Chapter 14: The Seven Seconds of Creation
Phaelan's death was as brutal and inglorious as his life.
It happened in a rain-soaked field on the edge of an oak forest. His tribe, drawn into a conflict he didn't understand, faced a small incursion of low-level demons, scum from the Great War that had spilled over into the human world. Through Faelan's eyes, I saw the creatures: twisted humanoids with leather skin and bone claws. They were weak, pathetic.
Faelan, now a gray-haired warchief with scars mapping his battle life, fought with the fury of a cornered wolf. His iron sword sang in the air, cutting through demonic flesh. But there were too many.
I felt it before it happened. The smell of doom, the energetic signature of a spell that Faelan didn't see coming. A spear of hellfire, fired from the horde's rear, pierced him from behind.
There was a moment of white, searing pain that I shared with him. The sensation of your lungs filling with your own blood. One last confused look at the gray and rainy sky. And then, the boom-boom stopped.
The chain broke for the third time. The clock began to tick.
One.
There was no hesitation. There was no analysis. I had rehearsed this moment in my mind for more than a century. Every movement, every thought, was predetermined. As Faelan's soul faded, I refused to be expelled from the world. I clung to reality with an iron will, anchoring myself in the shadow of the falling corpse.
Two.
The first act: anchoring. I ignored the pull of the System that was already beginning to pull me. Instead, I opened the crack. The wound in reality that he had practiced for decades.
I projected the totality of my true consciousness, my being, my will, through that tear and anchored it with a conceptual force to the infinity of the Dimension of Darkness.
I felt the connection solidify, a new kind of root that sank not into a soul, but into a concept. The Dimension of Darkness was no longer a place he visited; now it was the source of my existence. My body of shadows on the battlefield became a simple projection.
Three.
The second act: deception. With my true essence safe, I focused on the echo. The empty shell he had forged. With a pulse of will, I expelled her from my projected form. It floated in the air for a split second, a black sphere that was a perfect replica of my Longinus signature.
Four.
The third act: the paradox. This was the most crucial, the most blasphemous movement. Instead of allowing the echo to float freely, I positioned myself, my true consciousness now anchored in darkness, as its "host."
Not physically, but conceptually. I projected a thread of my will and tied it to the echo, reversing the dynamic. It was no longer the Sacred Gear tied to a soul; it was a soul tying to an empty Sacred Gear. I was hosting a part of myself.
Five.
The System, blind and operating on autopilot, found me. His programmed logic detected Faelan's death and the released signature of the Longinus. He rushed to recapture me. But he did not find Canis Lykaon, the conscience. He found the Echo of Canis Lykaon, the object.
Six.
The divine machinery did its job. He detected the signature of the Longinus. Then, he looked for a host to tie him to. And he found it. He saw the thread I had forged, connecting the echo to a "soul." My soul. To the system's binary, distracted logic, the equation was complete. A Sacred Gear. A host. A bond.
At the bottom of the cosmos, the Biblical God was probably busy moving legions of angels or fighting a Satan. The Seraphim were leading battlefronts. Heaven's focus was on survival, not micromanaging its prisons. My bold little manipulation went unnoticed under the din of warring creation.
Seven.
The golden chain was reformed. I felt it close around my essence. But this time, it wasn't a cage. It was an illusion. The chain, following the logic of the system I had deceived, anchored itself to my echo, and through the echo, to myself.
I had chained myself.
The feeling was of such pure and absolute euphoria that it almost undid me. The constant pull, the programmed compulsion, the longing for a host... everything disappeared.
The chain was there, a ghost of golden light that I could feel on my conceptual periphery, but it didn't pull anything. It was a closed loop. An endless circuit that began and ended in me.
On the battlefield, the remaining demons, feeling the surge of unleashed power, turned to my projected form.
For the first time, I didn't feel any leash. No limits.
I smiled, an act that was a stretching of jaws full of teeth at night. And for the first time, I unleashed a fragment of my true power, not out of necessity, but out of pure and glorious pleasure.
The shadow beneath my paws exploded outward, a tsunami of blackness that swallowed the light of rain and hellfire. The demons didn't have time to scream. The darkness touched them and they ceased to exist, their bodies and souls erased, consumed, and added to my domain.
I stood in the center of the silent field, in the gray rain, the only living being among the corpses of the Celts and the dust of the demons. He was free.
In the Dimension of Darkness, my true form felt the echo of that freedom. He was the only king in an infinite kingdom. War could roar. The gods could fall. The universe could burn.
I didn't care anymore.
He was no longer a piece in his game. It was a player who had turned the board upside down. And now, I was going to set my own rules.
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