[Twenty-Five Years from Now - Location: Beyond Dimensionality]
You were meant to mediate," said Helena, Magic God of the Multiverse. Her voice drifted like a lullaby meant for dying universes; soft, warm, and overwhelming. Her form was not a body, but an idea: a divine presence filtered into something humanoid only out of courtesy to lesser minds.
James stood unmoving under her radiance, cloak snapping in a wind that did not exist, at the epicenter of cosmic dissolution.
"Spare me the revisionism," James said in a tone cool and unhurried. "You sought for an instrument. What you received instead… was an equal."
Layers below, the Schism was healing. Reality knitting itself back together in defiance of three thousand years of divine mandate.
The Science God, Zeddicus materialized opposite, cold and blue. "YOU DARE!?" His voice was fury compressed into pure logic, electricity and entropy given sound.
"No," James said, eyes narrowing. "You dare."
"Oh my..." Helena's voice trembled like she was about to sob.
"LOOK WHAT YOU DID!" Zeddicus thundered. "IF ANYONE IS GOING TO MAKE MAGIC CRY, IT WILL BE ME!"
Helena inhaled sharply, cosmic sorrow and indignation folding together. "Oh James… why must you be like this?"
"BECAUSE HE IS A PROBLEM!" Zeddicus thundered. "A PETULANT, UNGRATEFUL, MORTAL PROBLEM!"
"Zeddicus," Helena snapped, "contain yourself."
"NO! I WILL NOT! YOU ALWAYS DO THIS!
"Let the mortal speak, Zeddicus," Helena retorted, her sadness instantly replaced with irritation.
"NO! THE FINITE BEING WILL SPEAK WHEN HE'S SPOKEN TO!"
Their bickering spiraled instantly, erasing timelines beneath them as collateral. Multiple spacetimes simply vanishing layers of narratives below, entire timelines collapsing like sandcastles as they carried on like James wasn't even there. Billions of lives snuffed out as cosmic background noise to their eternal argument.
James rolled his shoulders as though he had clearly had enough.
"James demands silence."
His voice echoed through dimensions, lifting the Language of Creation that was completely integrated into his being as it vibrated through every axis of existence.
The words grabbed their attention immediately and silence fell across the space beyond space.
James stepped forward now, eyes burning with cold emerald fire. "Let us be clear," he said. "You will fade. I will rise. And this tired reality will, for the first time, belong to itself—not to petulant deities clinging to relevance."
"I don't think I like you anymore," Helena said softly, her abstract form somehow conveying both anger and heartbreak simultaneously as her glow flickered with hurt.
"FINALLY!" Zeddicus boomed. "SOMETHING WE CAN AGREE ON!"
James didn't even bother looking at him.
"Your approval," raising a gauntleted hand that glowed with both mana and circuitry, "matters very little to me." James's armor ignited with impossible power as the void shook.
And the gods screamed in retaliation, causing all of creation to tremble.
---
[Twenty-Five Years Earlier - Location: Village of Ashfeld]
This is where it began.
With a child forged by fury.
And an ambition sharp enough to pierce Destiny itself.
It starts with death.
It ends with sovereignty.
Everything between those two points?
That is the story worth telling.