symphony.
Nicholas's soul-fragments plunged into the heart of all three at once.
The experience was an agony of infinite creation. His consciousness was not merely observing the symbols; it was devouring them, being infected by them, and infecting them in turn.
The threads of Fate wove themselves directly into the fabric of his soul, and they became him and he became them.
He felt every cut of the scissors as a personal amputation, every new thread as a fresh nerve. The blood of War stained his essence, the screams of the phantom armies becoming his own internal soundtrack.
The shifting staffs and elemental chaos of Magic branded his will, searing him with the raw, untamed power of creation and unmaking.
And through it all, the voices of the faith that powered this transformation both assaulted him and protected his fragments in their growth.
A billion prayers, a million curses, the desperate love of a mother, the fanatical devotion of a follower, the terrified plea of a dying soldier, it was a psychic furnace of human emotion. It was too much.
The sheer, undiluted force of it, the brutal integration of the domains, threatened to obliterate his identity, to scatter his consciousness into the very concepts he was becoming.
He could not hold on. His soul-fragments, now each of them ten times the size of his previous intact soul, recoiled. They were pulled back, retracting from the conceptual maelstrom before being violently merged together into one. His God-Soul had been forged.
In the real world, the cocoons of faith surrounding the five entities collapsed. The light died. For a single, silent second, nothing existed.
But it was then that Nicholas initiated his gambit. His own Immortal Essence fractured into 5 fragments, one main piece bigger than all the rest combined, and he then proceeded to initiate the last phase of the ritual.
In a similar way to how a God might forge their Symbol of Power. The four shards of his God-Soul, each a perfect, diamond-hard sliver of his Immortal Essence, were launched into the void.
They sought their targets, flying towards the four God-Souls of his attendants.
They were imprisoned in space at their most vulnerable moment by the hidden runic circle and thus allowed for the fragments of his Immortal Essence to embed themselves into their God-Souls.
This effectively forged them into his own Symbols of Power and allowed him to control and influence even their thoughts.
This was only one part of his plan; the other one was much more useful, it was an as-yet-untried method. The Gods knew that making split personalities would make them be able to bear much more faith.
Nicholas, however, was averse to ever making his soul develop another consciousness; he read far too many novels where such an action led to disaster.
So, Nicholas decided to try another path; he would use his attendants in a similar way that the Gods used Demigods and their Symbols of Power.
He would use them as an in-built filter for his faith, but it was ultimately untried by any person as of yet, and now came the time to find out if his gambit paid off.
So, he again unleashed a torrent of faith, but this time directed only at their God-Souls. Once that torrent reached their Essence, he directed his own Essence fragments to influence them to absorb all the impurities.
Thus, they got to work, unable to disobey his commands, it was incredibly successful as every single one of the impurities was left in their God-Souls while the purified energy was directed towards him.
He used his newly formed connection to his authorities to guide that energy to once again grow his God-Soul as well as the amount of authority he occupies.
With the support of the faith of millions, his Essence continued to grow until it was 2 times bigger compared to his attendants, as well as occupying a third of the entire Fate Authority.
However, it was then that he received a notification from his fragment that the God-Souls of his attendants were becoming unstable and almost approaching madness, so he immediately stopped the absorption. After all, he didn't want to kill his allies.
Once this operation was finished, Nicholas first wiped their memories of this incident before releasing the prison he placed on their God-Souls and allowing them to manifest their True Divine Forms for the first time.
Then five new suns ignited in the sanctuary.
Where Nicholas' mortal body had stood, a being two kilometers tall now dominated the space. It was his true divine form. A colossal, humanoid shape woven entirely from a billion intricately knotted, glowing strings.
Each string pulsed with the light of a distant star, a tapestry of pure white, silver, and gold. Scissors of solidified fate hovered around its fingers, and its eyes were swirling vortexes of golden color. This was Aeon, the Shaper of Reality.
To his right was Marcus, now and forever more to be known as the Cupbearer. A towering, kilometer-high humanoid mass of living, boiling blood, constantly in motion. Shadows of crimson fire danced across its surface, and at its core, a brilliant, life-giving flame pulsed like a heart.
To his left was Julian, now to be known as the Keeper. A terrifying, kilometer-tall form of twisting, incomprehensible geometry.
It was a mass of arcane symbols, shifting tentacles of pure knowledge, and creatures of shadow that defied mortal understanding. A thick, black mist of secrecy swirled around it, obscuring its true, horrifying shape from any mind that tried to perceive it.
Behind him was Jonathan, now to be known as the Witness. A serene, kilometer-high giant composed of endless, shifting sands. Each individual grain of his titanic form was a tiny, glowing crystal, and within each crystal, a fleeting moment of time was captured and replayed. Its form was a silent, beautiful, and terrifying embodiment of eternity's passage.
And finally, Hercules, now to be known as the Warden. A kilometer-high form of polished, twisting mirrors. The space around it was constantly distorted, bending light and reality itself. It was an immovable anchor, a fortress of reflected power and absolute defense.
The five new gods hovered in the sanctuary, their immense forms radiating power that made the very air crackle. The ritual was complete. The pantheon was born.
And immediately, they all heard it. A chorus of screams. Not of terror, but of pure, undiluted rage, shaking the world itself.
It was a sound that ripped across all of the divine planes, a psychic shriek of betrayal and fury that came from all of the Gods whose authority he had encroached on. The old gods had felt the birth of the new, and their wrath was now a tangible, universe-shaking force.
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